Читать книгу A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture - Группа авторов - Страница 35

“Globalization” spans from the height of the Cold War to the present. Among the K’iche’ this period of history has continued to be very turbulent and tragic time. There was a departure from the historical, sociological, and judicial discussion that characterized the governing periods of Juan José Arévalo (1944–50) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–4), who had been active participants in the implementation of fairer policies with the indigenous people, and the region slipped directly into civil war. The dictatorship of Coronel Castillo Armas launched a strategy of isolation and repression of the natives, using as excuses the paradoxical outcome of the indigenist policies of the Arévalo and Arbenez governments and the simplistic arguments of Cold War doctrines imported directly from the army and ultraconservative sectors. Between 1960 and 1980 these elites also developed a policy of appropriating land and exploiting indigenous workers that progressively transformed itself into a campaign of extermination perpetrated by the elite and the army, both predominately ladino.

The failure to recognize native rights generated responses from indigenous communities by diverse political groups, generally leftist, various churches (some postconciliar sectors of the Catholic Church and some liberal Protestant churches), and some activist groups with indigenous roots. From this movement guerrilla groups arose – never very numerous – Grupos de Base (a Catholic-inspired organization, with much influence from liberation theology), social movements and unions (mostly on plantations and farms), and groups for the recovery of language and traditions.

The repression led by the army against this widespread movement was called a “civil war” despite the fact that the vast majority of those killed or missing were unarmed civilians. In fact it was an ethnic war against natives, especially the K’iche’ (83 percent of the victims from 1962–96 were Mayans, and of those almost 50 percent were K’iche’, according to a report from Proyecto Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica). The worst period was under the dictatorship of General Efraín Ríos Montt, from 1982–3, with genocide that continued almost until the end of the decade. The K’iche’s refer to those years as “the time of violence.”

In the midst of these collapses and the repositioning of hegemonies at world and regional levels, reinterpretations of the Popol Wuj continued. One of the topics of debate was how to resolve the issue of the translations; the other was about the influences and eventual appropriations to which the text might be subjected, whether from political, religious, cultural (endo- or exo-ethnic), or other types of organizations or institutions.

Continuing in pursuit of a faithful recuperation of the K’iche’ text, in 1955 Dora M. de Burgess and Patricio Xec published a new K’iche’ version in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, with the backing of the evangelical church. According to Paulo Burgess, a missionary at the church, the goal was to return to the natives the right to read “their sacred book” in their own language and not in the Castilian of Recinos (1955: iii). The missionary believed that the publication could illuminate some of the aspects missed by the “savants,” owing to the fact that Patricio Xec Cuc had gone over the vocabulary with young students at the Instituto Bíblico Quiché from all over the K’iche’ region (ibid.).

In 1962 Antonio Villacorta wrote a second edition of the manuscript, this time translated word-for-word in a hyper-textualist approach, seeking complete semantic “purism.” He calls it “Crestomatía Quiché” – that is, a collection of writings chosen with educational aims, which seems to suggest the importance he gave to the dissemination of the text amongst the newer generations of Guatemalans.

After having worked from 1945 on the rephoneticization of Mayan writing and having created special characters to represent the phonemes of the language, in 1977 Adrián Inés Chávez published a new version of the Pop-Wuj (Libro de Acontecimientos, or Book of Events). In 1997 he reedited it under the title Pop Wuj. Libro del Tiempo (Book of Time). It is a translation in four columns: a literal transcription, a phoneticized transcription, a literal translation in Castilian, and a Castilian version employing syntactical rules comprehensible to contemporary readers.

The idea of this project was to recover precolonial phonetics and to decolonize the native language contaminated by Castilian sounds. He adds that the negative impact of Latin orthography on the K’iche’ language resulted in transmitting “feelings and ideas which are of a completely different nature than the Mayan cultural essence” (Matul Morales, 1997: xii; emphasis added). Antonio Pop Caal also maintains that those who wrote about natives while ignoring the basic characteristics of their culture represented them in a completely mistaken way (1988).

Daniel Matul Morales did not limit the task of recovering the Popol Wuj to speculative activity. For him, as for many other Mayan activists, this intellectual work is a part of a plan to construct a “Multilingual and multicultural nation in its fundamental structures” (1997: xiv). It is a new political plan constructed during the insurgency against exploitation and segregation, in resisting genocide, and in building a process to achieve peace in the face of difficulties that persist until today. Matul Morales trusts that, with the “secrets” contained in the contents of the Popol Wuj tzijs, “the Maya are contributing to the construction of a new society wherein our philosophers, in a context revindicated after four hundred and seventy-three years of struggle, will continue in search of the latest truths” (ibid.).

Perhaps today it might be said that the concrete results of Chávez’s translation are not its greatest contribution. The originality of this K’iche’ was to revindicate the value and dignity of the Mayan population and its culture, recovering the language and the text of the Popol Wuj in its precolonial integrity as living cultural artifact – a language and text that belongs to a community that is not primitive, and of course not backward. As Guzmán Böckler states, they belong to a community that despite the “multisecular aggression which it has been a victim of, has known how to maintain its vitality and historical continuity” (1997: xx). From Chávez’s reading, this is the contribution which has survived, despite the fact that his Catholic credo notoriously interfered with the terms in which the translation was rendered.

In 1971 Munro Edmonson published The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala. This translation, the second into English (in 1950 Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Morley had translated the Recinos version), made some changes in the reading of the Popol Wuj. Situated in academia and with an ethnographic, rather than a linguistic, religious, philosophical, or literary focus (xi), he abandons the traditional form of translation into prose and instead presents paired verses. His idea was that “The Popol Vuh is in poetry and cannot be accurately understood in prose” (xi). And he insists that “Words matter, and formal discourse matters even more” (xii). Because of this Edmondson proposed capturing the essence of the text through the nature and “style” of language.

With the assistance of a spiritual guide (daykeeper and seer) Andrés Xiloj, in 1986 Dennis Tedlock published his translation entitled Popol Vuh. The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. On the cover it also says: “commentary based on the ancient knowledge of the Modern Quiché Maya.” Tedlock’s focus was to read the original from a perspective of the “divinatory art” of seers and spiritual guides: “Diviners are, by profession, interpreters of difficult texts” (15). Tedlock states that when Andrés Xiloj began to read the Popol Wuj almost without difficulty, he understood that something special was occurring. Tedlock told Xiloj the meanings of archaic terms, and in turn the reader rendered an interpretation full of meaning (15). Tedlock concludes that his work is the result of a three-way dialogue between the wisdom of Xiloj’s profession, the manuscript, and his academic knowledge (16). The central theme is religious spirituality. Because of this the format of his translation alternates paragraphs in prose with others having the structure and tone of prayer – which is something he perceived as evident in the original text – in order to restore its ritual content.

Tedlock’s translation was an inspired reading, based in mysticism and religion that interpreted the text from an astronomical and calendaric perspective (15). This is the way the translator found to link the text written in 1555 with the tumultuous present of the K’iche’. In this sense it is a subversive mysticism because it opposes the doctrine of the majority of the dominant Western religions in Guatemala. It subverts the inspiration in the biblical creed and in a God in Heaven, and centers its religiosity in the Earth – where it is assumed that life sprang, according to the Popol Wuj. This reading by Tedlock and Xiloj links the precolonial past with the present, erasing the gap opened by European civilization. Nevertheless, it admits that the two timelines will have to run in parallel in the future (13).

Recently, Allen Christenson published his new translation of the Popol Wuj (2003–4). Taking up Edmonson’s point of view, Christenson saw the text as a “sublime work of literature” and he placed it on the same plane as classical works such as the epic poems of cultures having prestige in the West (42). The conceptual emphasis of this interpretation is to recover a word whose nature was to have always been written, and that as writing it suffered the trauma of the Spanish conquest and Catholic missionaries. Christenson focuses on the destructive effect of colonization exclusively in this historic period and on the modality particular to these forms of colonialism. The K’iche’ text is meant as a relic that in itself encompasses a sacred truth (17). Thus the task of the reading is to give it life by way of being faithful to the old Word, which later becomes wisdom through the ritual of uttering the Word. The accurate reproduction of the perfection of antiquity is the ultimate goal of the reading, and its authority is established by adhering to a text that was set down in writing during distant times. Therefore the work of the translator is to recover the desire to set down the story in writing; that is, through a system similar to that of the West but that had already existed for many centuries before the arrival of the Spanish. In this way the meaning of the text comes from linking poetic and literary value with archaic forms.

Finally, the last version we will mention is that by Enrique Sam Colop, published in 1999 under the title Popol Wuj. Versión Poética K’iche’. Sam Colop, of K’iche’ origin, emphasizes the “multiple authorship” of the text, and indicates that the Ximénez version gathered elements from different systems of register and transmission of the text, just as it did differences in dialects, all of which originate before colonization (13). He also notes that owing to the astronomical correlation of many of the passages, the narrative of the Popol Wuj is distinct from that of other cultures, both in its nature and in its form of articulation (13).

But the core of his reading lies in “attempting an interpretation of the text in the original language in which it was written” (14). In this recovery recognizing the differences in the style of the K’iche’ language plays an important role, but most importantly the tradition and language before the burst of Spanish invasion. This value does not lie in that, to us, the language seems archaic, but rather it was the form of expression and feeling of the people of these pre-Columbian communities, and it is through the recovery of its forms that the original meaning can be accessed. Just as for the majority of present-day Maya, one of the concerns of Sam Colop is education and literacy. His presentation of the Popol Wuj intends, without separating itself too much from Ximénez manuscript, to be within reach of contemporary K’iche’ (19).

In addition to previous readings of the Popol Wuj in translation, other summaries of critical interpretations could be presented. Because it is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will simply say that in this area there is also a large variety of tendencies, intentions, critical frameworks, and projects. We find readings ranging from parabiblical exegeses to the esoteric; from the most orthodox philology to ethnohistory and ethnolinguistics; from cultural anthropology to structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalytical, Marxist theories; and also those derived from cosmo-archeology.

Translations as well as critical studies have always had theoretical frameworks and ideologies strongly tied to very diverse political, epistemological, and religious projects. If this can occur with any text, in the particular case of the Popol Wuj these perspectives have been sharpened by the sociopolitical-cultural contexts of the Maya communities to which the tzijs are actively linked. This can also be seen in what happened to Ms. Rigoberta Menchú Tum. The debates, acceptances, and rejections toward her person, career, activities, and decisions are an example of the close relationships between the conditions of internal colonization with which the K’iche’ live, the plans and agendas far removed from them, and the conflicts within the hearts of the collective native community. The overall view of these stances serves to illustrate to what extent evaluating the conditions of the survival of the Maya culture and the texts that they gave rise to is problematic and controversial.

The synopsis – which has not been complete – shows, among other things, how persistent attempts to appropriate, manipulate, divert, or simply exterminate Mayan cultural discourses have been. These actions have been part-plans that have completed their cycles and have left their imprints, as much on the indigenous nation as on the text of the Popol Wuj. In recent times the most tragic point of these extermination plans was the genocide during the 1970s and 1980s. But military campaigns have had their parallels or counterparts in other activities. Cultural asphyxiation – erasing the presence of Mayan cosmogony, philosophy, ethic, language, and religion – was given a boost through some of the campaigns for religious expansion that are carried out in Latin America, and in particular Guatemala.

The new missionaries, in the same way as the Spanish of another era, have sought to erase the weakened remnants of native traditions and beliefs. The categorization used has been the same as that of the Spanish: they are pagan beliefs. The difference is that the contemporary missionaries have been more radical than the Catholics, because they, to a certain degree, tolerated spaces for ritual negotiation and for beliefs. It is not by chance that the institutional labor of some churches, like the evangelical Pentecostal – closely connected with Ríos Montt and Jorge Serrano, among others – has had a strong penetration into the Maya region.

But it has not been the only church that has laid out a campaign of aggressive expansion. According to a November 2005 report by the US Department of State, the religious composition of Guatemala is 40 percent Protestant, the majority of which are recognized as evangelical, but there is also a strong presence of other churches, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

Added to this are political agendas, those which during the Cold War were closely linked with the political blocs and ideologies of that time. But once this confrontation ended the penetration of the “global” system began, with its culture of hyperconsumption in the central countries, with technological development and the productivity that often do not respect the environment nor native cultures, and that transforms the collection of peripheral societies to a rhythm of needs and parameters far removed from local conditions. Taking into account this enormous complexity, one can ascertain that the conditions under colonialism during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries have not vanished, although they have changed and operate through different agents.

As readers today prepare to read the Popol Wuj, a legitimate question arises: Why read it? All readings are a form of recovery and re-creation of the text. The idea is to decide from which point we direct our work: From the perspective of the colonizer or the colonized? From the culture that fights to survive and carry on into the future, or from an academic position? From a respect for life in all its forms from all corners of the planet, or from the immediate and increasingly out-of-control urgencies? From the notion that there are privileged cultures and epistemologies, or from the perspective of the existence of cultural pluralism? And perhaps many other questions. What is certain is that the Popol Wuj, just as other native texts of the continent, has been silenced, either by ignoring it or by relegating it to an archaic space. Nevertheless, its resurgence is a fact of contemporary reality.

Its existence and survival have been linked with the fate of the community and culture to which it pertained and continues to pertain. Its survival also has been the result of innumerable repositioning of the subjects and agents that have been tied to these tzijs. This chapter is also subject to the same phenomenon.