The Mayan Enigma

For my wife, Maria Eugenia-Sheny; I have enjoyed every minute

of our incredible journey.

For my parents Juanita and Lindo who gave me the foundation, the freedom and the opportunity to pursue my dreams.

To the Maya-K’iché people and their millenary conception of heaven and earth, as recorded in their sacred book, Popol Vuh hundreds of years before the conquerors destroyed their world.

This book is also dedicated to those Guatemalan and foreign scholars who came to Guatemala to discover, study, learn and catalogue the myriad of archeological findings in this way helping to preserve our Mayan heritage. As Guatemalans we owe you an eternal debt of gratitude.

For my great teachers, my respects and heartfelt appreciation for their hard work and dedication invested in their students. Thank you.

For Guatemala, land of eternal spring and to the generous American people.

Special Note:

Comments received from my readers after the publication of my first novel, The Quetzal and the Cross, regarding the names of the protagonists and those of the different ethnic groups involved in the drama and to make the reading easier, in this novel I have decided to use the phonetic equivalent, as follows:

K’iché will become Kiché

Tz’utujil will become Zutujil

K’ak’chiquel would phonetically become Cachikel

PROLOGUE  

25 JULY, 1524 

The light of the sun had faded almost completely, leaving the battlefield bathed in the light of a big, bright moon.

The Spaniard troops and the remnants of their allies, the Kachikel and the Zutujils armies were combing the area, looking for survivors and spoil amongst the vanquished troops of their mortal enemy, their brethren, the Kiché(Quiché).

The dying day was witness to the massacre of the armies of the last Mayan Prince, Ahau Galel- Tecún Umán who perished at the hands of Sergeant, Juan Argueta, a soldier of fortune that miraculously had saved the life of his Captain, Pedro de Alvarado, the commander of the victorious troops.

Later in the night, the Supreme Priest of the Kiché, Ah Pun Kisin, guided by the light of the moon was searching for the body of his Prince, the Nima Rajpop Achij-Great Captain, General, Ahau Galel-Tecún Umán, slain that day.  To locate the corpse he was looking for amongst the thousands of bodies, one of his only clues was that his lord would be lying covered by the body of their sacred bird, the Quetzal which perished attempting to protect with his life the one of his protégée, the prince. His other clue was that the prince would be near a big, white horse that he had killed while trying to exterminate his Spaniard enemy.

The priest had to hurry because the deadline in which the body could be cleansed and purified according to the precepts of their sacred book, the Popol Vuh which narrated the history of his people hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived in his domain.  After almost three hours of patiently scouring the field, the priest finally located the corpse. With the utmost reverence he kneeled down and in silence said a short prayer asking his God Tojil-the Jaguar God to receive his immortal soul and help his nation in this dark hour of their defeat.  With surprise he realized that despite the searing heat, the body was not yet showing any signs of decomposition. He thanked Jacawitz-the Mountain God for allowing him the privilege of finding the remains of his master in such a good condition. He quickly summoned the other men in his entourage and in a hushed voice, ordered them to place the prince in the litter they have being carrying with them. The party soon disappeared in the night marching toward their capital, the city of K’umarkaj, now under siege by the invading forces. They were able to enter the city without difficulties because the metropolis didn’t have any walls that could impede their access.

Once the party arrived at the temple of K’uq’matz- the white feathered serpent, several other priests were waiting for their priest supreme and the body they have recovered. Hastily they started the tedious process of embalming the corpse and getting it ready for purification and burial in a previously designated secret place.

The council of the priests had agreed not to cremate the body of the prince as was their custom. The priests and the few elders that remained in the town had agreed to follow these steps to keep the memory of their lord alive and to help their vanquished people to cope with the grim days ahead.  The corpse would be carried by Ah Pun Kisin and a cadre of selected young priests to its final resting place. Before the embalming process was started, the supreme priest removed the beautifully carved jade statuette the prince was wearing around his neck, secreted it in his robes and departed for a secret room where a scribe was waiting for him. The scribe would carve in detailed Mayan glyphs, a secret message that would help the new generations to find portents of times to come. In case the little statuette was lost, a detailed reproduction of it would be painted in the right hand of the royal messenger that would be holding it in such a way that would allow whoever found it, to read with relative ease the symbols written in it to guide him or her, during their quest. The priests had devised a set of clues that would be left at previously chosen places, known only to a small number of selected priests and elders that would be entrusted with preserving their traditions alive.

The group left the city the next night for an unknown destination.

The next months brought with them the wrath of the conquering Spaniards. In retaliation for not inviting the invaders to come to the city for close to 2 weeks, their commander, Pedro de Alvarado burned to the ground the imposing temples and palaces. The surviving K’iche warriors were taken as slaves by the Spaniards and their allies, the K’akchiquels and Tz’utujils.  

Some of the prisoner-slaves were brought to Iximché, the K’akchikels’ capital; while others were sent to Chuitinamit, the capital of the Tz’utujils. Many enemies, especially the surviving officers, were executed on the spot. With this catastrophe in their hands the priests had to devise ways to avoid capture by the Spaniards or their indian allies. In the confusion of the battle and the aftermath, any information as the whereabouts of the body or the statuette were lost and would remain missing for close to six-hundred years.

CHAPTER  1

1701

SANTO TOMÁS, CHICHICASTENANGO.

Father Francisco Ximenez, a Dominican Friar arrived in the town of Chuilá, present day, Santo Tomás Chichicastenango in the highlands of present day Guatemala. Father Ximenez was tired and hungry but eager to start his ministry amongst the K’akchikel Indians. He was despondent, arguing with himself why he had been assigned to this Godforsaken place-but he rapidly crossed himself asking God forgiveness for his blasphemy.

The greater part of the previous inhabitants had abandoned the place forced by the cruelty of their former allies, the Spaniards, which were now using them as slaves, breaking their promise that they would be treated as equals when their cacique Acajal agreed to help the invaders to conquer their brethren, the K’iche. They were now paying dearly for their miscalculation and were resentful of the foreigners, most notably the Catholic priests that were trying to force them to abandon their gods and be converted to Catholicism. Every day the priests subjected them to unusual punishment when they failed to learn the bible and practice the rituals of the new church. The abuses of the clerics were only surpassed by the brutality of the governor, Gonzalo de Alvarado, one the sons of the older brother of the commander of the invaders, Pedro de Alvarado. With time, father Ximenez started to exert more pressure on the governor looking for better treatment for these wretched creatures, adducing that they also were children of God. When the K’akchikel  indians realized that Father Ximenez was an honest and pious man that was working hard to improve their misery, they started to place more trust in him, sometimes allowing the cleric to attend some of their ancient rituals, though in a very limited way. Father Ximenez bid his time and in few months had learned the basic rudiments of their language which made him more endearing to the locals. With the knowledge of the Maya-K’iche language, Father Ximenez was able to understand that their prayers were very similar to his prayers, except that in their case, they were directed to the ancient gods, Tepeu, the God Creator or Balam, the Jaguar God. The cleric attuned his way of teaching employing simpler ways, integrating his believes with theirs, slowly gaining more of their trust. Months later, Father Ximenez learned that the K’akchiquels used a book, similar to his bible that told of the creation of the world, the animals and men, though the book had been written almost six centuries before the Europeans arrived in these lands. After several years of securing their confidence, the elders of the realm, with the approval of the few remaining priests agreed to grant him access to their sacred book, which they called Popol Vuh, the book of the counsel or book of the mat. When Father Ximenez saw the manuscript his eyes almost popped from its orbits. He was taken aback with the beautifully crafted tome, delicately painted with Mayan glyphs of exquisite design. The priests explained that the book set the rules of conduct, narrated the origin of the world, detailing the role of each god in the creation, the way the animals and men were created and assigned a function in the order of the universe. He couldn’t believe that the codex was better illustrated than many of the bibles he had seen in his native land. The text was painted in a vertical manner, several meters in length, folded like an accordion. From that moment, his quest and purpose in life became the translation of the glyphs to his native Castilian- Spanish. To that purpose he pressed into service one of his earlier converts, an indian baptized with the name of Diego Reynoso. With the intercession of Reynoso, Father Ximenez was able to persuade another indian convert, Cristobal Velasco who, at that time, was the Nim Chokoh Cavec- Great Steward of the Ajaws- the nobles to help him. Velasco had been instrumental in the writing of another book entitled, Titulo de los Señores de Totonicapán- Title of the Lords of Totonicapán, which described the lineage of the royal houses of the K’iche kingdom. Father Ximenez was not aware that Velasco had been designated by the priests as their instrument in preserving the precious manuscript. Velasco, in exchange for helping Father Ximenez was granted by the cleric his request to write the preface of the translation as he was previously commanded by his priests. Velasco wrote:

This we now write under the law of God and Christianity; we shall bring it to light because now the Popol Vuh – the book of the counsel, as it is now called, cannot be seen anymore, in which was clearly foretold the coming of the invader from the other side of the sea and the narrative of our obscurity, and our life as was clearly seen.

Throughout the translation, Velasco and Reynoso, under the guide of the scribes and the priests managed to hid words carrying a message with detailed instructions for the future generations of their people in the hope that one day they again would be free and able to retrieve the directives that would be recorded as a riddle, describing the final resting place of Ahau Galel, prince Tecún, together with more prophecies by the astrologers for the next six-thousand years. The only difference between these clues and the text was a slight variation in the color of the ink used and the sequence of the words; otherwise, they were indistinguishable from the original text.  The priests were afraid that with the cruel rule of the soldiers and the fanaticism of the Dominican clerics, their sacred book could vanish forever or be condemned to the pyre.

After the translation was completed, the original manuscript again disappeared, some believing that it was destroyed or hidden in a place that has never been found. The only surviving text was the work of Father Ximenez who continued until his death, his pious and noble work with the K’akchikels and later on, with the Tz’utujils and other indigenous groups.

CHAPTER 2

Charles Etienne Brasseur was born in a French enclave in the Flemish town of De Bourbourg in 1845. This afternoon he was busily packing his few material possessions at the home of his order, the Monastery of Quebec. The Abbott, Charles Felix Cazeau had summarily dismissed Charles Etienne when he became aware that de Bourbourg had published, without his permission, a history of the Seminary that had angered most of the ordained priests and the ones in training. But he, like a cat, had landed on his feet and got a new position, this time in the Diocese of Boston, Massachusetts, at the invitation of his new friend and sponsor, Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick; in this new assignment he served at the satisfaction of his Bishop whom in few years made him Vicar General of his Diocese.

Charles Etienne’s main desire in life was to study the customs of the indigenous people and the ancient monuments of America, especially Mexico and Central America. To that effect he had resigned his post in Boston and left bound for Europe, to study and conduct research in the Indian archives of Rome and Madrid in preparation for his trip. He finally left for Mexico in 1847 where he stayed for some time, and then moved to Guatemala when he had learned that a precious Mayan manuscript was kept, poorly protected at the Library of the University of San Carlos. Years later, in 1861, he published a significant French translation of the sacred book of the Maya-K’iche Indians in the highlands of Guatemala. With time many of his translations and assertions were proven to be wrong. This treatise had also included an essay on Central American mythology.

While in Madrid, in 1866, he examined a document in possession of a Spaniard Professor, Juan de Tro Y Ortolano who had purchased the document six years before and that had baffled the experts for many years. The text was written in paper made of bark, constructed like an accordion, several pages long when extended. De Bourbourg rapidly identified the characters written in the manuscript as Mayan. Charles Etienne was elated and asked the owner, de Tro Y Ortolano to let him publish his findings in an almost faithful translation. In appreciation, De Bourbourg named the codex in his honor as the Troano Codex. The publication of this document was significant since this work was only the third such Maya codex to have been uncovered, the second one being the Paris Codex discovered by the French scholar Leon de Rosnay, few years before. In conversation with his benefactor, de Bourbourg recollected a story amongst the indians that narrated the destruction of many Mayan codices at the hands of Diego de Landa, a fanatic Spaniard priest who condemned precious texts to the flames, forever erasing crucial part of the history of the Mayan people of Mexico’s lowlands-the Yucatán Peninsula.

Few years later, another Maya codex came to light in the hands of another collector, a manuscript that became known as the Cortesianus Codex in the belief that this work had been in the possession of Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, which later on, Leon de Rosnay proved that it was part of the Troano Codex.

In that century, Europe was practically bulging at the seams with manuscripts and artifacts looted from Egypt, Greece, Italy and most recently Mexico and Guatemala, the new treasure chest of the avid scholars which came and in total collusion with the authorities of those countries, took precious and irreplaceable original artifacts, manuscripts and sculptures. And so it went that many legitimate scholars and dozens of would be experts parlayed their way to riches or fame, with flawed translations or spurious claims.

CHAPTER 3

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES, UNIVERSIDAD DE SAN

CARLOS, GUATEMALA CITY.

Professor, Olivia-Livi Ximénez was a sculptural, 5’8’’ gorgeous brunette, tall for Guatemalan standards, with silky, light brown hair, liquid brown eyes-almost yellow, like honey and a generous, well formed mouth. Without her being aware, she was extremely attractive, sensual and poised that many people that knew her, said that she resembled the American business woman and radio talk show host, Maria Bartiromo. Her easy and friendly smile won her many friends and quite a few puppy love and admirers amongst her students at the facultad, though the professor didn’t take any grief from would be troublemakers. She was a tenured Professor of Archeology at the school and a curator at the museum of archeology and ethnology in the city. Olivia had graduated magna cum laude from Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala City with a degree in Liberal Arts- a Licenciada, equivalent to an American PhD and had post graduate studies at Oxford University in England, Universidad de Madrid in Spain and most recently at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Many who knew her asked why she was still teaching in Guatemala when she could have very easily got a good position anywhere abroad, her answer always was that she loved her country and was needed here. She was fluent in her native Spanish, English, Italian and she was now learning French. She was especially proud of her command of Qatzijob’al, most popularly known as K’iche, the most common language spoken amongst the Maya-K’iche Indians of the highlands of Guatemala. Olivia also spoke other less frequently used dialects of her country. She inherited her love of archeology from her father who, as she was growing old, told her many stories of the Guatemalan Indians, their incredible accomplishments, their struggle against the invading Spaniards and many more stories her father regaled her with, during their frequent conversations. Because of these ideas she became almost obsessed with the idea of finding the final resting place of the national hero Tecún Umán. To achieve this goal she had travelled to Madrid, Spain where she studied the Troano Codex, then she went to Dresden, Germany to peruse the Codex Dresdensis and most recently she studied the only known copy of the Maya-K’iche sacred book known as Popol Vuh kept at the Newberry Library in Chicago. For few precious days she read the incredible glyphs and the Spanish translation of Father Ximenez, but she was unable to find any indications about her quest of finding the tomb of her hero, though at that time, she noticed several anomalies in the text, something that didn’t mesh with the narrative, but she dismissed this as probably a figment of her eager mind; she promised herself to come back and again review the manuscript. Every time she was in the presence of this irreplaceable work of art, the history of her people, she became incensed, her blood boiled at the treachery of that French priest that had removed the manuscript from the library at the University of San Carlos many years before, disregarding any decorum and gratitude for the hospitality the country had shown him. Unfortunately her sabbatical had ended too soon and she had to return to her duties. She was very proud of her Spaniard heritage but even more of her Maya-K’iche ancestry of which she, at the most, had but few precious drops it at all. She possessed a supremely sharp and logical mind; she was meticulous, almost a perfectionist, extremely loyal to her friends, family and any other person that won her friendship. Her students loved her to distraction and many said they would do anything to won her over.

This morning, her long and well formed legs were carrying her to her classroom through the corridors of the venerable school, wearing her brand new Manolo Blahnik shoes that she had bought in Rome on her return stopover from Israel. The clickity-clack of the heels accentuated her rush; the long stilettos made her hips move with a gracious cadence. She was late-well not really, only five minutes before her class started, but for her- miss perfect, she thought was behind schedule. She didn’t like to be late. Suddenly, her left shoe stiletto was trapped in a tiny crack in the tiles and broke completely. Damnation! She came hobbling into the classroom which alarmed the students present who solicitously asked if she was ok. She explained that it was only a minor mishap and promptly started her class. The subject of that day would be the new findings in the area near the archeological Park of Tikal. She expounded on the great work Professor Hansen, from Idaho University has been doing for the last 25 years; suddenly a student raised his hand and when he was acknowledged by Olivia, he said, Licenciada, do you really believe that the final resting place of Tecún Umán is about to be discovered? He continued when Olivia didn’t answer at once, "There are some rumors that the place contains a statuette of pure jade that has an inscription with instructions for whomever finds it- how does he knows this? Olivia thought, she then responded, In my last trip to Chichicastenango, I heard some of the locals affirm that the statuette indeed has some inscriptions, but we don’t know, nor they know what the characters say, although some elders told me that it may contain a cure for an old disease, while others say that it only reveals new predictions of the path of Venus, the moon and other planets. Really, there is a lot of speculation and right now, I cannot give you a categorical response. Maybe in another occasion we can devote the time to explore the many possibilities open to us. Thank you for your question. She continued her lecture without more interruptions.

As soon as the class was dismissed, the student went outside, to the patio, retrieved his cell phone and made a call to a number already stored in the phone’s memory. When the call was answered, he informed his contact about