It is not by accident that I reached the point in my series on El Salvador indigenous history and got stuck at 600 AD, with the description of Joya de Cerén, the Pompeii-like Mayan classical site which was frozen in time following a volcanic eruption which covered the farming village. The next topics to cover - the spectacular building of Cihuatán in the mid 8th century, its violent destruction about 100 years later, and then the arrival of the Pipiles from Mexico - did not make sense. The Pipiles, for example, told early Spanish chroniclers that they resettled in El Salvador as a form of retribution against all the Olmecas for causing them so much suffering. How does that fit? The Olmecs were from the Gulf of Mexico coast of Veracruz and Tabasco. And who would have attacked Cihuatán in such a fashion? The Pipiles did not have that military capacity.
That is why I have needed to take a big step back and look at the history of corn and the world of the cave dwellers. The history of corn has included an examination of the distribution of teosinte as a place name which was found to be centered in the Guatemala-Honduras-El Salvador triangle area (i.e. Chorti Maya area). Then by determining that teo means 'island' in Chorti' Maya, it was possible to see that teosinte, in fact, means 'plants in a row on an island'. The two islands of Lago Coatepeque ('serpent hill lake') and Lago Güija ('navel' or 'source' lake), both in western El Salvador, were used to continually hybridize corn with teosinte from a variety of local sites. Corn had undergone significant hybridization by 1500 BC, therefore these two islands are extremely early Mayan agricultural sites, i.e. pre-Pre-Classic.
And now the cave. The Popol Vuh offers a very detailed view of Xibalba, the underworld, the cave that the Mayans came out of. Dennis Tedlock, in his very good translation of the Popol Vuh into English, states that the first part of Xibalba means 'fright'. That's an important clue. Xibalba is an evil place, as described in the Popol Vuh, perhaps similar to Hades. Tedlock translates the leaders' names as One Death and Seven Death. Other leaders are called Demon of Pus, Blood Gatherer, Demon of Jaundice, Bone Scepter, Skull Scepter, and so on. You get the picture. And this is men describing Xibalba - you can only imagine what life was like for the women.
The Xibalbans did not just stay in the cave. The Popol Vuh discusses the road(s) to Xibalba as crossing various rivers, but especially mentions Pus River and Blood River, and says that they were traps put there by the Xibalbans. Given the leader names of Demon of Pus and Blood Gatherer, it is clear that the Xibalbans used rivers to ambush people and keep control of the roads, as is typical in "pre-civilized" societies. They controlled the countryside.
In Chorti' Maya, which is the oldest and purest Mayan language and the language of the inscriptions at Tikal and most Classic-era sites, xib is a plural male pronoun, as in 'those men of' or 'those men who'. It is pronounced similar to 'she' in English, with a 'b' at the end. But xib also correlates with the syllable xi. To show the impact of xi in the Mayan psyche or culture, it is helpful to see how it shows up in various words, with meanings in English:
- baxi 'pull out'
- haxi 'roll into a twist'
- ha'xi 'snare with a rope'
- hixi 'pull off with the fingers'
- huxi 'pluck'
- k'uxi 'gnaw on'
- muxi 'grind on the metate'
- see quxi 'lay an egg'
Following Tedlock's lead, in Chorti' the middle syllable is ba'k' which means 'fear' or 'fright'. The 'a' at the end could be ah, as in 'one who does'. But that is only used as a prefix in Chorti', not a suffix. The closest suffix sound is ha, which means 'water'. So Xi-ba'k'-ha means 'men who make water afraid' or more likely 'men who are afraid of water'. This is a derogatory name, something seen over and over again in the names of one's enemies in the Popol Vuh.
But more importantly, putting it together with the fact that some of the earliest Mayan settlements were built on islands, a very clear picture comes about. The earliest Mayans escaped from Xibalba, were pursued, and were only safe after entering water and swimming to safety to islands, because xibakha, the men were afraid of water. The islands were the only place that the Mayans were safe from the xibakha reign of terror. This is made even clearer by the Chorti' verb 'to swim', which is luhxih, giving a directional reference point, i.e. away from xih.
I write this as tears fall down my face. One can only understand the meaning of Xibalba if one understands El Mozote massacre, the Rio Sumpul massacre, the matanza of indigenous of 1932, the nearly 200,000 Guatemalan indigenous killed in the 1980s, the suffering caused by the US government in Central America, the repression of anti-coup leaders in Honduras, and the current murders against Salvadoran anti-mining activists. And then learn to swim.
I recently wrote about various caves in the Mesoamerica region, including La Gruta del Espíritu Santo cave in eastern El Salvador. The Popol Vuh also offers clues regarding the location of Xibalba. The Popol Vuh describes two early Mayan leaders being killed at Xibalba and buried nearby at 'Place of Ball Game Sacrifice'. The Popol Vuh was written in Quiche. Some of the words and syllables have changed from the original, which would have been Chorti' or very close to Chorti'. In Quiche, the 'Place of Ball Game Sacrifice' is Pusb'al cha'j. But let's look at it in Chorti'.
In Chorti', just as in English, there is a connection between the words used for hunted animals and a ball game. In Chorti' korom is hunted animals and kor is ball or pellet. Perhaps the subjects of the Xibalban lords were actually forced to "play" each other, as wild animals, to the death. This may have been both a form of entertainment and a means of population control. The naming of one of the rooms or houses in Xibalba as 'jaguar room' gives this connotation. This interpretation also would be consistent with the evolution of the later ball game fields at Mayan Pre-Classic and Classic sites.
In addition to kor, 'place' is irah, and 'sacrifice' is toy. So the full name would be kor-irah-toy. Two kilometers from La Gruta del Espíritu Santo cave is the town of Corinto. Further confirmation of this connection is the word for 'game place' in Chorti', koromtar.
This placement of Xibalba is consistent with the Popol Vuh. The early Mayans in the Popol Vuh always traveled east from their homes to Xibalba when summoned by the lords there. The Xibalba cave is in northeast El Salvador and one of the roads to Xibalba went from Isla Teopán and Isla Teotipa in west and northwest El Salvador. But the Popol Vuh makes it clear that there were four Mayan clans that escaped from Xibalba. And it turns out that they each went to a different island to escape the men afraid of water.
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