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Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests: Native Religion and Ritual in Highland Guatemala

2014; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 73; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2325-811X

Amy Howard,

Latin American history and culture

Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests: Native Religion and Ritual in Highland Guatemala. By Krystyna Deuss. (London: The Guatemalan Maya Centre, 2007. Pp. 334, dedication, photographs, illustrations, preface, introduction, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $49.50 paper.)For over thirty years, Krystyna Deuss traveled to Guatemala to study textiles, gathering an extensive collection and producing a large encyclopedic volume on the subject: Indian Costumes from Guatemala. The contents and presentation of Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests follow that same pattern of collection and exhibition of material. During her field trips to Guatemala, Deuss regularly interacted with traditional religious leaders in the Huehuetenango, a region in the Northwest comer of the Guatemalan highlands. Her book documents the dances, ceremonies, festivals, and rituals she observed and participated in, as well as the religious information she learned from these interactions, such as local Maya calendar day names and prayers.Deuss's overall purpose is to document the traditional religious practices of the indigenous people near Huehuetenango. Her extensive career in documentation and museum work shows in the presentation of her material. Primarily ethnographic with little to no concern for theoretical analysis, Shamans, Witches, and Maya Priests is so detail-rich that a close reading would best serve a serious researcher concerned with Guatemala or indigenous religious practices. This meticulous work will be useful to scholars seasoned in the field. At the same time, Deuss's writing style is academic yet informal, accessible for those new to Guatemalan studies. Her lively descriptions capture the feel of the towns in which she resided and will appeal to a broader audience interested in understanding the complexities of the religious and socioeconomic system in the Guatemalan highlands. She also includes one hundred photographs and nearly fifty illustrations of her own which give further detailed information about the workings of each ritual and ceremony she witnessed. These figures again demonstrate her attention to documentation and presentation.In the introduction, where she provides an overview of the Huehuetenango area, Deuss accurately captures the economics, religion (including religious syncretism), immigration issues, and class system common in the entire highland region, which helps those unfamiliar with Guatemala or this specific region. The remainder of the book is divided into sections about each community she studied: Santa Eulalia, Chimban, Soloma, San Juan Ixcoy, San Sebastian Coatan, and San Mateo Ixtatan. These sections read like field notes as Deuss guides the reader through her experiences. …