or: A trip to visit Maximón- Guatemalan god of drink and curses.
My friend Jeff from Portland looked over at me yesterday and remarked, "You know we've been down here for waaayyy too long when this doesn't seem all that weird." I agreed.
We had gone out to the nearby town of San Andreas Itzapa, driven by another friend of mine named Billy in his pickup (or picóp, en español). We arrived safely after a drive of about thirty minutes which was neatly punctuated near the end of the journey by our nearly being forced off the road and into a cornfield by an insane bus driver coming the other direction. After our screams had died down, I smoothly returned to recalling the anecdote about the time Kai gave me two black eyes after he and Vlad and I polished off a litre of Jaegermeister and 24 cans of Budweiser at the Noe St. flat in SF.
There is a religious tradtition practiced by residents of the Guatemalan highlands that relates to the worship of a diety known as Maximón (with the x being pronounced as sh) or alternately San Simón as the Catholic church would have it. Maximón is about a perfect example of religious syncretism as you will ever see in the Christian world. He is a combination of St. Simon, the Conquistador of Guatemala Don Pedro de Alvarado and traditional Mayan dieties. He is a mustachioed white man with blue eyes, depicted in a black suit and homburg style black hat, seated in a large wooden chair. His traditional symbols are the cigar perched in his mouth and the bottle of liquor crooked under his arm. People come to visit him and pray for all sorts of miracles. Devotees purchase candles of various colors at shops surrounding the shrine. Red candles are for those seeking improved love lives. Light blue for money and prosperous buisnesses. Yellow for healthy children and so on. Insight is gained into the daily lives and problems of the Mayans who flock to the shrine from all over Guatemala. There are no candles for desires pertaining to politics, I-Pods or a good crop of new tv shows come the fall. We parked the truck down the hill from the shrine and ascended a poorly maintained cobblestone road filled with shops selling incense and candles of all colors and smells. Also funnily enough there are tons of cheap restaurants around with the doorways crowded with the ladies that work in them yelling at you to come and eat in their place and what they are offering.
Wizened Old Women: (Shouting) "!Amigos! Hay caldos de res, de pollo, de verduras! ¡Pollo Dorado! ¡Lomo adobado! ¡Pepián de pollo¡ ¡Aproveche! ¡Aproveche! ¡Buen precio! ¡Buen precio!
Jake: Hey, you guys hungry? We can get lunch for like, a buck fifty.
Jeff: Fuck off. I don't wan't dysentery.
The purpose of our trip out to visit San Simón was at once both petty and deeply profound. Billy and Jeff are highly rabid Red Sox fans and a crucial three game series against the hated Yankees began yesterday afternoon. I like Maximón because he is not just someone you ask for help and miracles for your family. He is almost like the Old Testament god. An angry god, full of power and rage at the unbelievers. If you ask properly, He will act accordingly, or so goes the belief. Many people there were lighting black candles. So were we. Lots of them. I myself lit one personally for Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. Black candles are for curses, strong ones.
We purchased a stack of small black candles across the street for a rediculously small sum, something like two Quetzales (Q7.85= US$1) and walked across the street and through an archway into quite a scene. A small chapel rests on a concrete platform reached by several wide steps. In front of the chapel though in the courtyard is where the real action goes on. Men in woven red headdresses stoke the fires of the people who have come to give offerings. It is not just candles that are burned here. First salt is used to make a sign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the concrete floor. Then small bundles of wood or corn husks are arranged in either a triangle or square around the heart/cross symbol. Then inside are stacked cigars, candles colored according to your desires and some small brown organic objects of some sort that I could not identify. They vaguely looked like dog poop, but were dry and crumbly. Sometimes sugar was poured over the top. Then eggs are evenly placed at four or six intervals around the edge of the pyre and finally the whole thing is set ablaze using gasoline to get it going. At this point the penitent will then get on his or her knees and begin praying. Then they get up and begin walking clockwise around the fire while praying. The guy in the red headdress will then come over and the devotee will offer him a small bottle of liquor and a cigar. The cigar is lit with a devotional candle and the liquor is drunk by the shaman (for lack of a better word). As you may have guessed the shaman is by now quite drunk. Another bottle is proffered to the shaman which is then sprayed via his mouth onto the fire, causing it to shoot up a foot or more. This is strong stuff, not some 40 proof Malibu rum or something. This continues for quite some time, with the shaman moving from fire to fire, drinking the whole time, until the penitent is ready to be cleansed.
The cleanising process is rather straightforward. Some leafy green herbs are purchased from a small Mayan woman at the doorway and a liqour bottle from the liquour store located conveniently next to the chapel, inside the compound. The bottle is given to the shaman who proceedes to drink from it, then put more in his mouth and spray it over the devotee’s entire body, all the while whacking him/her with the leaves the whole time. Then more liquor is drunk/sprayed on the fire and finally the herbs are thrown in as well where they are more or less instantly incinerated. Most fires contain a variety of colors of candles and the person supplicating themselves are rather restrained. There was a rather notable exception though. About fifty years old and dressed in a blue Yankees(!) t-shirt and cowboy hat, he had a fire with no less than a hundred large black candles. Secretly I was afraid that he was hexing the Red Sox because his candle outlay far exceeded ours, as did his devotion. We were there about an hour in total, and he did not stop circling the fire, offering booze and cigars to the headdress guys and praying the whole time.
We watched all this for some time, then went into the chapel to offer up our black candles to Maximón for help with this weekend’s battle against the ancient enemy from the Bronx. The chapel is a smallish building with a high ceiling totally blackened from untold thousands of candles a couple hundred or so that burn on the tables that sit in front of the altar. The walls are totally covered with plaques from people who have received miracles from Maximón, some with incredible claims. “Thank you for giving me my legs back.” “Thank you for rescuing my children from Satan” etc… Signs abound warning pilgrims that lit cigars and spraying San Simón with liqour is prohibited. Simón himself occupies the prominent position in the chapel. He is seated in his chair on a raised dias surrounded with fresh flowers and bundles of cigars. Small bottles of local firewater are placed at his feet by the faithfull, who line up to see him. Everything is quiet and orderly, which is an immense contrast to the liquor-guzzling, cigar-smoking, shrub-thwacking, fiery madness outside.
Candles placed, we leave. We feel rather conspicuous as the only non Guatemalans to be seen in the whole place. The incredible amounts of thick gasoline laced smoke is making me feel a bit queasy and I ponder the life expectancy of those who spend all day tending the fires and drinking the liver-hardening booze downed by the shamans. “Three weeks, four tops” is Billy’s estimate. Also I almost feel blasphemous coming to a site of such obvious extreme devotion to curse a baseball team. Then again, seeing as how the Red Sox blew a three run lead with Curt Schilling pitching at home last night, maybe that guy in the Yankees shirt was cursing the Sox after all.
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