Pregunta 10

All social musical occasions celebrating family and community life are called

alegrias (‘happy’ occasions). During these events music, food, and alcohol are the most

precious gifts exchanged among the living and between the living and the dead; they ‘open the path of communication’ and express mutual recognition, a willingness to be sociable and to maintain reciprocity within community and family ties. Men make these offerings, though the gifts themselves are considered female.^

See Warren’s (1992 [1978]) discussion on mythology as the separatist ideology of a bi­ ethnic society.

Strictly speaking, Achi discourse does not ascribe a gender to alcohol (sugar cane spirits), although it is not uncommon for alcohol to be spoken o f as a personified agent.

Marimba music is a female and ‘Marian’ call to people and to the spirits of their ancestors to share the expression of sentimientos (sadness) and emociones (happiness). In a religious sense this emotional channel is particularly intended to release feelings in an appropriate context, outside the daily realm. The extroversion of feelings, desires, and intentions of multiple people during alegnas also exposes participants to symbolic violence such as envy, jealousy, and vengeance through witchcraft or to physical violence and accidents resulting from drunkenness. Even though music is immediately associated with gaiety, people also associate alegrias with drunkenness and fights because “music invites drinking and drunkards provoke fights.” Alcohol’s unbinding and anxiety relieving function (Horton 1943) contributes to the vulnerability generated in this social context. It is participants’ perception of music and alcohol (Taylor 1979) which transforms the social event into a dangerous situation which promotes conflicts and accidents.

Social drinking at alegnas not only mediates communication but is both a moral obligation and an expression of good will. To share alcohol is a gesture of trust between the person offering it and the one who accepts it and, in time (on this or other occasions) returns the offer. To refuse indicates an absence of confidence in the donor, who is likely to take this public rejection as an insult and may seek revenge. As ritual specialists, musicians and abogados (prayer makers) are very clear about this principle. This is reflected in their constant acceptance of the drinks offered to them by the event’s host and participants as a gesture of gratitude and in exchange for their prayers and musical offerings during every celebration. Consuming alcohol is essentially a challenge for musicians for they have to balance their obligation to be social and accept the offered drinks with their ability to perform and conduct the celebration until it ends. Musicians who frequently express their pleaisure in the effect their music has on people also speak, often with annoyance, of the drunks who follow them everywhere they play, creating conflicts. Many are also concerned about their own and other marimbistas' alcohol consumption: they are aware that the constant pressure exercised by friends and other fiesta participants to socialise and share drinks contributes to their own drinking problems.

But there is more to drinking in ritual contexts than relations among the living: drinking large quantities of alcohol often to the point of unconsciousness is a

declaration of trust in the communion of souls, alive and dead. This ‘apocalyptic’ pattern of drinking (Pages Larraya 1976) as part of the ritual celebration of the annual life cycle can be interpreted as a symbolic form of sacrifice. Individual will is delivered into the hands of the ancestors as an affirmation of the ties of reciprocity between the living and the dead. Collective drunkenness is, then, an affirmation of community spirit that is maintained during the communal celebrations of cofradiasJ

It seems that this ancient form of drinking is coming under increasing pressure as people try to balance their views of marimba music and alcohol as a religious and social offering within an alegria with their experiences of conflict while enjoying the music and sharing drinks.

Perceptions of music and alcohol form part of a moral view of the world where sociality and conflict are interpreted as a battle between good and evil. Conflict is explained as being the result of evil; all elaborations of this concept concerned the differentiation of the narrator’s family or community interests from those of ‘others’ who are considered ‘outsiders’. The evil intentions of other participants, stemming from conflicts between neighbouring families with affinal ties over such things as land and water access, is a common explanation. But even then, the story is told obliquely: for example, Bacho told me a long story about a fight he’d had over a girl, only telling me at the end of the tale that he was already in dispute with the man over water access.

Others saw alcohol personified as the devil himself. Blind marimbista Lazaro Cauec told me:

The marimba is a joy. It is like this [pointing at my tape recorder], you have your cassette there, and you are listening to the sones\ it depends on how you deal with it. There it is, not causing you a problem, instead the problems one has stem from the dammed drink. That is what causes the best man to lose his senses at the last hour, the mind is lost, the mind gets tangled to be more exact...

^. My personal experience with alcohol among the Maya Tzeltales o f Chanal, Chiapas, led me to the conclusion that surrendering completely to drunkenness is a means of expressing trust. The minute I started drinking in the same manner as the Chanaleros, falling into a stupor with them in the places where we drank, people began to have a friendlier attitude towards me (Navarrete 1988).

Older people explained that evil worked through encouraging alcohol consumption outside the places and times prescribed by ritual. From the older generation's moral and religious point of view, one has to drink in ‘God’s name’; that is, within the social and religious aims of the community while thinking of God and seeking His protection. They criticise young men for taking marimba music during cofradia festivities as an excuse to gather outside in the street which, at night, is the domain of the devil (cf. Warren 1992 [1978]: 46-48), to drink and look for trouble; they accuse them of drinking ‘por puro gusto ’ (only for pleasure) like Ladinos, becoming evil in the same way. Cantinas have been identified as one of devil’s favourite haunts and it is here is one of the places that the evil spirit of the marimba, la Siuanaba, appears.

Some people, and especially evangelicals, blame the marimba for the evil taking over in alegrias. When discussing musicians who, under Protestant persuasion, have abandoned their destiny, marimbista Francisco Ixpata said:

Here the evangelicals say that it is forbidden to play sones, forbidden to play

pieza. Then they sell it [the marimba] because some say the marimba is a devil

that imperils the person. So they say, that’s why they sell it.