When the baby joins the community, with him in the circle of candles–together with his little red bag–he will have his hoe, his machete, his axe and all the tools he will need in life. These will be his playthings. A little girl will have her washing board and all the things she will need when she grows up. She must learn the things of the house; to clean, to wash and sew her brothers’ trousers, for example. The little boy must begin to live like a man, to be responsible and learn to love the work in the fields. The learning is done as a kind of game. When the parents do anything they always explain what it means. This includes learning prayers. This is very important to our people. The mother may say a prayer at any time. Before getting up in the morning, for instance, she thanks the day which is dawning because it might be a very important one for the family. Before lighting the fire, she blesses the wood because that fire is going to cook food for the whole family. Since it’s the little girl who is closest to her mother, she learns all of this. Before washing the nixtamal, the woman blows on her hands and puts them in the nixtamal. She takes everything out and washes it well. She blows on her hands so that her work will bear fruit. She does it before she does the wash as well. She explains all these little details to her daughter, who learns by copying her. With the men it’s the same. Before they start work every day, whatever hour of the morning it is, they greet the sun. They remove their hats and talk to the sun before starting work. Their sons learn to do it too, taking off their little hats to talk to the sun. Naturally, each ethnic group has its own forms of expression. Other groups have different customs from ours. The meaning of their weaving patterns, for example. We realize the others are different in some things, but the one thing we have in common is our culture. Our people are mainly peasants, but there are some people who buy and sell as well. They go into this after they’ve worked on the land. Sometimes when they come back from working in the finca, instead of tending a little plot of land, they’ll start a shop and look for a different sort of life. But if they’re used to greeting the sun every morning, they still go on doing it. And they keep all their old customs. Every part of our culture comes from the earth. Our religion comes from the maize and bean harvests which are so vital to our community. So even if a man goes to try and make some money, he never forgets his culture springs from the earth.
As we grow up we have a series of obligations. Our parents teach us to be responsible; just as they have been responsible. The eldest son is responsible for the house. Whatever the father cannot correct is up to the eldest son to correct. He is like a second father to us all and is responsible for our upbringing. The mother is the one who is responsible for keeping an account of what the family eats, and what she has to buy. When a child is ill, she has to get medicine. But the father has to solve a lot of problems too. And each one of us, as we grow up, has our own small area of responsibility. This comes from the promises made for the child when he is born, and from the continuity of our customs. The child can make the promise for himself when his parents have taught him to do it. The mother, who is closest to the children, does this, or sometimes the father. They talk to their children, explaining what they have to do and what our ancestors used to do. They don’t impose it as a law, but just give the example of what our ancestors have always done. This is how we all learn our own small responsibilities. For example, the little girl begins by carrying water, and the little boy begins by tying up the dogs when the animals are brought into the yard at night, or by fetching a horse which has wandered off. Both girls and boys have their tasks and are told the reasons for doing them. They learn responsibility because if they don’t do their little jobs, well, their father has the right to scold them, or even beat them. So, they are very careful about learning to do their jobs well, but the parents are also very careful to explain exactly why the jobs have to be done. The little girl understands the reasons for everything her mother does. For example, when she puts a new earthenware pot on the fire for the first time, she hits it five times with a branch, so that it knows its job is to cook and so that it lasts. When the little girl asks, ‘Why did you do that?’, her mother says, ‘So that it knows what its job is and does it well.’ When it’s her turn to cook, the little girl does as her mother does. Again this is all bound up with our commitment to maintain our customs and pass on the secrets of our ancestors. The elected fathers of the community explain to us that all these things come down to us from our grandfathers and we must conserve them. Nearly everything we do today is based on what our ancestors did. This is the main purpose of our elected leader–to embody all the values handed down from our ancestors. He is the leader of the community, a father to all our children, and he must lead an exemplary life. Above all, he has a commitment to the whole community. Everything that is done today, is done in memory of those who have passed on.
III
THE NAHUAL
‘That night he spent howling like a coyote while he slept as a person.
To become animal, without ceasing to be a person.
Animal and person coexist in them through the will of their progenitors at birth.’
—Miguel Angel Asturias, Men of Maize.
Every child is born with a nahual. The nahual is like a shadow, his protective spirit who will go through life with him. The nahual is the representative of the earth, the animal world, the sun and water, and in this way the child communicates with nature. The nahual is our double, something very important to us. We conjure up an image of what our nahual is like. It is usually an animal. The child is taught that if he kills an animal, that animal’s human double will be very angry with him because he is killing his nahual. Every animal has its human counterpart and if you hurt him, you hurt the animal too.
Our days are divided into dogs, cats, bulls, birds, etc. There is a nahual for every day. If a child is born on a Wednesday, his nahual is a sheep. The day of his birth decides his nahual. So for a Wednesday child, every Wednesday is special. Parents know what a child’s behaviour will be from the day of the week he is born. Tuesday is a bad day to be born because the child will grow up bad-tempered. That is because Tuesday’s nahual is a bull and bulls are always angry. The child whose nahual is a cat will like fighting with his brothers and sisters.
We have ten sacred days, as our ancestors have always had. These ten days have their nahual. They can be dogs, cats, horses, bulls, but they can also be wild animals, like lions. Trees can be nahual too: trees chosen by our ancestors many centuries ago. A nahual is not always only one animal. With dogs, for example, nine dogs represent a nahual. Or in the case of horses, three. It can vary a lot. You don’t know how many in fact, or rather, only the parents know the number of animals which go to make the nahuals of these ten special days. For us the meekest days are Wednesday, Monday, Saturday and Sunday. Their nahuals are sheep, or birds or animals which don’t harm other animals.
All this is explained to young people before they get married so that when they have children they know which animal represents each day. One very important thing they have to remember is not to tell the child what his nahual is until he is grown up. We are only told what our nahual is when our personalities are formed and our parents see what our behaviour is normally. Otherwise a child might take advantage of his nahual. For example, if his nahual is a bull, he might like fighting and could say: ‘I behave like this because I’m such and such an animal and you must put up with me.’ If a child doesn’t know his nahual he cannot use it as an excuse. He may be compared to the animal, but that is not identifying him with his nahual. Younger children don’t know the nahual of their elder brothers and sisters. They are only told all this when they are mature enough and this could be at any age between ten and twelve. When this happens the animal which is his nahual is given to him as a present. If it is a lion, however, it is replaced by something else. Only our parents, or perhaps other members of the community who were there when we were born, know the day of our birth. People from other villages don’t know and they are only told if they become close friends.
A day only has a special meaning if