and Charles Dibble. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research and University of Utah. (Original manuscript ca. 1579). (This is a bilingual edition of the Nahuatl versions of Sahagún’s monumental Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España; it also includes a bilingual volume that contains prefaces, additions, and appendixes written in Spanish).20 Sahagún, Bernardino de (1993). Adiciones, Apéndice a la apostilla y Ejercicio [Additions, appendices to the apostilla and daily exercise]. Nahuatl text and Spanish translation, ed. and trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. (Original manuscripts ca. 1574.) (In this transcription of Nahuatl texts with Spanish translations, Anderson collects what is known as Sahagún’s s doctrinal encyclopedia).
21 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti (1988). “Can the subaltern speak?” In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 280—316. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. (This chapter provides a complex argument concerning the discursive constraints that constitute the impossibility of subaltern speech).
22 Vera Cruz, Alonso de la (1968). Relection de dominio infidelium & justo bello (A discussion on the dominion of unbelievers and just war). In The Writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz. Vol. 2. Trans. Ernest J. Burrus, SJ. Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute. (Original manuscript 1553—4). (Burrus offers a bilingual Latin and English edition of the lectures Alonso de la Vera Cruz delivered at the University of Mexico on the dominion of unbelievers and just war; volume 3 contains a photographic reproduction of De domino).
Further Reading
1 Rabasa, José (2006). “Ecografías de la voz en la historiografía a nahua” [Echographies of voice in Nahua historiography], Historia y Grafí, 25: 105—51. (This article defines echography as a method for examining voice in Nahua historical writings).
2 Wood, Stephanie (2003). Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. (As the title implies, this book examines the ways the Nahuas viewed the Spanish invasion with the intent of transcending conquest, that is, victimization).
3 The Popol Wuj: The Repositioning and Survival of Mayan Culture
Carlos M. López
The history of the Popol Wuj as both a collection of texts recorded among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala and also written down in the manner of the western canon is a history of successive repressions, recoveries, and appropriations. In the Popol Wuj we can see the distortions introduced in the texts as a result of their conservation within systems of registers and epistemological frameworks differing from the original, thus becoming tainted by Western culture paradigms. For this reason, the Mayan text can be seen as one of the most visible and illustrative cases of what occurred with many other belief systems existing in the Amerindian continent during the European colonization.
Currently the title Popol Wuj refers to a collection of tzijs — truths, stories, narratives, wisdom, and traditions — originating from the highlands of present-day Guatemala, dating from before the Spanish invasion lead by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. Father Ximénez’s manuscript, containing the oldest available version today (ca. 1701), is housed in the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA, as one of the documents bound in the volume cataloged as the Ayer MS 1515. It is important to read the Popol Wuj for two major reasons. First, because it is the most complete and intelligible surviving cultural record of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies. Secondly, because part of the epistemologies, cosmogonies, philosophical trends, and values contained in some of its tzijs could become the seeds of new thought if they enter in contact with our contemporary worldviews. A great deal of the contents of the Popol Wuj could offer alternative points of view for revisiting most of the ominous challenges arising from the current relationship between humans and nature. This Maya-K’iche’ text is not a book of solutions or revealed truths that will save us, but it offers different approaches to the way we think and feel. It is perhaps for this reason that Mayan cosmogonies might allow us to enrich our own epistemological perspectives.
The reading of such texts implies a significant risk. Given their profound discrepancies with our Western epistemology, we cannot avoid the tendency to invade, distort, overlay, or absorb their “non-Western” views. Because the Maya have been subjugated by Western powers for over 500 years, the reading of their texts is not a simple literary exercise. In this case there is contact with a cultural artifact bound by a long-standing system of oppression. Thus, a reading from the Western-dominant perspective implies an inevitable invasion of native discourses which becomes a new form of scholarly colonization. An alternative reading should seek to avoid this risk. In this chapter I will discuss the repercussions of the inherent dilemmas arising from readings of historically colonized texts.
The texts of the Popol Wuj — which originate from many diverse sources — are arranged in three main sections. The first part comprises the tzijs, which recount the origin of life, of plants, animals, and human beings. The creation of humans is the centerpiece of these tzijs, and is presented in four successive stages: the creation of animals, the creation of the Earthen Man, the Wooden Man, and finally the Maize Man. This process of creation is headed by the principal kab’awils (deities) of the Mayan cosmogony: Uk’ux kaj, Juraqan, Ch’ipi Kaqulja, Raxa Kaqulja, Tepew, Q’ukumatz, Alom, K’ajolom, Xpiyakok, Xmukane, Tz’aqol, and B’itol (the orthography of the names are from Sam Colop); which are translated into English as: the Heart of Sky, Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt, Sovereign, Plumed Serpent, Bearer, Begetter, Grand Mother, Grand Father, Maker, and Modeler (Ted- lock’s translation). These kab’awils join together to create a being capable of knowledge, but they did not preconceive the forms and characteristics of such a being. Through trial and error they tried different materials and forms that allowed the production of a creature capable of knowledge. The choice of materials and craftsmanship was tested by the capacity of the new creature to speak meaningfully. To determine the traits of these creatures, the deities used new combinations of materials (mud, wood, and maize) and random chance by casting together red beans and yellow corn kernels. Then, they interpreted the resulting patterns. The first three attempts failed, but each one of them signified a step forward toward greater complexity and perfection. On the fourth attempt, once the proper material — maize — was obtained, they produced the sought-after being: a creature capable of knowledge, and therefore capable of thanking the kab’awils for their existence. The names of the first four men were B’alam Kitze’, B’alam Aq’ab’, Majukutaj, and Ik’i Balam (Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night, Mahucutah, and True Jaguar); the first four women were Kaja Paluda, Chomi Ja, Tz’ununi Ja, and Kaq’ixa Ja (Celebrated Seahouse, Prawn House, Hummingbird House, and Macaw House).
The second group of tzijs is more diverse and complex. It includes the stories of different beings, whose nature was not strictly divine, human, legendary (in the Western sense), nor symbolic-metaphoric; instead they embodied some characteristics of all of these. These tzijs are subdivided into two large sections. On the one hand are the tales of Wuqub’ Kak’ix (Seven Macaw) and his sons Sipakna and Kab’raqan, and on the other, the struggles between Jun Junajpu and Wuqub’ Junajpu, and later between their sons Junajpu and Xb’alanke and the Lords of Xib’alb’a.
Wuqub’ Kak’ix and his sons are characterized by their arrogance and are defeated by the tricks played on them by the Twins Junajpu and Xb’alanke. The other series of tzijs tells how the Lords of the Underworld (Xib’alb’a, a place of suffering and trials) defeat Jun Junajpu and Wuqub’ Junajpu. However, the daughter of Kuchumakik’, one of the Lords of Xib’alb’a, disobeys her father’s prohibition and goes to the Jícaro (gourd tree) where the decapitated head
