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National Geographic : 1936 Nov
Contents
YUCATAN, HOME OF THE GIFTED MAYA He names his children not for himself or his wife or other members of the fam ily, but for the name of the saint on whose day the child happens to be born. There is an almanac in Yucatan called "El Calendario de Espinosa," from the name of its founder. This has been pub lished since 1824 by succeeding generations of the Espinosa family and is the source of all given names used by the Maya. The name in practically every case indicates the birthday. Maya fiestas are usually those of the Church, the biggest fiesta of the year in any village being the day of its particular pa tron saint. These patron-saint fiestas usually last a week or ten days, culminat ing on the saint's day. They suggest village fairs. Booths are set up, games, shooting galleries, always a superannuated merry-go-round, and a bull ring, while under the broad cloisters of the town hall there are Indian dances morn ing, noon, and night (page 634). DANCER NOT CONSULTED ABOUT PARTNER The Maya dances of today are not those of the old pagan times. The latter were thought by the early Franciscan fathers to be immoral, pertaining to the Devil, and they were speedily replaced by Spanish dances, such as the jarana and the zapateo. Though the Indians dance in couples, it is considered improper if the partners touch each other. The man, with his hands hanging at his sides or one hand resting on his hip, circles slowly about the girl with a shuffling step; the latter bobs around still more slowly and less gymnastically. The man does not pick out the girl with whom he dances. This highly important duty is performed by a sort of master of ceremonies. He asks the girl to dance, escorts her to the dancing floor, and then selects her partner without consulting her. The man commences dancing and pres ently the girl joins him. The music keeps up until the last girl has nodded curtly to her partner and returns unescorted to her seat. Formerly it was the custom for the Maya boys, when some girl was exceptionally graceful, to take off their broad-brimmed straw hats, in which they usually dance, and crown the fair bailadora with them. Sometimes a really beautiful dancer might have as many as four or five straw hats pyramided on her head during one dance. After she had returned to her seat with the hats in her hand, their respective own ers came forward and bought them back from her, each giving her two or four reales, as their pocketbooks permitted. These delightful old customs are pass ing, however, and now "el fox" and "el one step" are beginning to displace the more picturesque jarana and zapateo. But the chief business of the Maya man today, as it has been of his forefathers for century after century, is to raise corn for his family, and the chief occupation of his womenfolk today, just as it was a thou sand years ago, is to prepare that corn into tortillas for the family's daily meals. The way each goes about his or her task has remained practically unchanged throughout the intervening centuries. The man now has a steel ax and machete to fell the forest, instead of ringing the trees with his stone ax. His wife, when she lives in a village, takes her own corn to the local mill and has it ground for a few centavos. In the remoter villages a few women have hand-turned grinders somewhat like a small coffee grinder, but the great majority still use a slab of stone with a stone grinder held in the hand (Plate VII). An important task facing the Carnegie Institution investigators in Yucatan has been to determine what the dietary of the average Maya family was in ancient times, so that estimates may be made of the for mer population Yucatan might have sup ported with the system of agriculture then employed. THE MODERN MAYA MENU The best approach to this important question has been to study the dietary of the modern Maya, which, in spite of the introduction of certain European foods, chiefly animal proteins, such as beef, pig, and chicken, seems to have remained much as it was in ancient times. The relative percentages of carbohy drates and animal proteins are probably about the same today as they were before the discovery of America. While the animal proteins of the modern Maya come chiefly from beef, pork, and chicken, in former times they were derived principally from deer, peccary, and wild turkey, all abundant. The affectionate nickname the Maya 643
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