Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize

12. Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like

twelve Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like The title of this chapter is taken from a children’s book written by Jay Williams and beautifully illustrated by Mercer Mayer.1 I return to the book shortly as a device to resolve—or, more accurately, as a device to dissolve—issues that arise in claims by different agents to know what an authentic Christianity should “look like.” First, however, I reconsider what it meant to be Christian among the colonial-period Maya of Belize and how we would know what Christianity meant—to the Maya or to the Spaniards. How do archaeology and ethnohistory fit in? Maya Christians in Belize What it meant to be Christian is especially interesting for the area we now know as Belize because, as I have observed in earlier chapters, the Maya in the region remained Christian after 1700 under circumstances in which Spanish authorities were no longer in control. Admittedly, after two hundred years of Spanish interference it might have been difficult to maintain a corpus of beliefs and images that were not influenced by Christian imagery and thought, but it is worth noting that the Maya in Belize did not resort to rejection of all things Spanish, despite their relationships and alliances with the Itza and Kowoj of the Peten lakes region. The Mayas’ choices were probably affected by the fact that they could benefit to some extent from the colonial economy.2 They were far enough away from Spanish religious authorities to be able to lead their own lives for considerable periods at the same time that they could act as intermediaries in transactions with frontier communities in acquiring cacao, honey, annatto and other products, which they could then exchange and profit from in more + + 307 308 Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize heavily administered regions to the north. Although Lamanai suffered more than Tipu as regards community members’ health,3 the material culture does not reflect settlements deprived of material goods, and some European goods reached both communities. The Belize Maya could not have achieved this strategic position had they maintained the “pagan” profile that characterized the Maya of Peten. Both Classic- and Postclassic-period history suggest that this straddling of different worlds was not new to Maya communities in Belize. Their proximity to the sea and to coastal and coral islands served them well as regards access to a wealth of marine resources and to goods made available through coastal trade.4 Rivers and streams fostered inland travel and communication overland with Peten, which was important for the cities, towns, and villages in Belize in Classic times, and with Campeche and Yucatan where centers rose to prominence in Postclassic times. Many sites in Belize may not reflect the wealth of architecture and material culture of a Tikal or Calakmul, but neither do they give evidence of collapse or of a radical fluctuation in fortunes, at least until the Spanish colonial period. Such generalization is not meant to imply environmental determinism, but simply to assert that Belize Maya communities made good use of a good situation —one that offered diversity in resources and a range of choices in routes of communication. Even in the early colonial period, it would not be Spaniards , but rather British and Continental privateers and pirates who drove the Maya from the coast. Nonetheless, the long history of involvement of Belize Maya communities in trade and exchange from Honduras to Tabasco must have given many individuals substantial knowledge of overland, coastal, and maritime travel that would have served them well in times of upheaval. Despite the claims in Spanish sources that there was widespread apostasy, the stratigraphic sequence at Tipu provided evidence that the Maya continued to bury their dead in the churchyard long after the church and adjacent buildings had fallen into disuse. This, in addition to placement of caches in churches at Lamanai after the 1638–41 revolts, suggests strongly that Christianity made deeper inroads into Maya life than was recognized by the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities who were responsible for the administration of Belize in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It may have been that only some individuals at Tipu continued to use the churchyard, whereas others reverted to pre-Columbian practice. Yet the question is why any individuals at all would have continued to practice what we usually describe as the religion of the colonizers when the colonizers were no longer powerful or even proximate , and when Itza machinations against the...