Maya and Catholic Cultures in Crisis

Preface

Preface In 2006 I published The Maya and Catholicism: An Encounter of Worldviews. That work began with the Spanish evangelization of the Maya in the sixteenth century and ended with a description of the results of the Catholic efforts to convert the Maya during the colonial and early national periods. This book is a sequel to that work. It adds some material about the colonial and national periods as background for the interaction of the worldviews from about the middle to the end of the twentieth century. I have attempted to make this work stand by itself, but I strongly urge the reader to consult the previous volume for the background of this volume. Chapter 2 about the Maya worldview, is a revision of chapter 5 of the previous volume. The writer wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following experts on the various topics covered in the chapters. Without their help, this book could not have been written. The following people read earlier versions of the entire manuscript and made many helpful suggestions : Allen Christenson; Christine Eber; Christine Gudorf; Christopher Lutz; Brent Metz; Judith Maxwell; Norman Schwartz; and James Walsh, SJ. Others commented on parts of the manuscript pertinent to their specializations and/or furnished research materials: Garrett Cook; Ricardo Falla, SJ; Christine Kovic; Thomas and Marjorie Melville; Heidi Moksnes; Elizabeth Nick; Thomas Stafford; David Stoll; Kay Warren; John Womack; and Alexander Zatyrka, SJ. I am grateful for their help, but responsibility for the final product is mine alone. The maps are the work of Clifford Brown. Duncan Earle furnished the introductory photographs to chapters 17, 18, and 19; Jeanne Simonelli those for chapters 20 and 21. Thomas and Marjorie Melville furnished the introductory photographs to chapters 22, 26, and figures 22.1, 22.2. Allen Christenson furnished those for chapter 23 and figures 23.1, 23.2, and 23.3; Ricardo Falla for figure 24.1; and María Pilar de Hoyos de Asig for chapter 25 and figure 25.1. I took all the remaining photographs and did all translations from the Spanish. Biblical translations are from the Standard Edition of the New Jerusalem Bible. At times the text makes temporal references with the words “currently,” “contemporary,” or similar designations . For any future readers, they usually refer to the years 2000 to 2010. xii · Preface The older spellings of Maya languages based on Spanish orthography were changed in 1987 by the Guatemalan government’s acceptance of the alphabet proposed the Academia de Las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala. The writer has used these newer spellings when referring to the languages. But the older spellings have been retained when the references are to geographical places, rather than the predominant language of a place. This is more in accord with the spellings in the older literature and geographical usage. Important documents from the Vatican, bishops’ conferences, and some United Nations’ publications make use of a citation system that eases the problem of finding a cited source. Vatican documents are written in Latin, then translated into many of the world’s languages. In addition, there may be more than one translation for the same language, or multiple editions of a document or translation by different publishers. The end result is many possible editions with differing paginations for the same document. To avoid the problem of finding a citation only in the edition used by the writer, each section or paragraph of the original document is numbered and these numbers are repeated in all subsequent editions and translations . Here, after I cite the page number(s) of the edition I used, I’ve added the paragraph numbers(s), preceded by the number (#) sign. Over the years, some have misunderstood my involvement with the Maya. This is reflected in statements such as, “I was the parish priest in Zinacantán or Santiago Atitlán,” or “I witnessed many of the events described in the chapters.” I am a former Jesuit: ordained a priest in 1957, and resigned in 1969. I have had little personal contact with the Catholic church or the Jesuits since that time. In 1960-62, I was a graduate student in the Social Relations Department at Harvard. Joining the Harvard Chiapas Project directed by Professor Evon Vogt, I arrived in Zinacantán in December 1962. In the preface to the previous volume (Early 2006: xiv), I explained my situation in Zinacantán during the years 1963-64: “I did not function as the town priest, although I would sometimes...