Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax: Sundries from Zinacantán

Abstract

This volume is divided into two sections. Part 1 contains the travels of two Mayan Indians from Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico, who accompanied the author to the United States in 1963 and again in 1967. The first trip was described as it unfolded and then again after the passage of eight years. The second trip was described four years later. The travelers comment on such varied subjects as the assassination of President Kennedy, the Zuni Shalako, a football game, first views of snow and of the ocean, black-white relations, automation, and the “March on the Pentagon” in November 1967. Part 2 is a miscellany of ethnographic texts supplied by Romin Teratol, one of the above travelers, in response to the author's occasional requests for re-creations of Zinacantec dialogue and activities. The subjects range from seductions, a birth, requests for loans and repayment, requests for godparents, and for the return of a wife, house-dedication prayers, common prayers, religious officials' prayers, shamans' prayers, oaths of office, religious officials' songs, a wedding song, and a drunkard's song. Together they provide a convincing if haphazard exhibit of the richness and variety of Zinacantec oral literature as it is created daily by the citizens of Zinacantán.