For the Maya, 500 Years of Theater
This summer the Maya commemorate the 500th anniversary of their theater,[1] the oldest theatrical tradition in the Americas. The Art and Culture Commission of Yucatán State advanced legislation to make the Teatro Regional Yucateco the Cultural Patrimony — Patrimonio Cultural Intangible — that affirms contemporary Maya culture on the peninsula.[2]
To be sure, the Maya, not unlike other Indigenous peoples, had traditions of public performance before the arrival of the Spanish. These included soliloquies telling of historic events and mythological tales; narrations of heroic adventures; dances; and recitations of prayers.[3]
The Maya, however, did not have theater.
What do I mean by theater? Theater consists of actors performing specific roles, engaged in a dialogue among characters, in a performance before an audience. Theater, which is the staging of a play, could not take place until there was writing. Playwrights wrote plays; readings allowed actors to memorize their lines; and a director could present a public performance consistent with his or her vision of the dramatic work.
This is the Maya theater that began in 1523 — and by accident.
Origins
Twelve years before 1523, a tropical storm drove a Spanish galleon, sailing from Panama to Santo Domingo, off course.[4] The galleon shipwrecked off the coast of Jamaica. Sixteen of the 18 passengers survived aboard a makeshift raft. Lacking provisions and water, six men perished. By the time their raft washed up on the coast of Yucatán, the remaining survivors were dehydrated, exhausted, and disoriented.
The Maya encountered and apprehended the shipwrecked men. Astonished by them, the Maya sacrificed three or four; the rest were marched off, enslaved. Of these now enslaved Spaniards, all but two died over the next few years. The two survivors were Gonzalo Guerrero and Gerónimo de Aguilar. Guerrero was sold off to Nachan Can, ruler of Chetumal; Aguilar remained property of Xamanzana of Aquincuz.
Both acculturated to life among the Maya. They learned the language. They impressed the Maya with their knowledge and skills: the men earned their freedom. Here’s where the men’s fate diverged dramatically, however. Guerrero fully assimilated: he married a Maya noblewoman, Zazil Há, tattooed his face, pierced his lips, and became integrated as a member of the Maya elite when he fathered three children. Aguilar, a Franciscan friar, on the other hand, remained faithful to his vows; he declined invitations to marry. In his notes, however, Aguilar described the joy of cultural entertainment among the Maya. “They sing songs for amusement, and they recite long soliloquies about their legends,” he wrote. “They are a musical people.”
Eight years after the Maya rescued them, Hernán Cortés set sail from Cuba, landing in Cozumel, off the Yucatán coast, in March 1519.
Word spread throughout the peninsula that other bearded men, aboard large ships and in possession of demonic creatures (horses), had arrived. Aguilar sent a message to Cortés; Guerrero did not. Aguilar was eager to rejoin his countrymen. Guerrero was determined to stay. Cortés asked Aguilar to persuade Guerrero to return to the fold of the Spanish.
In what became the first European repudiation of his homeland, Guerrero wrote back: “Brother Aguilar; I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a Lord here, and captain in time of war. My face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What would the Spaniards say about me if they saw me like this? Go and God’s blessing be with you, for you have seen how handsome these children of mine are. Please give me some of those beads you have brought to give to them and I will tell them that my brothers have sent them from my own country.”[5]
It was very dramatic, of course.
Cortés regretted leaving Guerrero behind, but he was moving forward. Aguilar’s fluency in Maya would prove instrumental in the defeat of the Aztec. Aguilar could speak Maya to Malintzin, or La Malinche, who spoke Maya and Nahuatl. Aguilar, during the eight years among the Maya, had begun to transcribe their language using the Roman alphabet. (The Maya gave La Malinche to Cortés after Cortés confronted the Maya at Potonchán and the Maya asked for a truce with the Spanish.[6])
Cortés, forming alliances with Indigenous peoples whom the Aztec had subjugated, most famously the Tlaxcalans, was triumphant two years and five months later: the Aztec capital fell in August 1521. (The Tlaxcalans were such valued warriors that when King Felipe II sent a fleet of Spanish ships from Acapulco to the Philippines in 1564, General Miguel López de Legazpi took Indigenous soldiers across the Pacific who fought alongside the Spanish.[7])
Two years after Cortés orchestrated the defeat of Moctezuma, Aguilar returned to the Yucatán. He wanted to reach out to Guerrero and to assess the political situation among the Maya, divided and bickering amongst themselves. It was during this reconnaissance mission that he became nostalgic. Aguilar, during this months-long visit, settled on writing a theatrical play as a bold affirmation of Maya culture. He transcribed their stories as skits, and that summer, the first scripted performances took place in Maní, Yucatán, stronghold of the Tutul-Xiu Maya, rivals of the Cocom Maya.[8]
Aguilar had a broader vision, however: “The scripted word in a performance will open the way for the literacy needed to read the Bible. Spectacle will facilitate Scripture.”
In the decades that followed, as New Spain coalesced, literacy was paramount. Luis de Villalpando, a Franciscan, promoted the idea of universal public education in New Spain as a paramount objective. In the process, the Franciscans compiled scores of dictionaries of the Indigenous languages, inventing the discipline of modern linguistics in the process.[9] In Yucatán, this manifested itself in the Franciscan encouragement of Maya theater and theatrical works — as much for entertainment as for edification.
The Maya as Shakespeare’s Peers
Diego de Landa thought the first Maya plays were worth preserving, both for cultural reasons and as a historical record of the importance of literacy in improving the lives of the Maya as a people. In 1577, when the Diccionario de Motul was published, nine Maya plays were included. The works were representative of the comedies, farces, and satirical performances of the time. Two of the plays express social criticism, pointing out the ramifications of acculturating to the European norms then introduced.
Now consider the year when this happened: 1577.
Back in England, a young man by the name of William Shakespeare had yet to begin his career as a playwright. In fact, Shakespeare’s first play, The Taming of the Shrew, is believed to date from the late 1580s or before 1592. (Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part II; Henry VI, Part III; Two Gentlemen of Verona; and Titus Andronicus; and The Comedy of Errors all date from the first half of the 1590s.)
Most observers find it remarkable that the earliest recorded theatrical works of the Maya are contemporaneous to Shakespeare.
The Structure of Maya Theater
What is Maya theater, as it evolved in post-Hispanic Yucatán, like?
It originally resembled the structure of ancient Greek comedies. Recall that a Greek comedy consists of:
Prologue: A monologue or dialogue that presents the comedy’s topic.
Parode (Entrance Ode): Entry chant of the chorus, which sides for or against the hero.
Agôn (Contest): Two speakers debate the topic, usually eight feet per line; the first speaker loses.
Parabasis (Coming forward): When the character exits the stage, the chorus members remove their masks and address the audience.
Exode (Exit Song): A celebratory song or chant, often with a riotous revel (cômos), joyous marriage, or both, concludes the performance.
In the Maya, a play consists of:
Prologue: A monologue or dialogue that presents the play’s topic.
Scene One: A scene unfolds setting up the conflict, either tragic or comic.
Interlude An interlude ensues, often consisting of music, dance, or slapstick humor.
Resolution: The scene concludes the play, either tragic or comic, with justice prevailing.
Exode: A joyful series of dances and songs conclude the evening’s performance designed to lift the audience’s mood to celebratory effect.
Over the course of the second half of 20th century, because of television and movies, the Interlude has been abbreviated and the Exode is often eliminated altogether; competing entertainment options require an economy of time and the audience wants to get home to watch Netflix.
The Evolution of Contemporary Maya Theater
There are two things to understand about Maya theater as it has evolved over time.
First, many people in the Yucatán Peninsula speak Spanish with a Maya accent. In the same way that, say, Americans recognize English spoken with a French accent, it’s also possible to identify Spanish spoken with a Maya accent.
This is because linguistic habits learned in childhood are difficult to transcend. In French, for instance, stress in on the last syllable in a word. In French, it’s li-ber-TÉ, é-ga-li-TÉ, and fra-ter-ni-TÉ. In English, by contrast, stress may fall on any syllable. A native French speaker, thus, often fails to break the habit of placing stress on a syllable other than the last. That’s why an American will say NEWS-pa-per but a native French speaker will say news-pa-PER. An American understands what the speaker is saying, but the incorrect stress indicates that this is a native French speaker speaking English.
In a similar vein, native Maya speaker speaking Spanish tends to repeat the pitch and vowel duration when speaking Spanish. This means that the inherent Maya prosody — and syllable lengthening — appears when speaking Spanish. In the same way that native French speakers stress the last vowel when speaking English, native Maya speakers stress the penultimate vowel in Spanish.
An example is instructive. In Spanish, as in English, stress is placed in the antepenultimate syllable in the word ridiculous. In English, it’s ri-DI-cu-lous. In Spanish, it’s ri-DÍ-cu-lo. When a native Maya speaker is speaking in Spanish, however, he or she has a tendency to say, ri-dí-CU-lo. Everyone understands, but in this case, by stressing the “cu,” it sounds as if “culo” were its own word — and that means “ass.” “Ridiculous” spoken in Spanish with a Maya accent can be understood as “ridi-ASS.”
Since the 16th century, when Franciscan friars began teaching Spanish language grammar to the Maya, native Spanish speakers have commented the charming and amusing Maya accent in spoken Spanish. Maya-accented Spanish, not unlike the Southern drawl in the United States, is the basis for humor in Teatro Regional Yucateco.
The second thing is the nature of each language: Maya and Spanish. Maya words are often shorter than Spanish ones. This results in Maya words being used to convey wit whereas the more loquacious Spanish sentence structure adds melody.
Maya theater thus employs puns and double entendres for comic effect. It combines both languages to create a vocabulary that the audience understands.
Consider the possibilities for comedy. In Spanish, for instance, madre means mother. But colloquially, if the first syllable is lengthened, it can mean damn. Thus: “¡Maaadre, te ves bonita!” means, “Damn, you look good.”
Now, consider that in Maya Ma’ means no.
Let’s say there’s a scene in which a young man has been courting a young lady. After hesitation, he finally gets the nerve to ask her if he may kiss her. She’s somewhat startled and blurts out, “Ma’!” The lights go out.
What did she mean? Was she speaking Maya and said, No. Or, was she speaking Spanish and only got the first syllable in Maaadre before the scene ended?
If it was the former, then she turned him down. If it was the latter, the implication is that she was cut off by the stage going dark, and she meant to say, “¡Maaadre, es hora!” — meaning, “Damn, it’s about time!”
The answer, of course, is revealed in the subsequent scene when she is angry, confiding to her mother about the young man’s nerve — or disappointed, that she didn’t get her first kiss.
Héctor “Cholo” Herrera Álvarez, an actor and playwright credited with nurturing Maya Theater in the second half of the 20th century, was succinct in explaining the genre. “[Yucatec] Maya has short words, ideal for puns and witticisms,” he told me. “And Spanish, like Italian, is beautiful in its lyricism. So when you combine the two, then you have the melody of Spanish and the with the inflections of [Yucatec] Maya words.”
That Spanish words which tend to be multisyllabic, allows for a long-winded pun to be established before the monosyllabic reply creates laughter. To understand how this works, consider how Bette Davis set up her quip about Joan Crawford’s death in 1977 when interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Davis used melodious exposition; two perfectly timed pauses; and then delivered a monosyllabic denouement. “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good.” [Slight pause.] “Joan Crawford is dead.” [Pregnant pause.] “Good!”[10]
The other comic strategy is to incorporate Maya into Spanish. Consider the following sentence: “Si esta es otra hach, voy a wixar toda la noche.”
The sentence is in proper Spanish grammar. Two words, however, are Maya. If one only knows Spanish, the sentence doesn’t make any sense. One has to be familiar with Maya to get the humor. In this sentence, hach and wixar are Maya. Hachmeans the next to the last of anything. When men are drinking, they’ll often use the word to keep their buddies from leaving. “This is the hach,” one will say, meaning not the last round, but the next-to-last round. But if every round becomes the penultimate one, the drinking will never end. Wixar means to urinate.
Someone who wants to leave but is being coaxed to remain, speaks the sentence in protest: “If this is another hach, I’m going to be up all night pissing.”
I’ve taken friends from Mexico City and Barcelona to performances where, invariably, when the audience bursts out laughing, they turn to me and ask, “What’s so funny?”
On one occasion, I took Carlos Fuentes, whom I had met when he was a lecturer at George Mason University, to a performance. The Mexican novelist and essayist was at a loss. He didn’t understand the jokes, puns or double entendres. As we left the theater, he turned to me and said, “No entendí nada,” meaning he had understood nothing.
He wanted to have a Negroni to talk about what he had seen. On the way to the bar, we stopped at a tourist shop and purchased a copy of a Maya-Spanish booklet. He was bewildered, but appreciated the clever way Maya had been interspersed in the dialogue to move the action along to comic effect.
The other word play employed often centers on a Spanish word the Maya find amusing or funny. Obvious in Spanish, for instance, is obvio. In one play, a young man is shopping at the market. The action takes place in Mérida, where it is the custom for women to shop at the market.[11] As the young man wanders about, his movements dainty and fey, it is clear that something is up. The vendors, all women, ask him about how he plays to use this or that. He explains how he will use it in his cooking, ending his explanation is a dramatic, Obvio.
Each obvio elicits laughter from the audience. Why? Here’s where cultures inform each other. In Spanish there is a tradition of maintaining certain discretion about the lives of others. “Lo que se ve, no se pregunta,” a phrase attributed to Juan Gabriel, the famous singer-songwriter, sums up this moral instruction. The phrase means that it’s unnecessary to ask what is visibly obvious.[12] This was his answer to interviewers who inquired about his sexuality. He was married and had children, but it was clear he had guys on the side. Barbara Walters should have extended the same courtesy to Ricky Martin when she interviewed him; her lack of discretion proved embarrassing for Martin and became a career low for Walters, trying to out someone on national television before the person was ready.
In the market scene, the humor centers on how the middle age Maya vendors interact with a this endearing young man who thinks he’s passing as straight when he’s clearly not.[13]
The satirical nature of Maya plays is reminiscence of the [Yiddish] Jewish comedy tradition in the United States, specifically theater of the Borscht Belt in Upstate New York. American Jews spent summers in the Catskill Mountains and popular entertainment included Comedy Theater. Prominent American entertainers, from Milton Berle to Mel Brooks, Phyllis Diller to Joan Rivers launched their careers performing at Borscht Belt resorts.
Furthermore, the success of Indigenous literature under the auspices of the Spanish is astonishing: it fills an encyclopedia. Hundreds of storytellers, writers, poets, playwrights, and directors are listed in the Enciclopedia Indígena,[14]available online at https://www.enciclopediaindigena.com.
Now, one might think that Maya theater employing Spanish might lead to the sidelining of the Mayan language on the peninsula. It has had the opposite effect: to understand the humor, one has to become familiar with Maya. There is an incentive for non-Maya people to learn some of the language in order to enjoy the regional theater — and facilitate everyday social encounters in ordinary life. In consequence, Yucatec Maya thrives and is the most-widely spoken Indigenous language in North America.[15] There are more than 800,000 native Yucatec Maya speakers, with an additional 150,000 speakers who are conversant in the language.[16] For comparison, consider that the most-widely spoken Indigenous language in the U.S. is Navajo — but with barely 168,000 speakers.[17]
It is the rigorous examination of Maya in this theatrical tradition, I submit, that adds to its vitality and relevance. It would be almost impossible to find anyone living in Yucatán who is not familiar with some Maya vocabulary. Indeed, the mass appeal of Maya theater is so compelling that performances take place in a variety of theaters, including the Teatro Armando Manzanero, which seats 1,220 people; Broadway theaters, for comparison, are venues with a minimum seating capacity of 500 people.
A complaint the Franciscans expressed in the 16th century centered on the Maya’s raunchy humor. In his notes, Fray Diego de Landa noted that “the bawdy matter” prevented him from considering sending the Maya to perform in Spain.
Recall from high school history that the Spanish sent thousands of Indigenous students to study in Spain. Revisit that most of the Indigenous people sent to Europe eventually returned: fluent in Latin; with advanced studies in engineering and medicine; and with astonishing first-hand account of Old World cities. Remember, however, that thousands stayed in Europe, with the most famous Indigenous immigrant to Spain being Isabel Moctezuma, daughter of Emperor Moctezuma II. The Spanish Crown recognized the Indigenous nobility. Carlos I believed the only way to forge a lasting union between the Old and New Worlds was through marriage: he wanted Isabel to marry into Spanish nobility.[18] She did — several times. Her descendants today include distinguished noble families and royal dynasties in Europe. Rosario Nadal, Princess of Preslav, for example, is a senior member of the Bulgarian royal family and a descendant of Emperor Moctezuma II.[19]
Yes, Elizabeth Warren, European nobles have more Indigenous blood than you.
Back in the 16th century, Landa was astonished by one play that told of the domestic turmoil that erupted when a young Maya woman tells her mother she has fallen in love with a Franciscan priest. Her mother is distraught, telling her that those men, for reasons that are incomprehensible, “abstain from sex.” The domestic drama continues until the father becomes involved. It goes back and forth until the father ends the debate thusly: “A woman can never find happiness if she does not marry a man skilled at cunnilingus: Ask your mother!”
For his part, Herrera Álvarez summed up the success of Maya theater succinctly: “We were fortunate that the ‘Encounter’ took place with the Spanish, since our theater wouldn’t work with a Germanic language. And Spanish is the more flexible Romance language, since it has so many Arabic words!”[20]
Then he added, “Besides, without Spanish, we wouldn’t have our beautiful bombas!”
The bomba yucateca is a saying, rhymed like a limerick, of a comical or raunchy nature. It is quintessential to the peninsula’s cultural traditions and renowned throughout Mexico as the one thing that makes the Yucatán, the Yucatán.[21]
When Herrera Álvarez died, a statue of him was place in the Remate, where Paseo de Montejo, Mérida’s most elegant boulevard, begins.
“Hollywood Representation”
North of the border, almost no one is aware of the existence of Maya theater.
Anglophone Americans — Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans alike — are oblivious to the existence of the Teatro Regional Yucateco. “Contempt for the Indigenous has been ubiquitous in Mexico since the Spanish conquest, which violently imposed an embrace of European customs and features,” Jean Guerrero wrote in the Los Angeles Times, falsifying history for sport.[22]
It is clear that Guerrero, a cultural illiterate, has no idea that either the Teatro Regional Yucateco or the Enciclopedia Indígena exists. She’s also blithely unaware that the Franciscans, throughout the 16th century, invented modern linguistics as a field of study and that one, Bernardino de Sahagún, wrote a masterpiece, General History of the Things of New Spain, commonly known as The Florentine Codex, which became the foundational document for a field of study he invented: anthropology.
Yes, Sahagún is the Father of Anthropology.[23]
And today, anthropologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, or INAH) in Mexico City come to study Maya theater. Sociologists at the Autonomous University of Yucatán (Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, or UADY) document the evolution of Maya theater across the decades. Linguists from throughout the Hispanophone world are mesmerized by the evolution of the Spanish spoken on the peninsula and the development of this dialect.[24]
Why Kevin Merida, editor of the Los Angeles Times, allows columnists to falsify history and write libel against the Franciscans of New Spain is a mystery.
And yet, while U.S. Latinos decry the lack of Hollywood “representation,” Hollywood “representation” means nothing to the Maya. To paraphrase Charles S. Harris, the Maya without Hollywood “representation” are like a fish without a bicycle.
Indeed, there are two problems when U.S. Latinos flaunt their cultural illiteracy.
First, it denies the Maya agency. The Los Angeles Times suggests that the Maya are in need of a Great White Savior from Hollywood, White Man’s Burden to represent the underrepresented. The Maya, in fact, have been (mis)represented by Hollywood in two recent films. In 2006, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto portrayed the Maya at the time of the Spanish arrival. It was a fanciful conceit, not historically accurate. The Maya thought it a peculiar period piece, as if someone made, say, Ordinary People, starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore, but had them dressed as Puritans and speak in 17th century English. Why?
Then, in 2022, Marvel Studios’ Wakanda Forever took the Maya underwater, with a bizarre storyline that required the suspension of disbelief, which is the norm for comic book franchise movies. (The casting of Tenoch Huerta, whose phenotype is not Maya, was ridiculed as insensitive — and perplexing.) It was a joke casting in a joke movie.
In short, the Maya dismissed Apocalypto and Wakanda Forever as gringadas — a Mexican Spanish word for something so ridiculous only an American — estadounidense — would find it plausible. Think of any Mission Impossible movie plot: absurd to the point of laughter. There were no lines-around-the-block to buy tickets to see either film when they were released throughout Yucatán.
Second, the erasure of the Maya’s five-century history of theater continues to render them as the “Other.” That U.S. Latinos erase the cultural achievements of the Maya — and other Indigenous peoples — throughout New Spain contributes to the contempt with which they are viewed by non-Hispanic Americans. Consider, for instance, one of the more provocative playwrights working today in Maya theater: Conchi León. She is best known for her Maya feminist commentary, Mestiza Power.[25] In 2019, she was invited to participate in Chicago’s International Latino Theater Festival. Her play, La Tía Mariela, was to be staged at the National Museum of Mexican Art.
The Trump administration, however, denied her and the cast visas to travel to Chicago.[26] The Trump White House argued that Maya theater was “not culturally unique enough to merit approval” from the U.S. Department of Citizenship Immigration Services. No one in the Trump administration had heard of Maya theater and thought the visa requests were a scam to get a group of Mexicans to Chicago who would outstay their tourist visas and join the ranks of Mexican illegal aliens in the U.S.[27]
While disappointed, the Teatro Regional Yucateco forged ahead. After all, the Maya are interested in telling the story of their lives as the world changes.
Over the past half-century, for example, plays reflect the changing lives of the Maya. In the 1980s, plays focused on the struggles of daily life. Mexico was plunged into an economic crisis after the peso devaluation in August 1982 — and it lasted almost a decade. Then, when Mexico abandoned its import-substitution development model and sought economic integration with the U.S. and Canada through NAFTA in 1994, the nation’s consumer life was revolutionized. Suddenly, everything from McDonald’s and Starbucks to Wal-Mart and Home Depot transformed the lives of the Maya. Theatrical storylines documented how the Maya became modern consumers — with its benefits and pitfalls.
The advent of the Internet and cell phones a decade later, similarly, has given rise to astonishing comedies. What does a young Maya do when she finds out her boyfriend has been sexting her best friend? And what does a naïve Maya do when he discovers he’s been catfished and the beauty on the dating App turns out to be a transvestite?
A recent play, Una gringa en el mercado, explores the changing social dynamics at a time when U.S. citizens and Canadians — self-styled “expats” — are immigrating to Yucatán. What do you do with these new immigrants who have to be domesticated to the ways of the Maya? Once the Maya taught Spanish-dominant immigrants basics of Maya life. Now they are teaching English-dominant “expats.”
Indeed, Maya theater is robust, raucous, raunchy and a bold affirmation of identity. It is the legacy of a shipwrecked Spaniard, once enslaved, who earned his freedom, learned the language of the Maya, and came to love their society. It is the story of how, embracing literacy, the Maya were empowered to tell the stories of their lives through theater. It is the ambivalent give and take has always occurred throughout the history of New Spain.
In The Paris Review, Chloe Aridjis described lucha libre — Mexican freestyle wresting — thusly: “Three hundred years of colonial rule produced an intense syncretism of indigenous and European cultures, a bold new aesthetic accompanied by many new paradoxes, and these can be glimpsed today in both lighter and darker manifestations, some playful and others barbaric.”[28] And some manifestations are exquisite in their beauty.
The Teatro Regional Yucateco is a beautiful theatrical tradition that tells the stories of their lives with humor and resignation: people arrive, and they stay.
What is one to do, the Maya explore, but go with the flow as the world changes and the world changes you?
It’s obvio.
Postscript: Scores of video clips are available online at YouTube.com. Search for Teatro Regional Yucateco.
[1] For brevity, “Maya” is used to denote the Yucatec Maya and “Mayan” is used to denote the Yucatec Maya language.
[2] https://www.congresoyucatan.gob.mx/difusion/2046.
[3] https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/340/34003308.pdf.
[4] The passengers consisted of sixteen men and two women.
[5] In Spanish: “Hermano Aguilar, yo soy casado y tengo tres hijos. Tienenme por cacique y capitán, cuando hay guerras, la cara tengo labrada, y horadadas las orejas. ¿Que dirán de mi esos españoles, si me ven ir de este modo? Idos vos con la bendición de Dios, que ya veis que estos mis hijitos son bonitos, y dadme por vida vuestra de esas cuentas verdes que traeis, para darles, y diré, que mis hermanos me las envían de mi tierra.” See: https://www.noticonquista.unam.mx/historica/192/1368.
[6] See: Karttunen, Frances (1994). Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides, and Survivors. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
[7] Alejandro González Acosta. “Migraciones Tlaxcaltecas hasta centro y sudamérica La otra Frontera: El Sur.” Revista de Historia de América, no. 129 (2001): 103–44. See: http://www.jstor.org/stable/44732856. P. 109, 117..
[8] The Tutul-Xiu would forge an alliance with the Spanish in order to subjugate the Cocom, their rivals.
[9] Between 1540 and 1690, the Franciscans throughout New Spain learned scores of the languages. They compiled dictionaries, codifying them as written languages for the first time. (With the exception of the Maya, no Indigenous American people had a written language.) Consider the astounding linguistic achievements that resulted from this approach. In 1547, Fray Andrés de Olmos compiled the first written vocabulary of Náhuatl. Fray Alonso de Molina published, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, written between 1555 and 1571, which remains the classic for the study of the Náhuatl language of the Aztecs.[9] Pedro de Feria’s Spanish-Zapotec dictionary, Doctrina cristiana en lengua castellana y çapoteca, published in 1557 was the first milestone in rendering Zapotec into a written language. The following year, Fray Juan de Córdova compiled the first exhaustive vocabulary of the Zapotec language: Vocabvlario en lengva çapoteca.[9] In the meantime, Fray Domingo de Santa María compiled the grammar and dictionary for the Mixtec language between 1539 and 1544. (The completed Doctrina cristiana en lengua mixteca, by Fray Benito Hernández, was completed in 1567.) Fray Juan de la Cruz took charge of codifying the grammar and basic dictionary of the Huasteca language, Doctrina cristiana en lengua guasteca, in 1571. To disseminate books in the Indigenous American languages, Juan Pablos, in 1539, established the first press in New Spain under the direction of Fray Juan de Zumárraga. The first book ever published in this hemisphere was Zumárraga’s Breve y mas compendiosa doctrina cristiana en lengua mexicana y castellana.
[11] For reasons that have to do with frequent pirate raids along the coast, the tradition emerged in Campeche that men go shopping at the market, but in Mérida and other towns throughout Yucatán State, it is the women who go shop at the market.
[12] In the United States, during an opaque speech at the 2013 Golden Globes, Jodie Foster, said, “I’m just gonna put it out there … I’m single.” In other words, she never came out because it was clear she was never in — and why ask about the obvious?
[13] This scene is available to view online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sz7PpstkWA&t=787s.
[14] Noted playwrights, including Carlos Dzul Ek, Feliciano Sánchez Chan, and María Luisa Góngora Pacheco.
[15] 1,650,000 people speak Nahuatl, but this is comprised of five dialects: Nahuatl, Nahuat, Nahual, Macehualtlahtol, Melatahtol.
[16] Yucatán State government requires one-year mandatory Yucatec Maya lessons in all public schools.
[17] Navajo is the 12th most widely spoken Indigenous language in North America. The top 11 are all in Mexico, testament to Indigenous linguistic autonomy throughout New Spain. These are Nahuatl (1,650,000 speakers of Nahuatl, Nahuat, Nahual, Macehualtlahtol, Melatahtol), Yucatec Maya (800,000 speakers); Tzeltal Maya (600,000 speakers), Tzotzil Maya (550,000 speakers), Mixtec (526,000 speakers), Zapotec (490,000 speakers), Otomí (255,000 speakers), Totonac (255,000 speakers), Mazatec (237,000 speakers), and Huastec (169,000 speakers).
[18] She married three times to Spanish noblemen: Alonso de Grado, Pedro Gallego de Andrade, and Juan Cano de Saavedra. The first two husbands died, leaving her a widow. She had one son with Gallego de Andrade and five with Cano de Saavedra.
[19] The royal status of the descendants of Moctezuma II remains. Spain recognizes the Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo, or Duque de Moctezuma de Tultengo, a heritary titled. Since 1766, the tile has enjoyed status of the Grandeur of Spain, or Grandeza de España, the highest place in Spanish peerage.
[20] “Encounter” is the Yucatec Maya characterization of the “Conquest.” After all, to speak of “Conquest” is to see things through a European perspective. For the Yucatec Maya, who had absorbed other invaders, most notably the Itzá, there was much to incorporate from the Spanish.
[21] Here is a representative bomba: “Quisiera ser zapatito / de tu diminuto pie, / para ver de vez en cuando / lo que el zapatito ve. / ¡Bomba!”
[22] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-12-26/wakanda-forever-namor-tenoch-huerta-indigenous. The disdain of U.S. Latinos the history of New Spain is astonishing. One is reminded of Joseph Conrad’s observation: “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
[23] Yes, Americans are taught Sigmund Freud is that father of psychoanalysis, but not that Bernardino Sahagún is the father of anthropology.
[24] Español yucateco is different at a lexical and phonological level, as well as its morphological and syntactic structure that is distinct from Mexican Spanish. In fact, Miguel Güémez Pineda, a linguist at UADY, as compiled the Diccionario español yucateco.
[25] PEN featured “Mestiza Power” in “The Freedom to Write” program. See: https://pen.org/event/mestiza-power-by-conchi-leon-mexico/. It is worth noting that PEN incorrectly identified her play as “Mexican” when it was not; nuance is a work in progress.
[26] https://belatina.com/actors-denied-us-visas-to-perform/
[27] Then again, if Mexican Americans like Jean Guerrero did not work to deny the existence of Maya theater, it would be more difficult for hostile administrations to deny artists and actors visas. It is the climate of hostility this erasure fosters that continues to present the Maya as the “Other.”
[28] See, “On Mexican Baroque,” Chloe Aridjis, The Paris Review, July 5, 2023.
