Janferie Stonecrucial roles to play. Indeed, a man could not accrue enough service,
status, or wealth to rise in the hierarchies, whether of the local civil
government or the Cofradias, without a wife.
Gossen and Leventhal ( 1993 , 185 – 217 ) suggest that the insistence
on male dominance in public secular venues responds to a reality in
which childhood and adult life for men are initiated in the female lo-
cus of the household. However, the power that accrues to the feminine
from their submergence in the domestic sphere emerges publicly in sa-
cred performances through symbolic images, the cloth and ritual ob-
jects they have fashioned, and their honored roles as mother–fathers
in festival. Occasionally, over the centuries of Maya resistance to co-
lonial and then nation–state domination, women have risen to prom-
inence in public affairs as leaders and symbols in movements based
on native “priesthoods” and values (Bricker 1981 ). In the context of
la violencia, the appearance of Rigoberta Menchú as an international
spokesperson might be viewed as one instance of this phenomenon.
Historically, such female moments in power have been brief, with their
reigns preceded and rapidly succeeded by those of men. Gossen and
Leventhal, studying how Maya communities construct narratives to
describe these historical movements, propose a model that is carried
out on every level, from the local to the state to the cosmos.
The action begins with an initial state of nothingness, and then de-
scribes the coexistence of mutual adversaries and growing pessimism
and despair. An awareness of plight or war arises, and expectations
rise to meet it. A female divinity or principle appears, rallying the
forces, but quickly her voice is supplanted by that of a male broker,
who wrests mystical power from the female, leading to male ascen-
dancy, the slaying of enemies, and a period of societal intolerance of
otherness. Two outcomes are possible: one is the triumph of the forces
who rose up against the status quo and the creation of a new steady
state, now purged, in which patrifocal elements reassert their control
over society. The second possibility is that the rebellious protago-
nists are defeated, but in the narratives and histories, instead of being
killed, they transform into their nawals and disappear into the moun-
tains. In such an ambiguous ending, they maintain the possibility of
mounting a new threat to the steady state of the victors, and they may