Perfectly Happy in Panajachel

Greetings from Lago Atitlàn. My spirits lifted almost as soon as I left Antigua Saturday morning. I had interesting companions on my journey to Panajachel, the village that is the ¨doorway¨to the Lake, and ended up spending the day with them. After checking my luggage in my little hospedaje, where I have a lovely room for $10 a day (my first hotel on this trip, after 40-plus days of family stays and church dormitories), I joined them for a trip to San Juan La Laguna, a small Mayan town on the west end of the lake.

Like Crater Lake or Lake Chelan, Lago Atitlàn is in arid country, surrounded by volcanoes and hills that plunge steeply down to the shoreline. (Click here for a bunch of photos taken by other people.) You can pay a lot for a tour to several communities in a big boat (I'll do that tomorrow) or pay less and join the locals in a invigorating, speedy, spray-filled trip in a lancha (click here for a photo) to a particular village. Which we did, to arrive at a quiet, peaceful, hillside community where my new friends took a room in a little blue-and-white hotel and we enjoyed ice cream and licuadas, (fruit and water, stirred up in a blender) before I took the lancha back to "Pana".

Today I went to Chichicastenango, home of the biggest indigenous market in Guatemala. But instead of shopping, I explored Chichi's Mayan-Catholic churches and rituals. 18 steps lead up to San Tomas, the so-called ¨Church of Life,¨ one for each month in the Mayan solar calendar. At the top of the steps half a dozen men were swinging containers of incense around them. The guide I hired explained that they were Mayan shamans (is the plural shamans, or shamen?) purifying themselves to enter the church and lead prayers and rituals. (No, I can't post my photos yet; click here for an image from someone else's blog.)

Inside the church, where photos are not allowed, the area behind the altar rail and along the side walls is devoted to Catholic ritual. Down the center aisle on the floor are square wooden altars about 6 inches high on which candles are guttering and next to which the shamans kneel. In order, I encountered altars for curing children, cuiring infertility or influencing the gender of your next child, six altars for the harvest (three for corn, one for fruit, and one for beans), an altar for relationships (marriages and courtships), and, closest to the main Catholic altar, one for giving thanks to the god of man, the sun, and the god of women, the moon.

In the Catholic section, you can light your own candle or say your own prayer, but down this middle aisle, you need a shaman. The wooden altars around the church where paintings of saints once appeared were black with smoke and incense, and the church was thronged. Some children were being baptized, but more important, said the guide, is to take them to the shaman to find out their destiny (farmer? business person? shaman?) and then by the age of 10, apprentice them to someone who can help them reach their destiny.

Across the plaza and part of the market (the market takes over the whole town) was El Calvario, the church of death, where more floor altars receive prayers and rituals for dead men, women, and children. Prayers for children are to deliver them to their ancestors, who the children will serve. Likewise women go to serve their ancestors. 13 steps led up to this church, the number of months in the Mayan lunar calendar. In a side altar, shamans performed rituals for protection and safety, like on a bus trip to Guatemala City.

Then the guide led me up the hill to Pascual Abaj, where shamans work outdoors. My photos are WAY BETTER but click here to visualize what I am about to tell you. Two shamans were at work, a man and a woman, around a hillside charred with old fires (some not so old; you had to watch where you stepped, just like on that volcano last week!) and new fires, into which they threw things. As I arrived, the woman shaman was blessing the man with a live chicken, passing it around all the parts of his body. Passing the chicken around his legs would ensure safety while walking. Passing it around his head and mouth would help him concentrate better on his tasks and give him words for interpretation. Then the chicken's head was cut off, and its blood squeezed into the fire. And then, just like the saying goes, the chicken ran all around with its head cut off. My guide said that's a sign of good luck and many journeys. Beware the chicken that falls over and dies immediately! No journeys, or maybe journeys with robbers and flat tires.

In the center of the circle, in front of the altar, stood a bottle of coke and a bottle of beer. The coke was for the corazon del cielo, the heart of the sky. The beer was for the corazon del tierra, the heart of the earth. Why might this be? My guide asked. My lame guess was, because the coke is carbonated and the bubbles are going up?? No. The sky gods don't get liquor because because they are saints (Catholic influence here). The earth gets beer cuz it will placate (or reject) the bad spirits below.

On the altar stood a Mayan cross (the Mayans had a cross before the Spanish got there, but it had arms of equal lengths), a Christian cross, and the large stone symboling Pascual Abaj. Radiating from the central point of the circle (remember the beer and the coke) were four outer places to send prayers to the four arrows or directions.

I have pictures of all of this. The Popol Vuh, the Mayan holy book, also confirms it. That this amazing syncretism of religions happened is due to Fr. Francisco Jimenez, who was interested, about 400 years ago, in the creation stories of the Maya, and ¨discovered¨and read the Popol Vuh to learn more, thus gaining the respect of the local community, which moved its gods back to the church.

"Discovered" is in quotes because I read recently that no one can really ¨discover¨a new place or culture. Columbus, Cortez, and the rest of the conquistadores did not discover but rather invented America. They interpreted what they saw through their own lens and, not understanding it, made up some awfully tall tales about what they were seeing.

That happens every day of my journey! I see something or hear a word or phrase I don't know, and invent an explanation. Later, when someone explains, I can see just how far off I am. Every gringo I meet here is completely inventing explanations for the government, the culture, and the society. The humble ones admit this up front; the rest are "experts."

Tomorrow I get my gringo tour of the lake, meet my new friends from Saturday for supper, and then on Monday I take a chicken bus to Santa Cruz de Quichè, where I will be visiting Gloria Kanu and an organization called Acciòn Cultural Guatemala for a couple days. Those of you who attend Holden Village's Abriendos know Gloria's parents, Don Virgilio and Doña Isabel Canu. I hope to learn (or invent??) more of the story of Guatemala's indigenous people, who have suffered terribly ever since the Spanish got here. I won't be online much during those days. It may be next weekend before I post again. But you can never tell. Internet cafes are everywhere.

I gave the shaman 10 quetzales and he said he and the lady shaman would split a coke in my honor. Not a beer, a coke. Guess I'm a saint, not a bad spirit. Here's hoping that coke will be as effective as passing a live chicken around me when it comes to ensuring the safety of the next steps of my journey.