The Popol Vuh and the Dominican Religious Extirpation in Highland Guatemala: Prologues and Annotations of Fr. Francisco Ximénez

In 2006, the Newberry Library in Chicago announced its digitization of the ancient Maya-K'iche' myth, the Popol Vuh.¹ While digitization ensures the preservation of the document and easier access for researchers, it is also significant in that it marks a new stage in the long historical trajectory of the manuscript itself. The Popol Vuh, or "Maya Bible," is the most studied indigenous document of Mesoamerica. Contemporary scholarship has considered it, among all the early colonial documents, to best reflect a pre-Hispanic native voice. It provides a breadth and depth of detail concerning Maya religion, cosmology, and society, and its contents have been generalized to apply to virtually all of the ancient Maya religions.² Additionally, the text has been used as a source for numerous ethnohistorical studies,³ and its mythological context has profoundly influenced most Guatemalan literature from the early nineteenth century to the present. More important, the Popol Vuh has become a symbol of Guatemalan national "indigenousness" and was officially declared Guatemala's national book in 1971.⁴

Most Popol Vuh scholarship has conceived the text primarily in precolonial terms with emphasis on its native facets, but in doing so it has disregarded the colonial context and the historical circumstances within which the text was produced. Specifically omitted are the facts that the Guatemalan highlands were being proselytized by Dominican missionaries at the time the text was composed and that the transcriber and translator of the Popol Vuh, the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez, undertook his work explicitly to refute Maya-K'iche' religious idolatry. Recontextualizing the Popol Vuh, as this paper will do, can widen the scope of its interpretation, thus allowing a deeper understanding of the Maya-K'iche' religious conversion process, the methodology used by missionary friars to achieve conversion, and the spiritual situation of colonial Guatemala in general. Most important, placing the Popol Vuh within its historical context offers new insights into the fundamental question of what it is that the Maya-K'iche' have presented to us—and what it has become.

Story Told by the Popul Vuh

The text is a mytho-historical narrative that recounts the creation of the universe, followed by the creation of the K'iche' people of highland Guatemala and the legendary history of the K'iche' dynasties up to the arrival of the Spanish in 1524. The Popol Vuh is typically presented as a freestanding text in two sections, with the first section containing the epic myth that in a series of complex episodes recounts the creation of the universe, as well as of the K'iche' people. The account begins with the primordial creation of Earth, when the gods of the sea joined with the gods of the sky to create the world and form human beings. However, three attempts to create humans resulted in disappointment—the creatures all fell short of the gods' requirements for reproduction and veneration. The first beings became the predecessors of forest animals, the second beings (or mud people) dispersed into dust, and the wooden people of the third attempt became the predecessors of the monkeys.

The creation narrative is then interrupted to recount the heroic deeds of Junajpu and Ixb'alanq'e, or the hero twins, as they have been named by contemporary scholars. In fact, most of the mythological account in the Popol Vuh is composed of their deeds and triumphs, which ensured the ultimate fulfillment of the gods' creation plan. First, they defeated Wuqub' Kiaqix (Seven Macaw) and his two sons Zipacna and Kab'raqan, whose arrogance and uncontrolled power disrupted the gods' creation. The narrative reveals the origin of the hero twins by recounting the lives of their father, Jun Junajpu, and uncle, Wuqub' Junajpu, who were sacrificed by the lords of the underworld in Xib'alb'a. Like their father, the hero twins were summoned to play ball in Xib'alb'a, but ingeniously defeated the underworld lords Jun Kame and Wuqub' Kame through magic tricks. Junajpu and Ixb'alanq'e then ascended...