#Tzutujil

[folkfashion]

Tz'utujil Maya girl, Guatemala, Sara Elisabeth Mesia

[radical-revolution]

Luna Moon Rising by Mara Friedman

Martín Prechtel writes: "Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind."

Francis Weller writes: "The indigenous soul lives close to the ground, to moss, river and loon. It moves in springs and wind, is close to the breath of coyotes. It is scratched on rock walls around the planet, is seen dancing around firelight and is heard in stories told under the canopy of stars. The indigenous soul is the thread of our humanness woven inextricably with the world. Where all things meet and exchange the vitality that is life, there is soul."

Weller continues: "The recovery of the indigenous soul is imperative. We are in serious trouble as a people. Nearly every biological system is in peril: our watersheds, oceans and topsoil are experiencing rapid deterioration. We face a future that will be seriously impacted by radical changes in our climate. We are also witnessing the daily loss of the wild as we encroach ever further into wetlands and forests. We have forgotten our place in the world. And this woe is not confined to us alone; it extends to the others with whom we share this world. Many species find themselves threatened by these changes: grizzlies, blue fin tuna, spotted owls, coral reefs, Atlantic salmon, autumn buttercup, golden-cheeked wood warbler, Baker’s cypress. This list goes on and on. There are 2,269 endangered species in the United States alone. They are caught in a cascading net of sorrows, powerless to change or adapt. We must reconnect with this ancient ground of being that is our indigenous soul and recall that we are all of the earth."

Martín Prechtel likes to incant a blessing common among the Tzutujil Indians of Guatemala: “Be blessed with long life, honey in the heart, no evil, and thirteen thank you’s.”

[astranemus]

This Hole of the original tree was in the middle of the village around which a small temple had been raised long ago. When the Spaniards built their monument to their God, they built it right over that temple. The Hole was now right in the middle of that church and had miraculously survived there for over four and a half centuries.

Ironically, once a year on Good Friday the old-time Catholics had used the Hole to brace a heavy timber cross two stories tall on which they reenacted the crucifixion of their God-man Christ, with a well-articulated image of Jesus killed. The Mayans saw the cross as the original tree and Jesus as the diverse fruit of that tree, so they covered the dead Jesus at Easter with millions of beautiful flowers so that he was entirely hidden in beauty. When the Catholics lifted him nailed to his tree, the Mayans saw a flowering tree whose fruit was God's-gift-son crucified, whose blood ran down the tree into the Hole to feed the roots of creation.

It was not the original Tzutujil method, but since the Hole was left undis turbed the rest of the year there was no conflict. When the Franciscan fathers saw the hierarchy weeping, praying, placing fire, flowers, liquor, and incense into the Hole throughout the year, they assumed the Indians were venerating the Passion of Christ.

The sacred Hole was about words coming together and about longing, remembrance, and feeding what needed to live. Ma Um, Spider, was the official in charge of this portal. He would hold this position for life or as long as he wanted until he chose to pass the role of guarding and maintaining this Hole onto a shaman with the desire and knowledge. Ritually, we called this Hole the Umbilical Stump of the Earth Fruit and, like the navel on an orange, this spot was the memory of the ancient flowering.

Martín Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the Heart: A Story of Initiation and Eloquence from the Shores of a Mayan Lake

[idiotthewise]

Martine Prechtel - shaman, talks about the indigenous soul grief, praise, being human. 

[juancarlosphotog]

@everydayguatemala ・・・ This area of #SanPedro #LaLaguna is under water due to the rising water of the #Atittlan Lake. - Esta zona de #SanPedroLaLaguna está bajo el agua debido a las crecientes aguas del #LagodeAtitlán Photo: @photojuancarlos (Juan Carlos) #Guatemala #Mayan #Tzutujil #LakeAtitlan #EverydayGuatemala #Maya #iphoneography #SanPedroLaLaguna #Repost #LagoAtitlan #EverydayLatinAmerica #photojournalism #JuanCarlos #2017copyright

[waynewandering]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Wayne Culpepper (@waynewandering)

#Repost @betterworlded Scene from recent BWE #documentary I AM FRANCISCO. “I feel very grateful for my campo, which is a small plot of land directly across the lake. It takes me a little over an hour to get to my campo -- about 45 minutes to get across the lake on my kayak, then a fifteen minute trek up through the jungle. I go there a few times a week to check on my coffee plants,“ says Francisco. See his full vid at vimeo.com/betterworlded filmed by @waynewandering edited by @allaroundartsy #Guatemala #Mayan #LakeAtitlan #SantiagoDeAtitlan . . . #Tzutujil #atitlan #santiagoatitlan #patin #maya #natgeomyshot #natgeo #documentaryfilm #documentary #traveldaily #DJI #olympus #sonyA7series #lowepro #djispark #djidrone #gopro ##backcountry #GOATworthy #digitalnomad #fisherman #coffeefarmer (at Lake Atitlán) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrQqvWfA80n/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1dcq7usqawhj1

[folkfashion]

Tz'utujil Maya woman, Guatemala, by Alexander Khimushin

[westdesertsage]

[T]he revolutionary Left believed only in human effort and ability, not in the sacred or the Gods. All else was dead matter to be used by humans to build a world with no suffering for humans. To the Right ... just like the Left ... all else was dead matter to be used by their people to build a world ... so as not to cause any discomfort or suffering to this Right-wing elite. The Tzutujil were not trying to build a nonsuffering world. They world they were part of was not run by humans, and it had only live things residing in it. There were no dead things. Instead of eradicating all the misery of the world, the Tzutujil were trying to suffer together creatively in a beautiful way to keep their world of delicately balanced live things more vital by feeding it the grief of their human failures and stupidity. These failures were made beautiful by the ornate and graceful way the people dedicated their suffering to the earth and to that which made life live, in a proven ritual attitude of great antiquity.

Martin Prechtel

[astranemus]

At the center of the net of sacred mouths was a Hole through which all of creation as we knew it had originally gushed, spreading and growing the mighty net like vines of the far-reaching universe on whose stems the buds and flowers of this creation blossomed into all the lands, plants, weathers, waters, animals, and winds, the veritable tangible reality of this existence. Out of this Hole had grown and flowered a magnificent vine, and a tree and vine on whose summit perched a gigantic eagle, which some said had two heads, one male and the other female. This original mother tree had flowered and then fruited, covering herself first in diversity. She gave birth and made fruit, of which there were no two alike. Then each fruit of that first flowering seeded itself in the surrounding earth and grew its own vine shoot, or umbilical cord.

Now avocado trees bear only avocados; deer don't give birth to falcons; birds don't hatch avocados. All things exclusively reproduce their own kind. Having achieved diversity, the old vine died back, the old tree dried up, and, over thousands of years, died and rotted into a humus that became the Earth. The vegetal memory of the old tree in its humus continued to fertilize the old tree's dream of diversity through its decay.

The places on this network of vines - the mountains and valleys, springs, oceans, and volcanoes where the first seeds took root, dawned, and sprouted this world into life - were the locations of those hollow knots in the maze of sacred places in the village streets.

Having died back, the vines and trees that bore all life left us with hollow places, mouths that had to be nourished, where trunks had once stood. This nourishment was ritual itself, and ritual fed the deified earth and the network of time carried from each of these old places as spiritual humus, allowing the ancestral roots of all things to absorb enough ritual nutrients to keep the earth alive in the diversified and motion-oriented forms we live in today.

When the Original Trunk and Vine had died back, she left us with the most powerful Hole, mouth, hollow knot of all, right in the center of the universe. Out of this Hole our lives still flow. We the Scat Mulaj fed the world there, and began and ended all our rituals there.

Martín Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the Heart: A Story of Initiation and Eloquence from the Shores of a Mayan Lake

[everydaycoffeeph]

Acatenango ASPROGUATE Organic

Asociación Sostenible de Productores de Guatemala (ASPROGUATE) is a relatively young organization that unites and empowers small, mostly indigenous coffee grower communities near Lake Atitlán, the Acatenango volcano, and San Martín Jilotepeque, where the association is now headquartered. These three small coffee municipalities together form a triangle in Guatemala’s central highlands and include some of the country’s oldest-established coffee terroirs.

ASPROGUATE was founded in 2014 and its current president, don Hermes Pérez Higueros, is the grandson of Don José Pérez Rosales, who in 1890 founded one of Guatemala’s first registered coffee estates in Acatenango. So the identity of this group runs deep. ASPROGUATE sees itself as a necessary kind of grower association that promotes biodiversity and shade cover in the coffee-lands, organic methods, and a strong sense of cultural identity through coffee that connects indigenous and Spanish ancestors in a shared purpose.

Today 95% of ASPROGUATE farmers are organically certified, 55% are women, and 90% belong to the indigenous Cakchiquel and Tzutujil ethnicities. This coffee was produced by 65 associate farmers in Acatenango, a coffee-growing region west of the volcano of the same name, close to the border of Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez departments. All ASPROGUATE members are educated in organic farm management and best harvesting practices by the organization. Rather than the process at home, members supply freshly harvested coffee cherries to ASPROGUATE’s centralized wet mills for processing, in an effort to maximize cup quality and minimize the risk of the defect. At the wet mill, cherry deliveries are re-sorted for ripeness and size, rinsed of any dust or debris, and de-pulped. Fermentation is typically overnight but processing managers will adjust the time based on ambient temperatures and time of year. After fermentation is complete all coffee is patio-dried for 10-15 days, again depending on local temperatures. In addition to harvest management and marketing, ASPROGUATE has a technical staff in the field year-round, distributing fertilizer and advising farms on the management techniques needed throughout the year.

ASPROGUATE also provides educational scholarships for associates’ children on a need basis, and in the past year put a lot of resources into the distribution of personal protective equipment to support farmers through harvest during the spread of COVID-19.

[juancarlosphotog]

#OnAssignment for @ESPN - Sports Queen 2017-2018 of the town of #SanPedro #LaLaguna Mayra Lucia poses for portrait. The crown is detailed with symbolic representation of the #Mayan #Tz'utujil peoples, the ball; #sports, the #volcano; the region and the eagle; #MayanTz’utujil and the key; #SaintPeterApostle who is the patron saint of the town and he #eagle is on top of the volcano looking over the lake. / La #ReinadelDeporte 2017-2018 de la ciudad de #San Pedro La Laguna Mayra Lucía posa para un retrato. La corona se detalla con símbolos representativos del pueblo #Maya #Tzutujil, la pelota; #deportes, el volcán; la región y el águila; los #MayaTzutujil y la llave; #SanPedroApóstol que es el santo patrón del pueblo y el #águila está en la cima del #volcán mirando sobre el lago. #Guatemala #LakeAtitlan #EverydayGuatemala #iphoneography #SanPedroLaLaguna #LagoAtitlan #EverydayLatinAmerica #Selfie #photojournalism #JuanCarlos #2017copyright

[titou-nz]

Lake Atitlan - Guatemala

L'activité volcanique de la région a débuté il y a 11 millions d'années. Depuis lors, quatre épisodes volcaniques se sont succédé. Le plus récent, ayant débuté il y a 1,8 million d'années est responsable de la formation de l'actuelle caldeira.

Les villages en bordure du lac sont encore imprégnés de la culture traditionnelle Maya. Des costumes traditionnels y sont d'ailleurs portés par les populations telles que les Tzutujils et les Cakchiquels. À Santiago, un personnage énigmatique, Maximon, sorte d'idole issue du syncrétisme entre le monde maya et la religion catholique est vénéré en permanence. Les fidèles lui apportent des offrandes (dont de l'alcool et des cigares) dans une ambiance festive. Les petits enfants du village, pour un cadeau ou quelques piécettes, guident les touristes curieux dans le faubourg où il réside.

[celeleon]

Una nocturna en Atitlan, un abrazo sin salida de un lago que, según un médico con estetoscopio al cuello que cuenta historias en Antigua Guatemala, no tiene fondo conocido. El Atítlan ya’, comentan algunos Mayas de la región, es la superficie de una cueva que comunica a tres volcanes: Txunun ya’, Tzinií ya’, y chuinimajayú, nombrados en Tzutujil, una de las lenguas de las culturas Mayas asentadas al rededor del Lago. Tres volcanes dormilones que rodean al Atit Ya’ , conocido como lago de Atitlán, Guatemala. ... En rodaje con @disposableaddiction #guatemala #atitlan #atitlanlake @lizablackburn14 https://www.instagram.com/p/ByfvjtYgjrH/?igshid=1w2ykhpl005ya

[culturizando]

¿Quién fue Maximón, el Santo Libre?

Maximón es una figura que según sus creyentes representa la maldad con la bondad. Según la leyenda esta mística imagen es mitad santo y mitad dios, de voz sofocante y aguda originario de Santiago Atitlán, Sololá, en la República de Guatemala específicamente donde habita la etnia tzutujil.

Cuenta la leyenda que los primitivos de ese pueblo afrontaban una crisis social debido al adulterio. Fue entonces cuando surgió Maximón, quien sería el encargado de restablecer el comportamiento sexual de la gente, por lo que fue erigido para ser el guardián de la moral. Sus poderes, sin embargo, se corrompieron y se convirtió en el principal transgresor de las normas que le habían sido encomendadas.

El antropólogo Samuel Lothrop, en su libro Further Notes on Indian Ceremonies in Guatemala, indica que “Maximón es un ser sobrenatural y potente, con cuerpo grotesco, como de espantapájaros, con un puro en la boca y que resucita (…) Es la encarnación del conflicto y la ambigüedad; es tratado con temor y respeto, pero también despreciado y objeto de burla”.

Este Santo Libre también se ha descalificado y lo han conceptualizado como borracho, parrandero, adúltero, fornicador, homosexual y alcahuete. Esto, claro, según la acepción de cada persona. Algunas personas de la zona no lo defienden pero si lo respetan.

“Es el diablo”, advierte el sacerdote católico Hugo Estrada, del templo de La Divina Providencia. Con él coincide Abelardo Pérez Ruiz, de la diócesis de Sololá. “Maximón es un fenómeno de gravísima corrupción religiosa, del cual solo Dios sabrá el daño que tendrá en los cuerpos y en las almas”, comenta.

Hasta ahora, aún se debate sobre quién es en realidad. Mientras, él continúa paciente sobre una silla, la cual representa su trono. Sus seguidores lo visten de diferentes formas.

El pueblo tzutujil suele colocarle un pantalón corto al que le llaman skof, de color blanco con bordados de figuras de pájaros. Estos se sujetan con un cinturón denominado pax, por lo regular rojo con un nudo hacia el frente que cuelga en la zona de los genitales.  La camisa ajtun, se confecciona con tela jaspeada de color rojo, azul y verde y su cabeza es cubierta con pañuelos de distintos diseños. Por último, su tradicional sombrero de palma o de estilo tejano.

Su fiesta es celebrada el 28 de octubre y a pesar de todas las dudas que existen sobre este santo, mantiene sus fieles creyentes que le rezan, lo veneran y le piden ante cualquier dificultad.

  Por María Gabriela Roa | @gabyroab | Cuturizando

Con información de:  Prensalibre.com   |    Santiagoatitlan.com

La entrada ¿Quién fue Maximón, el Santo Libre? aparece primero en culturizando.com | Alimenta tu Mente.

[decaffeinatedmongerjudgespy]

Guatemala: What is a Tocoyal Headdress in Santiago Atitlan?

Lake Atitlan is a land of ancient cultures, traditions, beautiful handcrafted textiles. It is why Koffea TV Mariqui went to visit Subscribe: http://bit.ly/koffeatv

El Lago de Atitlan es una tierra de culturas ancestrales, tradiciones, hermosos textiles laborados a mano. Es por esto que Koffea TV Mariqui decidio visitar. Suscribete a Koffea TV:  http://bit.ly/koffeatv

[astranemus]

This Tzutujil love of speaking to other worlds was the reason behind their shrines and temples. Mayan temples were not monuments to their Gods; they were faces where the mouth was a doorway through which humans could feed and give the ritually sacrificed words and human creations of this world back to the spirit; the world that, in turn, fed them.

The Tzutujil people did not concern themselves with building large wooden and stone structures dedicated to their greatness or to the greatness of God, which would still be standing and proclaiming these things when they died. What monuments they did try to leave were a race of descendants who could continue feeding life. Culture was not measured by who had the biggest buildings but by the happiness of its people, and that came from their ability to make ornate gifts for the other world, gifts that decayed and disap peared, consumed by the spirits. There were many places on the earth where these powers of life and these deities could be fed. Extending in every direction out over the earth, in the Inner Bigness of the Universe they formed a huge net of holy places, a net of mouths. Each knot in this net was an actual spot on the earth that we considered to be hollow and hungry, little mouths through which ritual food could be pushed to nourish the universe. This kept the interconnecting lines between each of them, which were time and the bubbling life of the creations, from grinding to a halt of oblivion, truly keeping the whole world fertile and in live movement.

Martín Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the Heart: A Story of Initiation and Eloquence from the Shores of a Mayan Lake