Discarded Pages: Araceli Cab Cumí, Maya Poet and Politician

1: Writing the Contours of a Life

CHAPTER ONE Writing the Contours of a Life Words are our Greatest Treasure. —Araceli Cab Cumí, February 999  A Life Narrative In the opening poem of this chapter Araceli Cab Cumí expresses her desire for recognition rooted in intellectual achievement. As someone who is keenly intelligent but with limited formal schooling, as someone who writes as a fundamental form of self-expression yet files her work away, much of it unread by anyone but herself, Araceli desires recognition as a writer and intellectual. I have sometimes thought that she sees this book as her last chance for such recognition. As she once said to me, “The saints aren’t going to help me, you are!” At age seventy-five, with her political career seemingly at an end, Araceli has few opportunities for her intellect to shine and limited venues for her writings to appear. Araceli’s writings reflect her forthright intelligence and rebounding spirit. Whether she writes love poetry or poems in tribute to her town, political speeches addressing women’s issues or those of Maya campesinos, she evokes keenly etched worlds. Yet the compositions in which she directs her attention to her own life are few and quite recent, all dating from the mid- 990s. Araceli writes about herself most directly in three life narratives and 9 chapter one 20 four short diarylike essays.2 The three life narratives she wrote, one each year, in 994, 995, and 996. The four diary essays she wrote in a single-year span from August 994 to July 995. Three of these essays she composed in late 994 (August 28, September 4, and December 4), writing the final one seven months later on July 6, 995. It is perhaps understandable that Araceli wrote these life narrative compositions when she did. By the close of 993 her last congressional term of office had ended. In the mid-990s Araceli began to diminish her political activities at the state and regional level and concentrate her political engagement again in the smaller world of Maxcanú where her career had begun. With more time and some distance from her long political career, Araceli chose this occasion to write about her life. Araceli’s diarylike essays and life narratives are not self-analytical in the sense that many readers, more accustomed to the soul-baring style of much Western autobiographical writing, might anticipate them to be. Intense self-scrutiny may be Araceli’s lifelong practice but the results of her self-examination do not necessarily yield a written discourse with herself at the center. In her diary, essays, and life narratives she places herself within a larger historical context and avoids positioning herself as a point around which all else would pivot. Nonetheless, despite the historical scope of her writing, Araceli’s essays and life narrative compositions do define some of the contours of her life. On the following pages is the longest and most encompassing of the three life narrative essays Araceli has written, “Life Narrative, Summer 995,” beginning “It was December 9, 932.”3 She wrote it for the students of the Summer Intensive Introductory Course in Yucatec Maya sponsored by the Consortium inLatinAmericanStudiesattheUniversityofNorthCarolinaatChapelHilland Duke University. Under this program graduate students come each summer to Yucatán to study Yucatec Maya. Perhaps she wrote her most inclusive life narrative essay knowing that students studying Maya would read it. Araceli’s other two narratives are very similar but shorter versions of this 995 account. Araceli’s narrative retains the poetic format in which she often writes. My translation of her narrative is given first in its entirety. Following the narrative, I have written comments to frame the narrative and give it an explanatory context. In this section, divisions within the text and their titles are mine, not Araceli’s. To help frame Araceli’s narrative, a life chronology is given at the end of this chapter. Writing the Contours of a Life 2 The Maya words with which Araceli salts her text are in italic type followed by an English translation in brackets or an explanatory endnote. The Spanish words whose meaning would be clouded by translation to English remaininSpanish,italicizedwithanexplanatoryendnote.Asisthecommon practice in translations, I have occasionally inserted words into Araceli’s text to make the English translation read more smoothly. My insertions are also bracketed. Since common Spanish writing convention allows for a longer sentence structure than does English...