TheBanyanTree: When Strange Becomes Bizarre

[apmartin at canada.com]

        When Strange Becomes Bizarre

Tuesday, May 25, 2005

Today, Utatlan Spanish School’s field trip took us to
the nearby town of Zunil, located in a steep sided,
lush green valley 10 kilometers from Xela, and
dominated by an extinct volcano.  Traditional
indigenous agriculture is practiced there, and the
cultivated fields were separated by stone fences and
irrigated by canals.  Zunil is also known for its Mayan
albinos.  In Mayan culture, albinos are considered
‘gifts from the Gods’ and have an elevated status.  

After a twenty minute ride on the chicken bus, our
group of nine exited its back door onto the side of the
highway.  To enter the town, we walked across a
single-lane bridge that spanned a polluted river now
rushing with muddy water from the recent rains.

Founded in 1529, Zunil seemed to have changed little
since then.  Nearly all the women and girls wore
traditional Mayan clothing and carried everything on
their heads.  This included cloth-wrapped bundles,
plastic bags of groceries and stacks of newspapers. 
Those who had babies on their backs had them completely
concealed under colorful hand-woven cloth.  In order to
ward off Mal de Ojo or ‘the evil eye’, these infants
would be wrapped this way until they were able to walk.
 Older children wore either a bracelet of small red
beads with one large black bead that looked like a
deer’s eye (‘el ojo de venado’) or a gold ring or
bracelet.  These items supposedly draw away any
negative energy directed at the child. 

Our first stop took us to a large, white Catholic
church with serpentine columns and ornate carvings on
its exterior.  Built in 1544, it was remarkably
well-preserved. Inside, loops of 12” wide white lace
draped from the horizontal ceiling beams.  Dozens of
candles burned in front of a gleaming silver tooled
altar.  Glass cases with life-size representations of
saints and Jesus lined both sides of the church, and a
man on his knees fervently prayed aloud to a statue of
Jesus on the cross.  

Marvin, the director of the school acted as our tour
guide and led us to a handicrafts cooperative where
shelves of hand-made textiles were for sale.  There, a
Mayan woman demonstrated hand weaving on a traditional
back-strap loom, the same technique used in this area
for centuries.  My main interest, however, was our last
stop.  We were going to be introduced to San Simon, one
of the local god’s.  

No one knows exactly how San Simon came to be.  Some
say he is a combination of Mayan gods, Pedro de
Alvarado (one of the Spanish conquistadores of
Guatemala) and the biblical Judas.   When the Spanish
conquered Guatemala, the Mayans worshipped a number of
gods.  The Spanish (who were Catholics) forbade this
and set about to destroy the Mayan’s religion.  To
thwart them, the Mayans created a deity with an image
resembling a Spanish conquistador, a fair-skinned,
mustachioed being much larger than the short, small-boned Mayans
who are unable to grow facial hair. Because the Mayans
had created an idol in their likeness, the Spanish
allowed the Mayans to worship it.

Every year on October 28th, the festival of San Simon
is held, after which San Simon is moved to a different
house.  The host family puts on a huge party with live
music and plenty of food and rum, and participants are
given the opportunity to dance with him.  A committee
of highly-esteemed community members decides who will
have the privilege of hosting him.  It is a great
honor. 

To visit San Simon, we needed to pay an admission fee
of 5 quetzales ($CAD 0.80).  A woman at a small booth
near the door not only collected entrance fees but sold
bottles of Venado rum, cheaper firewater called
Quetzalteca Especial, cigarettes, cigars, bundles of
firewood and thousands of candles of different sizes
and colors.  These items were ‘offered’ to San Simon in
ceremonies when asking for his blessing.  Profits made
from the admission fee and sales were used to pay for
the annual fiesta.

Marvin purchased a handful of 12 inch candles of
various colors.  He told us that the color of the
candles signified different things.  Red related to
love; green to financial affairs, white to health,
yellow to intelligence, blue to the safety of children
and black was an aid to releasing negative energy.  

Marvin held out the candles, allowing us to choose one.
 Thinking of my daughter, Michelle, I chose a blue
candle.  We ducked through a small doorway and entered
a dark, smoke-filled room lit by flickering candles set
on the ground in front of a well-dressed, life-size
mannequin who sat propped on a chair facing us.  San
Simon wore western-style clothing, a black cowboy hat,
sunglasses, gloves and a bandana over his mouth.  On a
small table in front of him sat offerings such as rum,
cigarettes and cigars.  To me, he resembled the Lone
Ranger (a character from an old western television
program).  Incredulous, I found it hard to believe that
this garish plastic doll represented a powerful God,
and that people actually prayed to it believing it had
supernatural powers.  

A Mayan woman with a baby slung over her shoulder sat
on a chair in the corner of the room in order to guard
him.  Marvin told us that if we wanted to take photos
it would cost 10 quetzales ($CAD1.50) per photo. He
explained that believers often fed San Simon rum and
other alcoholic beverages which drained into a
container inside him.  When the container was full, the
contents of his ‘stomach’ were bottled and sold for its
medicinal qualities.

Using the burning candles to light our own, we dripped
hot wax onto the stone floor in order to add them to
the others.  One of the students lit a cigarette as an
offering to San Simon.  The Mayan caretaker provided
the student with a plastic cigarette holder for it,
pulled down the bandana covering San Simon’s mouth and
inserted the holder.  

While I took in the ludicrous sight of a plastic doll
smoking a cigarette, a Guatemalan man entered,
respectfully removed his hat and spoke reverently to
San Simon.  There was no doubt this man was an ardent
believer in San Simon’s powers.

Outside in the courtyard, strange became bizarre.  At
the back of the building, three fires burned in an
open-sided shack with a tin roof, while a number of
Guatemalan men and women watched.  A spiritual guide
who claimed to have a direct connection with San Simon
and the spirits was among them. 

People with illnesses, problems or requests met with
the spiritual leader and asked him to perform a
ceremony on their behalf.  The spiritual leader then
gave these people a list of items they needed to
perform a ceremony requesting San Simon’s help.  At
that moment, three ceremonies involving fires were
going on simultaneously. 

Ceremonies cost a lot of money and combine elements of
Catholicism, African voodoo and traditional Mayan
religion based on man’s relationship with the earth and
its elements.  People whose average wage was 15 to 20
quetzales per day (less than $CAD4.00) paid 1000
quetzales or more for a ceremony ($CAD150.00).

The spiritual leader was easy to spot.  He was a
well-groomed, middle-aged man wearing blue jeans and a
long-sleeved western-style dress shirt with a green
towel draped over his shoulders.  He wore a black
cowboy hat similar to San Simon’s.  The cell phone that
hung from his belt seemed completely out of context. He
stared at one of the fires and chanted, then swigged
from a small bottle of rum.  

I saw the man who had spoken to San Simon pacing in
front of one of the blazing fires, gesticulating with
his hands and ranting about problems with his brother. 
Some loud popping sounds came from the fires as cans of
food that had been offered exploded. 

Another man rubbed his arms with liquid from a small
bottle while facing another fire that devoured a
chicken.  Prior to our arrival, the spiritual guide
would have broken the chicken’s neck and sprinkled the
fire with blood before burning its carcass.

An indigenous couple arrived with a straw basket of
supplies.  Someone had drawn a four-legged animal on
the ground and prepared the beginnings of a fire inside
it.  We were not close enough to tell if the white
lines were made of salt or sugar.  If the drawing was
made of sugar, the ceremony was a request for something
positive.  If it was from salt, the wish was negative
and spoke to the devil.

The spiritual guide removed sugar cane, limes, handfuls
of white candles and small pieces of wood from the
couples basket and added them to the unlit fire.  He
drank more rum, approached the couple and spat it full
force on the front of the man.  He swigged again and
spat it all over the back of the man.  He repeated this
with the woman.  In the midst of this ceremony, his
cell phone rang.  He indicated the couple should sit
down, then quietly spoke into his phone and hung up. 
From the basket, he took a handful of slender 6” black
candles and waved them over all parts of both the man
and woman to clear away the evil spirits.   Then, he
lit the fire.

Beside him, another spiritual guide was performing a
ceremony.  This man took some eggs into his hand and
waved them over all parts of a kneeling man to cleanse
him of negative energy, then carefully laid a fire with
wood, eggs, candles, cigarettes and soda crackers.  A
few minutes after lighting it, an odd thing happened
that I have no explanation for.  The flames began to
spiral upward rapidly, tornado-like, as if some great
force was sucking them up. Supposedly this anomaly
seldom occurs but is very significant. If the flames
twist to the right, it is interpreted to mean that the
spirits accepted the offerings and looked favorably on
the request.  If the flames spiral to the left, it
means the spirits rejected the offerings.  

Some large firecrackers were added to another of the
fires (there were five now) and three, ear-shattering
explosions followed, so loud that I jumped and
screamed.  After that, everyone in our group was
anxious to leave, and we headed back to the bus stop.

I left feeling stunned at what I had just witnessed. It
was, without doubt, one of the strangest experiences in
my life. 

...Pat Martin