Chol Ritual Language
with Terrence Lee Folmar, Heidi Altman, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and Bernardo Pérez Martínez
©1996 J. Kathryn Josserand and Nicholas A. Hopkins

The Ceremonial Calendar

Tila celebrates a round of major religious ceremonies tied to the Christian calendar but retaining elements of Pre-Columbian and Colonial beliefs and practices. The ritual calendar begins on January 6th, with nine days of ceremonial activity leading up to the festival of the Señor de Tila on the 15th, organized by the four principal mayordomos, and including masses, processions of the Black Christ and other images from the sanctuary, and ritual meals at the homes of the mayordomos. (One of the texts we recorded during 1995 fieldwork in Tila, La Novena, is an account of the activities during the nine days of ritual activities between the 6th and 15th of January.)

Carnaval is celebrated from the last weekend of Lent until Ash Wednesday, and is the occasion for new cargo holders to replace old ones in office. It is also the occasion for public performances of male dancers (the Black Men versus the Marías) and the ritual combat between Bulls and Jaguars (symbolizing hispanic versus indigenous cultures). As described by Pérez Chacón (1988), Tila’s Carnaval performances are similar to those of the nearby Northern Tzeltal town of Bachajón, which have been documented by Becquelin-Monod and Breton (1979). The Bachajón performances constitute a five-day confrontation between cargo holders representing the town, on one side, and representing savage jungle Indians (identifiable as Lowland Chols; Breton 1984: 147), on the other. The ritual encounters include "dances" (Tzeltal ahk’ot) which proceed from ritual speech events (Tzeltal pat ’o’tan, ’greetings from the heart’) to mock combat, and terminate in a ritual meal. These events have been interpreted as symbolic representations of the oppositions between culture and nature, town and jungle, civilization and savagery (Becquelin-Monod and Breton 1979: 231).

Victoria Bricker has interpreted the dance cycles of highland Chiapas as records, or historical documents, of past ethnic conflicts (Bricker 1981: 129-154). The Tila "dances" have in common with Pre-Columbian Mayan ceremonies a number of features mentioned by Kurath and Marti (1964 passim) and Bricker (1989): they are calendrically scheduled, focussed on particular gods, with specified offerings; public ceremonies feature processions and mass formations of the population (with expressive gestures but without intricate steps and movements), banners are carried; mock combat between opposing forces is featured, and music includes flute and drum as well as secular (non-indigenous) music. A key feature is the use of masks and costumes, for ethnic, animal and deity impersonations.

The Feast of the Holy Cross (May 1 to 4) centers around the ritual procession of the image of the Señor de Tila from the church to the cave where his stalagmite image resides, with the intercession of the elders to convey petitions (see the text Santa Cruz, in Appendix II).

Corpus Christi, which usually falls in June (Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the Sunday following Pentecost Sunday), is a major commercial fair, when pilgrims from all over southern México and parts of Central America come to venerate the Lord of Tila, the Black Christ, in his two apparitions, the Cave God and the crucified Christ above the sanctuary altar. They clog the streets of Tila for more than a week, while their petitions are attended by elders and mayordomos.

Rainy season begins to intensify shortly after the Corpus Christi fair, and the ceremonial cycle is mostly quiescent over the summer, during the period of heavy rains. All Saints (October 30 to November 3) is mainly a family occasion, with house altars prepared to receive the family dead. Ritual activity features special prayers and offerings in cemeteries. (Another text collected in Tila during 1995 fieldwork is Todos Santos, an account of the ritual behavior associated with this period.) The ceremonial year ends with the festivals of the Virgin of Guadalupe (December 12) and then Christmas, both relatively minor occasions for ritual activity.

Each of the ceremonies in the Tila ritual year is the occasion for ritual speech, as are the planning sessions which precede each occasion, the formal meetings between applicants for cargos and the principal mayordomos, and many other situations. While a few samples of prayer have been published (see especially Pérez Chacón 1988), we know of no extensive record of formal speech, although Tzotzil examples (Cancian 1965: 223-224, Gossen 1974, Arias 1990) feature coupleting and structural opposition.

In addition to this public ceremonial life, Tila, as a center of religious activity, also abounds in other, less public, contexts for formal speech. Shamanic curers, midwives, and other ritual specialists have extensive repertories of special purpose prayers and speeches, some samples of which have been reported by Pérez Chacón (1988). Much of this ritual speech is learned, and ritual advisors or ’coaches’ are an ever-present component of public life in Tila.

Many ritual activities are carried out wholly in Chol, and analysis of published samples of ritual language show the standard inventory of features for formal speech found in other Mayan languages: couplets, special foregrounding devices, and a set of rhetorical phrases and patterns of text structure. Because of their subject matter, ritual texts are heavy with the vocabulary of ritual acts, the placing of offerings and summoning of deities, the making of contracts in support of petitions, and requests for supernatural help in curing souls.

The patterns of couplets used in ritual speech also reveal underlying structural oppositions and metaphors not accessible through ordinary language study. The systematic examination of this wide range of ritually-relevant terminology should prove productive, as it will provide us with a large number of previously unattested words and phrases–with their corresponding conceptual categories–of potential interest in the interpretation of Classic Maya materials. But this is among the most difficult of areas to research; the basic data of such metaphors occur rarely in normal language, and even when detected in ritual speech, their meanings are not always apparent even to speakers of the language. Ultimately their meanings must derive from an extensive understanding of the cultural matrix in which they are used.

For the various reasons put forth above, research in Tila should provide insights into the language of Classic Maya ritual activity, and while the pilot study was limited in its scope, it was quite successful, and some preliminary contributions to understanding Chol ritual culture and vocabulary are presented in the final section of this report.

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