CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 531agree with Sapir, but would be likely to force the issue to greater hyperbole. Through-
out the region, Mesoamericans linked language and dialogue to the dawn of con-
sciousness in the creation of the human condition. In time present as in time past,
language, with its wide range of rhetorical, poetic, and musical embellishments, has
behaved as a sacred symbol that allows humans to share qualities with, and to com-
municate with, gods.
In effect, beautifully executed speech and song are the only substances, with the
possible exception of blood, that the human body can produce that are accessible to,
and worthy before, divine beings. The Aztec theory of language, song, and poetics
was expressed in the metaphor of plants and flowers. Flowers are the most beautiful,
perfect achievement of plants, and also their medium for continuity through seed
production. Flowers are also symbols of the transforming sacred power of the sun.
So also, song and poetry are the most beautiful realization of the human spirit, mak-
ing this essence worthy before the deities. If divine beings are pleased, human life is
allowed to continue. A variant of these ideas occurs among the Chamula Tzotzil, in
which the metatheory of language links high poetic and musical forms of the lan-
guage to the qualities of divine heat, which are required for communication to and
about the Sun-Christ (for a detailed discussion of Tzotzil metatheory about language,
see Chapter 13).
It is well known that ancient Mesoamerican writing and mnemonic systems were
used to record calendrical, dynastic, and astronomical information of the highest
order of political and religious importance. Books were in fact produced, kept, and
used by a priestly class. The spiritual and political power that the native Mesoamer-
icans attached to pictographic and hieroglyphic books was such that the conquering
Spaniards destroyed them as a first order of business, and did so with particular zeal
(native writing in Mesoamerica is discussed in Chapter 6).
The native languages of Mesoamerica retain today not only their remarkable vi-
tality (over 15 million contemporary Mesoamericans continue to speak over eighty
native languages as their first or only language) but also their importance as an art
form and as a passive and active political force (again, see Chapter 13). The late an-
thropologist Eva Hunt observed, with understatement, that the conservative char-
acter of Mesoamerica’s native languages may be the single best way to account for the
continuity in the region’s distinctive symbolic order in our time.
It is also worth noting that the written form of language continues to be impor-
tant in Mesoamerican Indian communities, even in those that are largely nonliter-
ate either in their own languages or in Spanish. For example, the charter
proclamation of the Festival of Games in San Juan Chamula, a community that is
largely monolingual in Tzotzil and over 90 percent nonliterate, exists only in written
form. This document, called the “Spanish letter,” is “read” (actually recited from
memory) at key moments in the ritual sequence. The Spanish letter itself is a re-
gional historical synthesis of the conquest, incorporating references to Spanish sol-
diers who come from Guatemala and Mexico City. The paper on which it is written
is a potent ritual symbol and mnemonic device. This function is not unlike the role
of the written word in ancient Mesoamerica (see Chapter 11). This also recalls the
sacred “Books of Chilam Balam,” written in Maya utilizing the Latin alphabet, which