Tuesday, March 6

Class today considered the Cross Group at Palenque as a culmination to the first half of the Maya Public Ritual Art course, tying together the various strands of agricultural and cosmic regeneration with the addition of dynastic imagery, and remarking again on both the continuities and transformations in Maya ritual imagery. After the break we went through the Chilam Balam creation text (Yucatec Maya) in preparation of the assignment to compare it with creation in the Popol Vuh (K'iche' Maya). I found this procedure very exciting because as many times as I've gone through this text, including last night, the necessity to present it and explain parts gave me many new insights.

My afternoon was largely spent resting from the exhaustion I had been suffering since last night. Sara came back from class with Rita with all sorts of news from Oaxaca and information on the Zapatista gathering at Huitepec next week, but there was no time to hear about it because we were all heading to appointments.

Rita and I headed back to Sergio Castro's collection of traje (Maya traditional clothing), meeting there Maria Luisa with her grandparents as well as Alica's mom, Sarah. It was well worth going back. Rita and I were drawn to the room we couldn't see last time due to the arrival of wounded needing Sr. Castro's medical attention. This was the room of Christianized images including large crucifix on the wall, and several black wood images of saints from Tenejapa, one dressed in a huipil.

But the highlight in this room came when Sr. Castro picked up a simply fashioned stone idol (see above) that he had gotten from a cave and that had been fashioned from a stalactite. Another, larger one sat on the floor. Rita and I both instantly recognized that this is what Rosario Castellanos talks about in Oficio de Tinieblas (Book of Lamentations), when Catalina becomes an Ilol and develops a cult around ambiguous images she finds in the cave of Tzajal Hemel. Both of Sr. Castro's idols follow a natural shape but clearly define the head and facial features as well as depicting the arms in a praying gesture. The same concepts are applied to the wood images except that these are symmetrical.

We also enjoyed hearing Sr. Castro's presentation again (word for word), and Maria Louisa took a video of it (I want to borrow that!). We got to see the room of children's clothing, which included some things we hadn't seen in the main room. I asked Sr. Castro about that later and he noted that more than half of his collection is in storage because he has no place to store it. He also noted that the objects that fill his house were gifts from the people he has been helping for so many years. Rita and I stayed out while he did his slide show, taking advantage of the time to look and more of his things. But the highlight of tonight was the idol.