Este gabacho gives the Maya Culture a new cultural twist
In fact, I liked the story so much that I hijacked the entire narrative and placed it here, where it might get a chance to stand on itself through your Xican@ eyes.
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A young Mayan woman walks along the Laguna de Chicabal. The lake is in the crater of a volcano and is the home of one of the gods of the Mayan spiritual pantheon. It was May 3, 2001. On this day every year, the Mayan shamans journey to this holy place. It is a family event. There are a couple hundred Mayans picnicking, talking, playing, and worshiping. Above all, the lake is respected. No one is skipping rocks, swimming, or bathing.
The lake has an eerie life about it. The fog of the cloud forest swirls around the lake giving way to brilliant sun of the Guatemalan highlands. Bubbles of volcano gas disturb the lake’s surface and join the wind and the fog. It is never lost to me that these people think there is a god in that water. My western mind does not buy it. But if somebody offers me $1000 dollars to swim to the other side, I wouldn’t do it. “Dude, what happens if there is something really pissed off at me in that lake?”
The lake is ringed with bunches of lilies and small shrines made from branches. As we walk around the lake, we hear the chanting of the Mayan shamans back in the dense forest. Chicabal is habitat for the very rare Quetzal bird. We look, but it remains as hidden as the god in the Laguna.
The only person I see touch the water is the young woman. She walks slowly ankle deep; there is a kind of rhythm in her step. She seems to be lost in a conversation. Is it with the god in the water? There is a legend that a young woman from the village at the base of volcano swam out into the lake to which she gave her spirit. Is she talking with this spirit? She stops and turns to the center of the lake. The “conversation” seems to intensify. Her body seems like it is being pulled further out into the water; she takes another small step. I gasp. But she stops, but just barely. We continue on our walk.
Even now, this scene haunts me. I know I was an intruder. This was not my world. In fact, my world has treated the Mayans as enemies from the time of first contact. I have been obsessed with the number of questions: Why have indigenous people been so threatening to Europeans? Is it religious intolerance? Our stories are at least were about clearing a promised land of unrighteous and ungodly. Is this all that it is? How could we as Europeans even think of planting flags on the land of others and claim it in the name of God? Is this an anomaly, or does it proceed from the core of my spiritual ancestors–Abraham and Sarah being promised land by Yahweh which eventually require genocide via holy war?
Somehow the Columbus’s and the Pisarro’s believed that land not claimed by another European country was fair game. Land not lived on by Europeans was uninhabited. But now we do not believe that, and still indigenous peoples can still threaten the “civilized world.” Why would this be? There seems to be something very profound about this question?
The encounter with the woman of the Luguna de Chicabal acts as a window into my identity as white, Euro/American, male, and even further into the world that has created that identity. I have come to view Western modernity as a kind of beautiful galaxy. To use this analogy, the aspects of the West that are so admirable, the technology, the personal freedom, the economic opportunity, are the visible aspects of this galaxy. But it has only recently been discovered that most if not all large galaxies have black holes at their centers. These black holes are essential in some way to their formation possible continued organization. As you might remember, black holes are not visible because they are so massive as to prevent light from escaping.
The young Mayan woman was for me to gain a clue as to the nature of the black hole that is at the center of modernity. Although I do not consider black holes as an image of evil, you can reasonably expect that in this case I am speaking of a kind of heart of darkness which helps to organize the whole of Western civilization, is essential to its existence, and which assures its demise. But this dark post must give way to the beautiful sunshine that is shinging. Maybe I will write more later.
53 Han clachado