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

Field Work during Summer, 1995

Field work on the language and ritual activity of Tila was carried out during the summer of 1995.  The first part of May was spent in preparing for field work, and project personnel arrived in Palenque, Chiapas, May 20-21.  Field work in Tila began shortly thereafter, and lasted through most of June.

The goal of the pilot field season was to collect a preliminary corpus of lexical material and supporting ethnographic data concerning the ritual activities that characterize the ceremonial cycle in Tila, Chiapas, a regionally-important pilgrimage center with an annual round of festivals that include dances and other public performances, organized and carried out by Chol residents serving in the offices of a "cargo system" of voluntary community service. Veterans of the cargo system continue to serve pilgrims and the community as ritual advisers, ceremonial specialists, and intercessors for pilgrims to the Señor de Tila, a Black Christ of the Esquipulas tradition.

The 1995 field season was timed to coincide with the preparation and celebration of Tila’s most popular festival, held around Corpus Christi, and focussed on the Señor de Tila. During this two-week long festival, tens of thousands of pilgrims visit Tila to worship in the sanctuary of the Señor de Tila, the church located on the highest peak of the town, and in the associated cave shrine on a facing mountain peak. The entire town is transformed into a street fair, most private homes are converted to inns and hostels, food stands under tin-roofed sheds appear in front of many houses, and informal taverns open in the front rooms of other houses.

This period is one of intense ritual activity, participated in by townspeople and pilgrims alike, and most office holders are in attendance at the sanctuary throughout the pilgrimage fortnight. We were able to talk to both current and past cargo holders, and were invited to attend a ritual meal in the church kitchen for several dozen mayordomos (upper-level cargo holders) and their wives, who were making arrangements for the festival. We interviewed other ritual participants elsewhere in Tila, and also recorded verbal descriptions of the festival activities surrounding the Señor de Tila. Additional documentation was obtained in the form of photographs and ethnographic field notes. A limited amount of recording of local music and other festival activities was carried out, and locally-produced recordings of ceremonial music were also obtained.

A significant amount of field work time was spent in the recording, transcription, checking, and translation of text materials dealing with ceremonial activities. Texts describing the major festival of the Señor de Tila (in January), the festival of the Holy Cross (in May; also associated with the Señor de Tila) and All Saint’s Day (in November; associated with the ancestors) were recorded, transcribed, and prepared for presentation and analysis. One of these texts is presented here in Appendix II. Other texts collected included samples of local folklore, specifically stories of the "Black Man" or Xnek, a story cycle associated with this region of the Chiapas Highlands. This association is of particular interest given that the town name, Tila, is derived from the Gulf Coast Nahuat word tilan ’Black (Man) place’ (cognate with Classical Náhuatl tlil-lan ’place of black’).

Lexical material on ritual activity collected from informants and from published sources during the field season was transferred to 3" × 5" slips for filing, sorting, and eventual inclusion in a lexical database. A significant amount of this vocabulary was discussed with informants in the field. Informants and published sources were also examined for the vocabulary of animal names and several other semantic domains considered to be of potential value to studies of Classic Maya culture and language. These terms were also classified and discussed with informants.

One of the project assistants, Lee Folmar, carried out an intensive examination of the ethno-zoological classification of animals, especially the classes and sub-classes of birds, and this material will form the basis of his honors (B.A.) thesis in Anthropology in the coming year (see Appendix III). Several newly published local Mexican sources on Chol language and culture were obtained during the field season, including a simple vocabulary, and a study of agricultural vocabulary. This material will be discussed with informants and analyzed in future field sessions, along with more extensive elicitation sessions for vocabulary and texts relating to ritual life.

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