CHAPTER 13 THE INDIAN VOICE IN RECENT MESOAMERICAN LITERATURE 489Mayan historical tradition that dates at least to the first century of the Christian era
in lowland Chiapas and Guatemala. At least in the Mayan area, therefore, the pres-
ence of written texts available for study now spans a period of almost 2,000 years.
The twentieth century has provided both the political and the scientific infra-
structure to greatly expand our knowledge of Native American art forms to include
regions that were hitherto not well known. Indeed, many of the eighty-plus Indian
languages still surviving in Mesoamerica (including, as of 2005, about 18 million
speakers, living primarily in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize) did not have, even in
the mid–twentieth century, any published accounts of their contemporary verbal
arts. Now, however, much is known of both the variety and the complexity of this ex-
pressive and spiritual world.
It may come as a surprise to the reader to find that oral traditions are not easy
to record, transcribe, translate, and interpret in written form. We are dealing not
only with spoken languages that may not even have a standardized written form, but
also with a fluid set of art forms that are always changing as they are re-created and
used in new contexts. There are no fixed texts, sometimes not even fixed genres, as
in, say, the Bible’s Genesis 1, verses l to 8. What is spoken in what we might classify
as verbal art is carried in traditional knowledge that exists only as it is re-created by
the pragmatic dictates of myriad social settings that require use of stylized language
in an oral culture. These may be everyday events like the following: morning prayers;
joke-telling banter among young men as they walk on a mountain path; requests for
a loan or a favor from a relative; a toast to ritual kin who offer a friendly drink of rum;
a recounting of the day’s gossip around the fire at night, with casual reference to
similar events in time past; or a warning to children about a spook that will capture
them and turn them into tamales if they wander too far from home.
Special forms of language also occur as an accompaniment to ritual events at
festivals: for example, long sacred songs, prayers, and ritual language. It is often the
case during ritual proceedings that sacred narratives are implicitly present in par-
ticipants’ background knowledge, although they may not be formally recited; they are
assumed to be part of everyone’s common knowledge. Thus, the task of setting down
an oral tradition as a “written literature” and the quest for native theories of lan-
guage and poetics that characterize these traditions are, necessarily, somewhat arti-
ficial undertakings, for, from an oral performer’s point of view, that which is useful
and beautiful in the spoken word is simply learned and known from cultural expe-
rience; it is never a circumscribed, fixed corpus of knowledge.
The quest for adequate descriptions of these fleeting art forms is nevertheless
worth the effort, since modern Mexican and Guatemalan Indians, like their pre-
Columbian forebears, take accomplished and poised use of language extremely se-
riously. Eloquence in the spoken word, in fact, often ranks as the single most
important qualification for leadership and public service in Indian communities.
Why and how is this so?
Mesoamerican mythological accounts, past and present, link acquisition of lan-
guage and dialogue with the dawn of consciousness in the creation of the human
condition. In time present as in time past, language, with its wide range of poetic
and musical embellishments, has functioned as a sacred symbol that allows humans