[Aztlan] Day of the Dead - Maya Style

[Hube Smith]

Yes, I agree with David.

The Maya I work with remove the bones of the dead on no particular
schedule and certainly don't make November 1st the day they do it.
It has little to do with sanitation and more to do with space and custom.

They do, however, observe "Todos Santos" by making a meal, usually
a lightly-spiced puchero (squash stew) for the "animas" or "little souls"
who will take the "gracia" (grace) from the meal when it rests on the family
altar.

Less and less, a candle is placed in front of the home to guide the animas 
to
the altar.

Thus remembered, the roaming young souls will rest easy and be disinclined
to make trouble for the living.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Hixson" <aztlandave at yahoo.com>
To: "Elaine Day Schele" <eschele at austin.rr.com>; "Aztlan" 
<aztlan at lists.famsi.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Day of the Dead - Maya Style


> Happy Halloween, Listeros!
>
> I just have a few comments on the Reuters' report,
> which (besides from the usual journalistic
> inaccuracies) is a pretty good description of "Hanal
> Pixan" (Dinner or Feast of the Soul).  If you aren't
> already familiar with it, give it a "google".
>
> The following paragraph contains the majority of the
> errors:
>
>> The origins of the ritual, which is celebrated
>> almost exclusively in Pomuch, are murky, and it is
>> unclear whether the practice predates the Spanish
>> conquest of Latin America.  One theory suggests that
>> villagers, faced with an overflowing cemetery, may
>> have begun digging up their dead for sanitary
>> reasons.
>
> In fact, this is a widespread practice among the
> Yucatec Maya, not only those of Pomuch.  The ritual of
> Hanal Pixan has been documented by ethnographers
> across the Maya lowlands.
>
> The reporter is right that the origins are murky.  The
> Ancient Maya of the northern lowlands buried their
> dead beneath the house floors, rarely in cemeteries.
> Villa Rojas documented the forced change from house
> burials to graveyard burials in Q. Roo - enforced by
> the Catholic priests.
>
> However, the practice of secondary burial (exhuming
> the bones of a family member and re-interring them in
> an ossuary or other religious deposit), can be traced
> back much further in both the Maya and Spanish
> Catholic traditions.
>
> The dead were commonly exhumed and ritually gathered
> in folk Catholic traditions of the 16th century in
> Spain, while the prehispanic Maya often exhumed and
> reburied the bones of ancestors within household
> religious ceremonies.  It is my contention that it was
> this convenient overlap of traditions that allowed the
> ceremony of Hanal Pixan to take hold in the new world
> view that arose in the highly syncretic culture of
> colonial and modern Yucatan.
>
> It is unlikely that this ceremony began out of a
> concern for sanitation due to overcrowded graveyards,
> as the article suggests.
>
> [I've told my wife that's what I want for my tired old
> bones, but she's not having any part of it :-]
>
> -Dave
>
>
>
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