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T o understand the underlying meaning of the altarpiece’s complex imagery, it is essential to understand the history and culture of the people of Santiago Atitlán. Speaking of the symbolism that highland Maya women incorporate into their woven textiles, Elena Ixk’ot remarked that “understanding and appreciation must take place within the context of community or all meaning is lost” (Otzoy 1996, 150). The imagery displayed on the altarpiece also is closely tied to the society in which it was created. When explaining the imagery in their work, the Chávez brothers often referred to myths and rituals unique to Santiago Atitlán and its people. These myths stress events set in the far-distant past when the gods and traditions of the community were first born. Although the Santiago Atitlán myths are couched in language which seems to imply that they are based on historical fact (Atitecos accept them as real events rather than allegories), they are never tied to a fixed period of time. I spoke at length with Nicolás Chávez about the deer dance carved on the second of the lower narrative panels on the altarpiece. After he described the dance and its first appearance in the time of the ancient ancestors, I asked Nicolás how long ago these things took place. Without hesitation he said that the dance is as old as the world itself. Yet one of the ancestors he had named as a founder of the dance was Francisco Sojuel, a legendary Tz’utujil priest-shaman who in one way or another appears in myths about the origin of nearly all important aspects of Atiteco ceremonialism.1 Nicolás had 1 In this study I follow Barbara Tedlock’s definition of “priest-shaman” as an individual involved in rituals that are community-wide in scope rather than those of primarily individual concern, such as healings (B. Tedlock 1982, 52–53). CHAPTER TWO The Altarpiece in the Context of Tz’utujil History 23 The Altarpiece in the Context of Tz’utujil History mentioned that his father had been born only a few years after Sojuel’s death and had known the great man’s successor Marco Rohuch, a powerful priest in his own right. I asked if the world had begun so short a time ago. Puzzled over my concern for historical dates, he explained that the world has gone through many births as well as deaths. Each time the deer dance is performed, the world is created anew. (Carlsen and Prechtel also noted the Atiteco belief that the world was “born” not created [1994, 92]). For the Tz’utujils, the cosmos is conceived in living terms, undergoing birth and eventual death in endless cycles. Atitecos are not really interested in when things happened in the past, but in how they relate to the present. The actions of divine beings and revered ancestors are recapitulated through ritual as a means of sacralizing the present and asserting the symmetry inherent in the passage of time. As Vansina suggests, absolute measurements of time do not exist in any of the world’s oral traditions, unless based on recent memory: “Time was measured by the return of natural phenomena , by the occurrence of extraordinary events, by reference to human life span and reproduction, and by reference to the return of recurrent social events” (1985, 174). Yet, for the Tz’utujils, the lack of attention to historical dates also relates to their perception of time itself. Bricker notes that Maya ritual maintains a central focus on wellstructured mythic events and these are not haphazard constructs of arbitrarily chosen historical precedents: the prophetic tradition of the Maya tends to blur the distinction between myth and history. In serving as a precedent, as a guide for human action, myth becomes just another event in history. But since the events in the corresponding parts of two cycles are never identical, the myth may acquire some new elements before it is eventually reintegrated into oral tradition (1981, 180–181). Bricker suggests that such temporal distortions are related to the nature of the highland Maya calendar, which stresses repetitive cycles rather than linear time. In this view, time for the Maya operates as an endless repetition of paradigmatic events connected with specific days during the year. In Momostenango, Maya “daykeepers” continue to utilize the ancient ritual calendar of 260 days to time their rituals and offerings, as well as to interpret the significance of recent events (Schultze Jena...

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