Janferie Stonebecame a bounded zone of safety that was sustained through prayer
and public silence (Petrich 1997 , 27 – 28 , 30 ). But the violence was
present around Lake Atitlun, flaring into open battle in Santiago Atit-
lan and in frequent gunfire exchanges in the hills and on the roads.
The connection of such tales of nawals to la violencia is made explicit
by the work of Kay Warren in the Kaq chikel town of San Andrés.
She has written a detailed analysis of similar tales of nawalism that
she has come to call “Peel Off Flesh; Come Back On,” that she re-
corded on her return to San Andrés in the late eighties, when the vi-
olence had diminished (Warren 1998 , 101 – 108 ). She was amazed to
find that the most progressive people, catechists who had dedicated
themselves to Catholic Action and political consciousness–raising,
were discussing rumors and stories of shape-shifters, usually women
and wives. One woman insisted, “This is really true; this really hap-
pened, Kay. My niece saw a woman as she was transforming herself”
(Warren 1998 , 101 ).
The stories featured a woman, who had previously lived harmoni-
ously with her husband, exhibiting signs of illness. Despite his loving
care, she does not improve, and he begins to watch her more care-
fully. It turns out that she is drugging him into a deep sleep each night
so that she may change into an animal and roam the town. Her aches
and pains are the result of beatings she receives in her animal form.
Once he has witnessed the process, the appalled husband consults a
diviner and resolves to be “an assassin of the flesh” by salting the hu-
man skin she leaves behind. Thus, one night, returning to the house,
the wife is unable to re-clothe herself in her human flesh and disap-
pears in her animal form into the night. In these tales, the ideal be-
havior of a wife is posed within a state of harmony in the marriage;
this performance, by preceding the transformation, casts the wife’s
moral choices in a negative light and her actions as betrayal. In the
outcome of this version, the ambiguous other, unable to return to the
human fold, is expelled into nature. There is no episode leading to an
account of lineage, the positive and ongoing outcome presented in Ve-
ra’s tale. The unknown fate of the nawal parallels the inherent uncer-
tainty that rules during a state of violence.
When Kay Warren recounted the Trixano nawal tales to North