Lacandon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Lacandón are one of the Maya peoples who live in the jungles of the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the southern border with Guatemala. Their homeland, La Selva Lacandona ("The Lacandon Jungle"), lies along the Mexican side of the Usumacinta River and its tributaries. The Lacandón, who number only a few hundred today, are one of the most isolated and culturally conservative of Mexico's native peoples.

Contents 1 History 2 Language 3 Culture 4 Threats to cultural survival 5 External links 6 Further reading

[edit] History

The Lacandón were the only Native Americans in New Spain never conquered by Europeans. They escaped Spanish control throughout the colonial era by living in small, remote farming communities in the jungles of what is now Chiapas and the Guatemalan department of El Petén, avoiding contact with whites and Ladinos. Lacandón customs remain close to those of their pre-Columbian Mesoamerican ancestors. As recently as the late 19th century some bound the heads of infants, resulting in the distinctively shaped foreheads seen in Classic Maya art. And well into the 20th century, they continued using bows and arrows and making arrowheads from flint they quarried in the forest. Today they sell versions of these to tourists.

[edit] Language

The Lacandon speak a Mayan language closely related to Yucatec Maya. In their own language they call themselves Hach Winik ("Real People").

[edit] Culture

Until the mid-20th century the Lacandón had little contact with the outside world, and worshiped their own pantheon of gods and goddesses in a small hut set aside for religious worship at the edge of each village. These sacred structures contain a shelf of clay incense burners, each decorated with the face of a Lacandón deity. The Lacandón also make pilgrimages to ancient Maya cities to pray and to remove stone pebbles from the ruins for ritual purposes. They believe that the Maya sites are places where their gods once dwelled before moving to new domains they constructed in the sky and below the earth. The Maya site of Bonampak, famous for its preserved temple murals, became known to the outside world when Lacandóns led American photographer Giles Healy there in 1946.

Some Lacandóns continue their traditional religious practices today, especially in the north around Lakes Naja and Metzabok. Another group in the south was converted to a Baptist branch of Christianity in the mid-20th century by members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, missionary Bible translators based in the United States. The missionaries' efforts were aided by a yellow fever epidemic in the 1940s that took many lives and caused a high degree of social disruption among the southern Lacandón. But in the north the spiritual leader Chan K'in, who lived to an advanced age and died in 1996, helped keep the ancient traditions alive. Chan K'in urged his people to maintain a respectful distance from the outside world, taking some things of value, but not allowing outside influences to overwhelm the Lacandon way of life.

[edit] Threats to cultural survival

The Lacandóns' interaction with the outside world accelerated, though, during the past 30 years. In the 1970s, the Mexican government began paying them for rights to log timber in their forests, bringing them into closer contact with the national economy. At the same time, the government built roads into the area, establishing new villages of Tseltal and Ch'ol Indians who were far more exposed to the outside world than the Lacandón. The roads helped expand farming and logging, and severe deforestation occurred. Then, in the early 1990s, the Lacandon witnessed acts of violence during the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas led by Subcomandante Marcos. The Zapatistas issued a series of statements of their revolutionary principles, each called a "Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle."

Casa Na Bolom in San Cristóbal de las Casas is devoted to helping the Lacandons cope with the changes imposed on them in recent decades. A scientific and cultural institute, it was founded in 1951 by archaeologist Frans Blom and his wife, photographer Gertrude Duby Blom. Casa Na Bolom ("House of the Jaguar") does advocacy work for the Lacandón, sponsors research on their history and culture, returns to them copies of photographs and other cultural documentation done by scholars over the years, and addresses environmental threats to the Lacandón Jungle, such as deforestation. Among its many projects, Casa Na Bolom has collaborated with a group of Swedish ethnomusicology students who recorded traditional Lacandón songs. A publication of those recordings in CD form is now planned.

Several linguists and anthropologists have done extensive studies of Lacandon language and culture, including Christian Rätsch who spent three years living with the Lacandón while studying their spells and incantations.

[edit] External links

• Website for the Lacandon Communities
• Lacandon Culture
• History and Culture
• Mayaweb: Dedicated to the study of Lacandon Culture
• Spiritual Leader Chan K'in
• Photo Essay
• Chan K'in and the Lacandons
• Plight of the Lacandon
• Casa Na Bolom
• Documentation project on Lacandon language and culture

[edit] Further reading

• Blom, Frans & Gertrude Duby Blom (1955) "La Selva Lacandona," Mexico City: Editorial Cultura.
• Boremanse, Didier (1998) "Hach Winik: The Lacandon Maya of Chiapas, Southern Mexico," Austin: University of Texas Press.
• McGee, Jon (1990) "Life, Ritual, and Religion among the Lacandon Maya," Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.
• McGee, Jon (2002) "Watching Lacandon Maya Lives," Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Perera, Victor & Roberto Bruce (1982) "The Last Lords of Palenque: The Lacandon Mayas of the Mexican Rain Forest," Boston: Little, Brown.
• Price, Christine & Gertrude Duby Blom (1972) "Heirs of the Ancient Maya: A Portrait of the Lacandon Indians," New York: Scribner.
• Rittlinger, Herbert (1961) "Last of the Maya," New York: Taplinger Publishing Co.