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.