Popol Vuh – LAST Thoughts and Reflections

The reader’s guide states explicitly, “The epic is not the story of a hero, but hero twins” (p. 246). The Popol Vuh is a story of pluralities at any given moment: the twins, their father and uncle, One Death and Seven Death, the Framer and the Shaper, and so on. I found this most interesting as there is not a single first man, or a single first woman, but instead they come in quartets; clearly, a group of people is more powerful than a single being by K’iche’ standards. The cosmic force of the universe is made up of a conversation between multiple persons, the Earth coming into existence from the statement, “Earth”. This, to me, reflects the Popol Vuh’s statements on not only community, but power as well.

It speaks volumes that the power that the two twins seem to possess come from their understanding of their own world and deities, working to praise them and help them out and, in the case of the Lords of Death, learn their names. The Lords of Death are able to be defeated because each of them work as separate barriers, rather than working together to form one force, like the Framer and the Shaper do. The inherent motif to take away from these stories is that the respect, worship, and maintaining of relationships will provide power in both daily life (like the maize farm) and in eccentric circumstances (like Xibalba). It is, in this way, also a conversation about community.

Community is woven into almost every storyline, from the animals swallowing each other as a form of transportation (and an origin to the food chain) to the twins grandmother truly coming to care and worry for them. What I find most interesting about the community motifs is how they divide themselves from animals most of the time: monkeys are seen as hilarious creatures, and animals are told to give up their flesh as a sacrifice for not being able to worship. A sharp line is drawn down the middle between animal and human, and one has much more power than the other. Still, the animals serve as functional to the people beyond being meat; animals help the twins discover the gaming things, and ants help them gather flowers for One and Seven Death. It begs asking where animals fit in the Maya K’iche’ idea of personhood and community.

It’s not unfamiliar for Indigeneity to hold community so near and dear, and I think that the fact that this theme is present is a good connection internationally to other Indigenous communities, something Western concepts don’t always have. Instead, Western ideals present the singular hero archetype, or the one almighty being. Looking to Indigenous legends and traditions provides us with a new peek into what a community-drive power source can look like in myth. Still, I ask, how do conversation and community include or reject animals in a creation myth about humanity?

In reading the Popol Vuh, something I found myself thinking about over and over again was the connections in certain events between the Mayan stories and modern Christian stories. As the Popol Vuh has a complex and lengthy history with translation, especially with that of a Roman Catholic friar involved in one of the main translations, there is the question of whether or not all the tales were properly understood in the translation. I am not Christian or Catholic myself, and thus have only a basic understanding of the Catholic religious texts, but both the flood to destroy the people made of wood and the tale of Lady Blood and her want of forbidden fruit connect back to stories I have heard before in Catholic settings.

There are, obviously, important distinctions, like that of Lady Blood being the daughter of a lord from Xibalba rather than the creation of God, and the flood leading to the creation of monkeys. Still, the connection is undeniable. This asks the question of how well the Popol Vuh acts as a voice of Indigenous myth. The friar, Francisco Ximénez, was accredited with both transcription and translation of the Popol Vuh, as him and his parishoners worked together. This implies, of course, that the Mayan parishoners would have been deeply entrenched in Catholic and Christian narratives, and this also could play a role in the inclusion of Catholic themes within these stories. Of course, the Ximénez translation works off of an original manuscript, one no longer accessible. Something mentioned in class is how many cultures in Latin America believe in the idea of reviving the spirit of ancestors by speaking their words. If a friar speaks for “those who cannot speak themselves” is it the act of a saviour, or the act of a colonizer? Especially when the words spoken are related to religion and creation myths.

As far as other things I found interesting in the Popol Vuh, I think the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque are a very interesting look into what is deemed important in one’s character—the boys tend to work from a duality of taking justice into their own hands while working with the higher powers at the same time. It does quite a good job at establishing how important singular identity and judgement is away from the influence of god-like figures, and I think that could contribute to the culture of identity in Latin America. It is also a lesson to not always trust authority figures, like the grandmother who kicks them out. This proves to me, at the very least, that there is a semblance of the original Indigenous voice through the possible-colonial editing job.

LAST Thoughts and Reflections

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