brotherhood

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Chichicastenango-4: Santo Tomas Church

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What is Chichicastenango? It’s the 50 shades of pink, that makes you smile when you first see it, out of surprise and joy, a story created by the original Mayans with their colorful lives in this small city, in their local pink&purple dresses.
This pink shades turn into a rainbow on Market days, Thursdays and Sundays, when one of the largest outdoor markets of Central America happens. Of course you need some rain to form rainbow, a rain of vendors&tourists pushing each other in narrow, loudy streets, either to buy the best items or earn the best cash if you don’t bargain to half price of what they ask (I’m not kidding about the half price).
But what is more interesting is the Mayans that live here, who managed to preserve their Mayan past and mix it with Christianity, with shaman looking cofradias (brotherhoods/guilds). The original name of this city is, Chichicastenango de Santo Tomas. So, the patron saint of this city is Santo Tomas, where there’s a dedicated cofradia to it, to honor him, to arrange celebrations and rituals in front of the Santo Tomas Church.
The church is built in 1545, on a pre-columbian temple platform by conquistadors. However, the original stairs going into the temple is still preserved. Each of the 18 stairs that go into church (temple) stands for 1 month in Maya calendar, with 20 days in each month. Although it’s a Christian church, cofrades and local people perform Mayan rituals inside or in front of the church, by burning fires and praying while sitting in front of it, burning incenses, waving pots with smoke coming out, putting puppets of Santo Tomas, San Jose and San Sebastian (each belonging to 3 biggest cofradias of Chichi) inside the church to pray them and put money, rum and flower on them, after they march these puppets in streets with lots of attention.
Every year in 21st of Dec, they honor their patron Santo Tomas with one of the biggest fiestas of Guatemala. Even “The Telegraph” listed it as one of the 10 biggest street celebrations in the world. Christmas is not really cared by Mayans of Chichi. Fiesta in Guatemala means, lots of fireworks, firecrackers, any type of colorful&loudy explosives that you can think of. Team of men work all the day, to make sure something is exploding anytime and anywhere. If they manage to upgrade their obsessions with explosives to rockets&nukes, they can easily rule over the world. During these explosions, people in costume dance all day long, in live music that can be heard from the other part of the country.

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Chichicastenango-3: Religion&Municipals

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Chichicastenango has 2 municipals. One belongs to Indigenous Mayas, who still preserve their pre-hispanic culture, language, religion and physical looks. The other, to government. If you are looking to find some natural people, mysticism, spirituality, you are welcome here. They can arrange a paganist ritual for you, in hopes of shaping your life to a better way, if you’re desperate about it.
Why I’m here? To escape tourists and cities, feeling high levels of spirituality, experiencing this very interesting mystical city. But most importantly, one of the biggest fiestas of Guatemala happens here. Sorry, it’s not Christmas. Christmas is not really important in here. It’s Santo Tomas day (21st of Dec), the patron saint of the city, the saint that people worship, like a God, coming from their Mayan and Christian mixture culture. It’s puppet, full of flowers is carried through streets by Cofradia (Guild/brotherhood, see my previous post about them) before placing it in Santo Tomas Church. People put money on it, put rum in front of it, burn candles and incenses, and pray facing it.

Each different cofradia group, slowly but loudly parading their heavily decorated Patron Saint in streets of Chichicastenango, with celebrations accompanied by excited villagers and photographers, serious looking cofrades, bands, high amount of incenses smoking from plant pots that’re attached to hands of people with chain.
The greatness of decoration or the size of the float also indicates the effectiveness of that Cofradia group in the city

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Chichicastenango-2: Cofradias (Brotherhoods/Guilds)

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“The main purpose of Mayan Religious practices is to ensure that the Sun, stars, moon, and planets continue on their paths. In the greater scheme of things man has his part: through following a rigid schedule of rituals he can help to keep the gears greased. If someone doesn’t do the rituals on the proper time and in the correct manner the cycle will be broken and the world will end.

The Cofradias or Brotherhoods provide this function. Although set up by the Spanish priests to promote Christian ideals, they were soon subverted to the Native religion.”

They’re semi public/private groups to practise religious works. The associations are governed by “The Code of Canon Law” (Código de Derecho Canónico). However, they practise modern mixture of Catholic and Mayan cultures, to create bridge between Christianity and Mayan beliefs, by giving voice to indigenous people.

Many of the indigenous ceremonies of brotherhoods involve activities that are considered controversial from Christian point of view. For example, like cults of Maximón (a puppet God of some indigenouses), offering liquor to the pictures of Saints, dancing to the rhythm of celebrations and continuously drinking rum.
In K’iche culture, ceremonial specialist is called Chuchq’ajau and acts full time in the main guild. Sacardotes (Mayan priests/shamans) also work closely with Cofradias, since they maintain the spiritual life of natives.

Each cofradia is named for the Saint that they are dedicated to. They are responsible to take care of the image of the Saint that they worship, including celebration of his feast day. The image is kept in the altar of guild leader’s house. It is taken to the church for only ceremonies.
The house has to open it’s doors daily to public, for gifts of candles, flowers, rum, cigar, etc to the image. Also, people ask for favors from the Saint.
In cofradia of Santo Tomas, greater candles are lit continuously for day and night. It’s said that, he’s hungry for candles and punishes his butler if he’s not fed.

K’iche translation of cofradias is Chaq P’tan, which means “Service Work”. Being an official member is strictly limited, filled by appointment and rank graduation. In Chichicastenango, there are 14 cofradias, each having 6 to 8 members.

They are emerged during the Middle Ages in Europe and arrived to America in 16th century. During the expeditions to the New World, they were used to convert religions of Indians. Indians were grouped in 8-10 people and assigned to serve a Catholic Saint.
After the intense missionary-conquest era, there was about 200 years of abandon of clergy, during which time Mayans adopted their beliefs into cofradias, by interpreting Catholic beliefs in their own way.
The statues in churches are identified as Mayan guardian spirits. So, little remains from their Catholic counterpart, except their names and feast days.
Until the dictator Ubico, cofradias were governors of the village. The leaders of the most powerful cofradias also acted as judges and decision makers.
It is ironic to consider that, cofradias were brought by Spaniards to aid the Church. But now, from the views of Mayan people, they are now equally or more important than the Church.