The Mythical Mayan Village

Mini-jaunt On a Sunday, Fred (director of our project) and I walk up to Santa Maria. This is the pueblo furthest up the road that passes Santa Ana and Familias de Esperanza and continues up the volcano.  Once I could see the lights of Santa Maria from my rooftop terrace on Callejon Lopez. We walked for miles up a steep hill, past Finca Carmona, the furthest school on that road that I’d ever visited and then miles more. Finally, legs aching, I asked if we were close and Fred said “About half way.” I said a few swear words and then said, “I’m going to take the next bus that comes along.” And along it came, moments later. We walked around town and looked at things in the market, just like in Antigua and other places, and then started back down the hill. That’s where I fell in love. Looking out across the verdant fields of corn and squash and beans, below us, criss-crossed with makeshift fences and dotted with small sheds, I felt as though I were feeding, as thought the landscape were a source of direct nourishment through my eyes and heart. “Yes,” I kept exulting inwardly, near tears. “Yes! This is what I’ve been missing – with only that narrow vista of banana trees and the hillside from my windows. This is what nourishes me.” It seemed like a great confirmation. 

I keep looking for the Mythical Mayan Village So today I went to the pueblo of one of our young maestras, who is indigenous, spoke Katchiquel as a child, and still does occasionally at home. I had thought she lived in my mythical village, but it is nearly as big as Antigua, mostly concrete streets - a few mud - a large municipal building being built, and a big plazuela with, on this day, a ferris wheel, big jumping house for kids, several stands for marimba bands, a vegetable and textiles fair......and so on. First we looked at her house.....which is a series of side-by-side rooms down one side of a large cleared dirt space with little "flower beds" in it, with fruit trees or vegetables growing in them. One room was her "kitchen" - dirt floor, corn-cane walls, woodburning "stove". The other side of the cleared space is for the houses of two of her uncles. The whole thing about 100 ft sq. She showed us her backstrap loom, the first time I´ve seen them unassembled.   (I realize I could easily have one at my house!) Then we walked to the fair area and suddenly started seeing masqued and costumed figures coming out of a large building and followed them to a big roped off area in the plaza where they danced and paraded for the next hour. The most interesting and elaborate costumes! Many like the conquistadors with epaulettes and much metallic embroidery, some like Native North Americans!, some with horns coming from their shoulders, heads, chests, some like something from Mad Max at Thunderdrome (much leather and spikes), some like humanoid figures in Star Wars, several men dressed as women, two skeletons with skulls on their upper arms and backs, a few clown-types, but most interesting were the masques they wore.....almost like mannequin´s faces, but even more stylized.....perfect flawless faces, some with perfect goatees, but so many of them identical, and all with that strange immoble look on these vigorously dancing figures. Very surreal, really. I enjoyed that a lot. Then they started a contest.....pole climbing. The pole was maybe 40-50 feet tall and had been slicked and covered with pig grease. There were 4-5 men gathered to climb it for the 800Q tacked at the top of it (maybe $110.) What was interesting is that they carried bags of sand over their shoulders, and scrapers in their pockets, and it seemed to be okay to use this to try to get rid of the pig fat which was making it impossible to climb up (no cleats, of course...bare feet or tennies) But I also loved the cooperation between the contestants.....scraping and cleaning a section, then coming down to let someone else try to get further, boosting each other, standing on each others´ shoulders and sometimes heads by mistake (much unintentionally or intentionally funny behavior, like sliding down on top of each other)...at one point the pole looked like a totem pole, with 5 human figures crouched one on top of the other on the lower half. There were also some monkey figures in costume running around, who were messing around (sort of like Coyote in this culture, I think) messing up their attempts, getting in the way, etc. And then just some older drunks who were trying to be helpful but of course slipped or fell. So the whole thing was hilarious and yet the contestants were very persevering and serious about it. They had made it half the way up the pole in the 40 mins or so that I watched. We also went up to the church where there were the most beautiful large wheels covered in peacock and other feathers with a saint´s image in the middle, lots of incense smoke in the air, beautifully dressed women in typical huipiles and faldas, such as all the women in the town wears, but with the addition of silver and colored ribbons tying up their hair, and a white veil draped over the whole thing...carrying these lovely fabric-covered poles with images at the top. Later they came out of the church and formed a procession through town...along with the big "wheels" carried on the shoulders of the men. But we had to leave. On the way back (in a friend from the project´s pickup truck - some of us sitting down in the back) we saw a dirt road leading to a pueblo and one of the young maestra´s invited me to go up there with them in two weeks to do a training in Brain Gym..........so maybe THAT is my mythical mayan village! I´ll go see....