Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community: The Altarpiece of Santiago Atitlán

Preface

T his study concerns the extent to which the sacred architecture and monumental sculpture of Santiago Atitlán, a Tz’utujil– Maya-speaking community in Western Guatemala, reflects the worldview of traditionalist members of its society. The central altarpiece of the town’s sixteenth-century Roman Catholic church is my primary focus. Originally constructed at an unknown date during the early colonial era (1524–1700), the altarpiece underwent extensive reconstruction after it collapsed during a series of severe earthquakes in the twentieth century. The reconstruction effort took place from 1976 to 1981 under the direction of the town’s parish priest, Stanley Francisco Rother. To support craftsmanship within the community, Father Rother commissioned a local Tz’utujil sculptor, Diego Chávez Petzey, and his younger brother, Nicolás Chávez Sojuel, to reerect the monument and to carve replacement panels for those sections that were too damaged for reuse. Rather than strictly following the original arrangement of the altarpiece, the Chávez brothers replaced many damaged panels with entirely new compositions based on traditional Maya religious beliefs and rituals familiar to their contemporary experience. The relationship between the artists and Father Rother is best characterized as collaborative, a bilateral interaction in which both Catholic priest and Maya sculptors were active participants. Diego Chávez carried out the project with the intention of asserting the legitimacy of traditional Tz’utujil-Maya faith as an independent complement to Roman Catholicism. The result is a work in which Roman Catholic forms and images are reshaped to reveal uniquely Maya PREFACE xiv Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community meaning, and Maya motifs and rituals are brought into harmony with Catholic orthodoxy. Consequently, the altarpiece presents an invaluable visual display of important Tz’utujil rituals and beliefs that are otherwise difficult to access by Western researchers. I first saw the altarpiece in 1977, at the very time the Chávez brothers were reconstructing it and carving new panels along its base. Even in its unfinished state, the monument struck me with its masterful blending of Roman Catholic and traditional Maya motifs. I was intrigued by it, and still am. To see indigenous beliefs and rituals expressed sculpturally by living Maya artists is extremely rare. Never before or since, to my knowledge, has such a sculptural project been undertaken on so grand a scale. The world of Santiago Atitlán has changed dramatically in the years since the Chávez brothers worked on the reconstruction of the altarpiece. Robert Carlsen (1996, 1997) and Nathaniel Tarn (Tarn and Prechtel 1997) have documented sweeping shifts in nearly all aspects of the society. Santiago Atitlán has little room to grow, being wedged into a small area bounded by Lake Atitlán and one of its bays on the north and west and by mountains to the east and south. Lacking sufficient arable land to support their growing population, the people of Santiago Atitlán, often called Atitecos, have tended to move from an agriculturally based economy toward mercantilism. Improved roads and increased boat traffic on the lake have brought an influx of tourists and non-Maya businesses into the community. This contact with outside influences has had a tremendous impact on the traditional life of the community. In the 1970s, approximately 75 percent of the men wore traditional native Maya costume (Tarn and Prechtel 1997, 309). Today men rarely wear the traditional red shirt, favoring instead inexpensive American seconds, an indication that maintaining a distinctive Maya identity based on the past has declined somewhat in importance. In addition, the introduction of Protestantism and orthodox Roman Catholicism have steadily eroded older Atiteco religious practices to the point that traditionalists now constitute a minority of the overall population. The relatively peaceful town I first encountered in 1977 has given way to a bustling commercial center under nearly constant siege by the din of rumbling trucks and buses, blaring Protestant loudspeakers, and the American ditties that ice cream vendors play at ear-splitting volume. The devastating civil war in Guatemala, particularly the period in the 1980s known simply as la violencia (“the violence”) has had xv Preface the greatest impact on the social fabric of Santiago Atitlán. Atitecos suffered disproportionately among neighboring highland Maya communities during these years. The Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) estimates that as many as 1,700 Atitecos were killed between 1980 and 1990, out of a population of approximately 20,000...