Maya Spirituality in 
Postwar Guatemala

by Paul Jeffrey

When Diego de Landa burned the books of the Maya in the 16th century, the Spanish Roman Catholic inquisitor thought he could wipe out Indigenous memory. By destroying long sheets of bark paper, he thought he could destroy knowledge conveyed in signs and images that spoke of dreams and wars and people born before Christ, of the movements of stars and frequency of eclipses, of the respect for God in nature necessary to call for timely rain and good corn harvests.

Yet Diego de Landa, in his zeal to destroy what he deemed idolatry, was mistaken. The faith of the Maya wasn't bound in those primitive codices he turned to ash.

Evidence that he ultimately failed can be found every morning throughout the Indigenous highlands of Guatemala and southern Mexico, where Maya farmers rise from their sleep to thank father sun and mother earth for another day.

Though Diego de Landa failed in his campaign against paganism, he shouldn't be forgotten. To write about interfaith relations in Guatemala today leads back to the first encounter between two worlds -- the violence and ethnocide that followed quickly upon Christopher Columbus' journeys to what Europeans called the New World.

Although Diego de Landa, a Franciscan priest, was a fanatic who had his share of Spanish critics, his naming as a bishop shortly after his book-burning rampage indicates he carried out imperial and ecclesiastical policy. It was clearly a period of history marked by fear and arrogance, European sins for which millions of Maya paid with their lives.

By tearing down Maya altars or building their Roman Catholic churches on top of the Indians' sacred sites, and forcing the Maya to convert to Christianity or perish, the Spanish engaged in what some historians call a sacramentalization of Indigenous culture, as opposed to an authentic process of evangelization that seeks to express Gospel values within a culture.

Imposing Christian beliefs produced generations of Maya who became Christians to survive, who went to mass but in their hearts still felt the presence of the sacred altars below the cathedral floor, who practiced what became a syncretic faith mixing their ancestors' faith with elements of the colonial master's religion.

This is not ancient history. In Guatemala, the violent repression of Indigenous spirituality that began with Diego de Landa has continued until recently. Until 1992, when the observance throughout the Americas of the 500-year anniversary of the Conquest allowed Indigenous groups to assert their identity, practitioners of Indigenous spirituality had to celebrate their ceremonies in secret.

With the reaffirmation of Indigenous culture that has accelerated since 1992 -- the year that Rigoberta Menchú, a Maya K'iche' woman from Guatemala, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- Maya spirituality can be practiced in Guatemala with few restrictions. According to some estimates, more than one-third of Guatemala's 11 million people practice some element of traditional Maya spirituality, and observers expect that percentage to grow.

This process has been helped along by the December 1996 peace accords that put an end to Guatemala's 36-year civil war. Among the accords are agreements calling for a recognition of indigenous culture and identity, the practice of customary law in some indigenous communities, and unhindered access to traditional sacred sites.

Yet it hasn't been simple; 500 years of history doesn't turn around overnight.

For example, the Guatemalan military closely monitors the resurgence of Indigenous spirituality. Felipe Gomez, coordinator of Oxlajuj Ajpop, the National Conference of Ministers of Maya Spirituality, said the army has infiltrated the ranks of Maya priests.

"The army knows Indigenous spirituality is at the heart of Maya communities, so they've studied our religion in depth, and they've infiltrated our ranks to make the study more complete," Mr. Gomez said. "We've had some people studying to be spiritual guides who were sent secretly by the army. The army has very good investigators. Maybe through their study, they'll learn the truth about us. That's fine, unless they think that they can better destroy us by first understanding us better."

The access of Maya to their traditional sacred sites has not been resolved overnight. Some of the major sites, such as the famous ruins of Tikal, are in the hands of government tourist officials who often view the sacred sites as archeological digs or businesses to generate revenue from the thousands of tourists who flock to Guatemala every year.

Maya leaders have complained that the graves of their ancestors are seen as curiosities, their altars converted into tourist traps and their culture reduced to marketable folklore. A joint government-Maya commission, set up to implement the requirements of the 1996 accords that require sacred sites to be protected and access guaranteed, fell apart after the government refused to make concrete proposals.

"We're not against tourism," Mr. Gomez said. "The problem is that in many tourist zones the people aren't the real beneficiaries. The areas of Guatemala with the most tourists are also the areas with the most poor people. A small group benefits from tourism, not the majority."

Mr. Gomez insisted a minimum code of behavior needs to be established for tourists who enter sacred Maya sites, and local Indigenous communities need to participate in the administration of archeological sites and benefit from entrance fees visitors pay.

A series of measures that would have strengthened Indigenous rights was defeated in a 1999 referendum, which Indigenous voters enthusiastically supported but mestizo voters strongly opposed. The proposals included reforming Guatemala's constitution to give equal legal status to the languages, religions and customary laws of the Maya majority.

Opponents mounted an emotional campaign warning that increased legal recognition of Guatemala's Indigenous would lead to a balkanization of the country. Homeowners were told if the referendum passed, Indigenous people would invade their property en masse, seizing their backyards as sacred sites.

Conservative evangelical leaders also opposed the measures.

"There was a kind of religious fear that affected the conscience of many voters," said René Poitevin, director of the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty. "Information was manipulated to encourage a fear of idolatries or religions that seemed strange. Given this fear, the reaction of many voters was to keep things the same."

Evangelical churches, particularly the neo-Pentecostal congregations that flourished during the violence of the 1980s and have attracted many of Guatemala's urban middle and upper classes tired of priests telling them to treat their hired help with respect, have formed a new bulwark against the growth of Indigenous spirituality. In many ways a throwback to Diego de Landa, neo-Pentecostal preachers brand practitioners of Maya religion as devil worshipers, and blame their alleged idolatry for the lack of economic development experienced by the country's Indigenous majority.

This aggressive racism disguised as theology has caused enormous suffering, as Guatemalan evangelicals have exercised political power. General Efraín Rios Montt, a member of the Eureka, California-based neo-Pentecostal Church of the Word seized control of the country in 1982 and reigned over the most intense period of repression of Indigenous communities in recent history. Hundreds of Maya villages were destroyed, their residents massacred. Gen. Montt was overthrown by fellow officers in 1983 but continues his anti-indigenous policies in a more temperate way as president of the Guatemalan Congress. For example, he delayed consideration of legislation that would have benefitted Indigenous Peoples.

Political realities have forced the neo-Pentecostals to rethink their position, said Celso Lara, a professor of history and anthropology at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City. "Today they are less rabid in their opposition to Indigenous Peoples. Although they still consider the Indigenous Peoples diabolical, they have had to accept the Maya as they search for a consensus upon which to build their economic and political project."

As an example of this, Mr. Lara points to the appointment early this year of Otilia Lux de Coti as culture minister in the new government of President Alfonso Portillo, the candidate of Rios Montt's party. A Maya K'iche' woman, Ms. Lux was a member of the U.N.-supervised truth commission that in 1999 lambasted Rios Montt and other military officials as being responsible for more than 90 percent of the 200,000 dead and disappeared during the country's civil war.

While Christian fundamentalists have had to modify their posture, a few Maya leaders have swung the pendulum to the other extreme, Mr. Lara said.

"Some Maya intellectuals are today refusing to engage in any dialogue with the mestizo community," he said. "This reverse racism is fueled by fundamentalism and the ready availability of international funding. In some cases, the more fundamentalist you are, and the less interested in national development and dialogue, the more money becomes available. It

becomes a business, and the rescue of Maya culture becomes corrupted.

"This closes spaces for real inter-cultural dialogue and makes difficult the recognition of the true characteristics of multiculturality. If you assume that your position is the only valid posture, then you're just repeating the sins of the mestizos during the last 500 years. It seems normal, however, that this would happen in a country that's just emerging from a war that was as complicated and baroque as the war in Guatemala."

As conservative evangelicals and Maya leaders have changed their approaches to interreligious relations in recent years, so too are Roman Catholics wrestling with the changing landscape. Through the development of an official Indigenous ministry in some dioceses, some Roman Catholics have opened the door to dialogue and even to encouraging the recovery of Indigenous forms of worship. Others have reacted to these developments with alarm, Mr. Lara said.

"There's a horrible fear in the Catholic church today," he said. "They've always maintained obedience through fear, but that bond has been broken. Christianity doesn't work like it did anymore. So some Catholics are trying to recover ground by resorting to some Catholic-animist forms that will allow the church to continue to have influence within the Indigenous population."

Historic Protestant churches, including Guatemala's mostly Indigenous Methodist Church, centered in K'iche'-speaking regions of the western highlands, have been influenced by a variety of factors, including the anti-cultural attitudes of missionaries from the United States. Diego Chicoj, a K'iche'-speaking Maya and a Methodist pastor in Chichicastenango explained:

"The missionaries imported a lot of concepts. As a result, Pentecostalism has grown a lot in the highlands. People sing

and shout during worship, but they sing and shout in Spanish. To enter the church you've got to leave your culture and your language outside. I worry about our young people in these churches who are growing up thinking that God only speaks Spanish."

Juana Riquiac, a K'iche' woman and Methodist community health worker in Chichicastenango, said missionaries brought pianos and accordions from the north, claiming these were acceptable for use in worship, but prohibited use of the marimba, which is an integral part of Maya community life.

Ms. Riquiac said she has witnessed a few Maya religious ceremonies, although she gave up Maya spiritual practice when she became a Christian at age 14.

"It feels good to be present, if I'm clear about what I believe and don't believe," Ms. Riquiac said. "I can be present with respect, not criticizing, but being present."

Yet Ms. Riquiac said some Methodists have scolded her for "fraternizing with witches." She shrugs it off, saying that because she wears a cross around her neck, some other Methodists condemn her for being a closet Roman Catholic.

Mr. Chicoj, who admitted he was much less tolerant when he was a young pastor, argued that Protestants are in no position to cast stones at practitioners of Maya spirituality.

"We've been taught over the years to think that these people are serving the devil, but if we look more closely at reality we realize that's not true," Mr. Chicoj said. "There are people who practice Maya spirituality who are much more respectful toward everything around them than are we Christians. Whether they really worship the trees or the mountains, it's obvious that they

have respect for nature and feel deep love for God and their neighbor. So what can I say? I don't think I can say anything."

Much of the fear of Maya spirituality grows out of ignorance, said Juana Vasquez, coordinator of Uk' U'x Mayab -- Heart of the Maya People -- an organization dedicated to the rescue and reaffirmation of Maya culture.

"A lot of the persecution against us, going way back to the Spanish invasion, grows out of a bad interpretation of Maya spirituality," said Mr. Vasquez, a Sakapulteko-speaking Maya. "The Maya relate closely to nature. There's respect for the sun, the moon, the water, the land. There's a relationship to nature of respect that is still misinterpreted today. People say we're diabolical, that we have a lot of gods. That's not true. The Maya believe there is only one supreme god, creator and former of the world. The spirit of this God is what's found in living beings and matter. That's why there's respect."

Many observers say dividing lines between religious

expressions are not clear cut. The syncretism that allowed the Maya to resist centuries of Spanish repression has taken on new form. Mr. Gomez said Maya spiritual guides are consulted in the middle of the night by Christian believers, including clergy who don't want fellow Christians to see them there.

"They are experiencing a vacuum in their life, they have a need that's not otherwise being met," Mr. Gomez said. "We're happy if we can serve them."

This has larger ramifications, said Dennis Smith, an analyst at the Central American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies.

"With the globalization of culture and the marketing of symbolic goods through an electronic church, and with so many more offers out there in today's religious supermarket, it's both easier and more common than in the past for people to simultaneously embrace apparently contradictory belief systems," Mr. Smith said. "I know people who attend Catholic mass, charismatic services, mass neo-Pentecostal religious spectacles, and in a moment of profound personal crisis, consult a spiritist. There's no sense of needing to divide their spirituality into separate boxes. They're all there. At certain moments in your life you call upon what can give you a sense of meaning or guidance or support in that moment. The churches are simply puzzled by this phenomenon, and haven't figured out how to respond."

A formal dialogue among leaders of Guatemala's major religious traditions, including Jews, got under way this year. Participants said the talks got off to a friendly start, but given the decades of animosity, no one expects dramatic developments to emerge soon. One of the objectives of the dialogue, supported in part by the World Bank, is to examine how religious groups can work together to encourage economic development in postwar Guatemala.

"Everything in this country is fundamentally sacred," Mr. Lara said. "No social or economic project will get off the ground here unless it takes into account the deep variants in the religiosity of the Guatemalan people."

Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America.

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