MAYAN MASKS, 33
MAYAN MASKS
The masks you see worn during religious festivals in Mayan areas
(especially in the highland areas of Mexico
and Guatemala) are a creation of the Maya from after the Conquest based on the
masks that adorned their temples as well as the masks worn by Classical Mayan
dancers as seen on their ceramics. It is known that the Maya had religious
brotherhoods and specific dances were performed by each. They would get into a
trance state through the use of alcohol and mushrooms.
Some think that hallucinogenic drugs or medicines were
used to put the performer into an altered state of mind. Once in this
state of mind the participants were transformed into their wayob or soul
companions. These soul companions were
depicted through the masks and the costumes
people wore in the dance. Some scenes are painted on pottery such as that from the myriad
ritual meals of Classic festivals. These vessels depict humans, both kings and
nobles, dressed in costumes. Their human faces are shown in cutaway view inside
the costumes of the fantastic creatures they have become through the
transformation of the dance. Some of these wayob are recognizable as
animals like jaguars and birds of prey, but others just
look like strange monsters.”
These trance dancers wearing masks are also described in a post-classic
book called the Popol Vuh.
When the Maya were collectivized by the Conquistadors and then their
religious and political leaders were either killed or co-opted by the Spanish,
the local survivors were converted by Jesuit priests for the most part. Without
access to their writing (since the Scribes were gone), the people reverted to local
practices such as worshiping mountains and performing divination. They still
retained memories of their old gods, but as they were converted they overlaid
Catholic saints on to these gods. Thus, Tlaloc, the rain god became St. Michael
and so forth. Their masks reflected this syncretism as did their religious lay
brotherhoods called Cofradias.
The dances to their new saints replaced the dances to their old gods and
the people were very aware of the dual nature of their worship. They made other
masks to represent the Spanish Conquista and the coming of Jesus and the saints
who were really their memories of their deities (especially the local forces of
the four corners and colors, the underworld and the sky world plus the
mountains they worshipped). They formed Cofradias or religious lay orders
dedicated to a saint and each Cofradia had different masks and costumes.
One of the most famous masked dances was a re-telling of a 15th Century
Maya drama called the Rabinal Achi. It takes place annually in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. Its original name
is Xajoj Tun, meaning
"Trumpet Dance." In this dance drama, the Maya wear masks to
represent a story of two princes who are at war. The dancers wear Jaguar Masks
and Quetzal Bird masks as well as masks representing various servants of the
princes who are combinations of animals and people. The dance is always
performed on St. Paul’s day by his cofradia.
Remember that these people had been gathered together into central towns
from their individual villages. They were set up into a debt peonage system of
work where they had to purchase their grain and tools from overseers and never
got out of debt. The only thing they had was their secret religious practices
that mixed Catholic with Native practices. On top of this, the Spanish had set
up a caste system where Spanish whites were on the top, Criollos or native
whites were next, Mestizos or mixed blood peoples next, the native Maya who had
collaborated with the Spanish during the conquista next, and at the very bottom
the native indios. Each caste had certain rights and privileges, such as where
they could live, how they could dress and what work they were allowed to do.
By the time of the Independence in 1821, the Maya were released from
these collective farms and many went to Quintana Roo, then a territory, where
they could practice their religion and farming practices in relative peace. In
1848, after a revolt in the Yucatan and a resulting declaration of
independence, the Maya living to the southeast of Valladolid had a vision of
three crosses and named their town Chan-Santa Cruz based on the worship of the
crosses. The crosses would speak and through divination often directed the
population of Quintana Roo on raids with firearms they had obtained from the
revolutionaries. They returned to what they remembered of their native
practices.
New masks were worn during sacrifices of copal incense, chickens, corn
flour and chocolate to the crosses. The Maya of Chan-Santa Cruz never really
surrendered although the Mexican Army destroyed their town and scattered the
people. What they built in its place became the resort of Cancun.
Today, the various villages of Maya in the lowlands and highlands still
dance on Saint’s days wearing masks to tell the stories of their gods and
leaders through a lens of Catholic belief
MAYAN
CULTURE
This mask comes from the mayas, they were a Mesoamerican civilization
from the southeast of Mexico. They highlighted for their glyph writing,
the only fully developed writing system in the pre-Columbian American
continent. They are good at math, art, astronomy, architecture… During
the formative period, before 2000 B. C., began the development of agriculture
and the population became sedentary establishing in the first villages. The basic
foods of the Mayan diet were corn, beans, pumpkins and chilies. The first
Mayan cities developed around 750 B. C. About 500 B. C. These cities had a
monumental architecture, including great temples with facades of stucco.
MAYAN ART
Mayan art, made from perishable and non-perishable materials, served to
connect the Maya with their ancestors. Although surviving Mayan art is only
a small portion of what the Maya created, it deals with a wider variety of
subjects than any other art tradition in the Americas. The Mayans showed
a preference for green or blue-green, and used the same word for blue and
green colors. Consequently, they placed a high value on green jade and other
green stones, associating them with the Sun God. They carved artifacts ranging
from beads and fine tiles to carved heads weighing 4.42 kg. The Mayan
nobility practiced dental modification, and some men wore jade inlays on
their teeth. Mosaic funerary masks could also be made of jade, such as that of
K'inich Janaab 'Pakal, the king of Palenque.
The Mayan stone sculpture emerged in the archaeological record as a tradition
already fully developed, suggesting that it may have evolved from the tradition
of wood carving. Due to the biodegradability of wood, the corpus of
woodworking has almost completely disappeared. The few surviving wood
artifacts include three-dimensional sculptures and panels with glyphs.
The largest Mayan sculptures were architectural facades made of stucco. The
approximate form was established in a smooth plaster coating on the wall,
and the three-dimensional shape was built with small stones. Finally, this was
coated with stucco and molded to the final shape; the forms of the human body
were first modeled in stucco and then the suits were added. Finally, the stucco
sculpture was painted in vivid colors. Towards the Late Preclassic, the
facades of the temples were adorned with giant stucco masks, and this type
of decoration continued during the Classic period.
The Maya had a long tradition of mural painting; In San Bartolo exquisite
polychrome murals dating from between 300 and 200 B. C. were excavated.
Polychrome designs were painted on walls plastered with smooth plaster.
Most of these murals no longer exist, but several preserved murals - painted
in cream, red and blac, they were found in the tombs of the Early Classic
period in Caracol, Río Azul and Tikal. Among the best preserved murals
stands a series of great Late Classic paintings in Bonampak.
WEBGRAFIA
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultura_maya#Arte
BIBLIOGRAFÍA
Arte Maya
ALBA OUBIÑA BÚAM, 3º ESO A.
