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Maya inscriptions begin by elaborately stating the date, relating it to the time of origin, and mentioning the diverse Divine Patrons of the moment. This is the Long Count. After describing the event itself, they end with the so-called Emblem Glyph, reaffirming the sacred connection of the ruling lineage to the place. In fact, the superfix of the Emblem Glyph seems to represent the difrasismo “mat and throne.”
Similarly, Ñuu Dzaui codices and lienzos start the dynastic record with a sacred foundation date and a place sign. Rulership is expressed as a couple, the Lord and Lady, seated on the mat and the throne at that specific place.
Their descent from a sequence of earlier couples—mentioned explicitly or connoted implicitly—connects them to the sacred time in which the sov-ereign community was created. In this way the mat and throne (yuvui tayu) becomes an emblem of governance and at the same time an emblem of a community’s sovereignty.
The difrasismo “father, mother” occurs even today as an important title of deities, shaman priests, and authorities.1 The ruling couple in ancient time was also likely considered the “Father and Mother” of the people. These funda-mental relationships were expressed by the depiction of the king and queen seated on the place sign. These relationships were also the main issue in com-memorating history during celebrations in a ceremonial center.
The analysis of its contents shows that Ñuu Dzaui historiography goes beyond the recording of simple annals with straightforward statements about past events. This is an epic history of communities as told through their heroes. It aims at involving its public by evoking and communicating emo-tions within the context of a ritual and by expressing a specific shared ideol-ogy. Writing is not some form of “objective” documentation but the point of departure for artistic elaboration and dramatic performance. Codifying the information directly in figurative images and scenes, pictography is very close to body language and physical enactment, making it especially appropriate for ritualized expressions. Involving both the storyteller and the audience, such a performance has a much more compelling effect than simple discourse would have. The painted representation is an image (naa in Dzaha Dzaui, ixiptla in Nahuatl) in which the past and the Ancestors can actually become present.
Storytelling is an art in all cultures. Parallels can be drawn with the Homeric epic tradition, the medieval troubadours, the Wajang theater, and the storytellers of the Arab world. In the course of our investigations we
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became acquainted with the Sicilian puppet play, the opera dei pupi, an oral performance of Carolingian and other epics that has survived to today. We found it extremely illuminating to see the universality and depth of the art of the pupari, not only in handling the puppets and giving them voices but also in sculpting the figures, painting the scenery and the lienzos that announce the presentations, decorating the traditional wooden carts with scenes from the dramas, reflecting on narrative structures and human psychology, and similar activities.2
In present-day Ñuu Dzaui tradition, such an oral art form survives in the parangón (sahu in Dzaha Dzaui), the formal discourse for special occasions, such as prayers, handing over authority, or asking for the hand of a bride.
Thus it is not surprising to encounter in the heart of the Ñuu Dzaui region, in San Agustín Tlacotepec (originally located at the site of Tixii), the very same Carolingian epic cycle in the form of an extremely popular performance of dances, known as “los doce pares de Francia.” Each year at the occasion of the Patron’s feast, on August 28, the inhabitants gather in front of the former municipal building to watch realistic battle scenes, with flashing machetes, and hear the chivalrous and defiant speeches of Roldán, Oliveros, and the other knights of Charlemagne. According to local memory, the spectacle was introduced in 1926 from Yucu Uvui, Ometepec, in the State of Guerrero.
It came with a hand-copied manuscript. A new copy was brought from the same town in 1976 and is still in use today.
Oral literature in general can be characterized as, among other things,
“agonistic,” that is, focusing on events, with praise of heroic deeds. Its pre-sentation is additive rather than subordinative, aggregative rather than ana-lytic (Ong 1982). Indeed, the codices enumerate events, leaving the causal relationships between them mostly implicit, and paint personages in a sche-matic way, without attention to their individual characteristics, let alone to psychological peculiarities or motivations. The viewpoint of performative art is empathetic and participatory: the performer takes sides and takes into account the often very local bias of the audience. Indeed, we find numerous examples in which the local perspective may have been responsible for certain information being mentioned or omitted. This is a conservative, traditional medium. No creative originality in the plot or composition is expected from the performer; quite the contrary, it is crucial to represent the well-known story with sophisticated and flamboyant performance techniques. Performer and audience are locked into a specific frame of reference; oral transmission
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is not well suited to include data outside that scope. The tradition can be sur-prisingly strong in a continuous context, but breaks do occur, especially when the social-cultural panorama has gone through major changes.
The presence of a system that could fix data in a controllable fashion helped to codify history, to give it the legitimacy of “this is what really hap-pened and was registered in ancient times,” and to preserve it with respect, precision, and care. The very notion of writing creates the preoccupation with a fixed canonical text as a norm for performances and interpretations (cf. Goody 2000). It is possible that the use of difrasismos and formal pictorial language originated as a mnemonic technique aimed at verbatim reproduc-tion of ancient texts during oral performances.
In Europe, starting with the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the central questions of the dominant historiography have long been close to the concerns of judges and lawyers: finding out what really happened and why.
Often this procedure implied some form of judging the past. This is not the character of Ñuu Dzaui pictorial manuscripts. They are closer to an older form, that of the epic narrative, a kind of discourse that usually sets out sim-ply to conserve the memory of the deeds of great people. Focusing on the constants and internal contradictions of the human condition, this discourse may develop a deep layer of cultural symbolism and psychological insights.
The main issue is not what “really” happened but the exemplary value of deeds, usually connected with a dramatic dimension and a ritualized perfor-mance. This is the narrative art of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Marabharata, and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The tragedies of authors such as Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Goethe continue this tradition.
Consequently, stories about the past are structured according to liter-ary conventions and to the ideas of ruling families regarding power, social-religious functions, and legitimacy. History is presented and experienced as the foundation of the present. Monuments and permanent visual images (in codices, on carved slabs, and the like) are palpable products of and references to what we may call, with Paul Ricoeur, the “narrative identity” of the com-munity. Declamation and reenactment of the story during ritual occasions re-create and reaffirm the sense of belonging to a community with a common background. This implies a respectful attitude toward the past. The story-teller knows that in the performance he or she is invoking the Ancestors; they are present at the occasion, watching if the storyteller does his or her job well.
The Ancestors are not to be manipulated as mere puppets on the string of our
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imagination; their deeds and motivations must be commemorated and inter-preted with care. Thus personal interpretations can be brought into the his-toriographer’s epic work, filling in the gaps of the register with imagination.
But this element of fiction occurs within a framework of serious empathy, limited by shared convictions and conditioned by human experience. Respect for the past ensures that the epic memory not only expresses a cosmological vision but also records many detailed facts and dates, both as indications of the working of higher powers and for their own sakes.
In telling our own story now, we are trying to follow the same path of respect, combining all kinds of fragmentary data to voice that ancient epic and striving for insights into both the historical process and the ideological dynamics of the society that produced it. In exploring this field in such a way, we are particularly interested in the structures and concepts of power that become manifest in the story. The sovereignty of the communities, expressed in its dynastic records and rituals, is therefore one of our leading threads.
The RITUAL DIMENSION
The occasion to bring out the codices and lienzos must have been a commu-nity event, a large ritual on a specific commemoration date. The discourse about the past was formal, in accordance with the conventions of oral litera-ture known as “flowery speech”: the sahu. The pictorial register was both a point of departure for such performances and concrete evidence of the canon-ical truth of the story told. While the codices and lienzos may have expressed a message or monologue on the part of the rulers, the text was also meant to have an effect on the people at large. Therefore, it had to take into account the expectation horizon of the public, including its social ethos and norms.
The aim of the performance was not just to please a passive audience but also to motivate the beholders and involve them in a ritual action.
In discussing the differences between theater and ritual, Roy Rappaport has pointed out:
Those present at a ritual constitute a congregation. The defining relation-ship of the members of a congregation to the event for which they are present is participation. (Rappaport 1999: 39)
[T]he transmitter-receivers become fused with the messages they are trans-mitting and receiving. In conforming to the orders that their performances bring into being, and that come alive in their performance, performers
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become indistinguishable from those orders, parts of them, for the time being. . . . Therefore by performing a liturgical order the participants accept, and indicate to themselves and to others that they accept, whatever is encoded in the canon of that order. (Rappaport 1999: 119)
Ritual is usually the reenactment of an ancient codified set of acts and texts with the aim of marking and (re)establishing relationships in the pres-ent, such as the bonds between a person and him/herself (as in a healing process), between individuals and groups, between humans and Nature, or between humans and divine powers. In other words, ritual performance often has to do with positioning individuals or collectives within society, life, and 2.1. Calendar with the four World Trees and nine Deities of the Night (Codex Tezcatli-poca, 1).
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the cosmos. As such, it provides a shared experience that may become an ingredient of “identity,” a rather vague concept, which we do not see as a pre-existing “monolithic” essence but as a web of developing relationships with others, an ongoing act of developing and communicating within a spatial and historical dimension. Identity is a project, a journey, and, in terms of the philosopher Deleuze, a “becoming.”3 Braidotti insightfully describes the prototypical subject in this process as a nomad, which “stands for movable diversity” and “expresses the desire for an identity made of transitions, succes-sive shifts, and coordinated changes, without and against an essential unity”
(Braidotti 1994: 14, 22). At the same time, with our identity we look back, honoring a spiritual connection to the land and earlier generations. The mul-tiple relationships involved are not neutral but are laden with specific mean-ings and emotions that are actualized in ritual.
Rituals may inspire respect and awe and reestablish spiritual equilibrium and confidence, giving people the strength for critical confrontations. This positioning within a web of relations in turn produces, reinforces, and states publicly the individual’s commitment to that which is perceived as a higher-order meaning. Thus ritual expresses and provides power of at least two types:
loyalty (the collective acceptance of authority within a social hierarchy or institution) and inner strength or charisma, received from an outside, divine source. A high-intensity religious ritual usually provokes a special state of mind: a catharsis, an inner empowerment with religious overtones, and a form of consolation or at least strengthened confidence in a social order and a normative ethos.
Not all rituals have this effect. Obviously, many ritual acts may be experi-enced as routine, fun, or boring, repetitive actions, depending on their char-acter, their context, and the participants’ background and state of mind. On the other hand, some high-intensity rituals are expected to have a great influ-ence on people. In many societies these rituals express central religious val-ues capable of overruling rational discursive thought. With the process of modernity and secularization, these rituals are often being replaced by cul-tural historical values. Sacred places then simply become culcul-tural and histori-cal monuments. Archaeology, at least in Mesoamerica, plays a crucial role in this transformation.
For researchers, it is wise to reflect first on what ritual has done for them in their own lives, not only because in those cases one is usually better informed about contexts and meanings but also because an examination of one’s own
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experiences is the basis for a careful and respectful treatment of other people’s feelings. Such a comparative and engaging perspective makes us aware of the many different emotions a ritual may evoke in specific individuals.
To our eyes, for example, modern Dutch society is not very religious, at least not publicly. The process of transforming sacrality into cultural history and reducing religion to the private sphere is well advanced there. One of the country’s few large public rituals is the commemoration of those who died in World War II and other conflicts, defending the causes of freedom and human rights. Each year, on the eve of May 5, a minute of silence is observed, garlands and flowers are ceremoniously laid down at specific monuments, and bells toll. Some may look upon all this without engagement, but others will feel deep emotion, stemming from personal experiences or a shared com-mitment to combat racism and Nazism. The same difference holds true for the attitude toward sacred places. In Dutch society, quite a few churches have been secularized and are now public activity halls. As a consequence, par-ties may be held in former ceremonial environments and on top of ancient sepulchral slabs. This is acceptable to some but shocking to others, either because they find it inappropriate in view of the monument’s cultural value or because they sense that such activities will offend the divine powers still present there.
In exploring what rituals might achieve and how, we go back to a per-sonal experience, a ceremony in which we became compadres of a family from San Pablo Tijaltepec, a community close to Ñuu Ndeya (Chalcatongo). It is a small, relatively isolated village, with a breathtaking view of the blue mountain ranges of the Mixteca Alta. All inhabitants speak the local dialect of Dzaha Dzaui; many are monolingual. The women dress traditionally, with colorful embroidered blouses. Because of this, the people of San Pablo are eas-ily recognized in Ñuu Ndeya, a town in transition, with traditional agencias (hamlets) but also a booming commercial center. Being poor and associated with the indigenous tradition, visitors from San Pablo are often discriminated against and treated badly.
More than twenty years ago we asked an elderly San Pablo couple to become our daughter’s godparents. Consequently, their own daughter, in the first years of elementary school at the time, respected us as her godparents.
Later, we lost contact with this godchild; after finishing school, she cut her braids, abandoned the traditional dress, and went to seek work in Mexico City and Tijuana. A few years ago we met her again. She had married and
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gone back to the village, dressed again in the traditional way, and was raising her children in Ñuu Dzaui traditional culture. It was an occasion of joy and true emotion.
The renewed contact led one of her family members to ask us to take her two small children to the church for the Catholic evangelio ceremony. We all went to the late colonial church of Ñuu Ndeya, where an elderly German Capuchin monk celebrated Mass. The Capuchin mission in this area follows the ideas of Liberation Theology. In a radical break with the demonizing of
“pagan idolatry” that was so characteristic of colonialism and is still widely practiced by conservative Mexican clergy, members of this order, working in the Franciscan tradition, see the work of God manifested in Nature and as such recognized by precolonial religions. A conscious effort is made to respect and integrate the native spiritual tradition. During the ceremony the German monk, keenly aware of the discriminatory views held by many in Ñuu Ndeya, asked the people from San Pablo to assist him in the Mass, han-dling the sacred objects and walking through the church in their traditional dress, incensing with copal.
The physical actions of the ritual are rather ordinary—the Mass, the words of the priest, the incense, the holy water, the embracing—but they are realized within an extraordinary setting and within a specific context with its own particular history.4 All movement is situated on a permanent focus line that directs the minds of the participant public in the nave toward the altar, dedicated to the Virgen María de Natividad, celebrated on September 8. The church reproduces the basic form of the ancient Roman basilica, shaped as a cross to represent the Virgin’s Son, the crucified Founder. In a similar way, the ancient Mexican temple was the body of a God or Goddess. According to tradition, this particular church (vehe ñuhu) is built on the spot of an ancient spring, where dark cattail reeds, or tules (kohyo), were growing. Our Lady, originally from Nuu Yoo, appeared among the reeds and manifested herself to the people. Under the main altar is the head of a large serpent, whose tail lies under the market square where the civic center is located. Tradition has it that a child was buried in the fundament of the building, a sacrifice that inspires awe. The Virgin Mother, both Demeter and Tonantzin, represents earth as a universal female principle, the power of life and death. Jesus Christ
The physical actions of the ritual are rather ordinary—the Mass, the words of the priest, the incense, the holy water, the embracing—but they are realized within an extraordinary setting and within a specific context with its own particular history.4 All movement is situated on a permanent focus line that directs the minds of the participant public in the nave toward the altar, dedicated to the Virgen María de Natividad, celebrated on September 8. The church reproduces the basic form of the ancient Roman basilica, shaped as a cross to represent the Virgin’s Son, the crucified Founder. In a similar way, the ancient Mexican temple was the body of a God or Goddess. According to tradition, this particular church (vehe ñuhu) is built on the spot of an ancient spring, where dark cattail reeds, or tules (kohyo), were growing. Our Lady, originally from Nuu Yoo, appeared among the reeds and manifested herself to the people. Under the main altar is the head of a large serpent, whose tail lies under the market square where the civic center is located. Tradition has it that a child was buried in the fundament of the building, a sacrifice that inspires awe. The Virgin Mother, both Demeter and Tonantzin, represents earth as a universal female principle, the power of life and death. Jesus Christ