Nahualá
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Nahualá [pronounced na-wa-LÁ/, with a final glottal stop] is a municipio (i.e., township or municipality) in Sololá department of Guatemala. The town is sometimes known as “Santa Catarina Nahualá,” in honor of the town’s patron saint, Saint Catherine of Alexandria. But the town is officially registered just as “Nahualá.”
Nahualá is also a name for the river known more commonly in Guatemalan Spanish as the Río Nahualate. The river has its source in the north of the township of Nahualá, and flows through the center of the “head-town” or cabecera of the township. In K’ichee’, the river, the township, and the cabecera are Nawala’, although in the local dialect of Nahualá, the river is called Niwala’, distinguishing it from the name of the township and cabecera.
Nahuala is the location of radio station La Voz de Nahuala, one of numerous Roman Catholic broadcasters in Guatemala. The station broadcasts primarily in the K'ichee' (Quiche) and Cakchiquel languages.
[edit] The name Nahualá / Nahuala / Nawala' / Niwala'
Local residents translate the name Nahualá roughly as “enchanted waters,” “water of the spirits,” and “water of the shamans,” and they often object to the common Spanish translation of the name as “agua de los brujos” (or “water of the witches”). Scholars have typically argued that the name Nahualá derives from a compound of the Nahuatl term nagual or nahual (pronounced NA-wal), meaning “spirit” or “divine co-essence,” as well as “shaman,” and the K’ichee’ root ja’, meaning “water.” This has led Maya linguists to argue apocryphally that the “true” name should be Nawalja’ or Nawal-ja’, disregarding that the word ja’ is regularly apocopated at the ends of words –-especially toponyms-- not only in K’ichee’, but closely related Mayan languages. Those who promote the neologisms Nawalja’ and Nawal-ja’ also ignore that the pronunciation of the neologisms is inconsistent with the pronunciation in sixteenth-century K’ichee’- and Kaqchikel-Mayan recorded in several early colonial manuscripts written in Latin orthography by members of the native nobility.
For example, the sixteenth-century Título of Totonicapán mentions a Late Post-classic Period site called “navala,” (not “navalha”). Although scholars have argued that the site of the título corresponds to the modern community of Nahualá, it more likely corresponds to a pre-colonial Nahua-, K’ichee’- and Tz’utujiil-speaking community located in the piedmont some 20 kilometers south of Nahualá, along the Río Nahualate: San Antonio Nahualá (later annexed as a ward of the departmental capital of San Antonio Suchitepéquez). The earliest mention of Nahualá occurs in one of the sixteenth-century Kaqchikel-language Xpantzay Títulos, which mentions a site called, “chohohche niguala” which almost certainly corresponds to a modern canton of the cabecera of Nahualá, Chojojche’ (Cho Joj Chee' = "Before [the] Crow Tree"). Several other sixteenth or early seventeenth-century titles in Spanish and K’ichee’ mention Nahualá either directly (as “Navala”) or obliquely, in terms of the landmarks of the community.
Despite early references to the community, foreign scholars and many Mayas themselves have ironically tended to claim that the community was only founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, promoting particularly apocryphal interpretations of local legends.
Nahualá was settled at least as early as the Pre-Classic Period. Archaeologist John Fox, who conducted archaeological surveys in the area during the 1970s, identified structures from the Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic Periods. Grinding stones dated to as early as 500 BCE. found in archaeological sites around Quetzaltenango were likely manufactured near the cabecera of Nahualá, where residents still mine volcanic stones and carve grinding stones that are sold throughout the Guatemala’s western highlands
Nearly the entire population of the municipality is made up of K’ichee’-Mayas who speak the K'iche' language.
The population of the township is estimated to be between 50,000-85,000 individuals, about 10% of whom live in the township’s head-town or cabecera. Statistics vary widely because much of the township’s territory and several large villages are also claimed by Nahualá’ sister township, Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán.
Officially, according to the 1779 título of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán share their territory according to ancient, “mancomunademente.” Today, the vast territory of the two municipios covers 218 square kilometers, about 2/3 of which is under the control of Nahualeños (or AjNawala’iib’), the “people of Nahualá.” Disputes between the two towns have been common, especially since 1999, when the government of Guatemala arranged for the cabecera of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán to be moved to a site of Chwi’ Patan (nicknamed “Alaska” by a North American Catholic priest who worked in Nahualá during the 1960s) within Nahualá’s territory, after the original cabecera of Ixtahuacán located in a remote piedmont site ways supposedly ruined by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Officials of the national government negotiated a treaty between the mayors of Nahualá and Ixtahuacán to allow for the re-location of Ixtahuacán’s cabecera. However, residents of Ixtahuacán occupied the land in question early, before the treaty was completely negotiated, before the land had been surveyed, and before any compensation had been paid to the town of Nahualá and to the private owners of land in the area. Several Nahualeños were killed and injured by Ixtahuacanecos during conflicts that resulted from Ixtahuacán’s precipitous occupation of the Chwi’ Patan, which many Nahualeños consider a theft. The national government and the elected local governments or Nahualá and Ixtahuacán subsequently agreed to a modification of the original agreement, but compensation has still not been paid completely. Many Nahualeños refuse to accept the agreement, arguing that neither the general population nor Nahualá’s local elders (known as principales in Spanish and as ri’j’laab’ in K’ichee’) have been given an opportunity to approve the treaty, even though both traditionally hold a higher authority than the elected local officials (such as the town mayor).
Since 1999, the government of the Republic of Guatemala has repeatedly attempted to resolve the conflict between the communities by fixing a border between their respective territories, but it its efforts have been thwarted not only by continuing confrontations and land-invasions, but also by a misunderstanding of the complexity of indigenous systems of land-use and property.
[edit] Linguistic Affiliation
The principal language of the town is K'ichee'-Mayan. Although a growing portion of the township is bilingual in Spanish or castellano, potentially 30% of adults do not speak this national language of Guatemala. Inability to speak Spanish does not always mean that residents are “monolingual.” Many local residents, particularly those engaged in trade and those living in the far west and in the far south of the township also speak the closely-related Kaqchikel language- and Tz'utijil-Mayan languages. In addition, a sizeable proportion of the township communicates in an indigenous natural sign language, though many deny linguistic competence. Locals consider the local sign language to be a variety of a widespread (and apparently ancient) language complex that they call Meemul Ch’aab’al, literally ”mute language(s).” The incidence of congenital or early-onset deafness within the township is very high. The incidence within the cabecera is over 10 times higher than the average worldwide incidence.
Since the 1970s, numerous linguists have produced studies of the K’ichee’ dialect of Nahualá, believing that it was a particularly conservative dialect in terms of phonology and lexicon. Some indigenous Mayas trained linguists have even advocated that the official K’ichee’ alphabet used by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) should reflect the phonology of the Nahualá. The dialect of Nahualá preserves sounds that have been lost in other K'ichee' communities, including the K'ichee' towns that are most associated with the administration of the pre-colonial K'ichee' State, such as Q'uma'rka'aaj (now Santa Cruz el Quiché) and Chwi' Meqina' (San Miguel Totonicapán). Nahualá’s local dialect preserves an ancient Proto-Mayan distinction between five long vowels (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu) and five short vowels (a, e, i, o , u). It is for this conservative linguistic feature that Guatemalan and foreign linguists have actively sought to have the language called "K'ichee'," rather than K'iche' or Quiché.
Unlike the most prominent K'ichee' dialects, the Nahualá dialect of K'ichee' also has a phoneme /h/ and a phoneme /N/, both of which occur only at the ends of words, almost exclusively after short vowels. Linguists have established firmly that the /h/ is a reflex of a proto-Mayan */h/. Linguists have not thoroughly investigated the origin of the /N/ phoneme, which occurs only in a few words.
