Discarded Pages: Araceli Cab Cumí, Maya Poet and Politician

4: An Agenda for the Maya

CHAPTER FOUR An Agenda for the Maya I am also of corn. —Araceli Cab Cumí, March 2002  Honoring the Maya Araceli composed the preceding poem especially to open this chapter about herpoliticalworkwithandonbehalfofherfellowYucatecMaya.Initshelinks her identity as a Maya to the natural world, particularly to the basic foodstuff crops, corn and beans, of the Maya campesinos for many millennia. Corn is especially important since its cycle of clearing fields, planting, caretaking of the growing crop, and ultimately its harvesting structure the campesinos’ days and set a rhythm to the rituals attendant to the various stages of crop production. Corn is also the base of the campesino garden. Crops such as yams and jicamas grow among its roots. Squashes and watermelons flourish in the cornstalks’ protective shade. Cornstalks support the climbing pole beans. Corn has been important and central to the Maya as a crop and as a symbol since ancient times. Consequently, it is understandable why Araceli places corn symbolically at the center of her self-definition as a Maya. Araceli also finds poetic resolution of her identity as a Maya in the symbolic imagery of water, a reflective surface that appears to ask and answer questionssimultaneouslyasanimagereboundsbackandforth.Inheropening 49 chapter four 50 poem she references the garden wells where campesinos retrieve water and perhaps also the natural wells, the cenotes, that puncture the landscape in parts of the Yucatán Peninsula. Araceli wrote the following poem on New Year’s Day 986 as a hopeful message for the coming year: Ideal The dawn begins to open her gate to let the light of the day to enter people wake up to their daily routine to their constant labor of struggle and work. The whispering of voices and the murmuring of steps . . . , words that are heard in the pursuit of hope of a better day, in the new year. Of what will be! of the good and the bad The year really could be new when the light of the sun of justice levels the scales of the poor their rights of beneficial equality would stand out Not sickness, nor hunger, nor misery! Neither a child barefoot nor starving! Neither an old person sunk in oblivion! For all . . . the sun . . . the moon and the stars! January , 986 Thinking of better days for campesinos. Araceli Cab Cumí original page on page 178 In this poem Araceli writes of a better time for the Maya campesinos who are her neighbors and constituents. Although Araceli rarely speaks directly about the inspirations for her poetry, she says she wrote this poem at her home in Maxcanú after listening to the sounds of the campesinos going to work early one morning. The imagery and lyricism of the poem underscore its hopeful, almost prayerful message. It seems part prayer and part Araceli’s activist agenda as a Maya leader. As with other of her poems she portrays the natural world as an active force such as in the opening phrase, “The dawn begins to open her gate.” On March 2, 994, Araceli An Agenda fo the Maya 5 recited the following poem to an audience of faculty and students at Florida International University. She had written it to commemorate her first visit to the campus and indeed her first visit to the United States. In this poem she demonstrates her pride as a Maya and presents the Maya as people not only with a past and present but also a future. She insists in her poem on the humanity of the Maya, their deep roots in the Yucatecan homeland, and their strong links to a Maya past. She begins by asking to be heard: I Have Here (My ruins speak) Stop, . . . and listen to me I want you to relive our passionate history and . . . while you listen to my voice telling our life, make Araceli with friend and political supporter José Tec at his refreshment stand in the Maxcanú market. chapter four 52 echoes in your memory, relive it with me with a common remembrance I am . . . the voice of your memory! My legend . . . you will find, . . . you will glimpse my shadow, . . . my silhouettes appear, . . . and I am here in each rusty corner in each stoop collapsed by this oxide called time. Look at me! . . . I am here where I have always been Waiting for your following call. See me and listen to me, the whisper in a soft murmuring of the ceibas...