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Carlos M. López

The history of the Popol Wuj as both a collection of texts recorded among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala and also written down in the manner of the western canon is a history of successive repressions, recoveries, and appropriations. In the Popol Wuj we can see the distortions introduced in the texts as a result of their conservation within systems of registers and epistemological frameworks differing from the original, thus becoming tainted by Western culture paradigms. For this reason, the Mayan text can be seen as one of the most visible and illustrative cases of what occurred with many other belief systems existing in the Amerindian continent during the European colonization.

Currently the title Popol Wuj refers to a collection of tzijs — truths, stories, narratives, wisdom, and traditions — originating from the highlands of present-day Guatemala, dating from before the Spanish invasion lead by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. Father Ximénez’s manuscript, containing the oldest available version today (ca. 1701), is housed in the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA, as one of the documents bound in the volume cataloged as the Ayer MS 1515. It is important to read the Popol Wuj for two major reasons. First, because it is the most complete and intelligible surviving cultural record of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies. Secondly, because part of the epistemologies, cosmogonies, philosophical trends, and values contained in some of its tzijs could become the seeds of new thought if they enter in contact with our contemporary worldviews. A great deal of the contents of the Popol Wuj could offer alternative points of view for revisiting most of the ominous challenges arising from the current relationship between humans and nature. This Maya-K’iche’ text is not a book of solutions or revealed truths that will save us, but it offers different approaches to the way we think and feel. It is perhaps for this reason that Mayan cosmogonies might allow us to enrich our own epistemological perspectives.

The reading of such texts implies a significant risk. Given their profound discrepancies with our Western epistemology, we cannot avoid the tendency to invade, distort, overlay, or absorb their “non-Western” views. Because the Maya have been subjugated by Western powers for over 500 years, the reading of their texts is not a simple literary exercise. In this case there is contact with a cultural artifact bound by a long-standing system of oppression. Thus, a reading from the Western-dominant perspective implies an inevitable invasion of native discourses which becomes a new form of scholarly colonization. An alternative reading should seek to avoid this risk. In this chapter I will discuss the repercussions of the inherent dilemmas arising from readings of historically colonized texts.

The texts of the Popol Wuj — which originate from many diverse sources — are arranged in three main sections. The first part comprises the tzijs, which recount the origin of life, of plants, animals, and human beings. The creation of humans is the centerpiece of these tzijs, and is presented in four successive stages: the creation of animals, the creation of the Earthen Man, the Wooden Man, and finally the Maize Man. This process of creation is headed by the principal kab’awils (deities) of the Mayan cosmogony: Uk’ux kaj, Juraqan, Ch’ipi Kaqulja, Raxa Kaqulja, Tepew, Q’ukumatz, Alom, K’ajolom, Xpiyakok, Xmukane, Tz’aqol, and B’itol (the orthography of the names are from Sam Colop); which are translated into English as: the Heart of Sky, Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt, Sovereign, Plumed Serpent, Bearer, Begetter, Grand Mother, Grand Father, Maker, and Modeler (Ted- lock’s translation). These kab’awils join together to create a being capable of knowledge, but they did not preconceive the forms and characteristics of such a being. Through trial and error they tried different materials and forms that allowed the production of a creature capable of knowledge. The choice of materials and craftsmanship was tested by the capacity of the new creature to speak meaningfully. To determine the traits of these creatures, the deities used new combinations of materials (mud, wood, and maize) and random chance by casting together red beans and yellow corn kernels. Then, they interpreted the resulting patterns. The first three attempts failed, but each one of them signified a step forward toward greater complexity and perfection. On the fourth attempt, once the proper material — maize — was obtained, they produced the sought-after being: a creature capable of knowledge, and therefore capable of thanking the kab’awils for their existence. The names of the first four men were B’alam Kitze’, B’alam Aq’ab’, Majukutaj, and Ik’i Balam (Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night, Mahucutah, and True Jaguar); the first four women were Kaja Paluda, Chomi Ja, Tz’ununi Ja, and Kaq’ixa Ja (Celebrated Seahouse, Prawn House, Hummingbird House, and Macaw House).

The second group of tzijs is more diverse and complex. It includes the stories of different beings, whose nature was not strictly divine, human, legendary (in the Western sense), nor symbolic-metaphoric; instead they embodied some characteristics of all of these. These tzijs are subdivided into two large sections. On the one hand are the tales of Wuqub’ Kak’ix (Seven Macaw) and his sons Sipakna and Kab’raqan, and on the other, the struggles between Jun Junajpu and Wuqub’ Junajpu, and later between their sons Junajpu and Xb’alanke and the Lords of Xib’alb’a.

Wuqub’ Kak’ix and his sons are characterized by their arrogance and are defeated by the tricks played on them by the Twins Junajpu and Xb’alanke. The other series of tzijs tells how the Lords of the Underworld (Xib’alb’a, a place of suffering and trials) defeat Jun Junajpu and Wuqub’ Junajpu. However, the daughter of Kuchumakik’, one of the Lords of Xib’alb’a, disobeys her father’s prohibition and goes to the Jícaro (gourd tree) where the decapitated head of Jun Junajpu is hanging. The skull spits on the maiden Xkik’s hand, and she conceives the tiwns Junajpu and Xb’alanke. She is then condemned to death for her disobedience and subsequent pregnancy, but she manages to escape and is received and protected by the elder Xmukane, the mother of Jun Junajpu. When Junajpu and Xb’alanke were born, they were harassed by their stepbrothers Jun B’atz’ and Jun Chowen, who made them submit to all kinds of abuse. As time passed the Twins grew up and took revenge on their older brothers. Using their wisdom, they tricked Jun B’atz’ and Jun Chowen and transformed them into monkeys, freeing themselves of their hostility. After this first deed, they descended to Xib’alb’a, to avenge the death of their parents. At the entrance to the Underworld, there were four different-colored rivers: blue, red, black, and yellow. They followed the black river, which led them to the House of Suffering, but thanks to the collaboration of the ants and the mosquitoes, they managed to overcome and destroy the Lords of Xib’alb’a. Their triumph ends in an apotheosis: one transforms into the sun and the other into the moon.

Finally, the last section of the Popol Wuj contains the tzijs that refer to the peregrination of the first four forefathers (B’alam Kitze’, B’alam Aq’ab’, Majukutaj, and Ik’i Balam), accompanied by the group of peoples who later will form the K’iche’ federation in their migration from Tulan. This journey begins in the dark, as they await the rising of the sun (Q’ij), the Moon (ik’), and Venus (Ik’oq’ij), at which time they go into the highlands. These forefathers bring the symbols of power from the Tulan (Toltecs), introducing the kab’awils Tojil, Awilix, and Jakawitz. This excursion of warriors defeats and subjugates the populations that did not want to accept the kab’awil Tojil, and installs the three Houses and their respective dynasties: the Ajaw K’iche’, the Nija’ib’ab, and the Kaweq. Basically, these tzijs describe the formation of the K iche reign, and end with a catalog of the lineage of Toltec origin of those living in the capital Kumarcaaj (or Gumarcaj, which means “place of old reeds”), also known as Utatlán.

As we can see, the names have a certain significance, but not in a direct way. The K’iche’ language is founded on a system of metaphoric meanings or polysemantic symbols. For example, the word Q’ij means sun, but it also means day, and is the name of a day in the K’iche’ calendar. The word tzij means truths, stories, narratives, wisdom, and traditions. The word pop means mat (petate), stories, time, events, facts, and, through extension of petate, it means also council and community. In the same way, the whole structure of K’iche’ language and discourse has the same properties and characteristics. Likewise, polysemantic expressions, or the aggregation of meanings through chains of transferences, are a trait of Mayan epistemology, which obviously differs from that of the West. From the moment that these texts were captured and set down within the framework of colonization, they were subjected to the interferences and appropriations from the outside, which is to say, from Western paradigms and colonizing pressures. This process started in social as well as in cultural spheres from the very first moment of invasion by the imperial army of Spain.

During Lent in the year 1524, K’umarcaaj was conquered and destroyed, causing the downfall of one of the most powerful groups and sociopolitical organizations in Mescamerica, perhaps second only in importance to Tenochtitlán. With the destruction of this military and ceremonial center, a very rapid breakdown of the cultural and social fabric of the K’iche’ nation ensued. Its military and religious leaders were executed and the general populace was subjected to a regime of servitude or slavery, which together with forced migration, resettlement, and European diseases, left them with very few chances to organize a resistance. It was in this context that the tzij, rooted in the past “before the arrival of Christianity” (fo. 1r, lines 24-5), acquired a very important status: they formed the center of resistance for surviving invasion and destruction.

Possibly around 1555, the friars charged with indoctrination of the Christian faith realized the importance of the “stories” from “pagan” antiquity. Presumably, young K’iche’ nobles recorded in their language, but using Latin characters, tzijs heard as children in their homes or ceremonial centers and recalled from memory, perhaps with the help of some sort of visual aids – wujs, ceramics, pictures, or stone inscriptions carved into stelae, murals, temples, and buildings, and in the notable case of a stone housed at the Chichichastenango Museum. Ruud van Akkeren emphasizes the oral nature of these tzijs and maintains that “the Popol Wuj seems an amalgamation of dance-dramas and oral history,” adding that “it only received its detailed, written form, as we know it today, when it was composed by a group of Maya scribes in the middle of the 1550s” (2000: 3). It is probable that this record was solicited by the indoctrinating friars, who in order to convert the indigenous people had closer contact with them than most colonizers. If indeed it occurred in this manner, the circumstances gave rise to one of the peculiarities of the Popol Wuj: with each recovery, it survived, but at the same time it suffered adulterations.

When the tzijs were recorded in a European fashion (using Latin lettering and phonetic systems, and employing paper and ink) they acquired a further characteristic feature: fossilization in the written form. This format, now set as a block, almost certainly never existed in this form before the arrival of Alvarado. Very likely the tzijs were a part of a more or less disperse corpus (Sam Colop, 1999: 13), and were repeated or read in different circumstances and within a framework completely different from that which it began to inhabit after 1524. In a departure from existing Mayan tzijs, during the period of the formation of the K’iche kingdom, the intent of the tzijs was to justify and impose the legitimacy of the invaders’ hegemony over ancient Mayan settlements. During the conquest of the Maya, the new Toltec-created tzijs recorded the clashes between the various houses or bloodlines (the Ajaw K’iche’, the Kaweq, and the Nija’ib’ab’). A testimony of the conflicts between the K’iche’ of K’umarcaaj and those of Rabinal or the Cakchiqueles was recorded in the Rabinal Achi and the Memorial de Solola. This means that the texts narrating those events were in constant interaction with other texts and within the collection of social, political, and religious realities in a process of transformations originating from within the culture itself. As of 1555, all of this was wiped out owing to a sudden interruption of that historic dynamic when both the society and its cultural texts were subjected to colonial rule.

Setting down the tzijs as a single piece during transcription into Western writing not only eliminated the dynamics and differences within the core of the corpus, but also determined and imposed the impossibility of its evolution. It became fixed as a document, which is to say a text that informs about the past but will not be able to change in accordance with new realities. It enters, literally, the shelves of the monastery, the administration, or overseas powers. Thus it is transformed into an informant, an object of scrutiny, a tool of power. This transmutation is of course much more complex, but we can say that the aforementioned impacts comprise the most important repercussions of the entry of the Maya-K’iche’ tzij into the “lettered city” of the Spanish colony and those which followed.