Tzotzil

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The Tzotzil Maya of the central highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas are an indigenous group, the direct descendants of the Classic Maya civilization. The Tzotzil language, like Tzeltal and Ch'ol, is descended from the proto-Ch'ol spoken in the late classic period at sites such as Palenque and Yaxchilan. Today, the largest Tzotzil municipalities are Chamula and Zinacantan, both studied at length by a project of Harvard University directed by cultural anthropologist Evon Z. Vogt.^[1]

The word tzotzil means "people of bat" (tzotz = "bat" in the Tzotzil language).^[2]

The Tzotzil were for centuries exploited by Europeans as laborers on coffee and sugar plantations, particularly in the central valleys of the state.

With the collapse of coffee prices in the 1980s, sustainable employment has been hard for many people in the highlands to find. As both population and foreign tourism have risen, the sale of artisan goods has replaced other economic activities. Tzotziles usually sell their products in the nearby cities of San Cristobal de las Casas, Comitán, and Simojovel. Recently, and increasingly, many Maya from the highlands of Chiapas have found migration to other parts of Mexico, and illegal immigration to the United States a way to break away from subsistence farming and abysmal wages.

Issues surrounding social integration persist, especially with white people, mestizos, and westernized indigenous people (all called "ladinos"). Also, most of the enlistees in the guerrilla Zapatista Army of National Liberation are Tzotzil.^{[citation needed]}. Other Tzotzil, such as those part of the pacifist group Las Abejas, support the goals of the Zapatistas but not their violent means.

[edit] Pre-Christian Tzotzil religion

• "The Tzotzil discern two souls in the human body. One, the ch'ulel, transcends a human's life; the other, wayjel, ties them to an animal outside their body ... . The ch'ulel ... when an individual dies ... goes back to its source, the Katibak, or the world of the dead in the center of the earth. It will remain there for the same length of time it had been in the human world, and it will return to reanimate another human being of the opposite sex in another calpul. ... Then the ch'ulel becomes younger and younger, regressing through its age, marching inversely through the years it had lived, until it is converted into the newborn's soul".^[3]
• "The Winajel is in the Sun ... . ... Baptized infants and women who die in childbirth go directly to the Winajel. People who have been struck by lightning or who have drowned do not go to Katibak ... . Neither do murder victims".^[4]
• "According to the Tzotzil, the souls of animals and of trees ... go to the Katibak, ... and then they return .. to the face of the earth. Animals, like humans, are reborn as the same species, but as the opposite sex".^[5] "Animals and trees have a ch'ulel soul. The wayhel soul belongs only to human beings".
• "Each town has as a replication a sacred mountain. ... Manojel-Tojel, the creator god, ... caused humans to be born by leading them out of the caves of the original hills."^[6] According to myth, each one of the patron-gods "installed himself in a hill, by order of the gods of the four corners of the earth".^[7] "The Tzotzil speak of an animistic union between the patron god and the hummingbird ... the waylel".^[8]
• "Yahwal Balamil ... who lives inside the earth ... frees the water-filled clouds from inside the earth through caves. ... Yahwal Balamil rides a deer with serpent bridles ..., but he announces himself with ... the croaking of frogs".^[9] [a note for comparative religion : with the name of this god /YAHWAL/ compare, e.g., that of the "Seminole ... god Yahola"^[10]]; and that of the "Creek god named Yaholi."^[11]]

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Coe, Michael D. (1999). The Maya (Sixth edition ed.). New York: Thames & Hudson. pp. 134–136. ISBN 0-500-28066-5. 
2. ^ Laughlin 1975.
3. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 146, citing Guiteras, pp. 131, 198-9
4. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 147, citing Guiteras, pp.42-3
5. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. pp. 147-148, citing Guiteras, p. 249
6. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 148, citing Guiteras, p. 237
7. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 148, citing Vogt, p. 35
8. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 149, citing Guiteras, p. 205
9. ^ Alfredo López Austin (translated by Ortiz de Montellano) : Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. University Press of Colorado, 1997. p. 133, citing Vogt, pp. 35-6, 94-5
10. ^ Michael Heim : Exploring Missouri Highways. Exploring America's Highways, 2007. p. 130
11. ^ Michael Heim : Exploring Indiana Highways. Exploring America's Highways, 2007. p. 27

[edit] References

• Laughlin, Robert M. (1975). The great Tzotzil dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. 
• Vogt, Evon Z. (1983). Ofrendas para los dioses : análisis simbólico de rituales zinacantecos. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. 
• Guiteras-Holmes, Calixta (1965). Los peligros del alma : visión del mundo de un tzotzil. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. 
• Obregón Rodríguez, Maria Concepción (2003). Tzotziles. Mexico: PNUD. ISBN 970-753-007-3.  Available at http://www.e-mexico.gob.mx/wb2/eMex/eMex_Tzotziles