Nahualá
Encyclopedia
Nahualá is a municipality
in the Sololá department
of Guatemala
. The town is sometimes known as Santa Catarina Nahualá, in honor of the town’s patron saint
, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, but the official name is just "Nahualá".
Nahualá orNawala' is also the K'iche' (Quiché) language
name for the Nahualate River
, which is calledNiwala' the local Nahualá dialect. The river has its source in the north of the township of Nahualá, and flows through the center of the town's cabecera ("head-town").
Nahuala is the location of radio station Nawal Estereo, the successor to the La Voz de Nahuala, which was originally founded with the assistance of Roman Catholic clerics in the 1960s. Nowadays, the station broadcasts primarily in the K'iche' language, with some broadcasts also done in Kaqchikel
and Spanish.
term nagual
or nahual , meaning "magician"(and related to terms for clear or powerful speech) and the K’iche’ rootja' , meaning "water". However, the loanword nawal, which entered the Mayan languages about a thousand years ago, came to denote "spirit[s]" or "divine co-essence[s]", as well as "shaman[s]" in K'iche'. Some Maya linguists have argued apocryphally that the "true" name should be Nawalja' or Nawal-ja', disregarding that the word ja’ is regularly apocopated at the ends of words — especially toponyms — not only in K'iche', but also in related Mayan languages. Those who promote the neologisms Nawalja' and Nawal-ja' also ignore that the pronunciation of the neologisms is inconsistent with the pronunciation in sixteenth-century K'iche' — and Kaqchikel-Mayan recorded in several early colonial manuscripts written in Latin orthography by members of the native nobility
.
For example, the sixteenth-century Título de Totonicapán mentions a Late Post-classic Period site called "navala", (not "navalha"). Although scholars have argued that the site of the título corresponds to the modern community of Nahualá, it may actually correspond to a pre-colonial Nahua-, K’iche’- and Tz'utujil
-speaking community located some 20 kilometers to the south: San Juan Nahualá or San Juan Nagualapan (later annexed as a ward of the departmental capital of San Antonio Suchitepéquez
). The earliest mention of Nahualá occurs in one of the sixteenth-century Kaqchikel-language Xpantzay Títulos, which mentions a site called, "chohohche niguala" which almost certainly corresponds to a modern canton of the cabecera of Nahualá, Chojojche' (Cho Joj Chee' = "Before [the] Crow Tree"). Several other sixteenth or early seventeenth-century titles in Spanish and K'iche' mention Nahualá either directly (as "Navala") or obliquely, in terms of the landmarks of the community, including Siija (a Late Post-Classic fortress settlement located atop a hill of the same name, 12 kilometers west of Nahualá), Pa Raxk'im ("in the green bunchgrass/thatch", the name of the mountain chain that envelops most of the township's highland territory, as well as a Nahualeño village of the same name), Chi Q'al[i]b'al ("at the throne" a site located near Siija, mentioned in the Xajil chronicle popularly known as the Anales de los Cakchiqueles
), Chwi' Raxon or Pa Raxon ("above the cotinga/verdure/green feathers/wealth," the mountain in the center of the township's head town), Poop Ab'aj ("Petate-Stone," a site located northeast of the town, along the precolonial road that became part of El Camino Real during the Spanish period), Xajil Juyub', Pa Tz'itee', Chwi' Patan, and others.
Nahualá was settled at least as early as the Pre-Classic Period. Archaeologist John Fox
, who conducted archaeological surveys in the area during the 1970s, identified structures from the Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic Periods. Grinding stone
s dated to as early as 500 BCE found in archaeological sites around Quetzaltenango
were likely manufactured near the cabecera of Nahualá, where residents still mine volcanic basalt
and carve grinding stones that are sold throughout Guatemala’s western highlands
.
The population of the township is estimated to be between 50,000-85,000 individuals, about 10% of whom live in the head-town. Statistics vary widely because much of the township’s territory and several large villages are also claimed by Nahualá’ sister township, Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán
.
in 1998. Publicizing photos of houses with large cracks that made homes unsafe, Ixtahuacanecos (i.e., the Inhabitants of Ixtahuacán) had claimed that the hurricane had totally destroyed their cabecera, yet in doing so, they failed to mention that most of the homes that exhibited such damage were located on unstable land within an area that had been swamp well into the 1980s.
Officials of the national government negotiated a treaty between the mayors of Nahualá and Ixtahuacán to allow for the re-location of Ixtahuacán’s cabecera. However, residents of Ixtahuacán occupied the land in question early, before the treaty was completely negotiated, before the land had been surveyed, and before any compensation had been paid to the town of Nahualá and to the private owners of land in the area. Several Nahualeños were killed and injured by Ixtahuacanecos during conflicts that resulted from Ixtahuacán’s precipitous occupation of the Chwi' Patan, which many Nahualeños consider a theft. The national government and the elected local governments or Nahualá and Ixtahuacán subsequently agreed to a modification of the original agreement, but compensation has still not been paid completely. Many Nahualeños refuse to accept the agreement, arguing that neither the general population nor Nahualá's local elders (known as principales in Spanish and asri'j'laab' in K'iche') have been given an opportunity to approve the treaty, even though both traditionally hold a higher authority than the elected local officials (such as the town mayor).
Since 1999, the government of the Republic of Guatemala
has repeatedly attempted to resolve the conflict between the communities by fixing a border between their respective territories, but its efforts have been thwarted not only by continuing confrontations and land-invasions, but also by a misunderstanding of the complexity of indigenous systems of land-use and property.
or castellano, potentially 30% of adults do not speak this national language of Guatemala. Inability to speak Spanish does not always mean that residents are “monolingual.” Many local residents, particularly those engaged in trade and those living in the far west and in the far south of the township also speak the closely related Kaqchikel
and Tz'utijil
languages. In addition, a sizeable proportion of the township communicates in an indigenous natural sign language
, though many deny linguistic competence. Locals consider the local sign language to be a variety of a widespread (and apparently ancient) language complex that they call Meemul Ch'aab'al or Meemul Tziij, literally "mute language(s)." The incidence of congenital or early-onset deafness within the township is very high. The incidence within the cabecera is over 10 times higher than the average worldwide incidence.
Since the 1970s, numerous linguists have produced studies of the K'iche' dialect of Nahualá, believing that it was a particularly conservative dialect in terms of phonology
and lexicon
. Some indigenous Mayas trained linguists have even advocated that the official K'iche' alphabet used by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala
(ALMG) should reflect the phonology of the Nahualá. The dialect of Nahualá preserves sounds that have been lost in other K'iche' communities, including the K'iche' towns that are most associated with the administration of the pre-colonial K'iche' kingdom
, such as Q'uma'rka'aaj (now Santa Cruz del Quiché
) and Chwi' Meq'ina' (San Miguel Totonicapán
). Nahualá’s local dialect preserves an ancient Proto-Mayan
distinction between five long vowels (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu) and five short vowels (a, e, i, o, u). It is for this conservative linguistic feature that Guatemalan and foreign linguists have actively sought to have the language called "K'ichee'," rather than K'iche' or Quiché.
Unlike the most prominent K'iche' dialects, the Nahualá dialect of K'iche' also has a phoneme h and a phoneme ŋ, both of which occur only at the ends of words, almost exclusively after short vowels. Linguists have established firmly that the /h/ is a reflex of a proto-Mayan */h/. Linguists have not thoroughly investigated the origin of the /ŋ/ phoneme, which occurs only in a small number of words, and therefore is not believed to have enough "phonemic weight" to deserve official recognition.
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
in the Sololá department
Departments of Guatemala
||Guatemala is divided into 22 departments :#Alta Verapaz#Baja Verapaz#Chimaltenango#Chiquimula#Petén#El Progreso#El Quiché#Escuintla#Guatemala#Huehuetenango#Izabal#Jalapa#Jutiapa#Quetzaltenango#Retalhuleu#Sacatepéquez...
of Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
. The town is sometimes known as Santa Catarina Nahualá, in honor of the town’s patron saint
Patron saint
A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, but the official name is just "Nahualá".
Nahualá or
K'iche' language
The K’iche’ language is a part of the Mayan language family. It is spoken by many K'iche' people in the central highlands of Guatemala. With close to a million speakers , it is the second-most widely spoken language in the country after Spanish...
name for the Nahualate River
Nahualate River
The Río Nahualate is a river in southwest Guatemala. Its sources are located in the Sierra Madre range, in the vicinity of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán and Nahualá . From there it flows southwards through the coastal lowlands of Suchitepéquez and Escuintla to the Pacific Ocean.The Nahualate river...
, which is called
Nahuala is the location of radio station Nawal Estereo, the successor to the La Voz de Nahuala, which was originally founded with the assistance of Roman Catholic clerics in the 1960s. Nowadays, the station broadcasts primarily in the K'iche' language, with some broadcasts also done in Kaqchikel
Kaqchikel language
The Kaqchikel, or Kaqchiquel, language is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean–Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala...
and Spanish.
Meaning of the name
Local residents translate the name Nahualá roughly as "enchanted waters," "water of the spirits," and "water of the shamans," and they often object to the common Spanish translation of the name as agua de los brujos ("water of the shamans"). Scholars have typically argued that the name Nahualá derives from a compound of the NahuatlNahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
term nagual
Nagual
In Mesoamerican folk religion, a Nagual or Nahual is a human being who has the power to magically turn him- or herself into an animal form: most commonly a donkey, turkey, or dog, but also other and more powerful animals such as the jaguar and puma.Such a Nagual is believed to use his powers for...
or nahual , meaning "magician"(and related to terms for clear or powerful speech) and the K’iche’ root
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
.
For example, the sixteenth-century Título de Totonicapán mentions a Late Post-classic Period site called "navala", (not "navalha"). Although scholars have argued that the site of the título corresponds to the modern community of Nahualá, it may actually correspond to a pre-colonial Nahua-, K’iche’- and Tz'utujil
Tz'utujil language
Tz'utujil is a Mayan language spoken by the Tz'utujil people in the region to the south of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Tz'utujil is closely related to its larger neighbors, Kaqchikel and K'iche'....
-speaking community located some 20 kilometers to the south: San Juan Nahualá or San Juan Nagualapan (later annexed as a ward of the departmental capital of San Antonio Suchitepéquez
San Antonio Suchitepéquez
San Antonio Suchitepéquez is a municipality in the Suchitepéquez department of Guatemala. It has an elevation of 300m to 500m above sea level. It contains 37,857 people. It covers a terrain of 64km².-External links:*...
). The earliest mention of Nahualá occurs in one of the sixteenth-century Kaqchikel-language Xpantzay Títulos, which mentions a site called, "chohohche niguala" which almost certainly corresponds to a modern canton of the cabecera of Nahualá, Chojojche' (
Annals of the Cakchiquels
The Annals of the Cakchiquels , is a manuscript written in Kaqchikel, by Francisco Hernández Arana Xajilá in 1571, and completed by his grand son, Francisco Rojas in 1604...
), Chwi' Raxon or Pa Raxon ("above the cotinga/verdure/green feathers/wealth," the mountain in the center of the township's head town), Poop Ab'aj ("Petate-Stone," a site located northeast of the town, along the precolonial road that became part of El Camino Real during the Spanish period), Xajil Juyub', Pa Tz'itee', Chwi' Patan, and others.
History
Despite early references to the community, foreign scholars and many Mayas themselves have ironically tended to claim that the community was only founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, promoting particularly apocryphal interpretations of local legends.Nahualá was settled at least as early as the Pre-Classic Period. Archaeologist John Fox
John Fox
John Fox may refer to:* Tinker Fox, Colonel John Fox , English Parliamentarian Soldier*John Fox * John Fox , pitcher for Major League Baseball* John Fox , comedian...
, who conducted archaeological surveys in the area during the 1970s, identified structures from the Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic Periods. Grinding stone
Grinding Stone
Grinding Stone is a 1973 debut album by Gary Moore, released under the "The Gary Moore Band" moniker.-Track listing:All songs by Gary Moore.# "Grinding Stone" – 9:38# "Time to Heal" - 6:19# "Sail Across the Mountain" - 6:58...
s dated to as early as 500 BCE found in archaeological sites around Quetzaltenango
Quetzaltenango
Quetzaltenango, also commonly known by its indigenous name, Xelajú , or more commonly, Xela , is the second largest city of Guatemala. It is both the capital of Quetzaltenango Department and the municipal seat of Quetzaltenango municipality....
were likely manufactured near the cabecera of Nahualá, where residents still mine volcanic basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...
and carve grinding stones that are sold throughout Guatemala’s western highlands
Guatemalan Highlands
The Guatemalan Highlands is an upland region in southern Guatemala, lying between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas to the south and the Petén lowlands to the north....
.
Population
Nearly the entire population of the municipality is made up of ethnic K'iche' Maya who speak the K'iche' language.The population of the township is estimated to be between 50,000-85,000 individuals, about 10% of whom live in the head-town. Statistics vary widely because much of the township’s territory and several large villages are also claimed by Nahualá’ sister township, Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán
Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan
Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan is a municipality in the Sololá department of Guatemala. It is located at about 7500 ft altitude in the steep mountains descending from the western highlands to the southern coastal plain. The indigenous language is K'ichee'...
.
Land conflict
Officially, according to the 1779 título of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán share their territory according to ancient custom (mancomunado). Today, the vast territory of the two municipios covers 218 square kilometers, about 2/3 of which is under the control of Nahualeños (or AjNawala'iib'), the "people of Nahualá". Disputes between the two towns have been common, especially since 1999, when the government of Guatemala arranged for the cabecera of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán to be moved to the site of Chwi' Patan (nicknamed "Alaska" by a North American Catholic priest who worked in Nahualá during the 1960s) within Nahualá’s territory, after the original cabecera of Ixtahuacán in a remote piedmont site was damaged by Hurricane MitchHurricane Mitch
Hurricane Mitch was the most powerful hurricane and the most destructive of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season, with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph . The storm was the thirteenth tropical storm, ninth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the season. Along with Hurricane Georges, Mitch...
in 1998. Publicizing photos of houses with large cracks that made homes unsafe, Ixtahuacanecos (i.e., the Inhabitants of Ixtahuacán) had claimed that the hurricane had totally destroyed their cabecera, yet in doing so, they failed to mention that most of the homes that exhibited such damage were located on unstable land within an area that had been swamp well into the 1980s.
Officials of the national government negotiated a treaty between the mayors of Nahualá and Ixtahuacán to allow for the re-location of Ixtahuacán’s cabecera. However, residents of Ixtahuacán occupied the land in question early, before the treaty was completely negotiated, before the land had been surveyed, and before any compensation had been paid to the town of Nahualá and to the private owners of land in the area. Several Nahualeños were killed and injured by Ixtahuacanecos during conflicts that resulted from Ixtahuacán’s precipitous occupation of the Chwi' Patan, which many Nahualeños consider a theft. The national government and the elected local governments or Nahualá and Ixtahuacán subsequently agreed to a modification of the original agreement, but compensation has still not been paid completely. Many Nahualeños refuse to accept the agreement, arguing that neither the general population nor Nahualá's local elders (known as principales in Spanish and as
Since 1999, the government of the Republic of Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
has repeatedly attempted to resolve the conflict between the communities by fixing a border between their respective territories, but its efforts have been thwarted not only by continuing confrontations and land-invasions, but also by a misunderstanding of the complexity of indigenous systems of land-use and property.
Linguistic Affiliation
The principal language of the town is K'iche'. Although a growing portion of the township is bilingual in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
or castellano, potentially 30% of adults do not speak this national language of Guatemala. Inability to speak Spanish does not always mean that residents are “monolingual.” Many local residents, particularly those engaged in trade and those living in the far west and in the far south of the township also speak the closely related Kaqchikel
Kaqchikel language
The Kaqchikel, or Kaqchiquel, language is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean–Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala...
and Tz'utijil
Tz'utujil language
Tz'utujil is a Mayan language spoken by the Tz'utujil people in the region to the south of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Tz'utujil is closely related to its larger neighbors, Kaqchikel and K'iche'....
languages. In addition, a sizeable proportion of the township communicates in an indigenous natural sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
, though many deny linguistic competence. Locals consider the local sign language to be a variety of a widespread (and apparently ancient) language complex that they call Meemul Ch'aab'al or Meemul Tziij, literally "mute language(s)." The incidence of congenital or early-onset deafness within the township is very high. The incidence within the cabecera is over 10 times higher than the average worldwide incidence.
Since the 1970s, numerous linguists have produced studies of the K'iche' dialect of Nahualá, believing that it was a particularly conservative dialect in terms of phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
. Some indigenous Mayas trained linguists have even advocated that the official K'iche' alphabet used by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala
Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala
The Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, or ALMG is a Guatemalan organisation that regulates the use of the 21 Mayan languages spoken within the borders of the republic. It has expended particular efforts on standardising the various writing systems used...
(ALMG) should reflect the phonology of the Nahualá. The dialect of Nahualá preserves sounds that have been lost in other K'iche' communities, including the K'iche' towns that are most associated with the administration of the pre-colonial K'iche' kingdom
K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj
The K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj was a state in the highlands of modern day Guatemala which was founded by the K'iche' Maya in the thirteenth century, and which expanded through the fifteenth century until it was conquered by Spanish and Nahua forces led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524.The K'iche'...
, such as Q'uma'rka'aaj (now Santa Cruz del Quiché
Santa Cruz del Quiché
Santa Cruz del Quiché is a city in Guatemala. It serves as the capital of El Quiché department and the municipal seat of Santa Cruz del Quiché municipality.The city is located at , at an elevation of 2,021 m above sea level...
) and Chwi' Meq'ina' (San Miguel Totonicapán
Totonicapán
Totonicapán is a city in Guatemala. It serves as the capital of the department of Totonicapán and as the administrative seat for the surrounding municipality of Totonicapán.- External links :# #...
). Nahualá’s local dialect preserves an ancient Proto-Mayan
Proto-Mayan
Proto-Mayan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the 30 living Mayan languages, as well as the Classic Maya languages documented in the Maya Hieroglyphical inscriptions.-Phonology:...
distinction between five long vowels (aa, ee, ii, oo, uu) and five short vowels (a, e, i, o, u). It is for this conservative linguistic feature that Guatemalan and foreign linguists have actively sought to have the language called "K'ichee'," rather than K'iche' or Quiché.
Unlike the most prominent K'iche' dialects, the Nahualá dialect of K'iche' also has a phoneme h and a phoneme ŋ, both of which occur only at the ends of words, almost exclusively after short vowels. Linguists have established firmly that the /h/ is a reflex of a proto-Mayan */h/. Linguists have not thoroughly investigated the origin of the /ŋ/ phoneme, which occurs only in a small number of words, and therefore is not believed to have enough "phonemic weight" to deserve official recognition.
External links
- Municipal site (in Spanish)