The Popol Vuh was a great book to read, offering insights on the mayan gods and an interpretation from a “mayans perspective” of the creation of life on earth. I feel that the second half of the book described more about the importance of animals, along with the gods’ definition of what makes humans “human”. In the readers companion, we see that the author offers their own interpretation of the mayan myths and reflects on how some of the text contrasts to the bible. I found it rather interesting that this portion of the text reverts back to being in thick paragraphs, main thoughts separated by a little design for the paragraph break, in contrast to the single and spaced out lines in the earlier parts. 

The animals played important roles with the twins’ ability to succeed, from interfering with their chore work, helping them get through the trials, to building a fake head for Hunahpu. Community and teamwork appear to be centered around the animals, where they tend to work together in a lot of the scenarios. Such as the animals who came to deliver the message from Xibalba to the twins. Although they each tried to eat each other, in the end if they hadn’t done so the message might not have reached the twins in time. It also felt that this scenario also demonstrated the animals to be easily persuaded by food, a primitive instinct for survival or desire. This is shown through the louse and the frog, giving rise to the development of a food chain. There is also the event when the twins give the jaguars bones to eat in the Jaguar house trial so they would not eat them. 

I found it particularly interesting on page 124 how the text was set up to describe the animals who participated in making the fields full of trees and bushes. It looks as though each line was like a stanza in a poem, carefully matching the animals mentioned by their appearances or behaviour, such as the “puma and the jaguar” and “the deer and the rabbit”. Similar formatting can be seen in later pages in part 3, listing out descriptions that would be deemed as lengthy if it were kept in a single paragraph. Perhaps this was done to not only make the text easier to read and at a faster pace, but to create some voice inside the readers heads as they read the lines. I feel when words are listed apart in a story there is more emphasis given to the subjects mentioned, with a unique serious narrative. 

Another thing I found rather compelling was the mention of why falcons eat snakes and the reason for the whipowhirl’s gaping mouth. I feel like the narrator found these random bits of information stand out and necessary to write down as part of what led to the creation of life they now knew. Furthermore the way the facts were told made the stories seem more of myth, where the whipowhirls transformation felt something out of a fantasy. 

Going back to my first blog entry for Popol Vuh, I mention how the gods or demigods have a strong sense of pride that lead to their demise. To complement this, they also lacked na’wik,  the “capacity to notice, understand, and perceive”. This is the human side, differentiating humans from gods and the first creation of wooden humans. I notice that this doesn’t imply that this is what is defined as “good” traits but what just is according to the book. The only thing this influences is their judgment, to which the gods decide to keep the humans eyes shrouded so they don’t see all like a god. This makes me wonder if it is something that should not be questioned since this is a trait that the gods designed humans to have and without it they would be inhuman or too much of it deemed as something as a god. 

While reading Popol Vuh from pages 1 – 120,  I felt it was written almost like a storybook, telling of the “tales” of the gods and heroes. I also found that there was a great emphasis on pride along with what seemed to be the best actions to “please” the gods. 

The first story relates to the beginning of how people and animals came to be. Animals were created as a new form of life but because they could not praise the gods their flesh would be eaten, almost like a punishment which they would live with forever. In this case the struggle to live in the world came down to eat or be eaten, and to serve the humans which could praise the gods. The creation of the humans was ultimelty to praise the gods and stroke their ego of being “all powerful”. However the first humans created were deemed greedy and ungrateful so they were destroyed by the forces of the gods. This sort of reminded me of the story of Noah’s Arc from the bible, in which god sends a flood to wash away the evils of the earth to start over. Lady Blood’s desire for the fruit also relates back to the story of Adam and Eve to which both women are tempted to reach out to the fruit and are cursed because of their actions.

In the later stories one may notice that having too much pride leads to a downfall in other powerful beings. Zipacna and Cabracan were very prideful and met their demise because of their pride. Zipacana death was ironic since the “maker of mountains” was crushed by a mountain, and Cabracan paid no attention to the danger that he was with the twins who killed his brother, even trusting the food they gave him which ultimately killed him. The lords of Xibalaba’s greediness and pride make them easily to fool when Lady Blood sends a fake heart to them to which they are bind and believe it is a real heart. Then there are the older brothers of the twins who climb the trees to prove they are better and are turned into monkeys. To be turned into monkeys or animals may relate to how the twins did not see them as worthy to continue to have a human life. A passage from Popol Vah, “pride swelled into evil” reminds me alot of how the bible tries to warn those of the various evils from pride which can lead to jealousy and greed. The lords of Xibalba also reminded me of the bible’s seven deadly sins. This makes me wonder if the indigenous stories were translated or written in a manner that were influenced by Chrisitan view. So did the K’iche’ origin stories actually have this great emphasis on pride with the gods and demigods, and what exactly were their definitions of evils? 

A few other things that also caught my attention was the choice of words. In the line of which Seven Macaw describe his pain to his wife, “Two maniacs shot me and dislocated my jaw!” sort of surprised me at first. I am not used to seeing the word “maniac” in a lot of texts and did not expect to see it here. I looked into the origin of the word and it started being used within the 1500s. Perhaps this word was in the original text or perhaps this word was closest or even a more simple word that was used for translation. 

Hello, my name is Isabella! I am a fourth year student at UBC currently majoring in Biology. I will be graduating this coming May, and afterwards I will decide on wether I want to pursue medicine or become a medical illustrator. Two very different things, but reason being I have strong passions in the arts which I don’t want to let go yet! This includes dancing, animating, and baking! I have a pretty active schedule, which includes training for dance performances, working part time at a biotech company, and studying. A fun fact about me is that I have a pet lovebird named George.

I joined this class because part of my heritage goes back to Central America, and I want to learn more about indigenous cultures in Latin America and have a stronger  understanding of the history.

I found the first lecture rather interesting because the land acknowledgements aren’t really discussed at UBC. My only experience in which I had to think carefully and incorporate my personal land acknowledgement was during my time as a first year orientation leader at UBC. The lecture made me think of all my past experiences with indigenous cultures being integrated as part of my curriculum growing up in Canada, and how there were many times that I felt that the culture wasn’t being properly conveyed or the values weren’t as special. In elementary school I remember that the culture was introduced to students by telling us their legends such as “Raven: A tricksters tale from the Pacific Northwest” by Gerald McDermott, and how we did arts and crafts that would symbolize parts of the legend. While in highschool were learned more about indigenous struggles and genocide, however nothing about what is being done in present day to preserve their cultures. The one thing that hasn’t changed is a land acknowledgement that was presented before every assembly or course introduction. I feel like this is a small way to have the indigenous voices heard or their presence made to have us aware yet it doesn’t give the impact or impression that it should. In other words, the acknowledgement can be quickly overlooked for both someone who is familiar with the acknowledgements or not familiar.