The Death of Don Pedro: Insecurity and Cultural Continuity in Peacetime Guatemala: The Death of Don Pedro

The Death of Don Pedro: Insecurity andCultural Continuity in Peacetime Guatemala

By

Thomas A. OffitBaylor University

Garrett CookBaylor University

R e s u m e n

Abstracto: Con enfoque en El Baile de los Monos, el baile-drama mas popular y

duradero que se realiza en el pueblo de Momostenango en los Altos Occidentales Mayas

de Guatemala, examinamos como la violencia epidemica que ha matado al lıder espir-

itual del baile se ha combinado con la inseguridad economica que ahuyenta a la

juventud Momosteca, quienes salen en busqueda de un futuro economico, para amen-

azar el papel del baile como asilo cultural para los bailarines y para la comunidad. La

amenaza hacia el Baile de los Monos es, en si, emblematico de la amenaza neoliberal a la

cultura Maya en Guatemala; mas sin embargo la resistencia de los bailarines y su re-

spaldo continuo en el sistema religioso tradicional entre tantas inseguridades en-

frentadas paradojicamente brinda una esperanza perdurable. Esta continuidad indica

la flexibilidad y plasticidad de la cosmovision tradicional Maya. Pero tambien revela los

efectos desnivelados del neoliberalismo en los Altos de Guatemala

PALABRAS CLAVES: Guatemala, Violencia, Religion, Cambio Economico

Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, ending the 30-year civil war, Guatemala

has fully embraced a neoliberal economic agenda and undergone a period of economic

and physical insecurity that many believe has been as traumatic as the war itself. Ac-

cording to the predictions of the general critique of neoliberalism, these developments

are a natural outcome of the neoliberal plan, bent on the destruction of bases for col-

lective action that could resist the individualistic ideology and elite-class oriented goals

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 42–65. ISSN 1935-4932, online ISSN

1935-4940. & 2010 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1935-

4940.2010.01062.x

4 2 J O U R N A L O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N A N D C A R I B B E A N A N T H R O P O L O G Y

of neoliberal regimes. Focusing on theMonkeys’ Dance, the most popular and enduring

dance-drama performed in the town of Momostenango in the Maya dominated West-

ern Highlands of Guatemala, this article examines how epidemic violence, which

claimed the life of the dance’s spiritual leader, has combined with an economic inse-

curity that has the youth of the town fleeing Momostenango in search of an economic

future, which threatens the role of the dance as a cultural redoubt for the dancers and

the community. The threat to the continuation of the Monkeys’ Dance is itself em-

blematic of the threat to all Maya culture in neoliberal Guatemala, yet the dancers’

perseverance and reliance upon their traditional religious system amidst the many in-

securities they face paradoxically offers evidence of a continuing hope. This continuity

points not only to the enduring flexibility and resilience of traditional Maya belief

systems, but also to the uneven effects of neoliberalism in Highland Guatemala.

KEYWORDS: Maya, Guatemala, Violence, Religion, Economic Change

DON PEDRO WAS ONE OF THE most revered of the Maya priests (chuch kajaw, literally,

Mother–father) of the highland Guatemalan municipality (municipio) of Mom-

ostenango, and the main sponsor of the Dance of the Monkeys. He died around

noon on October 15, 2007, on a lightly travelled rural road just outside town. He

was murdered by two men who stabbed him, shot him, and nearly decapitated him

when slicing his throat.

Some thought he was killed by a gang or drug cartel, or was a victim of an older

kind of violence in revenge for witchcraft (brujerıa). Some said he was an inveterate

womanizer who finally ran into a husband who would neither forgive nor forget.

The first and most common sentiment his death aroused, in a country where such

violence is a part of everyday life, recalled the reaction of the civil servants and

bureaucrats who surrounded Tolstoy’s bourgeois anti-hero Ivan Ilyich, namely,

‘‘the complacent feeling that ‘It is he who is dead and not I’’’ (Tolstoy 2004:88).

The crime garnered public interest yet was ignored by the judicial authorities,

despite the presence of many witnesses to his abduction. Subsequent violent crimes

and murders soon drove Pedro’s death from the consciousness of Momostenango.

This exceptional man died a death that is now quite common in Guatemala, a death

that was violent, public, and will go unpunished. Guatemala has become notorious

for a murder rate that places it among the world’s leaders (PNUD 2007)Fa coun-

try at peace that has seemingly become less secure for many than during a 30-year

civil conflict.

Insecurity comes in many forms, and Pierre Bourdieu has described neoliberal

governance, dominant in Guatemala and globally, as driven by the ‘‘structural vi-

olence of unemployment, of insecure employment, and of the fear provoked by

The Death of Don Pedro 43

the threat of losing employment’’ (1998:98), which provokes such a climate of

economic insecurity and anxiety that individuals retreat to a personal struggle for

survival, resulting in a ‘‘programme of methodical destruction of collectives’’ (95–

6). Economic liberalization has led to a reduction in state-sponsored security and

an increase in societal instability as economic survival becomes more precarious,

leading to a radical increase in ‘‘everyday’’ violence aimed largely at the poor and

working classes who lack the resources to protect themselves against the predations

of the State, of corporations and of their neighbors (Scheper-Hughes 1992; Das

et al. 2000; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004). When physical violence comes

from all quarters and goes unpunished, Bourdieu’s economically driven ‘‘destruc-

tion of collectives’’ is logically accelerated, with traditional collectivities often

replaced by organized crime and the gangs that proliferate in Guatemala and

throughout the world (see Nordstrom 2007).

This article examines how the physical and economic insecurity characteristic

of today’s Guatemala affects the Monkeys’ Dance, the centerpiece of the town’s

annual fiesta. As inheritors of Don Pedro’s mission, in the space opened by his

untimely death, dancers have reassessed their commitment amidst new insecuri-

ties. We investigate the implications for a team of young male performers of a

traditional dance, and for the older sponsors, and the ritualist whose offerings

protect the dancers; furthermore, this article will look at the articulation of Mo-

mostecans with a globalized neoliberal economy and the implications of growing

violence, and especially homicide with impunity, which is linked to the neoliberal

remaking of Guatemala (Benson et al. 2008). The ethnographic literature shows

that traditional Maya authority systems (see especially Green 2003; Goldın 2001,

2009)1 and local traditions related to the syncretized cult of the saints, are being

eroded by the neoliberal order that has dominated Guatemala since the late 1980s,

yet, as we shall illustrate, the uneven nature of neoliberal change in Momostenango

has led neither to the demise of the dance nor to a lessening of the dancers’

commitment to their role in it. The dancers and the community culture they

celebrate have shown an extraordinary resilience (Ungar et al. 2007) in tumultuous

times (Fig. 1).

The Monkeys’ Dance and its Role in Renewing the Momostecan World

The ‘‘monkeys’’ actually perform a ‘‘dance’’ within a danceFa collection of pranks

and clowning skits on the ground, and dangerous acrobatic tricks on a rope sus-

pended above the dance groundFperformed by a jaguar, a lion, and two monkeys,

on a given day, in the midst of what would otherwise be a typical highland Maya

deer dance.2 This dance is neither for the faint hearted nor for those who are less

than fully committed to the endeavor. The tests (pruebas) on the rope, 70 feet in the


air above the plaza, are only accomplished by those with strong faith and with

a need to experience the personal power derived from direct contact with the

supernatural. Many dancers today add their attachment to Momostecan tradition

as a reason for dancing, but the central reason to dance, now and then, was to

acquire protection from Patron Santiago and the dead.

The team is a typical Native American medicine society (Lowie 1959), the per-

formance complete with clowning, physical ordeals, and the search for personal

power conferred by spirits to which young men are called by sickness, dreams, a

desire for excitement, and for supernatural protection and family connections and

social pressure. The team of nine includes two jaguars (tigres), two mountain lions

(leones), and four monkeys (monos, or c’oy in K’iche’, literally, spider monkeys),

divided into first and second teams with half performing on any given day, along

with a spiritual guide and protector, the chuch kajaw. There are also several little

lions, tigers, and monkeys, young sons of the dancers who dance and clown on the

dance ground, and are likely recruits as monkeys when they reach the age of sixteen.

Dancing and sponsorship are promised year to year, ideally via a novena, or promise

of nine performances, although that is currently rare among the dancers. To field a

team in a given year the primary sponsor (autor primero) needs to recruit in August

at the end of a non-dancing fiesta in order to have the new team organized and

promised by November of the year before the dance.

Recruitment is based on trust in the power of the dance priest (chuch kajaw),

and on family connections and enculturation. Thus most dancers come from the

village of Xequemeya and have had fathers, uncles, and brothers who have danced.

Figure 1 Don Pedro and Dancers Performing Costumbre at the Cemetery


Because of the need to practice for two days each month from January through July,

and the 35 plus days of costumbre, many of which involve trips to altars on distant

mountains and require revolving in-turn dancer participation, only those with

flexible time can serve as dancers. Dancing worked well in a community of farmers

and weavers who were largely in control of their own time and were almost always at

home, yet does not fit as well with the current situation of long periods of work in

the capital or even in the United States.

While serving as minor sponsors of the dance and participating in religious

ceremonies, practice sessions, the raising and felling of dance poles, and perfor-

mances of the Monkeys’ Dance between 2006 and 2008, we sought evidence of

the impact of the neoliberal order on the dance. While the economic and social

contexts of the dance have changed dramatically over the past several decades,

and while increasing violence has robbed the dancers of their most important

ritualist/sponsor, and one of the dancers between the 2006 and 2008 performances,

our expectation that the dancers would be forced by economic exigencies and by

the tragedies befalling the team to abandon the dance was not borne out by

subsequent events. We discovered a resilience in the team and strong emotional

support for its members in traditional Maya culture, which led to a successful

performance of the dance in 2008 in spite of incredible obstacles. Below we inves-

tigate the sources of this resilience within Mayan culture and within the variable

impacts of neoliberalism on Guatemalan communities with different modes of

economic articulation.

Neoliberalism, Economic Insecurity and Momostecans

Neoliberalism, a theory of political economy that demands ‘‘deregulation,

privatization, and the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provi-

sion’’ (Harvey 2005) came to Guatemala during the late 1980s as military-backed

dictators began slowly to implement new economic initiatives amidst the civil war.

They focused on the development of maquiladora assembly plants along the

Pan-American Highway (Peterson 1992; Goldın 2009) and on an increase of

non-traditional, export-related agricultural projects (see Fischer and Benson

2006); a small group of ‘‘modern’’ thinking entrepreneurs emerged (Robinson

2001). Guatemala’s generals and oligarchs had not adopted the spirit of Keynesian

policy over the previous decades. There was no social safety net, little reliance

on import substitution industrialization, and few publicly owned enterprises

(Portes 2001). They relied on brute force to maintain power. With the signing of the

Peace Accords in 1996, a new Guatemalan ‘‘transnational elite’’ (Robinson 2001)

was in control, and the full court press of neoliberal economic policies were put

in place, culminating in the 2005 signing of the Central American Free Trade


Agreement (CAFTA). This turned all of Central America and the Dominican

Republic into a free-trade zone with the United States, opening the region for

penetration from US firms.

Neoliberal reforms did provide some new economic opportunities in Guate-

mala, specifically in the urban informal sector (Offit 2008), among Maya textile

vendors (Little 2004), and in the export of non-traditional crops (Fischer and

Benson 2006; Goldın 2009), and Portes and Roberts (2004) note that foreign in-

vestment rose dramatically in Guatemala as inflation fell. Yet these same authors

also point out that each boom has been short lived, and as the United Nations

Development Report indicates, Guatemala still lags far behind Latin America and

the Caribbean in both life expectancy and the Human Development Index (PNUD

2007). Perhaps most troubling, the neoliberal era has also exacerbated the wealth

discrepancy between the rich and the poor both globally and in Guatemala, a

country already famous for inequity in wealth distribution. This points to the

seamy underside of the neoliberal project, which is arguably more about the con-

solidation of elite power, both political and economic, which had eroded globally

during the post-World War II period, than about increasing the benefits for all in a

global capitalist economy (Robinson 2000; Harvey 2005).

Economic insecurity and violence are not new to the Maya of the Western

Highlands. Since the advent of Spanish colonialism they have been subject to ex-

ternal domination by government and church, to local domination by encomend-

eros (like European feudal lords) during the colonial era, and to finqueros

(plantation owners) in the late 19th and early 20th century (see Smith 1990a, b;

McCreery 1994 and Grandin 2000).3 Subsistence farming has been on the decline

for several generations, and in Momostenango the pace of decline has rapidly ac-

celerated over the past 20 years as young men have increasingly abandoned farming

for other pursuits.4 The type of economic insecurity that plagues the monkey

dancers in neoliberal Momostanango does not have to do with earthquakes, or civil

wars, or strong-armed plantation owners, but with the nature of what one must do

to feed one’s family in neoliberal Guatemala.5

The Guatemalan civil war was an armed attempt by leftist factions to bring

economic and political justice for the oppressed. Two hundred thousand civilians

were murdered; some 90 per cent by the security forces, with millions displaced (see

REMHI 1998). The war violently eliminated the active proponents of economic

and land reform and thus paved the way for the neoliberal agenda (seemingly the

only viable ‘‘reform’’) by Guatemala’s new ‘‘transnational elite’’ of entrepreneurs

(Robinson 2001), and for the penetration of global capitalism into the lives of the

rural Maya (Green 2003).

For young Momostecans, capitalist penetration of the highlands has offered

few opportunities. Much recent attention has been paid to the uneven spatial


nature of neoliberal development on a global, national and regional scale (Har-

vey 2006; Kanbur and Venables 2007), yet there has been less attention paid to

how regional discrepancies within peripheral nations, or differences within

towns, in these sub-regions have made nearby hamlets into areas of radically

different economic fortune. Unlike the Maya of Chimaltenango who went to

work in maquiladoras off the nearby pan-American highway (Green 1999), ex-

port-oriented maquila work for Momostecans meant leaving home and limited

the ability to return frequently due to the ‘‘capitalist work discipline’’ (Ong 1987)

in the factoriesFunlike the Pan-Mayanists of Tecpan who lived close to the

nation’s capital and benefitted from increased educational opportunities and

the possibility of work in international export agriculture (Fischer 2001).

Momostecans had few opportunities for education, and only the local elite

could afford higher education in Quetzaltenango. Large-scale export agriculture

is largely infeasible in the highlands of Totonicapan because of scarce land and

inadequate ransportation. Smaller regional export operations, such as those that

have sprung up in San Pedro Almolonga, Quetzaltenango (Goldın 1989, 2009),

are less feasible when inadequate infrastructure is compounded by the distance

between markets in Southern Mexico and Momostenango. Migration out of

Momostenango, which largely meant only maquila work for young women, and

urban informal sector work for men and women, offered economic opportunity

for some,6 yet neither has sustained its initial promise for most beyond a survival

wage and both have weakened the local community by removing its most dy-

namic elementsFits young adults.

Momostenago was traditionally a town of small plot agriculturalists (milp-

eros), artisans (blanket weavers) and blanket vendors (commericantes), all of

whom have been marginalized by globalization.7 The Momostecan blanket in-

dustry, once famous throughout Guatemala, was destroyed virtually overnight

by a flood of cheap Chinese-made blankets. The local Sunday market, once

home to dozens of blanket vendors and visited by national and foreign tourists,

has declined to three blanket vendors, two of whom are older men who report

that it is no longer a profitable enterprise. The vendors also report that the

supply of blankets has dried up, as the limited demand has led to most aban-

doning their massive looms, making only occasional blankets for specific cus-

tomers.

As a result of capitalist globalization, subsistence agriculture for the old and

migration for the young and able are currently the only viable strategies for the vast

majority of Momostecan households. Subsistence farming alone will not support a

modernity defined by the consumption of Western fashion and technology (Mills

1999). International migration is dangerous and expensive, especially for those

who have no close kin living abroad, and tends to favor the development of a local


class of the wealthy relatives of successful emigrants, and to cause inflated prices for

urban housing as foreign money pours into town:

The Central American peasantry, artisan class y and other pre-globalization

classes have tended to gradually disintegrate, and three principal globalization

groups have come to the forefront: transnationalized fractions of the bourgeoisie

tied to new economic activities, new urban and rural working classes, and a new

class of supernumeraries, or superfluous labor pools (Robinson 2001:193).

It is the third group to which many Guatemalans and the majority of Mo-

mostecans belong; thus, neoliberalism has meant social dislocation and an in-

creasingly inequitable distribution of wealth. The young dancers are not immune

to these processes, yet by choice they maintain their communal expressive religion

tradition alive. It is on their backs that the burden of social reproduction lies, in an

economic context that keeps them swinging full-time on an economic tightrope,

seemingly ill-adapted to continue this dance with its deep local roots. And eco-

nomic insecurity is now compounded by a physical insecurity that has come with

the recent wave of criminal violence that has engulfed the nation.

Physical Insecurity and Momostecans

The Monkeys’ Dance is popular in Momostenango and well known in the Western

Highlands, in part, because it is dangerous. Dancers descend on a rope that is an-

chored 30 meters away across the plaza from the top of a 20-meter pole, doing

acrobatic tricks in full costumes with heavy wooden masks that restrict visibility.

They wear no safety harnesses, and there is no net should they fall to the concrete of

the town square. Falls have occurred, and enhance the spectacle’s drawing power.

It is a dangerous undertaking that requires strength, skill, flexibility, and the

encouragement of profound religious faith for its success. It is ironic that the

Monkeys’ Dance is far from the most significant danger that dancers encounter, for

as Guatemalans living in the aftermath of the civil war era, danger is everywhere,

and six dancers and dance sponsors have died untimely deaths in the memory of

current dancers, and none from falling (Fig. 2).

During the 12 years since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords, a new kind of

violence has emerged, radically undermining the social and political stability that

was to have come with the end of formal hostilities, and confirming Walter Ben-

jamin’s finding that for the oppressed, the state of emergency is the rule, not the

exception (see Taussig 2004). More than 20 thousand Guatemalans have been

murdered in the last 4 years, and the homicide rate in peacetime Guatemala has

increased more than 120 percent since 1999, placing Guatemala’s murder rate in the

top three of all nations in Latin America (PNUD 2007). In the post-war years,

delinquency, drug wars, and gang violence have arisen as new threats to citizens’


safety, though the perpetrators of this violence are often the same as in the war

years, yet under different institutional structures (ibid.).8

Murder rates and impunity for perpetrators demonstrate a disturbing conti-

nuity with the war-time era.9 Although more than 90 percent of all the killings

during the war years were committed by the security forces, and the vast majority of

the victims were unarmed civilians, only a handful have been punished, and none

of these were the intellectual authors of the violence. During the past five years, the

government has filed charges in only 2 percent of murders, and the filing of charges

has rarely resulted in convictions of perpetrators. Neighboring El Salvador, with a

similar wave of gang and drug violence and organized crime, has filed charges in 45

percent of murders (Economist 2008). Impunity for the peacetime perpetrators of

violence seems to have reached its apogee in Guatemala.

Figure 2 Don Pedro and Dancers Balance on Pole prior to the Dance


Totonicapan, the state (departamento) where Momostenango is located and

where Don Pedro was murdered, was home to only five murders per 100,000 per-

sons since the worst of the civil war violence subsided, which made it the safest

department in Guatemala along with two other nearby departments, Alta Verapaz

and Huehuetenango (El Instituto Nacional de Estadıstica 2006). In today’s Gua-

temala, majority indigenous departments are suffering much lower rates of ho-

micide than majority ladino ones, yet perceived increases in violence and the reality

of impunity have made all Momostecans captives to fear. Large numbers of Mo-

mostecans currently live and work part-time in the more dangerous areas.

Fear itself is not in any way new to Highland Guatemala (Green 1999; Sanford

2003). Yet images of violence are everywhere in Momostenango, especially from

national news programs and the newspapers that are the standard sources for local

and national news. Graphics-based daily papers such as Nuestro Diario outsell less

visually oriented publications such as the Prensa Libre and Siglo Veintiuno by nearly

four to one in the local market. In turn, this ‘‘mediatization of violence’’ (Das et al.

2000:4) has led to a proliferation of what Caldeira terms ‘‘talk of crime’’ (Caldeira

and Holston 1999). In Momostenango, crime is the most popular topic for every-

day discussion, and when queried it seems that everyone in the town has recently

heard of or experienced a violent crime. A recent study conducted in Guatemala

City indicates that crime is the number one social issue, far outpacing education,

cost of living, and employment, and this in a city where half of all children never

reach high school, half of all individuals live in poverty, and underemployment is

estimated at between 70 and 75 percent (INE 2006). Conversation with Momoste-

cans reveals the same trend, though poverty, underemployment, and lack of ed-

ucation are far direr in Momostenango than in the capital. People in

Momostenango are afraid, and the fear they feel comes not from exploitative la-

dino finca owners or rampaging army patrols, but from their fellow Momostecans;

yet this fear is only part of the insecurity that currently rules their lives.

The ability to overcome fear is what makes the monkey dancers special. By the

time they have concluded one full dance season, practice sessions included, each

will have traversed the rope a minimum of thirteen times, sometimes intoxicated or

with a hangover and always suffering from sleep deprivation. To be a dancer in the

Monkeys’ Dance is to live without fear, or at least to force oneself to overcome it on

a daily basis during the fiesta season. Of the eight dancers who performed the dance

during the 2006 fiesta season, all realized that they were putting themselves in grave

danger by choosing to perform in the dance, but none indicated that they were in

fact afraid. As Mateo, a monkey in the 2006 dance said, ‘‘After we do the costumbre,

when we get on the rope, we don’t feel fear, we don’t feel anything, it is the rope that

dances for us; we feel no fear. When we see the pole now, it looks high, but when

we dance we feel nothing; patron Santiago protects us.’’ Mateo himself did not


participate in the 2008 dance. One of his reasons for not participating in 2008 was

the murder of Don Pedro; he feared that the monkey dance was cursed, and that

Santiago would not protect the dancers, as he failed Don Pedro during his abduc-

tion and murder.

Tomas, the de facto leader of the monkey dancers, had a dream foretelling an ill

omen two months before Pedro’s murder, and consulted with Don Pedro about the

meaning of his dream; Don Pedro indicated to him, ‘‘one of us will die.’’ Despite

Don Pedro’s general spiritual insight and his particular prescience regarding

Tomas’ dream, he was unable to protect himself from his killers. Unlike the

‘‘rage’’ and desire for revenge following from violence so eloquently described by

Renato Rosaldo (1989), none of the dancers, kin members, or friends of Don Pedro

(with whom we spoke) expressed more than sadness and resignation about his

death. This resignation and the fatalism of which it is a manifestation are not sur-

prising since they are themes within Maya culture, yet considering the common

boasts of bravado by the young male dancers concerning their lack of fear in the face

of danger, this level of resignation is surprising and may portend an area of po-

tential psychological conflict or cognitive dissonance. In theory, the recent violence

should have further eroded Guatemalans belief in the future and indeed the past. As

Kleinman and Das put it in their recent landmark volume on violence and sub-

jectivity, this new violence ‘‘is a sign of the distortion of local moral worlds by forces

(national and global) which originate outside of those worlds and over which local

communities can exercise little control’’ (2000:1); hence, perhaps, the utility and

realism of fatalism and resignation as a response.

Individually the dancers have deep feelings about Don Pedro, and Tomas

readily admitted to depression for several months as he mourned the loss of his

mentor. All are aware of the threat of violence, but when asked, none indicated that

they felt afraid in their everyday lives. In a country where there are an estimated 1.5

million illegal firearms, none of the dancers carried a gun. When a knife was needed

to open packets of incense, only the anthropologist had one.

The dancers have not reacted to this violence by seeking revenge, or by taking

up arms. Have they, as the perspective developed above suggests, reacted by ques-

tioning the efficacy of their traditional moral world, specifically by questioning

their beliefs concerning their ancestors, their religion, and the importance of

maintaining their commitment to their patron saint? Scheper-Hughes and

Bourgois contend that violence receives ‘‘its power and meaning’’ through its ‘‘so-

cial and cultural dimensions’’ (2004:1). Did the murder of Don Pedro, a local and

personal manifestation of the current wave of violence in Guatemala, threaten their

commitment to renewing the world of their ancestors? Did the confrontation with

death initially lead the young dancers away from the faith and interpersonal con-

nections that Tolstoy portrays as the very stuff of the meaning of life in the character


of Ivan Ilyich? Our findings reflect variability within the team and within contem-

porary Monkeys, but suggest that a phase of uncertainty and dread was followed for

most by recommitment. However, should such shocks continue, the longer term

implications remain uncertain.

Acrobats in the Face of Insecurity

The current crop of dancers, seven in total since they have one monkey missing, are

well versed in the requirements of the dance. Of the seven, six have had close family

members who were dancers at some point. All recall being fascinated by the dance

since their earliest days, and all are proud to have taken up the obligation (cargo) to

be a dancer, yet they also point out that they have never truly understood the tre-

mendous sacrifice that being a dancer entails.

While all dancers fear injury or death from a fall, it is the commitment of time

and money that make the dance such a heavy burden. All devote 35 days to the

dance: 14 days of performing the dance in the plaza; 10–15 days performing cost-

umbre at various sacred places outside Momostenango; as well as various days for

meetings, practices, and costumbre performed locally. In addition, in 2006 each

dancer contributed nearly 8 hundred dollars for the right to participate, including

costume rental (between US$200 and US$250) and mask rental (US$50), a fee for

food and drink (US$150), religious offerings (US$300), transportation costs, and

fines levied by the group for misbehavior. The financial sacrifice accounts for an

estimated 20–40 percent of their annual income, and the opportunity cost of par-

ticipating in the dance (the sum of their outlays combined with the lost income they

endure by sacrificing time away from work) adds another loss of 10 percent of their

annual income.

Felipe, whose father danced in the Mexicanos,10 has always wanted to dance.

Mateo’s father died when he was only three, but his grandfather was at one time part

of both the Baile de la Conquista and the Mexicanos, and Tomas’ father was a

participant as well. Don Pedro inherited the authorship from his father, and Don

Juan’s father was an active member of dance teams in the distant past. Yet current

dancers differ radically from their progenitors in one significant regard: their pro-

genitors were farmers and artisans fully vested in the local economy. They were

‘‘hombres de maız’’ in the words of Miguel Angel Asturias, and the milpa provided

their food, at least some of their money, and their identity.

The 2006 dance team included an assistant to truck drivers based in Guatemala

City, two street vendors who live and work largely in Guatemala City, one itinerant

vendor who makes a biweekly route between Guatemala City, Quetzaltenango, and

the border region of Huehuetenango, two young men who sell various goods on the

streets of the coastal city of Escuintla, and a tuk-tuk driver who lives in Totonicapan.


While many of these men maintain small homes on ancestral land around Mom-

ostenango, and some work small subsistence plots with the aid of family members,

only Tomas truly resides in Momostenango, and he is no milpero, but instead runs a

small rented store selling dry goods and food on the central square. The decline of

the milpa, which has accelerated rapidly in the recent past with the advent of cap-

italist restructuring, has combined with the violence endemic to neoliberal regimes

to endanger the future of this central Momostecan institution.11

None of the dancers blames their insecurity on neoliberal policies, yet there is a

near-constant refrain among the dancers that economically things have never

looked bleaker. Mateo, the truck-driver’s aid, lost his job when his driver was killed

during a roadside hold-up, and as of the writing of this he was afraid to return to

work considering that murders of truck drivers are now an almost daily occurrence

throughout Guatemala. He and his family currently live on his grandfather’s land,

and share their abode in exchange for helping to work the land and take care of

elderly relations. He talks about working as a carpenter, but admits that Mom-

ostenango is awash in laborers with skills similar to his, and uses his savings and any

cash he can find to sponsor his own participation in the newly resurrected conquest

dance, as he believes his only hope for economic fortune lies in pleasing patron

Santiago and his ancestors.

Sapo, a father of one, who sells cell-phone accessories in Guatemala, says that

while he continues to sell outside the El Guarda market in Guatemala City, every

day there are more vendors on the streets, and with the additional competition and

the clear and present danger of theft or assault, he wonders how he will feed his

family in the near future. He is one of the few dancers who indicated that his eco-

nomic struggles were tied to the economic struggles of the nation, yet despite his

woes he was in the process of constructing a first home for his family back in the

town of his birth. He told us he had poured all his savings into the construction, and

with the decline in his earnings he was likely to be forced to abandon his family and

migrate to the United States illegally if he ever wished to be able to provide for them

and have them live in Momostenango. He reported having, for the first time, to take

personal loans from friends in order to get the money to participate in the dance

during the 2008 season, placing himself in further debt while his house was still not

completed. Yet as another dance team member commented, ‘‘Look at Sapo! How

does a guy like him ever get the money to begin building a house? It must be from

the benefit and protection of Patron Santiago.’’

Finally, the charismatic Tomas, the only full-time resident of Mom-

ostenango to dance in both 2006 and 2008, can be found every day in his small

dry goods stall, holding court with friends and looking over the central plaza of

Momostenango. Tomas once sold women’s clothing from a travelling kiosk

along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, making at times more money than he


says he could spend. Yet this once thriving business ended in failure, largely due

to personal excesses, and he returned home to take care of his aging father and

start his admittedly modest store. The most popular item he sells is a plastic bag

of clean drinking water for 25 centavos, or less than a nickel, and when asked

why he did not try to push more expensive beverages on his customers, he said

that when he started his kiosk three years ago he was selling many more sodas,

but now the bags of water are all that the townspeople can afford. He is aware

that he is unlikely to get rich with the profit margin on his most popular item

being around one cent (US) per bag, but he hopes that with his dance partic-

ipation and his increased role in the social life of his birthplace, he will soon be

blessed with better fortune.

In light of the importance of the powers of the older dance leaders (the chuch

k’ajaw and the autores) in recruiting and retaining the younger dancers, the death of

Don Pedro in October 2007 was a significant event. Its implications for the repro-

duction of the dance became clear to us when we were invited to participate in the

erection of the practice dance pole at the house of the new dance author (sponsor)

Don Natanael, in February 2008.

The Monkeys’ Dance in a Time of Crisis

The tree designated to become the practice pole was located near the bottom of a

small ravine on Don Natanael’s remote rural property, and it was beautiful.

Roughly 18 meters tall, and perfectly straight, it was a type of tree that is ubiquitous

in this part of highland Guatemala, and gives the region its lush beauty. The dancers

raced down the steep ravine to take turns with the huge double-bladed axe, mock-

ing each other’s technique and boasting of their own as they trimmed its branches.

They had relished the excitement of chopping it down at sunrise, but also realized

the enormity of what the tree meant, as they had slept under it the previous night

and made burnt offerings to it as a means of paying homage to what would become

the focal point of their fears and anxieties during the practice season.

It was a magical scene, scented with pine, as the dancers and Don Natanael

returned from lunch and carried the tree trunk, whipping the tree with small

braided leather quirts, attempting to break its resistance so it could be pulled out of

the ravine, while the two oldest men played the ‘‘Rey Quiche’’ on marimba and cane

flute. With the assembled spectators cheering them on, the men began walking with

the fallen tree; they walked in order of rank until, about midway through their

journey, Don Natanael, a 57-year-old tavern owner, slipped off the tree and fell a

few feet to the steeply sloping ground below. The others laughed and continued

upward, but as Don Natanael did not get up, the dancers looked down towards his

fallen body and Felipe called out, ‘‘Don Nataneal, it is broken!’’ The others jumped


down and gathered round; Don Natanael’s left ankle and foot were hanging by a

shred of skin and tendon at a 901 angle to his leg, the jagged ends of his fibula and

tibia exposed for all to see. Don Natanael stared out at the group with a dazed

expression, clearly the victim of shock. One of the dancers immediately grabbed his

leg and reset it, as Don Natanael’s wife and family arrived from their nearby house.

He was then quickly carried to the shade of a clump of avocado trees on the edge of

the milpa, wrapped in a blanket, and given rum to ease his suffering. As his kinfolk

gathered round him, the other dance sponsors and dancers formed a tight circle

slightly away from the stricken leader and his family, collected all the money from

everyone present to help with the hospital fees, and then engaged in a solemn dis-

cussion about such an ill portent at the start of the first year of Don Pedro’s dance

after his murder.

This was not the first bad omen that haunted the dance team. Tomas, a char-

ismatic leader and one of the tigres, who served as the missal reader during all

costumbre, the man called upon when the work was difficult, said there were nu-

merous ill portents before Don Pedro’s death. Two dancers from the previous dance

year had embraced women while wearing their costumes, and were not invited

back. A popular television channel had obtained a pirated copy of a video made by

the two anthropologists (Offit and Cook), and broadcast it on national television

without consent, bringing the dancers undesired notoriety for obscene language

and unruly behavior, and then there were the dreams that haunted Tomas.

Gathered in a tight circle, the six participating dancers, two remaining authors,

two collaborators, and chuch kajaw were now forced to consider the meaning of Don

Natanael’s fall, and to decide whether the dance should continue. On the edge of the

milpa, the future of the most famous and revered of Momostenango’s traditional

dances, with an unbroken chain of sponsors and performances going back at least six

generations, was at stake, and the ghost of the murdered Don Pedro was everywhere.

All those present knew how the answers to their fearful questions were to be

discerned. We repaired to a dark room in Don Natanael’s compound and began a 2-

hour process of discussion and divination that would provide the answers. At the

front of the room was Don Natanael’s altar, covered in spent candles, coins, pre-

Columbian artifacts, and a photo of Momostenango’s patron saint, Santiago, ac-

companied by his secretary and companion, San Felipe. Next to the photo were

placed 13 bundles of copal incense wrapped in corn husks, and four red votive

candles were lit. A smaller table was placed in front of the altar, where the chuch

kajaw of the dance team, Don Simon, placed a small table covering of traditional

handwoven cloth and his bag of divinatory re ‘‘beans’’ (seeds of the tzite tree; see

Tedlock 1982). Don Simon was seated at this table, while the others were given seats

surrounding him, and after a brief invocatory Maya prayer and a Hail Mary said by

the group, the process began.


The dominant elder and cosponsor Don Juan argued that the primary matter

was to define the questions that were to be asked by Don Simon of the powers that

ordained how the sorting and counting of the seeds would unfold. It was quickly

concluded that answers were needed to the following: Why had Don Natanael fallen?

Should he serve as sponsor? Should the dance proceed? And if it were to proceed,

should the same practice pole be used? Don Simon then set to work, methodically

mixing the seeds and laying little piles of four seeds in rows and columns, always

noting the remainder, one to four, in the final pile. As Don Simon read the per-

mutations of the seeds and listened to his blood for signs, those assembled began to

offer their own explanations for what had occurred and how best to proceed.

Two camps quickly emerged. Tomas and two others feared that the dance had

been cursedFa result of Don Pedro’s murder, the sins of previous dancers, and the

result of poor calendrical design of the events by the planners, holding the first

reunion of the dancers on a day that was insufficiently powerful. They believed that

it was best for the safety of all to refrain from dancing this year. In addition, the

dance was now without a primary sponsor, as Don Natanael would probably be

unable to pay the prohibitive costs of sponsoring the danceFan outlay of 25–30

thousand quetzales; the money would now be needed for medical bills. Then a

messenger entered the room to report another ill omen. The pickup truck trans-

porting Don Natanael to the hospital had gone into a ditch.

The second camp was led by Bernabe and Felipe. Like Tomas, both were veteran

dancers with important roles, yet unlike Tomas both had been married for years

and had children who also participated in the dance as little lions and monkeys.

They suspected that the blame for Don Natanael’s injury lay with him, and was

likely a result of his being bewitched or punished for an act unrelated to the dance.

Don Natanael was partly to blame because he had not made his initial burnt

offerings with all of the other dancers as is usually done, but on his own. While

expressing tremendous admiration for Don Natanael and for all that he had done,

they said that he was not the man to lead them, but they must find another sponsor

and continue the dance.

Rather propitiously at this point, Don Simon stopped the divination and in-

dicated that the seeds had told him that Don Natanael’s fall had been his fault, the

result of a curse put on him by a rival, and his accident was not sent by Don Pedro,

nor a result of the ancestors’ displeasure with the dancers. He further indicated that

the dance should proceed, but that a different tree had to be chosen and the bad tree

cut up for firewood. Nataneal could continue as sponsor if he confessed and paid

his fine. The group briefly discussed the findings, which were strongly endorsed by

the influential Don Juan, who as an initiated diviner himself, the senior collabo-

rator, and a close friend of the murdered Don Pedro, had considerable authority,

and all proceeded outside to select another tree.


In the end, another palo was selected, this one on level ground, and with easy

access to Don Natanael’s milpa. It was felled, hauled to a spot near his house, and

erected via the use of a series of scissor-jacks of lashed rough-hewn poles. Offerings

were made, music was played, and drink and food were distributed, all in accor-

dance with past tradition. Yet there was a sadness in the air as people reminisced

about Don Pedro, spoke in hushed tones about Don Natanael, and speculated

about how they would manage to find a dancer to take on the role of the missing

monkey, and more importantly, a well-heeled elder willing to accept the cargo of

becoming the sponsor should Pedro withdraw. Tomas accepted the authority of the

divination, but still seemed anxious about all of the ill omens that had befallen the

group and the general state of ‘‘spiritual insecurity.’’ Although he remained un-

certain about dancing in February, and was receiving some pressure from his new

bride to withdraw, he had promised to dance and he did ultimately dance the role of

first jaguar during the festival in July.

Tomas’ concerns about ill omens was only confirmed when Zelote, the colorful

first monkey who was now one of the veteran dancers of the group, resigned from

the dance in April leaving two vacancies, and then was murdered in June 2008 in the

nearby municipio of Santa Lucıa. There are few details available concerning his

killing, and the dancers can only speculate, though a photo of his tortured corpse

was available in one of the national newspapers. Those who knew him confirm that

he was a hard worker, but that as a tuk-tukero who worked the streets of the de-

partmental capital, they had also heard that he was involved in gang activity and

drug sales. No news about the arrest of his killers is expected. The dancers were

stunned, but as he had broken his promise to dance his death could be attributed to

punishment from Patron Santiago and so was not a threat to the dancers’ beliefs. In

July the dance went on, albeit with only one additional new recruit, and so still with

only seven of the usual eight roles filled, and with a sponsor who was home from the

hospital, but walking with a crutch.

Conclusion: Projecting the Social and Spiritual Bases for Indian Culture

In a time of physical and economic insecurity, what brought two itinerant peddlers

based in Guatemala City, a rickshaw driver living in Totonicapan, a shoe vendor

from Escuintala, a porter for a national truck driver, and one Momostecan dry

goods vendor back to their birthplace to spend excessive amounts of time and

money performing in a public spectacle? For them and many other displaced Mo-

mostecans, Momostenango during the festival, and the monkeys’ dance in partic-

ular, serve as a cultural redoubt (Rojas Lima 1988), a place of security, continuity

with the past, and affirmation of identity amidst the chaos of economic and phys-

ical survival in peacetime Guatemala. In a time when providing for themselves and


their families is a daily struggle that demands emigration from their home, insecure

employment, and dire threats to their physical safety, the dance and the town are a

psychological fortress, a place where physical and emotional security are found,

where meaningful culture is lived, a place where their k’ux (Heart) and anima

(spirit/soul) (Fischer 2001) are allowed their fullest expression. Contrary to the

unidirectional expectations of much neoliberal critique, Bourdieu’s destruction of

the basis for collectivity has not withered among these dancers, despite the fact that

the economically devastating results of neoliberal policy observed by Bourdieu,

Harvey, and others have been visited upon the region.

Although these dancers retreat to Momostenango as their redoubt, the walls

have been breached, and whether or not the dance, or indeed the entire structure of

highland Maya belief and expressive culture will survive, is uncertain. The political

and economic conditions in modern Guatemala threaten the monkey dancers’

personal security and their ability to survive economically. The inability of the

ancestors and the patron saint to save Don Pedro from his murderers, to keep Don

Natanael from falling off the palo and breaking his leg, or to inspire the community

to provide a sufficient number of dancers for the 2008 fiesta are all potential attacks

on the faith that the dancers have in themselves and their fellow Momostecans, and

in the supernatural patrons they seek to serve.

The final casualty of the violence may be the bonds that hold together those who

are so central to celebrating and renewing Momostecan tradition. In the moments

before his death, having received his epiphany concerning the meaning of life, Tol-

stoy’s Ivan Ilyich reaches for the hand of his youngest son. Awash with feelings of love

for his son and regret that he has not expressed to his heir the importance of love for

one’s dear friends and relations, indeed for all of humanity, Ivan realizes that it is

brotherly love and mutual support that are the pillars of a good life. Momostecans

have never been a utopian community of self-sacrificing altruists, but they have lived

in community, and the communal ethos connecting the Maya to each other and their

ancestors is further imperiled by the economic and physical insecurity of neoliberal

Guatemala that has already broken their ties to the land. For now though, for this year

at least, the tigers and lions and monkeys have descended one more time from the

church roof; fatalism and faithFproviding uniquely powerful defenses against the

threats to moral order that they face, and the authority of the elders and tradition, and

the hopeful energy of the youngFhave overcome fear and resisted the forces of

change and preserved the refuge, for a little while longer.

Acknowledgments

Funding and support for this research were provided by the Foundation for the

Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Inc. (FAMSI) and Baylor University.


Notes

1It is important to note that the cofradıa and fiesta systems have themselves been in decline in some

Maya communities since the late 1950s, due to economic change (Smith 1977) and the rise of evangelical

Protestantism in the region (Annis 1987). Walter Little (2009) has also shown how neoliberal change is

affecting individual day-keepers and religious tradition.2The Momostecan Monkeys’ Dance is described in Cook 2000:107–118; Cook and Offit 2007. For

the highland Mayan Deer Dance, see Cook 2000:110–112; Hutcheson 2003:366–498; Mace 1970; Paret-

Limardo 1963.3The Maya have also been subject to the machinations of their own elite, who often manipulate their

less powerful brethren in attempts to maintain their own status, a point especially well brought out in

works by Grandin (2000) and Velasquez Nimatuj (2002).4While the authors do not have census data on occupation or agricultural production figures to

back up our assertion concerning the decline of milpa agriculture, especially among the youth, inter-

views, and our observations of abandoned fields support it.5McIlwaine and Moser (2003) call for the inclusion of personal security in defining the livelihood

security concept.6See Offit 2008 for a description of a thriving urban informal sector market in the late 1990s, and

some who managed to parlay this opportunity into future prospects.7Around 1900 more than 90 percent of the population of Momostenango were peasants, in-

cluding many ‘‘commercialized peasants’’ who also did some weaving and selling of crafts. Only 5–10

percent of Momostecans worked in seasonal migrant plantation labor. As a result of increasing pop-

ulation, and of the effects of the liberal agenda, about 25 percent of the population was engaged in

plantation labor by the 1930s (Carmack 1995:163). Nevertheless, citing Carol Smith (1978), Carmack

argues that at least as late as the mid-1970s, ‘‘Momostenango’s commercialism is said to underwrite a

persisting peasant condition as well as a strong capacity to maintain the institutions of Indian iden-

tity’’ (1995:xviii).8The grim growth of violence in Guatemala has also been a significant economic drain on the

nation. Estimates indicate the cost of violence at more than US$2 billion, more than 7 percent of GDP,

and double the cost of the damages wrought by hurricane Stan in 2005. Violence has damaged the

climate for foreign investment, and has also damaged tourism, which is currently operating at 45 percent

below capacity (PNUD 2007).9Murder is not new to the Maya. June Nash’s 1967 American Anthropologist article, ‘‘Death as a Way

of Life: The Increasing Resort to Homicide in a Maya Indian Community’’, shows many similarities with

the case we profile. Economic change led to spiritual insecurity and ultimately murder.10The Baile de los Mexicanos or Mexicanos is another of the traditional dances performed during

the Fiesta in Momostenango since the 1940s. It depicts hacienda life and stereotypical nineteenth cen-

tury Mexican vaqueros (see Cook 2000:84–5).11Religious change has accompanied this restructuring, but does not currently threaten the dance.

Conversion to evangelical Protestantism in Momostenango grew rapidly between 1980 and the mid-90s,

with 40–50 percent of the townspeople currently identifying as evangelicals. There remains, however, a

strong costumbrista base in Momostenango. The dances are performed within a pluralistic setting that

includes Catholics (who are generally tolerant of them, though regard them as idolatrous) and Protestants

(who are often hostile to what they perceive as the deviltry embodied in the fiesta itself with its drinking and

wasting of time and money); the dances are performed to honor the images of saints. However, there is

currently no organized evangelical opposition to the dances. The father of Don Pedro, who sponsored the

dance for 20 years and served as its ritualist for most of that time, had converted to a Protestant church


briefly in the 1960s before returning to costumbre. Religious identities in Momostenango are complex and

hybrid. The shrines and the public practices of Maya religiosity are now protected by Guatemalan statutes,

making direct evangelical attacks on the costumbrista religious infrastructure difficult.

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