Perinatal Rites in the Ritual of the Bacabs, a Colonial Maya Manuscript (original) (raw)
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Authorizing Tradition: Vectors of Contention in Highland Maya Midwifery.
Social Science & Medicine, 2004
In Guatemala, midwives deliver the majority of children and play an important health care role in rural areas. Maya midwives, using time-proven methods, are the chief providers of care for mothers and infants in these areas. In recent decades, however, the medical establishment has become interested in Maya midwives, and is currently engaged in training and certifying many of them. This study examines how Guatemalan health authorities have sought to change Maya midwifery, refashioning its vocational framework and retooling it in accordance with Western medical principles. I focus on the place of obligatory formal training and the use of biomedical materials in the experience of Kaqchikel Maya midwives, and consider how the health officials employ these means to undermine the midwives’ knowledge base. Encounters between midwives and formal health personnel reveal an ongoing privileging of biomedical knowledge, one that preserves asymmetrical relationships between these practitioners. This creates an environment favorable to health personnel, and helps them to extend their influence through the midwives into the community. Given this, I contend that health personnel value local Maya midwives primarily for their role in furthering the goals of biomedicine. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Guatemala; Maya midwifery; Biomedical change; Maternal health; Child care
Valentino Nizzo (ed.), Archeologia e antropologia della morte: 1. La regola dell’eccezione, Atti del 3° Incontro Internazionale di Studi di Antropologia e Archeologia a confronto, 2018
In this work we wish to discuss some of the multi-layered native meanings of ritualized violence and human sacrifce among the ancient Maya and their mortuary expressions. This text surrounds a number of elements of debate that are key in detecting and understanding the transformation of the body and the individual in ritualized violence, along with their mortuary signatures. En este trabajo deseamos discutir algunos de los significados nativos de múltiples capas de la violencia ritualizada y el sacrificio humano entre los antiguos mayas y sus expresiones mortuorias. Este texto involucra una serie de elementos de debate que son claves para detectar y comprender la transformación del cuerpo y del individuo en la violencia ritualizada, junto con sus firmas mortuorias.
Maya Female Taboo: Menstruation and Pregnancy in Lacandon Daily Life
Contributions in New World Archaeology, 2017
The article is focused on two female taboos linked with menstruation and pregnancy existing among the contemporary members of the Lacandon community. Despite the references about one female taboo associated with different restrictions for women (sacred places, participation in rituals and other specific activities), in this research we analyse two categories of reasons for these taboos. The first one related to menstruation takes into account the spiritual essence of blood and the necessity of keeping it under control during rituals. Menstruation in this case represents an outflow of spiritual powers that cannot be controlled, with possible risks for the community. In the case of pregnancy, the reason for it being a taboo is different because it concerns the lack of blood. In this sense, the presented theory is based on the concepts of nagualism, indicating that the existence of two souls/beings in one body presupposes magic power and healing possibilities with a high risk of magic attacks. The evidence obtained during long-term fieldwork clarify that the so-called female taboo is composed of two different reasons. It is not the same phenomenon because the expectations, as well as the consequences, are different. To conclude, a phenomenon formally comparable with other similar phenomenon from the Old World could possibly have different origins.
Rituelle Gewalt, Gewaltrituale. XX Tagung der Landesmuseums für Vorgeschicht, Halle, 2019, edited by Harald Meller, Detlef Gronenborn, and Roberto Risch. Halle, Germany. , 2020
Like other Mesoamerican societies, the ancient Maya deemed human sacrifices essential parts of a hierarchically organized cosmic food chain, which operated between the living human sphere and a divine anecumene. Native religious practitioners still offer copal and maize during today’s festivities and liken them to human flesh. Until recently, humans themselves were held to be a supreme »food staple«, which vitalised the cosmos at the pulse of consecrated time intervals. Victims were prepared and slaughtered in prescribed ways to liberate their animate essences effectively. In the aftermath of slaughter, the sanctified fleshly remains would often be processed and partitioned, and could be used as powerful trophies or relics. Although violence has been abundantly recorded in Maya iconography, only the last two decades of scholarship have seen methodological and interpretive strides towards a more nuanced study of ancient sacrificial practices involving humans. Recently, a combination of different disciplinary lenses has allowed the reconstruction of distinct sacrificial sequences from sacrificial mortuary deposits. In this contribution, I review the Maya mortuary record to document evidence of Maya forms of ritual violence and posthumous body processing. Furthermore, the procedures provide clues about the concept of the human body as a cosmic model and conduit. I close this essay by reviewing notions of ritualized violence as a form of instrumentation in political and militaristic agendas versus substitute violence as effective form of creating community among the Maya of today.
Chapter 4. Body and Soul among the Maya: Keeping the Spirits in Place
Archeological Papers of the American …, 2002
The prehispanic Maya are known to have commonly interred their dead beneath the floors or within the platforms of domestic structures. This custom has been interpreted as part of a larger complex of rituals and beliefs associated with ancestor veneration. By continually curating the bones of deceased family members within their own domestic space, the surviving members of the household may have strengthened their rights to material property believed to have been acquired by these ancestors. Maya residences have thus been considered domestic mausolea: "places of death." However, archaeological interpretations of burial practices should take into account the likelihood of customs and beliefs regarding the proper disposition of the nontangible components of deceased persons along with their physical remains. These components include names and souls, which may have been the property of specific corporate groups who transferred them from the dead to the newly born as an expression of group continuity. Archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence from Maya peoples is examined here to suggest that residential interments may have served to ensure control over the souls of the dead. Ancestral spirits were important nontangible property belonging to prehispanic Maya corporate kin groups, known as "houses." They were carefully safeguarded for reincarnation in subsequent generations, thereby perpetuating the kin group. Rather than a place of death, Maya domestic space is therefore better considered a place of curation, transformation, and regeneration of enduring social personae.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2012
This paper examines the materiality-or the mutually constitutive relationships between people and things-of Aztec rattle figurines in order to shed light on household ritual life in Postclassic central Mexico. By examining iconographic, archaeological, and ethnohistoric evidence, I argue that these figurines were actively used in household healing rituals concerning successful biological and social reproduction, comprised of the work, relationships, and attitudes that perpetuate human life. I then consider the physical experience of that ritual use by exploring the visual, tactile, auditory, and physiological aspects of these figurines. I contend that their visibility in workshops, markets, and the home presented an image of the female body that reinforced women's important roles in the production and reproduction of the household and society. Finally, the material qualities of these figurines reveal ancient discourses on the human body and experimentation with bodily representation in terms of scale, form, and material.
Maya/Guatemala Comadronas or Traditional Medicine Annotated Bibliography 1 7/6/23
The Project utilized three participatory approaches in tandem: the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO) Approach, the Care Group Approach, and the Community Birthing Center Approach. Together, these are referred to as the Expanded CBIO Approach (or CBIO+). Objective: This is the first article of a supplement that assesses the effectiveness of the Project's community-based service delivery platform that was integrated into the Guatemalan government's rural health care system and its special program for mothers and children called PEC (Programa de Extensión de Cobertura, or Extension of Coverage Program). Methods: We review and summarize the CBIO+ Approach and its development. We also describe the Project Area, the structure and implementation of the Project, and its context. Results: The CBIO+ Approach is the product of four decades of field work. The Project reached a population of 98,000 people, covering the entire municipalities of San Sebastián Coatán, Santa Eulalia, and San Miguel Acatán. After mapping all households in each community and registering all household members, the Project established 184 Care Groups, which were composed of 5-12 Care Group Volunteers who were each responsible for 10-15 households. Paid Care Group Promoters provided training in behavior change communication every two weeks to the Care Groups. Care Group Volunteers in turn passed this communication to the mothers in their assigned households and also reported back to the Care Group Promoters information about any births or deaths that they learned of during the previous two weeks as a result of their regular contact with their neighbors. At the outset of the Project, there was one Birthing Center in the Project Area, serving a small group of communities nearby. Two additional Birthing Centers began functioning as the Project was operating. The Birthing Centers encouraged the participation of traditional midwives (called comadronas) in the Project Area. Conclusion: This article serves as an introduction to an assessment of the CBIO+ communitybased, participatory approach as it was implemented by Curamericas/Guatemala in the Western Highlands of the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. This article is the first of a series of articles in a supplement entitled Reducing Inequities in Maternal and Child Health in Rural Guatemala through the CBIO+ Approach of Curamericas.
Women’s Voices in a Male World: Actions, Bodies and Spaces among the Ancient Maya
"Feminist archaeology has prompted scholars to reconsider gender roles in ancient Mesoamerica. Current research, however, tends to focus on elite women, classes and sites. Although I do not ignore the potential of these sources, in this paper I am mainly concerned with issues such as the phenomenology of bodies and spaces, subroyal ritual actions, and daily activities such as cooking and weaving. My aim is to offer an overview of the most recent studies on gender in Maya archaeology and to provide ideas for further research by emphasising the need to engender ritual and individuate female discourses in the archaeological record."