Acta MesoAmericana

Acta MesoAmericana
Volume 23
Christian Isendahl and Bodil Liljefors Persson (editors)
Ecology, Power, and Religion
in Maya Landscapes
11th European Maya Conference
Malm University
December 2006
VERLAG
ANTON SAURWEIN
2011
ISBN: 3-931419-19-X
Copyright Verlag Anton Saurwein, Markt Schwaben, Germany, 2011
All rights reserved
Layout: Daniel Karlsson, Prinfo Grafskt Center, Malm, Sweden
Printed in Germany
Wayeb Advisory Editorial Board
Alain Breton
Andrs Ciudad Ruiz
Elizabeth Graham
Nikolai Grube
Norman Hammond
Die Deutsche Bibliothek CIP Einheitsaufnahme
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Contents
Introduction
Christian Isendahl and Bodil Liljefors Persson
Introducing Ecology, Power, and Religion in
Maya Landscapes 9
Water and Climatic Phenomena
Stephen Houston and Karl Taube
Te Fiery Pool: Water and Sea among the
Classic Maya 17
Patrice Bonnafoux
Waters, Droughts, and Early Classic Maya
Worldviews 39
Nicholas P. Dunning and Stephen Houston
Chan Ik: Hurricanes as a Destabilizing
Force in the Pre-Hispanic Maya Lowlands 57
Lorraine A. Williams-Beck
Rivers of Ritual and Power in the Northwestern
Maya Lowlands 69
Exploring Power in the Landscape
Alexandre Tokovinine
People from a Place: Re-Interpreting Classic
Maya Emblem Glyphs 91
Estella Weiss-Krejci
Reordering the Universe during Tikals
Dark Age 107
Laura M. Amrhein
Xkeptunich: Terminal Classic Maya
Cosmology, Rulership, and the World Tree 121
Ritual and Boundaries
Christopher T. Morehart
Te Fourth Obligation: Food Oferings in Caves
and the Materiality of Sacred Relationships 135
Bodil Liljefors Persson
Ualhi Yax Imix Che tu Chumuk:
Cosmology, Ritual and the Power of Place in
Yucatec Maya (Con-)Texts 145
Kerry Hull
Ritual and Cosmological Landscapes of the
Chorti Maya 159
Andrs Dapuez
Untimely Dispositions 167
Lars Frhsorge
Memory, Nature, and Religion:
Te Perception of Pre-Hispanic Ruins in a
Highland Maya Community 177
Valentina Vapnarsky and Olivier Le Guen
Te Guardians of Space and History:
Understanding Ecological and Historical
Relationships of the Contemporary Yucatec
Maya to their Landscape 191
Integrated Landscapes
Christian Isendahl
Tinking about Landscape and Religion in the
Pre-Hispanic Maya Lowlands 209
Elizabeth Graham
Darwin at Copan 221
Untimely Dispositions
Andrs Dapuez
John Hopkins University
Abstract
Beyond the anthropological paradigm called historic particularism and the theological individualism that the
notion of the self entertains, in this paper I analyze cargo or kuch festivals using the concept of disposition. As
inherently social self-other stances, cargo dispositions depend upon empathy to authorize ritual participants and to
frame social and natural phenomena under the principle of reciprocity. Without entering into symbolic analyses,
this paper describes some of the socio-psychological mechanisms of buying life from numinous entities through
the communication of these cargo dispositions.
Resumen
Ms all del paradigma antropolgico denominado particularismo histrico, y el individualismo teolgico que la
nocin de s mismo evoca, propongo en este artculo, analizar los festivales de cargo o kuch utilizando el concepto
de disposicin. Como vnculo inherentemente social, la disposicin de cargo depende de momentos de empata
para autorizar a los participantes rituales y para articular fenmenos sociales y naturales bajo el principio de reci-
procidad. Sin entrar en anlisis simblicos, este artculo describe mecanismos socio-psicolgicos de compra de
vida a entidades invisibles por medio de comunicacin que estas disposiciones de cargo proponen.
N
or must any synechist say, I am altogether
myself, and not at all you. If you embrace syn-
echism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wicked-
ness. In the frst place, your neighbors are, in a meas-
ure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without
deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really,
the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for
the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity. (Im-
mortality in the light of Synechism, Peirce 1998: 2)
Introduction
Xocn, Yucatan, Mexico, was one of the villages
where Caste Wars and the new religion (Bricker
1981) of Cruzoob initiated in the 19th century. Now-
adays it is a village of around three thousand persons.
Nine miles from Valladolid, approximately 90% of
its population denominate themselves as Catholic. In
the late 1980s, when electricity and running water
came to town, Pentecostals were also allowed by au-
thorities to regularly visit Xocn. Te turning point
in the relationship with Protestantes was the con-
version of the son of a comisario, or the communal
Mayor. However, the elite of the village still openly
resists and distrusts Pentecostals. Guardians of the
Cross, maestros cantores, shamans, and ritual experts
called elders speak out against them. According to
the general opinion, Protestantes endanger and deny
local traditions.
Authorities are constituted by 15 sargentos
primeros who lead opinions, and take decisions in po-
litical matters. Among the political authorities there
is also a comandante who presides over meetings and
assemblies, and takes care of various duties includ-
ing, among other things, writing acts, taking hear-
ings, and prosecuting ordinary crimes. Every adult
male must serve as a soldier or soldado on a rotating
basis under the authority of one sergeant, or sargento
primero. Soldados clean up the main square, guard the
main building, incarcerate wrongdoers, and perform
other related duties. Te Mexican law created the of-
Andrs Dapuez
168
fce of comisario. A comisario comunal intervenes in
all political issues but his authority depends on the
comandante and sargentos primeros, and more formal-
ly, on the villages assemblies. Most of all, he repre-
sents the village in issues concerning the commune
or municipio of Valladolid. Tere is also a comisario
ejidal, who according to the Mexican constitution
takes care of communal lands issues.
Annual Festivals
Xocn has many festivals a year. Political authorities,
headed by the commandant or comandante and the
comisario, organize some of them. Tey are public
ceremonies for the wellbeing andof courseen-
tertainment of the people of Xocn. At four calendar
dates, select individuals organize and support feast-
ings, dances, processions, and prayers with the help
of some acquaintances. Participants in these rituals
are typically relatives and friends of the sponsors. Te
main sponsor is called kuch, cargo holder or inter-
esado. Kuch means burden but also to carry or to
hold up (Stross 1988). However, Bolles (1997) notes
than an additional sense of the word kuch is locus,
site, or the place of residence of an object. Sponsors
bear the cost and the efort entailed in organizing a
complex set of ceremonies (see also Redfeld 1964,
1960, 1941; Redfeld and Villa Rojas 1962; Price
1974; Pohl 1981; Villa Rojas 1987; Fernandez 1994;
Hervik 1999; Eiss 2002; Loewe 2003, 1995). Kuch
sponsorships are also related to Wayeb ceremonies. In
particular, year bearers impersonators address difer-
ent sets of ceremonial arrangements according to the
year commencement (e.g., Tompson 1934, 1958,
1970; Tozzer 1941; Coe 1965; Len-Portilla 1988;
Vogt 1976; Bricker et al. 1997, 2002; Farriss 1984;
Love 1986, 1991; Taube 1988; Vail 1997; Bill et al.
2000). In Xocn, 2003s kuch sponsored festivals
took place on:
May 3 to 4: Fiesta de la Santsima Cruz Tun or
the Festival of the Sacred Cross Tun.
July 23 to 24: Cambio de traje del Santo Cristo,
the change of the dress of the Christ.
July 31 to August 7: Corridas or Fiesta del
Pueblo, the village festival (with a new host eve-
ryday).
February 14 to 18: Gremios or guilds. For in-
stance, the agricultural guild of Xocn holds its
ceremoniessponsored by a kuch and his help-
erson February 14.
Kuchoob (plural of kuch) report that they sponsor
and organize these celebrations for their own ben-
eft. Tey spend around $3000 US dollars to sup-
port a day of corridas, for example. Tese festivals
are intended to buy life and rain for the sponsors
house. In a transactional logic represented in other
ritual contexts as loh-nah, loh-corral, and, kex (house
redemption, farmyard redemption, and exchange)
the arrangement is imagined as an exchange between
a person who makes the expenditure and some in-
dexed but invisible powers. Tese powers, own-
ers, winds, or deities are addressed though the
iconic manifestations of Catholic saints and, mainly,
through the villages cross-shaped idol called Santsi-
ma Cruz Tun.
Xocenences also express these sacred transactions
in the Catholic terminology of promesas or promises
and compromisos or engagements (compromiso may be
understood in Yucatec Mayan as mookthan, mean-
ing fastening or agreement). Te typical story I was
told states a person who makes a promise to the cross,
for instance for the health of her animals. She pledges
a novena to it, or some other service that implies ex-
penditure. However, if this person forgets to perform
it, the cross will remind her she has an unsettled
compromiso with it. Tat reminder frequently means
that an illness will sicken her, or her animals. If the
person does not go to a shaman to see what is the
reason of the illness she, or her animals, could die.
Te shaman will give advice about how to pay the
debt or to comply with the compromiso.
In Xocn, as well as in other Yucatec communi-
ties, unfortunate events tend to be interpreted by
eschatological narratives. Te end of any life cycle
is also a reminder that this world is going to end
soon. Hurricanes, illnesses, famines, and other per-
sonal misfortunes indicate punishments and rein-
force the apprehension of the proximity of fnal de-
cay. In this sense, many people in Xocn conceive of
ritual sponsorships as fundamental to the efort to
thrive and to avoid punishments. By dealing with
numinous entities, one may reverse the economic or
natural decadence which their punishments imply.
Future blessings and miracles, or punish-
ments, show up also as logical outcomes of the spon-
sors performances. Interesados or kuchoob try to
secure divine favors by sponsoring ceremonies with
faith and commitment. With the help of ritual ex-
perts, called mayores or nohoch, which means in Maya
and in Spanish elders, ancestors, as well as big,
they learn how to transact with the sacred-natural
realm which such powerful forces inhabit, and, in the
village, with the persons who are going to help them
to fnance and sponsor these celebrations. Promises
and engagements manifest their relative success in
Untimely Dispositions
169
the productivity of feld plots, in the wellness of the
kuchobs houses, and in the sufciency of means of
living.
Wellness, health, wealth, and wellbeing can be
read as signs of a sponsors authority insofar as they
are taken to signal that he has mastered the correct
disposition and thus successfully addressed the gods.
On the contrary, if you have made a promise and
you do not fulfll it, you will get a warning, they say.
For example, if a pig dies before it has been slaugh-
tered for the feasting, this is taken as a very bad omen
for the sponsor. In other cases, illness, fever, and pain
are taken as signs of an unsettled compromiso. I was
told that if you cannot solve the problem with a
physician you go with the h-men and he will tell you:
you have a compromiso, here. You must accomplish
it. You promisedfor examplea glorious mystery
at the Santa Cruz chapel and you have not fulflled it,
yet.
Cargo and Fiesta Sponsorships
Mesoamerican ritual sponsorships have been un-
derstood under exchange paradigms by numerous
ethno graphers and ritual practitioners. Most analysts,
following Tax (1937), Wolf (1955, 1957, 1986), and
Foster (1965, 1966, 1988), take cargo and festa
systems to be ideological manifestations of highly
conservative economic structuresclosed corpo-
rate peasant communities or limited good models.
Generations of analysts have interpreted cargo rituals
in terms of their functioning within such economic
structures (Cancian 1965, 1967, 1992; Carrasco
1961, 1990; Chance 1990, 1994; Chance and Taylor
1985; DeWalt 1975; Dow 2001, 2005; Early 1983;
Freidlander 1981; Wasserstrom 1980; Rus and Wass-
erstrom 1980). Dependent on homeostatic schemas,
ritual transactions are generally considered modes of
economic redistribution (Polanyi 1944). While such
studies have signifcantly contributed to our under-
standing of ritual practitioners political economies
(including the redistribution of wealth, transforma-
tion of economic surplus into prestige or authority,
etc.), many aspects still remain critical and critically
under-examined.
In a context in which life is considered fragile
and threats to it believed to represent divine punish-
ments, it is understandable that sponsors want to
regenerate their families, plants, animals, friends, and
feld plots. Tat I for the moment have left aside the
symbolic aspects of Mesoamerican rites of renewal
does not mean I consider these to be irrelevant. By
describing the production of social practices which
cargo rituality implies, and the engagement they
produce, I am looking for a new defnition of trans-
action. Examining these cargo holders narratives, I
suggest that cargo holders transact for renewals by
cultivating a particular religious disposition that em-
powers and authorizes them.
Discussing the Supporters
Religious Dispositions
According to Talal Asad (1993) the anthropological
defnition of religion has been infected by Christian
traditions. Te idea that religion is a universal cate-
gory of humankind, which Asad fnds for example in
the infuential work of Cliford Geertz (1973), itself
presupposes the assertion of 17th and 18th century
Christian premises. Geertz defnes religion as:
(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish
powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and mo-
tivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of
a general order of existence and (4) clothing these
conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5)
the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic
(Geertz 1973: 90, my emphasis).
In this general defnition, Geertz establishes a uni-
lateral agency. A system of symbols acts upon the
inert matter of moods and motivations. Te logic
could not be reversed in Geertzs terms because the
preeminence of the symbolic would be broken and
the hermeneutical enterprise

immediately fnished.
What would happen if the moods and motivations
could also act upon the system of symbols? Or, to
what extent could moods and motivations dif-
fer from a set of conceptions of general order of
existence? To posit such questions using Geertzs
terminology, symbolic practices inscribe themselves
into moods and motivations. But in Geertzs work,
these moods and motivations seem to lack the capac-
ity to modify the whole system of symbols with the
same power. A general understanding of how sense
is made, mainly through writing and reading signs,
biases and determines the systematic of the whole set
of symbols, as well. What makes a set of symbols a
system is, above all, the hermeneutical interpretation
of the ethnographer.
According to Asad, these assumptions construct
religion as a mater of symbolic meanings linked to
ideas of general order (expressed through either or
both rite and doctrine) (Asad 1993: 4243). From
Andrs Dapuez
170
Asads point of view, this highly conceptual perspec-
tive for defning religion precludes the understand-
ing of religion as a set of concrete practices. What
most interests Asad is the historical importance of
practical contexts (Scott and Hirschkind 2006: 7)
by which the understanding of symbols is made pos-
sible in a given tradition. Tese practical contexts are
closely related to the generative power of the body,
gestures, embodied aptitudes (Scott and Hirsch-
kind 2006: 8), discourses, and practices of argumen-
tation, also called authorizing processes.
Asads notion of authorizing process particularizes
any universal defnition of religion. More specifcally,
Asad objects to the subordination of dispositions un-
der the power of concepts and gives priority to the
practical constitution of religious phenomena:
Te argument that a particular disposition is religious
partly because it occupies a conceptual place within a
cosmic framework appears plausible, but only because
it presupposes a question that must be made explicit:
how do authorizing processes represent practices, ut-
terances, or dispositions so that they can be discur-
sively related to general (cosmic) ideas of order? In
short, the question pertains to the authorizing process
by which religion is created (Asad 1993: 3637).
Depending on particular authorizing processes, a dis-
position is built up ritually and its main goal is to
produce authorized subjects. Terefore, a disposition
could be preliminarily defned as a social mechanism
interiorized in the self which allows further concep-
tualization, and, in the particular case of the Xocns
ritualists, a specifc regime of engagement. In these
terms, kuch sponsorships build up a religious disposi-
tion only when sponsors consider themselves as com-
mitted persons. However, commitment does not end
in self-discipline, trustworthiness, and humility, but
also in recognizing an automatic other in the self.
Below the limits of the self, this burdening disposi-
tion confrms a common ontology.
According to Hent de Vries (2008: 75) the
Foucaultian rediscovery of the dispositif has been
related by Agamben (2006) to the theological trope
of disposition. Tese dispositions designate the his-
torical element, with all the weight of rules, rites,
and institutions posited and imposed on individuals
due to an external force, but which also fnds itself,
as it were, interiorized is systems of belief and senti-
ments (Agamben in de Vries 2008: 75). It is worth-
while to refer to the theological notion of dispositio
not only because it historicizes Foucaults and Asads
historical enterprises but, more generally, because
this notion is also intended to bridge the gap between
ontology and praxis. According to de Vries,
Teologically, it involves the justifcation of the Trin-
ity, of divine providence, and of Christs incarna-
tion. Sufce it to note that the Greek oikonomia was
rendered by the Latin Fathers as dispositio and that,
for Agamben, it inaugurates a distinctionindeed,
nothing short of schizophreniabetween Gods
being in and for himself (his nature or essence),
on the one hand, and his action in the world (his
operation, governance, and administration of
creaturely afairs), on the other, and hence between
ontology and praxis (de Vries 2008: 75).
What most interests me is not only to recognize the
theological underpinnings of Asads and Foucault
works but also to craft a possible use of the notion
of disposition in the analysis of kuch sponsorships,
in the light of la tradicin, or Xocns ritual tradi-
tion. By isolating the kuch disposition from the au-
thorizing processes that produced it, I do not mean
to remove it from its particular history. My claim
is that these dispositions are religious even though
they do not automatically convey symbolic mean-
ings linked to ideas of general order (Asad 1993).
Instead of assuming that a set of symbols could de-
termine or modify a disposition, I am assuming here
Asads critique of Geertz (1973), and exploring the
infuence of apparently meaningless dispositions on
symbols and conceptions. Sponsors practices enter
into a constant relationship with symbols but they
do not always depend on symbolic interpretations to
be transmitted.
In the process of learning how to successfully
sponsor these annual festivals, sponsors assimilate
with their ancestors in a tradition of ritual practices.
Trough ceremonial preparations and divine and sol-
emn transactions, ritual experts or elders instruct
the kuch in the proper ritual manners. Preparations
for the day-long rites start months ahead of time.
Elders guide the kuch and his partners in the various
duties they must face. For example, a particular elder
advises the kuch as to who should be approached
for contributions of money, food, or service for the
festival. In these cases, the elder also witnesses the
arrangement between two men, one asking a contri-
bution, the other either pledging himself or compro-
metindose to give it, or rejecting the request. In the
process, let me say, of pledging, or better comprom-
eterse with a potential helper, the kuch always pays his
visit accompanied by an elder and a bottle of liquor.
Untimely Dispositions
171
Te elder testifes to and remembers the agreement
reached by the kuch and potential helper. A shot
of liquor precedes the transaction. Ritual drinking
predisposes everybodys mood. It also transforms
promesas into compromisos. Since alcohol afects both
parts of the transaction, a positive inclination tends
to arise. Once the kuch has recruited his helpers, his
involvement becomes, in Peirces terminology, less
symbolic and much more indexical.
Indications or indices, show something about
things, on account of their being physically con-
nected with them (Peirce 1998: 5). As Peirce puts
it, an indexical sign stands in a relation of dynamic
coexistence with its object. Co-presence and conti-
guity are characteristic of indexical relationships, too.
Brought many times to the language of cause and ef-
fect, indexical semiotics might be better expressed in
terms of afections. Peirce (1998: 35) uses the extreme
example of the sun and the sunfower: he considers
the fowers phototropism as a semiotic relationship.
As one is afecting the other, it follows that there is an
object and a sign, in some sort of continuity. In other
example he gives, the sound of thunder afects a per-
son who does not know what is happening at that
moment. After a while, the individual could relate
the sound with a previous, and maybe unseen, fash
of lightning. In both cases a conscious acknowledg-
ment, or a conceptual representation, does not start
or stop the indexical force. Te person afected by the
sound of thunder reacts. Her or his idea of what that
thunder is comes later.
Contrariwise, contract-like agreements among
ritual practitioners, elders, and helpers in Xocn are
only the start of the kuch sponsored ceremonies. Pacts
among men are the initial stages of a more profound
understanding. Compromisos go from symbolic rep-
resentations of exchange (how many pesos to con-
tribute for the feasting, for example) towards an in-
dexical participation between partners. Later, on the
festival day, elders supervise food preparation, serve
ritual drink, or other duties that entail solemnity and
right gestures.
Ritual experts or elders, therefore, possess know-
how, mainly transmitted by imitation. By perform-
ing diferent duties with the kuch, the elders super-
vise and authorize him to transact with ancestors and
partners in the same way that their ancestors did
it before. However, imitation does not just trans-
fer a discrete quantity of information from one set
of individuals to others (or from one generation to
another). In the process of imitating both, sponsors
and ritual experts, enact a scene in which empathy
is a crucial element for the whole ritual. Non-verbal
acts transmit this ritual knowledge, along with the
tradition in which it is embedded. It is my main hy-
pothesis here that instead of a transmission, the kuch
disposition articulates a particular self-other locus.
From entering into sponsorship-contracts to cor-
rectly executing dances and gestures, ritualists de-
pend on the elders advice. Elders are persons who
have sponsored these ceremonies many times and
know how to do it. Elders serve alcohol, cook, wit-
ness economic transaction among helpers and cargo
holders, and suggest who could help the cargo holder
with music, bulls and other items. But more impor-
tantly, elders are there to be imitated in all of these
tasks. In other words, the elder-like preparation of
these festivals assures their success. As in many other
human activities, elders cannot transmit their know-
ledge more than in doing what they know to do.
Conceptually poor, the right way or the right man-
ners must be learned by trial and error, or in Xocns
terms, by miracles and punishments. Authority
comes at last when the sponsor becomes reliable,
humble, and most of all committed to the villages
traditions and its ancestors. In few words, commit-
ment and authority arise through imitation.
Imitation implies a complex set of neurological
phenomena. Vittorio Gallese has studied F5 neural
systems in monkeys and its counterpart in humans.
F5 system is composed by canonical and mirror
neurons. Canonical neurons fre when a certain type
of action is performed, but they are also triggered by
perception of objects that aford such actions. Mir-
ror neurons activate when a certain type of action is
performed, but also when another agent is observed
performing the same type action (Hurley and Chater
2005: 3). In the mirror system, Gallese analyzes the
possibility of imitation as an intertwined set of ac-
tion, perception, and cognition oriented towards a
goal. By looking at someone else doing a determined
goal-oriented action or whenever the subject is per-
forming the same action, mirror neurons discharge.
Te exact neurons, thus, fre when a hand grasps an
object or when one sees someone else grasping it.
Tese neural facts allow us to consider imitation as
prior to any subjective representation of others ac-
tions.
According to Gallese, matching others behavior
allows us to share a common intersubjective stance
behind conscious representations. Te phenomena
related to imitative neuronal processes are directly
connected to a social, multimodal and shared in-
tersubjective space that founds any human self in
a constitutive commonality. In Galleses (2005: 105)
words:
Andrs Dapuez
172
this relation is established at the very onset of our
life, when no subjective representation can yet be en-
tertained by us, because there is no yet a conscious
subject of experience. Te absence of a subject does
not preclude, however, the presence of a primitive
self-other space, a paradoxical form of intersubjectiv-
ity without subjects. Te infant shares this space with
lifeless objects as well as with living others, which are
internalized by the infant because they are projection
of the control strategies governing the interactions
they are part of.
Te shared manifold hypothesis establishes that this
self-other identity is a driving force in the cognitive
development of more articulated and sophisticated
forms of intersubjetive relations (Gallese 2005:
114). Te lack of this presubjective stance, accord-
ing to him, condemns the subject to autism. How-
ever, beyond infancy, this shared manifold is also
the condition of possibility for any further symbolic
behavior and provides the foundations for any par-
ticular self development. In other words, beyond
any particularities of the self resides an irreducible
social stance that supports it. In my study, I identify
what can be named a will of infancy of ritualists,
expressed through a voyage from linguistic pacts to-
wards mimetic and silent enactments. I interpret it as
an efort to fnd a common ground for learning how
to act correctly in a very difcult arena where life and
death intermingle. Elders, closer to death than the
initiates, teach and mediate in transactions that are
discrete purchases. However, these transactions are
also understood to extend past and ancestor-like ac-
tions into the present. By mirroring ancestors deeds,
current sponsors hope for the continuity of their acts
into the future.
Conclusion
To represent how important automatism and em-
pathic bindings are to ritualistswho have very dif-
ferent aims to those of historiansI have taken a
detour from my anthropological discourse to refer to
some cognitive studies. Less than a phenomenologi-
cal embodiment (Csordas 1997), or habitus (Mauss
1979; Bourdieu 1990), doing kuch through com-
mitted actions, and regulated by a tradition of ritual
doers, seems to imply a political-religious pledge, or
compromiso, that presupposes a pre-subjective stance
or a particular self-other disposition which has to
be learned and mimetically reproduced in order to
keep authority developing. In a similar way, we saw
that kuch ritual performances depend on imitation,
as a very precise mode of transmission, of informa-
tion that is very difcult to conceptualize. Beyond
the easy and not incorrect comparison between in-
fants and kuchoob, and their elders, the conditions of
possibility of transactions depend on a pre-subjective
self-other stance.
After some contract-like interactions, kuchoobs
duties seem to replicate their ancestors postures. To
become an elder, a nohoch, is also to be able to pro-
duce ancestor-like and god-like gestures. Compromi-
so, then, seems to entail an involvement more com-
plex than that of punctual deals. Compromiso implies
an indexical participation with gestures, actions, af-
fections, or what I call dispositions. To some extent,
these dispositions look like indexical bindings, not
symbola, which produce transactions and reciprocity
with ancestors. Relational in its nature, this self-other
standpoint bridges the gap between the present and
the past justifying the mere existence of a committed
disposition such as the kuchs in its own generative
powers.
In a paragraph about feld rituals, which can be
experimentally extrapolated to Xocn, Vogt (1976:
55)discussing what I would like to tentatively de-
nominate the embodied aptitude of maizesays:
After the kernels are planted, the cobs from the seed
maize are hung up in trees to rest, for they are be-
lieved to be exhausted from having carried the bur-
den of the seeds.
While one may be tempted to read this, at frst,
as an anthropomorphization of maize, I suggest that
it may be useful to recognize it as an invitation for
humans to mimetically reproduce the action of the
corn. Without the necessity of imagining a way
transformation (supporters becoming maize cobs),
a sort of commonality arises between the plant-god
and the community supporters of economic life.
Maize and kuchoob carry burdens indispensable to
reproduce life. Both are afected by the heaviness of
their bundles. Both work to renew life. From consid-
ering transactions as interactions which are system-
atically governed by reciprocity (Barth 1981: 38),
into the more defnitive continuity of afections, this
common embodied aptitude arises as a force which
traverses man, corn, and other beings in a true trans-
action. In Xocn, interconnectedness among beings
appears as the ontological proof of how divine au-
thority transverses discrete bodies in perfect syn-
echism.
Acknowledgements. I would like to mention the hos-
pitality I enjoyed from diferent people of Xocn.
Untimely Dispositions
173
First of all, the many kuchoob who invited me to
their houses at diferent festivals. Second, the pleas-
ant conversations I maintained with Florencio May
May, Lzaro Kuh, the comandante and the comisa-
rio comunal, Andrs Dzib May, a highly sophisti-
cated intellectual and politician. I also would like to
thank Veena Das, Jane Guyer, Marcel Detienne, and
Fenella Canell who read and commented parts of this
paper. It would not be readable without the editing
of Cristin Ellis and the editors of these proceedings.
Finally, many thanks to the organizers of the 11th
European Maya Conference at Malm University,
Sweden, especially to Bodil Liljefors Persson.
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