Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World

2: Santiago and the Cofradía: Reorganizing the Tradition

26 CHAPTER TWO santiago and the Cofradía Reorganizing the Tradition stRuCtuRe aNd aGeNCy E thnographic research on the cofradía of Santiago between 2006 and 2009 is reported here and in chapter 5 as it responds to two goals. Here we seek to describe the current institution and to compare its organization with that of 1976. From time to time issues of agency will arise in this discussion since the individual and culture are involved in unremitting interaction . We seek to portray an ad hoc and adjusting interactive field rather than a frozen model of local culture. Nevertheless, our emphasis here is to depict cultural patterns, as these are institutionalized or are becoming institutionalized at the time of this writing. We will return to agency in chapter 5 and explore the drama enacted by individuals engaged in innovation and in negotiation of the complex hybridized terrain of a twenty-first-century transnational festival in a post-peasant village. This chapter suggests that the cofradía remains largely successful at reproducing the mid-twentieth-century ritual symbols and the expressive culture tradition of Santiago, but that to do so it has had to make some significant adjustments in its social organization, funding, and articulation with the larger community. On balance, then, at the organizational level the cofradía has been substantially remade and is undergoing ongoing reconstruction, while at the 27 Santiago and the Cofradía level of ritual symbols and meaning we see the cofradía today as reproducing a tradition rather than constructing one. The discussion of the disfraces in chapter 4 documents a more radical episode of discontinuity and cultural construction within Maya cultural performance and ritual symbolism. the fIeldWoRk Recent fieldwork on the cofradía of Santiago and its role in the fiesta included observation of the village festival in 2005 and of the specific activities at the cofradía house between 2006 and 2009. In 2006 the cofradía fiesta proper at the cofradía house was first observed when the authors attended in their role as collaborators and videographers of the Monkeys Dance, since the dance team and its sponsors were invited to have lunch at the cofradía house and to return to the town center in the cofradía procession. This first visit to the cofradía house allowed us to meet the alcalde and the diputado of the cofradía as interested supporters of Momostecan tradition and Costumbre. They both agreed to meet with us later and provided contact information. In July 2007 the authors returned with funding for fieldwork from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Two interviews were completed that season with the diputado, a practicing aj mesa, one on the roadside after observing his offerings at the shrine of Ventana Mundo and another, longer one in his consulting room. Several additional interviews and numerous conversations have since taken place. The alcalde invited the authors to his ceremonies at a shrine complex on a hilltop overlooking the cofradía house in 2007 and later provided several recorded interviews at his altar table in the cofradía house. We again attended the festival at the cofradía house in 2008 and 2009, as guests of the alcalde and minor sponsors, and again accompanied the procession from the cofradía house to a chapel that used to belong to an hermandad, remaining for several hours to participate in the vigil and meal. We also accompanied the cofradía and images of Santiago and San Felipe in several processions through the principal streets of downtown Momostenango over these several years and added at least one additional formal interview with the alcalde in each season. The senior author had witnessed the cofradía processions and been invited to a lunch at the cofradía house during the festival of Patrón Santiago in 1976. He had completed two very long recorded interviews with the recently retired diputado of the cofradía, an experienced ritualist who had served as chuchkajaw for the cofradía from 1957 to 1975 and who had been removed through a Catholic Action plot, as mentioned in chapter 1 (see Cook 2000:44–47, 231; 28 chapter two B. Tedlock 1982:42–43). The findings of this earlier research, which have been reported elsewhere (see Cook 2000:43–47, 75–98), provide comparative and historical context for the analysis here. the CofRadía IN 2006...