Pregunta 1

The spiritual conquest of the Indians was perceived by Spanish missionaries as a battle against the devil, whom they felt they knew well and blamed for tricking Indians and keeping them in the dark. The initial enthusiasm of the Franciscan and Dominican missionaries in Mexico and Guatemala evaporated as they began to suspect that Indians were continuing to worship their own deities. The missionaries’ success - which they gauged by Indians’ ability to learn, perform, and enjoy the stories of saints with song, music, and drama - was an illusion. Perhaps massive Indian ‘conversions’

had led the missionaries to be overconfident about the imminent defeat of the devil and his minions; perhaps they just wanted to give a successful impression of their evangelisation efforts to the Spanish crown.

The copious church decrees prohibiting Indian celebrations (Acufia 1975:127- 156)* give the impression of a violent and irrevocable policy against Indian celebrations, although it has been claimed (Cervantes 1994:34) that, in practice, provincial religious authorities were tolerant of them. Whilst the religious authorities were guided by Bartolomé de las Casas’ famous dictum that “Indians are fundamentally good and their religiosity predisposes them to acquire the Catholic faith”, they simultaneously doubted Indians’ intelligence and capacity to be pious. Paternalistic attitudes led the Spanish to describe Indians as being ‘like children’, a view which still prevails among Ladinos (non-Indians) who refer to Indians in a diminishing way as 'inditos ' (child Indians). Indians were considered to be inherently weak and easy prey for the devil; Indian drunkenness at their numerous fiestas was commonly cited as evidence of this. On the other hand, the Spanish judicial authorities believed Indians were naturally prone to drinking and the law considered drunkenness as a mitigating factor in homicide cases (Taylor 1979:104). This idea has served to obfuscate violence and its real foundation in the communities - exacerbated by the introduction of sugar cane spirits and its illegal sale to Indians by other Spanish authorities - attributing it to the devil’s work.

The religious and royal authorities stressed the need to reduce the number of Indian festivities for economic, political, and religious reasons. The nascent economy of the Audiencia of Guatemala was hamstrung by what seemed to be an almost permanently drunken labour force. Both local Spanish civil authorities and the Dominicans who administered the wealth of Rabinal’s cofradias (chapter 2) tried to

Some of the prohibitions o f dances and dance-dramas within Indian celebrations during the colonial era (lb*** to early 19* centuries) can be found in the General Archive o f Central America and in the AHA: “Decree prohibiting the Tum dance, year 1593”, Al.39.1751. f.46; Al.68.3 exp.48127 leg.5555; "Se prohibe el baile de la zarabanda en las pueblos de la provincia de Zapotitlan ano 1669"

(Ordoflez 1989:97-104). “Decree prohibiting dances and zarabandas in the Guatemala valley, year 1749”, Al,22.1508.f.221. Other bans of dances in Guatemala include A 1.68-3 leg.2589 exp.21110 f.l; “Royal provision to the Verapâz mayor on the excesses ensuing from celebrations, year 1799”, A l. leg.4659 exp. 39868; “Prohibition of zarabandas in Suchitepequez, year 1802”, A1.68.24.823-.2815. Acufia (1975) offers an analysis o f church decrees and prohibitions against the Tun dance-drama, which he identifies as the predecessor to the Rabinal Achi dance-drama.

prevent these festivals in order to protect their own economic and political interests. They insisted that these celebrations were the root cause of neglect of work, excessive spending and poverty among Indians. A royal provision to the mayor of Verapaz in 1799 which prohibited music, alcohol, and dancing during children’s wakes (chapter 5) and vigils for the saints during cofradîa fiestas complains of:

The daily feasts and continuous spree lasting nine days and the profane dances performed in front of the saints during the wakes at their homes and the many days of missed work by the whole town, with great harm to the public, are consequences of these obligations whose purpose is the ruin of the participants (AGCA:A1.leg.4659, esp.39868).

The document also discloses the conflict between the provincial civil authorities and the Dominicans who had the economic and social control over the Verapaz region. The local authorities wanted to share the royal privileges of the missionaries over the Verapaz and took any opportunity to discredit the Dominicans blaming them for the great expenses of the Indians during religious festivities; they also criticised the music of the Indians as inappropriate ways of celebrating them. Fiesta participants priorities were wrong, their attitudes were wrong, and so too was their music:

...it is not only the church expenses that ruin these wretches (Indians), but also the amounts of lights, fireworks, and music, commonly in terrible disarray and of a style foreign to the majestic depth of those august performances. Far from inspiring tenderness, devotion and a healthy dose of respectful fear, these excite instead delinquent memories and passions (AGCA:A1.leg.4659, esp.39868).

This complaint gets to the crux of the matter: having incorporated Christ as a Mayan ancestor, Jesus became an Achi; he is inside the spiritual system, not outside, beyond, or above it. He is therefore celebrated in the same way as other founding ancestors, with music, dancing, and alcohol. Admittedly, after the conquest, both the music played and the alcohol drunk changed, the latter with disastrous effects.

But whilst the royal authorities railed against Indian behaviour, local Spanish authorities were more concerned with their own short-term interests. They turned a blind eye to the settlement of other ethnicities in Indian towns, opened clandestine alcohol shops and cantinas (bars), and hosted zarabandas (social events drinking and

dancing) selling cane spirits to Indians/ Indians’ inability to withstand Ladino entrepreneurs’ invitations to drink the new spirits may well have been another element feeding into negative views about alcohol on the part of both Indians and higher Spanish authorities. Drinking alcohol in cantinas came to be identified as another evil brought by rural Spanish and Ladinos. In the 1670s, Archbishop Cortes y Larras wrote that rural Spanish and Ladinos, were responsible for introducing evil to the Indians. The Indians are evil because they were deceived by the devil; the rural Spanish and Ladinos were evil because they were dedicated to vice and evil habits (Alejos: 1992).

Attacks on the rural population whether Spanish, Indian or Ladino Indian morals continued throughout the colonial period. The 1799 provision mentioned above makes a moral distinction between the ‘folk’ music played by people in their celebrations at their houses (which, by this time, included weddings, cofradîa fiestas and anniversaries of the dead), and the ‘cultured’ music performed by orchestras and choirs in the church. This attack on Indian culture also reflects the loosening of the religious authorities’ control over the local population and their festivities as their own position weakened when Enlightenment ideas crossed the Atlantic.

What really upset the higher Spanish civil-religious authorities, then, was the fact that Indians and Ladinos celebrated supposedly Christian festivals in a thoroughly inappropriate maimer. One such inappropriate behaviour was the involvement of women dancing inside the sacred sphere; to make matters worse, they appeared to be dancing, if not competing, for money from men. A 1669 document prohibiting this dance in the Indian towns of Zapotitlan province (where it was performed in Ladino

cofradias) includes testimony from Spanish witnesses living in the towns of

Cuyotenango, San Francisco Zapotitlan, Masatenango and San Antonio Suchitepequez. One Spaniard’s testimony reads:

...[he] knows and has witnessed that in all the celebrations in the towns of this province the Ladino women captains^ of the cofradias of Our Lady of the Rosary and St Nicholas, organise the dance they are accustomed to dancing and they call zarabanda, and they all dance, mostly women, for this is their purpose.

As early as 1617 provincial civil authorities were running taverns in Indian towns (AGCA:A1.23.leg. 1515G). Several centuries later, roughly between 1850-1930, the alcohol business was formally recognised in the habilitacion system (chapter 2).

and that in such dance there is a contest of men who, once a woman starts dancing, they approach her and set a real (Spanish silver coin) or more on her front, and then throw it in a dish that they have set for this purpose (Ordonez

1989:99).

Other testimonies in the same document state that this dance had been performed for a long time and that only the prettiest mulattas or mestizas were chosen to perform it. After the men had made their donations, men and women were permitted to dance in couples. The reales went to the cofradîa funds:

...that which is collected helps to pay the expenses of the celebration as well as the blood-procession which that cofradia organises for the sake of the penitentes (penitents) in order not to dip into the cofradia’s principal (capital) since upon leaving their charges they have to deliver every cent not spent with detailed accounts and explanation to the cofradia treasure, deposit it in the box and sometimes they even add some jewellery as charity and they take care of the sick, after all that is their purpose (Ordonez 1989:102).

These testimonies portrayed women as agents of evil and to give weight to the edict, which concludes that these celebrations are offensive to God as they are only a means whereby the devil pretends virtuous actions to cover up mortal sins, mainly of sensuality. The women’s dance attracted the worst sort of person: Indians, Ladinos, Mulattos, Mestizos, Muleteers and foreigners "who had no home". Such negative Spanish views of women, found in the historical record, influenced Indian perceptions of women.

A version of this dance survives in the modem provinces of Alta Verapaz and El Quiche.'* The Q’eqchi, for example, perform a dance accompanied by the zarabanda son music of harp, violin and guitar in their cofradia celebrations in front of its saint image to collect funds for the cult: a cash offering to the saint entitles the donor to one glass of alcohol and the right to dance as a devocion to the saint. The substitution of alcohol for female sensuality as a reward for pious donations resonates with a contemporary myth about the origins of mankind and alcohol among the Maya Tzeltal of Chiapas, Mexico. The myth tells how the Virgin Mary transforms her blood into alcohol, seduces the Anti-Christ through dance, and gets him drunk in order to trap him

Another version survives among Ladinos of Retuhuleu province. Known as the

zarabanda de lazo, this is a social dance in which a lazo (ribbon) is tied across the dance hall to separate couples who make a donation for each pieza they dance.

and prevent him from continuing his destruction of mankind (Navarrete 1988:151-2). In this instance, the female call to drink the Virgin Mary’s own blood and to dance with her serves the purpose of eliminating the devil. Thus the dangers of alcohol and female seductiveness are inverted and become an instrument for the common good.

The démonisation of Indian society was not only an ideology imposed to justify domination; it was also a Manichean notion of the world which was part of the rationality of sixteenth century Spanish society (Cervantes 1994:1-4). This was transplanted to a multi-ethnic colonial society, where it took hold and became part of contemporary society’s heritage. The clash for power and resources between Ladino ‘outsiders’ and Indian ‘insiders’ and vice versa became for both a struggle between good and evil. Certainly part of Indian subjugation has been an assimilation of a negative view of themselves and their past, which reinforces their subordination to Ladino society. The conquest and subjection of Indians has, in their eyes, transformed Ladinos into the devil’s allies. Ladinos’ greed for money and personal gratification, the accumulation of illegitimate wealth obtained from activities other than working the land, the exploitation and ill treatment of Indians by Ladino bosses on the plantations, are all manifestations of evil (Cabarrus 1979; Warren 1992 [1978]).^