Story Cycles in Chol (Mayan) Mythology:  Contextualizing Classic Iconography
with Nicholas A. Hopkins, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, Ashley Kistler, and Kayla Price

Appendix II: Story Synopses (Summary)
Ch’ol de Chiapas y Campeche, 2002 Field Season

Black Man (X’ijk’al or Xñek)

Rafael López Vázquez: Two men are asked to take a letter to a priest. They are accosted by a Black Man (Negro, ’ijk’al) on the road. They escape to tell their story… The Black Men used to come into houses and take women off to the woods. They would abduct them at dawn, and by six in the afternoon the women would be producing babies. (2002-2)

Abelardo López Méndez: The ch’ix winik is not the same as the ’ijk’al, but the ’ijk’al is the same as the xnek… A story about the ’ijk’al in an encounter with ALM’s uncles/brothers and their dogs. (2002-3)

Spiny Man (Ch’ix Winik)

Abelardo López Méndez: A story about chicleros and a ch’ix winik (Spiny Man) who comes into camp to talk to a woman working there. (2002-3)

Big Hat (Sombrerón)

Rafael López Vázquez: Big Hat (Sombrerón) is a short man who wears a huge hat and lives in the forest. He confuses people on the trails, making them go around in circles… People out looking for palm leaves for weaving ran into a Sombrerón on a trail in the woods. They can be confused if we wear clothing backwards. His shirt is made of the bark of the masamón (ch’ix jun) tree (a fig-like tree with spines); his pants are made likewise… If we are out in the woods and get confused by the Sombrerón, we should make a bow out of mutusay (a tree-climbing vine that drops liana-like roots), and pluck the string to make music. The Sombrerón is fascinated by this music, and will find the instrument, sit down and play it, and start laughing. While he is distracted and laughing, we can find our way again. (2002-2)

Feet on Backwards (Xwuluk ’ok)

Abelardo López Méndez: A discussion of the xwuluk ’ok, a jungle creature whose feet are turned backwards. (2002-3)

Savage (Salvaje)

Rafael López Vázquez: People used to go out into the woods to collect chicle sap (the chicleros). Wild Men (Salvajes) would find their camps and try to eat them. The Wild Men are large and covered with spines all over their bodies. When they see people, the spines stand up, otherwise they lie down. (2002-2)

Lacandóns (Kichañob)

Juan Alvaro Montejo: When JAM was a young man working on the highway from Palenque to Frontera Echeverría, Chiapas, he was warned about the kichañob (a term used for Lacandónes, both real and legendary). He was told they would kill him and eat his flesh. That there was an abandoned house beside the crossroads at the split between the San Cristóbal and Chancalá highways, outside Palenque, and that a man had died there, and his bones were found hanging in the house; the flesh had been eaten by the kichañob. (2002-12)

Ausencio Cruz Guzmán: There is a saying that if you burn tortillas (by accident), the kichañob will come. (2002-12)

Chajk

Rafael López Vázquez: People go to Chajk to ask for rain. RLV associates Chajk (the Lightning God) with Xibaj (the Underworld lord, the devil). (2002-2)

Transformers (Comadre and other stories)

Abelardo López Méndez: A comadre story in which a woman is visited by a jaguar in the guise of a man. The women meet to grind posol and eat, while the husband is out in the milpa. The jaguar (one of the women) takes the other woman out to gather snails in a river. When he gets wet his spots begin to show, and the woman notices he has a tail curled up under his clothing. She manages to escape. (2002-3.)

Rafael López Vázquez: Two women (comadres) go out to grind corn to make posol by the river, but one of them is really a jaguar that has taken human shape. They decide to collect snails, but the jaguar doesn’t understand what they are doing and begins to fill his bag with small stones, raising the suspicions of the woman. She then notices his tail curling out under his clothing, and begins to get afraid. She excuses herself to go off for a bowel movement. She escapes to hide in a hollow in a large tree, and is pursued by the jaguar, who rakes at the tree with his claws. He is unable to get to her, and begins to cry that he wanted to eat her ears, her head… He leaves and comes back later, and is unable to get to her. A review of the events closes the story. (2002-2)

Rafael López Vázquez: There was man who could turn himself into a woman. He would take women off to the milpa and their families could never find them. (2002-2)

Witches (Xibajob)

Juan Alvaro Montejo: When JAM was about 14, he went to visit a sister who lived in Kuktiepa (Chiapas), where the houses are scattered, not nucleated. A neighbor, an old man, a tatuch, died, and he was taken to see the corpse laid out, before it was buried that afternoon. Next to his sister’s house was an abandoned house whose owner had moved away. About 9 at night, his sister told him not to go to sleep, that he should keep his eyes open, because a jaguar (a witch, a devil) would be coming to frighten them. About 10 PM, an owl arrived, hooting, and went to rest at the peak of the abandoned house. Then came a fox, barking. About 1 AM, someone was heard coming nearer beating a drum. They all gathered in the house and began to talk audibly, but nobody could see anything. Much later, he heard the sounds of chopping and then scraping, like someone was cutting bones with a machete. A couple of hours after the witches arrived, a child was heard coming, crying uñé, uñé, uñé… Others came and began to circle around the house where JAM was staying. They went around twice without him seeing anyone, but the third time around, the child stepped up on a table-like rock his sister had placed in front of the house, and it looked like a duck, off-white in color. It stayed there singing for a couple of hours, until dawn, when his sister took out a small gourd and began to sprinkle the inside of the house with tobacco powder, even outside the door, and the witches left. The next day he went out to look at the rock, and the bones of the old man were scattered around there, with strips of tendons still attached, covered with flies. The witches had eaten his flesh in the night. (2002-12)

Messengers (X’ak’jun)

Rafael López Vázquez: A man went out with a companion to deliver a message, got confused on the trail, and took shelter in an abandoned house. In the night, the witches arrived. An owl came in to sweep, and was followed by some evil-looking people. They brought food, but it was human. One of the messengers recognized it as the body of a recently dead old man and told his companion. They manage to sprinkle tobacco powder on the witches’ food, putting them to sleep, climb down from the loft where they have been hiding, and escape. (2002-2)

Dog Informer (Tz’i’)

Rafael López Vázquez: A certain man had a wife who, when he went out to work in the milpa, would receive her lover at the house. The man’s dog informs on the wife; the dog is mad because the wife doesn’t feed him well and beats him badly. She doesn’t give the dog tortillas or posol, and she beats him. The dog tells the man that when he leaves the house, the other man arrives, and they conspire to catch the lover. The lover comes to visit the wife, and in the middle of the night has to urinate. She tells him he doesn’t have to go outside, he can pee through a crack in the planks of the wall. When he sticks his member out through the crack, the husband cuts it off with a machete. The man takes it back to the milpa and cooks it with lots of salt. He then brings it in to his wife and tells her it is kidneys he has cooked for her. She eats it, and it makes her so thirsty that she begins to drink copious quantities of water. She drinks so much that she swells up and bursts. (2002-2)

Races

Rafael López Vázquez: A deer and a toad (referred to with Spanish names as Tío Venado, Uncle Deer, and Tío Sapo, Uncle Toad) challenge each other to a race, over a distance of 500 meters. The toads conspire to cheat the deer. Every leap the deer takes, a toad takes, but it is a different toad, and the toads win. (2002-2)

Creation

Juan Alvaro Montejo: A Creation story, featuring Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, and other Biblical tales. Adam is presented as the older brother (presumably, as in other tales, Christ will appear as the younger brother). (2002-12)

Curers (Xwujt)

Abelardo López Méndez: If people get sick, they go to a curer (’aj wujty, xwujty) with a gift of liquor, rice, beans, etc. He makes a diagnosis of fright (bäk’en), and cures by spraying (wujtyan). Or, he may diagnose some variety of shame (vergüenza de chityam [pig], de muty [chicken], de ’ajtzo’ [turkey], etc.), or blood-sucking, etc. Sometimes people get well, sometimes they get mad, because they don’t get cured but have to pay a lot of money –100, 300 pesos. Some cure by prayers, making the sign of the cross with liquor, curing eye of the wind (’ojo de viento), some cure by rubbing the body with liquids. Some diagnose with eggs, but only for children, not for adults. Herbs are also used (kursiyo, yerbamatin). A cross may be set up, or candles burned. Spirits can be called up by using a gourd drum and calling to them. In the church, prayers may be made, scripture read. Different offerings would be made for a boy or girl. Powdered tobacco (man k’ujtz) can be used in curing, like spraying, if a soul has been shut up by a mountain. If people do prayers in the milpa, they take gifts of food and liquor. They ask for pardon so they can do their work; they burn candles. We pray to God to cure us, to keep us from snakes, whatever. We pray to God for strength, valor, for whatever we are waiting for. In the name of God the father and God the son, may we not die, be snakebit, or have any kind of trouble. (2002-3)

Abelardo López Méndez: Also included is a discussion of the late Juan Jiménez, a noted curer who had a talking box [also discussed by Rafael López Vázquez in 2002-2]. (2002-3)

The Good Girl and the Dead

Ausencio Cruz Guzmán: Folktale about a girl who sees the dead walking on Todos Santos, and is given a candle by an old woman. Next year at Todos Santos, she must protect herself by holding an infant (a pure soul) to avoid being taken by the dead. (2002-16)

Lost in the Woods, Lost in a Strange Land

Abelardo López Méndez: A personal narrative about being lost in the woods for three months when he was a small child. During the first month he had a number of encounters with animals, and learned to eat wild foods. The second month he was taken in by a Lady in a "special" house, but he was afraid and fled. The third month his Uncle Pancho came out looking for him with dogs and found him (protected by four jungle cats who surrounded him for protection). (2002-3)

Juana Torres López: A personal narrative featuring a trip to the forest with her aunt to gather ramón. The women have to stay overnight in the woods, and they get lost. They can’t find the trail and the aunt prays to God for help and scolds the forest for treating them this way after all their ancestors have done, in elegant language. The women find their way home. (2002-3)

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