The church of Panajachel (16th century)

At a wall in San Pedro

What is the same in all communities, is the system of the 'confradias'. The confradias are those people that have invested in the responsibility and trust of the church. Every community honors one or more of these confradias. At Panajachel (where our hotel is located) this is in the first place San Fransisco. A lot of places are named after their confradia (San Juan, San Lucas, etcetera). Apart from that, you find 'confrades' that take care of the maintenance of honoring of the confradias. Nowadays these men are also involved in preserving the traditions in the modernising Guatemala.

Christianity is very trong in Guatemala. We were oftenly surprised by the number of burning candles in churches, the ceremonies and how people crowl on hand and feet to the altar and back... over and over again.

Apart from visiting chruches we also visited babtising ceremonies in the lake of Atitlan. The Maya people hope to have the possibility to visit the lake once in their life time. The babtising we saw involved people of all ages.

Women listening to a speech of one of the priests

Babtising in the holy water of the late of Atitlan

We made a small movie of a babtising ceremony, very different from what we know in The Netherlands.

• movie: babtising in the lake of Atitlan

Maximon

We will try to explain the story of Maximom. A long time ago, there used to be an 'old couple'. They decided to create a small family that should serve as an example for the entire world (the were called Nawales). The worked very hard and had a lot of fun. The men worked and the women nursed the children... so to say a perfect world ;-) But life was not as perfect as they expected, since the women cheated according to the men. The men decided to create the god named Maximon and take him down to earth (he was personified). Maximon was known as the guard and protector. The made him out of wood and used magic to bring him to life.

All over Guatemala you see a lot of wooden statues of Maximon. Here, the original Maximon is shown. Maximon is worshiped by offering candles, sigars, cigarets, liquor etcetera.

A Maximon in Chichicastenango

The temple in which Maximon can be found, amongst others

Unfortunately, Maximon could not be trusted, instead of taking care of the women, he seduces them. When the men realised this, they decided to mutilate Maximon. They cut of his arms and legs and mutilated his face. Then they were finished, Maximon hardly had any human attraction left. Now, he did no longer seduce the women and could do his job as protector again.

The original Maximon can be found in Santiago Atitlan. A long search at this small village let us to one of his guards. We were allowed to visit Maximon in a dark shed, which turned out to be the house of one of the confradias. He was wearing multiple hats and ties, shoes (!?) and was smoking a cigar. He was surrounded with offerings, like vegetables, liquor, cigarets and money. In the same room you can also find several Catholic statues, which surprised us. This takes us back to the first paragraph in Christianity and the Maya belief.

Maximon in Santiago Atitlan

Catholic statues next to Maximon

To fit Maximon into Christianity, he is often seen as the brother of Jesus. He also is a (sun of) god. Others look at him as being Judas, who is seen as betrayer as well. The strong religious people honor Maximon as devil. These of course are no Maya people, but Latinos and Spaniards.

White and black magic

Apart from Christianity, you find the curanderos. These are the healers (some sort of shamams); people who are having supernatural powers. You can visit them for several reasons. The first reason is to do something good; white magic. Think for example of healing ill people and blessing a marriage. The second reason is to do harm; black magic. Think for example of cursing someone.

These are other views on white and black magic: white magic involved the good spirits/ gods and black magic involves bad spirits/ devils. According to us, this it the distincting practised in Guatemala. We will explain this below.

We were lucky to experience Maya magic several times. We heard that close to the lake of Atitlan you can find several caves where the Maya people practise magic. Of course, we went out to find one of these caves! Adventure here we come! We heard that close to Panajachel (close to San Jorge) the "cueva del brujos" can be found, the case of the witches. We think that this cave involves black magic since the bad spirits are spoken to, but not (only) for doing harm. After a ride on a pick-up truck we ended at a small pathway. Since we did not want to make use of the local children to guide us, we went out on our own. Hmmm.... is this a smart thing to do...? Gliding and climbing we went down the mountain. Every now and then we ran into a "crossroad", we followed our luck. We kept going and going, although we ran into snakes and spiders (black magic?). At the moment that we decided to not continue, we saw smoke raising the trees. That should be it! Finally, we arrived and the Maya people (read: witches) did not really look friendly. We were lucking that we took some candles and gave them to the least happy women.

The cave!

After a short dicussing in a local language, not Spanish, we were invited inside the cave. We had to sit down, after which two ladies took our candles, circled them above our heads and spoke some sort of spell. Hopefully it was not a curse :-s... Next, we had to light the candles and put them next to the black crosses in the left back of the cave. Several other candles and incence sticks were burning already. We slowly went back to the entrance of the cave and sat down, which gave us a nice view on the ceremonies that were taking place. In the righthand back of the cavea woman was preparing a big fire. She was till her hips covered in smoke and she was singing lots of spells. Another woman whan stripping flower and dropped the leaves around this fire. At the left front of the cave a stove was bubbling where lots of herbs were put in. Hmmmm... a pointy hat and a broomstick is all that is missing :-) In the right from of the cave six people were joining in a ceremony. Around a big fire one of the curanderos (that you can recognise by a piece of cloth wrapped around his head) was leading the ceremony. First, the people smoked cigars. next, the threw offerings into the fire. The "washed" themselves by rubbing an egg all over their body. Next, this egg was thrown in the fire as well. Finally, rice, cacao, alcohol and a lot of undefined things were offered. All in all, we stayed at the cave for about 20 minutes; we were amazed (and smoked)! Wat an experience!

Crosses like the onces in the cave

On the top of a mountain near Chichicastenango we visited a similar fire ceremony, here it involved white magic. It involved a specific god, Pasqual Abaj. We were not allowed to make pictures of the curanderos, so you can find it below... sssssst :-)

Illegal picture of the curanderos

On the righthand side you see Pasqual Abaj