Goulet.pdf

Janferie Stone
Many tales involve a man, a trader, on the road overnight, who
is forced to take shelter in a strange house, or near ruins or a ceme-
tery. Overhearing people talking, he recognizes the voice of his wife,
making pacts with other “masters of the night” to bring destruction
to the townspeople. While it may be necessary for a man to be out
in the night, it is never acceptable for a woman (see, for example, Ya
ktal qiisoom, “Catarina la characotel” from Santiago Atitlan, Pet-
rich 1999 , 86 – 90 ). Women, transformed into their nawals, are seen as
agents of destruction for both family and community, and ultimately,
they must be expelled from society.
The two images of women, the one in traje, highly valued and in-
deed valorized, the other as nawal, an anathema, are actually both in-
stances of dressing, when the appearance of women is represented as
crucial in the construction of everyday sociality. These accounts must
be contextualized within the historical development of Maya spiri-
tual and political power. Furthermore, drawing on the work of Kay
Warren and a historical model proposed by Gary Gossen and Rich-
ard Leventhal, I suggest that within the context of la violencia (the
Guatemalan civil conflict) these images of women as nawals represent
extraordinary spiritual performances that marked movement toward
widespread social change at a particular moment. These performances
may not have been recognized as such within the society.

Clothing the Woman, from Labor to Reproduction

For women, cloth has been the product of female labor, key in their
contributions to the household, town, and the national economies of
Mesoamerica. This has been so for millennia. Many studies of Maya
textiles have focused on their technical excellence, skill, and mastery
of design, yet imputed Spanish influences and institutions of control,
to the development of significant markers of clan, village, and lin-
guistic regions (Shevill 1985 , 20 – 22 ). But Irma Otzoy insists that the
Maya had more control over the socio-cultural trajectories of their
production. She explores the complexities of signifiers on cloth, be-
ginning with ancient portrayals on ceramics, codices, and the stone
monuments of Classic Maya cities (Otzoy 1996 a, 142 – 143 ). As more