BROKEN WINDOWS

Saturday, November 1, 2003

The TULANE MAYA SYMPOSIUM:
I (the guest blogger) am a graduate student studying mesoamerican archaeology here at Tulane University in New Orleans. For those of you who don't know, Tulane has a long and rich history of Maya Archaeologists going back to Frans Blom in the 1940's. Once a year, the Latin American Studies department hosts a MAYA SYMPOSIUM, where experts from the field gather to discuss their recent findings. It is open to the public and really quite interesting. Today, I was asked to give a lecture to local teachers about Maya Astronomy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Maya, they had a profound understanding and interpretation of the motion of the celestial bodies. They made tables that accurately predicted eclipses, tracked the movement of venus, and counted mars' retrograde loops. Perhaps it is fitting that this event occured on the Halloween weekend here in New Orleans. I say this, because to the Native Mesoamerican, there were three animistic entities associated with life. One a gaseous spirit that roamed the world like a ghostly spirit after death. Another that came from the sun and left the body when one was dreaming or unconscious. Lastly, the third was responsible for our cognitive functions (memory, learning, intelligence). This "soul", called the Teyolia by the Aztecs, following death went on a journey to Mictlan (Aztec word for land of the dead). There are many depictions in Maya art concerning the activities and lords of this underworld place. In fact, there is even a myth (known as the Popul Vuh) where two heroe twins must descend into the underworld to compete in the ceremonial ballgame against the lords of the night. Likewise, according to the Leyendas de los Soles, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl must descend into the land of the dead, and trick Mictlantecuhtli (lord of the dead) in order to gather bones, which later served as the building blocks for humans.

Today Maya culture is present in over 30 linguistic groups across Guatemala, Chiapas, Yucatan, Belize, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. These people still to this day leave offerings for their ancestors, who will one day return. In Central Mexico, and all over Latin America, families construct offrendas to their ancestors today, Nov 1st. These consist of beautiful shrine like structures loaded with paraphanelia that once belonged to the deceased relative. Items include photographs, clothing, tools, sports equipment, and various other things. In addition to this, flowers and candles always play an important role. In any case, it seems that in the land of the Maya, not too long after the second solar zenith passage (something that only occurs in the tropics) and just after the harvest of corn, a special ceremony developed particularly to honor their ancestors, as if they were still around observing the world of the living.

Last night, after the key note address, I made my way down to Fenchman street, just outside of the French Quarter to see the way we celebrate in New Orleans. What a raucus affair! There were literally thousands of people roaming the street in a multitude of elaborate costumes. Although the notion of ancestry and death seems to have slipped somewhat, there were plenty of costumes devoted to near mythical or infamous characters. Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Marilyn Monroe, Osama Bin Laden, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin, Socrates, The Tudors to name a few. Then there were tributes to cultural icons: beauty pageant queens, soldiers, priests, cops, and robbers. In addition to this there were mythical/made-up characters: Scooby-doo, Fred Flintstone was particularly popular, Jack Skelington, fairies, Umpa-Lumpas, devils, elves, witches, vampires, and ghouls. Lastly, there were the unkowns: costumes that were concocted at the last minute and seemed to have no meaning. In the end, perhaps subconsciously, we are still celebrating an intangeable element of our culture that is not unlike a spirit. I recommend a visit to NOLA sometime for this event. Happy Halloween/Dia de los Muertos!

I would have loved to post some pictures, but Kate has the camera.

6:48:42 PM |

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