Tzotzil
Encyclopedia
The Tzotzil are an indigenous
Maya people
of the central Chiapas highlands
in southern Mexico. As of 2000, they numbered about 290,000. The municipalities with largest Tzotzil population are Chamula
(48,500), San Cristóbal de las Casas
(30,700), and Zinacantan
(24,300), in the Mexican state of Chiapas
.
The Tzotzil language
, like Tzeltal
and Ch'ol
, is descended from the proto-Ch'ol spoken in the late classic period at sites such as Palenque
and Yaxchilan
. The word tzotzil originally meant "bat
people" or "people of the bat" in the Tzotzil language (from tzotz "bat"). Today the Tzotzil call themselves Sotz'leb, which means "bat people" in the modern language, and are often called Zinacantecos in Spanish (from the Nahuatl tzinacantlan "place of bats").
or lumber
, usually with thatched roofs. Traditional men's clothing consists of shirt, short pants, neckerchief, hat, and wool
poncho. Traditional women's clothing is a blouse or long overdress (huipil
), indigo
dyed skirt (enredo), cotton sash, and shawl.
peoples entered Chiapas between 100 BCE and 300 CE. According to Spanish chronicles, just before the Spanish Conquest the Tzotzil exported quetzal
feathers and amber
to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. They also produced salt
from wells near Ixtapa
and traded it throughout the Chipas highlands, and continued to do so after the Conquest.
The Spanish conquerors met comparatively little resistance in Chiapas. In 1522, the Zinacantán lord Cuzcácuatl sought the Spaniards with an offer of allegiance, and his subjects afterwards helped Spanish commander Luis Marín to subdue neighboring tribes. On the other hand, the natives from Chamula fought hard against the Spaniards. They and the natives of Huixtlán eventually fled leaving nothing that the invaders could make use of. Unable to obtain service or tribute from those people, the Spaniards returned to the Gulf
coast, and the Tzoltzil returned to their lands and lifestlyle. Other Spanish incursions in the following decade generally spared the Tzotzil, but their numbers were greatly diminshed by diseases and hunger. Many villages were focibly relocated, and the natives were assigned as vassals to the encomiendas (land grants) given by the Spanish crown to the conquerors.
After the Spanish conquest, the Tzotzil were for centuries exploited as laborers, first by the Spaniards and then by the Ladinos
(urban Spanish-speaking people of Spanish and native descent) who own most of the land and dominate commerce. During most of this period, a rigid caste system
sharply divided the natives from the Ladinos, with very different rights and obligations. The oppression led them to revolt in 1528, 1712, and 1868. The situation of the Tzoltzil worsened considerably in 1863, when laws enacted by Benito Juárez
stripped the Indian towns of their corporate lands, forcing many Zinacantecos to become debt-indentured laborers on farms owned by the Ladinos.
The sense of national pride has become stronger among the Tzotzil since 1940, as natives have increasingly began to occupy local administrative posts and used their cultural identity for political purposes. While sizable Tzotzil communities have appeared in some towns, other Tzotzil towns have been undergoing "reindianization" as the formerly dominating Ladino minorities have migrated to larger cities.
With the collapse of coffee prices in the 1980s, sustainable employment has been hard for many people in the highlands to find. As both population and foreign tourism have risen, the sale of artisan goods has replaced other economic activities. Tzotzils usually sell their products in the nearby cities of San Cristóbal de las Casas
, Comitán
, and Simojovel
. Recently, and increasingly, many Maya from the highlands of Chiapas have found migration to other parts of Mexico and Illegal immigration to the United States
a way to break away from subsistence farming and abysmal wages.
Issues surrounding social integration persist, especially with the Ladinos. Support for the Zapatista
guerrilas, as well as for other non-violent opposition groups such as Las Abejas
, is strong among the Tzotzil.
The Tzotzil conceive the World as a square, at whose center is the "navel", a mound of earth located in the ceremonial center. The world rests on the shoulders of the Vashak, analogous to the Four-Corner Gods or Sky-Bearers of the ancient Maya. This cosmic model is reflected in the ceremonial circuits around houses and fields performed by priests, which proceed counterclockwise around the four corners and end in the center, where offerings are made to the gods. The Tzotzil Underworld inhabited by a race of dwarfs, created by the gods during their attempts to create mankind.
The Sun is "Our Father Heat", and the Moon is "Our Holy Mother". The planet Venus is called "Sweeper of the Path" as it precedes the Sun in his path around the World. Local hills and mountains lare the homes of the ancestral couples, the Totilme'il or "Fathers-Mothers", the most important Tzotzil gods. The next mots important deity is the Earth Lord. In modern times, he is pictured as a large fat and rich Ladino living underground, who owns all land and its natural resources. A Tzotzil who uses any of those resources — water holes, trees, mud for his home, limestone
for lime — is expected to compensate the Earth Lord with appropriate offerings in a ceremony.
The Tzotzil believe that each human being has two souls, a ch'ulel and a chanul. The ch'ulel is an inner, personal soul, located in the heart and blood, placed in the unborn embryo by the ancestral gods. It is composed of thirteen parts, and a person who loses one or more of these parts must have a curing ceremony performed by a shaman to recover them. "Soul loss" may be caused by fright of falling down or seeing a demon on a dark night; as a punishment by the ancestral gods for misbehavior; or by being sold into slavery to the Earth Lord, through evil witchcraft. At death, the inner soul leaves the body and goes to the Katibak, the world of the dead in the center of the earth. There it will remain for the same length of time it had been in the human world, reliving his life in reverse, younger and younger, until it is assigned by the ancestral gods to another newborn of the opposite sex. Baptized infants and women who die in childbirth go directly to Winajel, located in the Sun. People who have drowned, have been murdered, or were struck by lightning do not go to Katibak. Animals and trees too have ch'ulel soul, which goes through the same cycle.
The other soul, the wayjel, is an animal-spirit companion, shared with a chanul, a wild animal. Throughout each person's life, whatever happens to the animal spirit also happens to the person and vice versa. These animal-spirit companions, consisting of jaguars, ocelots, coyotes, and smaller animals such as squirrel
s and opossums, are kept by the ancestral gods in four corrals inside the "Senior Large Mountain" in the east side of the world. If the animal spirit is let off its corral by the ancestral gods, the person is in mortal danger and must undergo a lengthy ceremony to round up the chanul and return it to its corral. Only human beings have a wayhel soul.
Each town is associated to a sacred mountain. The god Manojel-Tojel created humans by leading them out of the caves of the original hills. According to myth, each one of the patron-gods "installed himself in a hill, by order of the gods of the four corners of the earth".
Yahwal Balamil is agod who lives inside the earth. He rides a deer with serpent bridles, and frees the water-filled clouds from inside the earth through caves. He announces himself with the croaking of frogs".
; distributed by University of Texas Press
|isbn=0-942041-19-4 |oclc=52341702}} |authorlink=Alfredo López Austin |coauthors=and |year=2001 |title=Mexico's Indigenous Past |series=Civilization of the American Indian series, |others=Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano (trans.) |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press
|isbn=0-8061-3214-0 |oclc=45879556}}
Indigenous peoples of Mexico
Mexico, in the second article of its Constitution, is defined as a "pluricultural" nation in recognition of the diverse ethnic groups that constitute it, and in which the indigenous peoples are the original foundation...
Maya people
Maya peoples
The Maya people constitute a diverse range of the Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. The overarching term "Maya" is a collective designation to include the peoples of the region who share some degree of cultural and linguistic heritage; however, the term...
of the central Chiapas highlands
Chiapas highlands
The region of the Chiapas Highlands is located in Chiapas, the southern-most state of Mexico.Many pre-Columbian Maya civilization sites are located in these highlands....
in southern Mexico. As of 2000, they numbered about 290,000. The municipalities with largest Tzotzil population are Chamula
Chamula
San Juan Chamula is a municipio and township in the Mexican state of Chiapas, with over 50,000 inhabitants. It is situated some 10 km from San Cristóbal de las Casas....
(48,500), San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas also known as it's native Tsotsil name, Jovel is a city and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas...
(30,700), and Zinacantan
Zinacantan
San Lorenzo Zinacantán is a municipio in the southern part of the Central Chiapas highlands in the Mexican state of Chiapas. About 98% of its population are Tzotzil Maya, an indigenous people with linguistic and cultural ties to other highland Maya peoples.Zinacantán literally means "land of bats"...
(24,300), in the Mexican state of Chiapas
Chiapas
Chiapas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutierrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las...
.
The Tzotzil language
Tzotzil language
Tzotzil is a Maya language spoken by the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. According to an INEGI 2005 census, there are 329,937 speakers of Tzotzil in Mexico, making it the 6th most spoken indigenous language in the country...
, like Tzeltal
Tzeltal language
- External links :*...
and Ch'ol
Chol language
Ch'ol is a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Ch'ol people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There are two main dialects:...
, is descended from the proto-Ch'ol spoken in the late classic period at sites such as Palenque
Palenque
Palenque was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that flourished in the 7th century. The Palenque ruins date back to 100 BC to its fall around 800 AD...
and Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan is an ancient Maya city located on the bank of the Usumacinta River in what is now the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In the Late Classic Period Yaxchilan was one of the most powerful Maya states along the course of the Usumacinta, with Piedras Negras as its major rival...
. The word tzotzil originally meant "bat
Bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
people" or "people of the bat" in the Tzotzil language (from tzotz "bat"). Today the Tzotzil call themselves Sotz'leb, which means "bat people" in the modern language, and are often called Zinacantecos in Spanish (from the Nahuatl tzinacantlan "place of bats").
Costumes
Houses are built of wattle and daubWattle and daub
Wattle and daub is a composite building material used for making walls, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw...
or lumber
Lumber
Lumber or timber is wood in any of its stages from felling through readiness for use as structural material for construction, or wood pulp for paper production....
, usually with thatched roofs. Traditional men's clothing consists of shirt, short pants, neckerchief, hat, and wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
poncho. Traditional women's clothing is a blouse or long overdress (huipil
Huipíl
A huipil is a form of Maya textile and tunic or blouse worn by indigenous Mayan, Zapotec, and other women in central to southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras, in the northern part of Central America. Some are also worn by men, particularly in Guatemala...
), indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
dyed skirt (enredo), cotton sash, and shawl.
History
Based on linguistic and archaeological data, scholars believe that the common ancestors of the contemporary Tzotzil and TzeltalTzeltal people
The Tzeltal people are the largest indigenous group mostly located in the highlands or Los Altos region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. They are one of many Mayan ethnic groups and they speak a a language which belongs to the Tzeltalan subgroup of Mayan languages...
peoples entered Chiapas between 100 BCE and 300 CE. According to Spanish chronicles, just before the Spanish Conquest the Tzotzil exported quetzal
Quetzal
Quetzals are strikingly colored birds in the trogon family . They are found in forests and woodlands, especially in humid highlands, with the five species from the genus Pharomachrus being exclusively Neotropical, while the single Euptilotis species is almost entirely restricted to western Mexico...
feathers and amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. They also produced salt
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
from wells near Ixtapa
Ixtapa
Ixtapa is a beach resort in the municipality of Zihuatanejo de Azueta, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It is located to the northwest of the municipal seat, Zihuatanejo, and some northwest of Acapulco....
and traded it throughout the Chipas highlands, and continued to do so after the Conquest.
The Spanish conquerors met comparatively little resistance in Chiapas. In 1522, the Zinacantán lord Cuzcácuatl sought the Spaniards with an offer of allegiance, and his subjects afterwards helped Spanish commander Luis Marín to subdue neighboring tribes. On the other hand, the natives from Chamula fought hard against the Spaniards. They and the natives of Huixtlán eventually fled leaving nothing that the invaders could make use of. Unable to obtain service or tribute from those people, the Spaniards returned to the Gulf
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
coast, and the Tzoltzil returned to their lands and lifestlyle. Other Spanish incursions in the following decade generally spared the Tzotzil, but their numbers were greatly diminshed by diseases and hunger. Many villages were focibly relocated, and the natives were assigned as vassals to the encomiendas (land grants) given by the Spanish crown to the conquerors.
After the Spanish conquest, the Tzotzil were for centuries exploited as laborers, first by the Spaniards and then by the Ladinos
Ladino people
Ladino is a Spanish term used to describe various socio-ethnic categories in Latin America, principally in Central America.The term Ladino is derived from "latino" and usually refers to the mestizo or hispanicized population...
(urban Spanish-speaking people of Spanish and native descent) who own most of the land and dominate commerce. During most of this period, a rigid caste system
Casta
Casta is a Portuguese and Spanish term used in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period...
sharply divided the natives from the Ladinos, with very different rights and obligations. The oppression led them to revolt in 1528, 1712, and 1868. The situation of the Tzoltzil worsened considerably in 1863, when laws enacted by Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez born Benito Pablo Juárez García, was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served five terms as president of Mexico: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872...
stripped the Indian towns of their corporate lands, forcing many Zinacantecos to become debt-indentured laborers on farms owned by the Ladinos.
The sense of national pride has become stronger among the Tzotzil since 1940, as natives have increasingly began to occupy local administrative posts and used their cultural identity for political purposes. While sizable Tzotzil communities have appeared in some towns, other Tzotzil towns have been undergoing "reindianization" as the formerly dominating Ladino minorities have migrated to larger cities.
With the collapse of coffee prices in the 1980s, sustainable employment has been hard for many people in the highlands to find. As both population and foreign tourism have risen, the sale of artisan goods has replaced other economic activities. Tzotzils usually sell their products in the nearby cities of San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas also known as it's native Tsotsil name, Jovel is a city and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas...
, Comitán
Comitán
Comitán is the fourth-largest city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is the seat of government of the municipality of the same name....
, and Simojovel
Simojovel
Simojovel is one of the 119 municipalities of Chiapas, in southern Mexico.As of 2005, the municipality had a total population of 31,615. It covers an area of 446.99 km².The municipal seat is the town of Simojovel de Allende.- Economía :...
. Recently, and increasingly, many Maya from the highlands of Chiapas have found migration to other parts of Mexico and Illegal immigration to the United States
Illegal immigration to the United States
An illegal immigrant in the United States is an alien who has entered the United States without government permission or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa....
a way to break away from subsistence farming and abysmal wages.
Issues surrounding social integration persist, especially with the Ladinos. Support for the Zapatista
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico....
guerrilas, as well as for other non-violent opposition groups such as Las Abejas
Las Abejas
Las Abejas, or "The Bees," is a Christian pacifist civil society group of Tzotzil Maya formed in Chenalho, Chiapas in 1992 following a familial property dispute that left one person killed. When members of the community took the injured man to the nearest town for medical attention, they were...
, is strong among the Tzotzil.
Native religion
A Spanish chronicler described Zinacantan as a pueblo with "an infinite number of gods; they worshiped the sun and offered sacrifices to it, and to the full rivers, to the springs, to the trees of heavy foliage, and to the high hills they gave incense and gifts .. . their ancestors discovered a stone bat and considered it God and worshiped it" (Ximenez 1929-1931, 360).The Tzotzil conceive the World as a square, at whose center is the "navel", a mound of earth located in the ceremonial center. The world rests on the shoulders of the Vashak, analogous to the Four-Corner Gods or Sky-Bearers of the ancient Maya. This cosmic model is reflected in the ceremonial circuits around houses and fields performed by priests, which proceed counterclockwise around the four corners and end in the center, where offerings are made to the gods. The Tzotzil Underworld inhabited by a race of dwarfs, created by the gods during their attempts to create mankind.
The Sun is "Our Father Heat", and the Moon is "Our Holy Mother". The planet Venus is called "Sweeper of the Path" as it precedes the Sun in his path around the World. Local hills and mountains lare the homes of the ancestral couples, the Totilme'il or "Fathers-Mothers", the most important Tzotzil gods. The next mots important deity is the Earth Lord. In modern times, he is pictured as a large fat and rich Ladino living underground, who owns all land and its natural resources. A Tzotzil who uses any of those resources — water holes, trees, mud for his home, limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
for lime — is expected to compensate the Earth Lord with appropriate offerings in a ceremony.
The Tzotzil believe that each human being has two souls, a ch'ulel and a chanul. The ch'ulel is an inner, personal soul, located in the heart and blood, placed in the unborn embryo by the ancestral gods. It is composed of thirteen parts, and a person who loses one or more of these parts must have a curing ceremony performed by a shaman to recover them. "Soul loss" may be caused by fright of falling down or seeing a demon on a dark night; as a punishment by the ancestral gods for misbehavior; or by being sold into slavery to the Earth Lord, through evil witchcraft. At death, the inner soul leaves the body and goes to the Katibak, the world of the dead in the center of the earth. There it will remain for the same length of time it had been in the human world, reliving his life in reverse, younger and younger, until it is assigned by the ancestral gods to another newborn of the opposite sex. Baptized infants and women who die in childbirth go directly to Winajel, located in the Sun. People who have drowned, have been murdered, or were struck by lightning do not go to Katibak. Animals and trees too have ch'ulel soul, which goes through the same cycle.
The other soul, the wayjel, is an animal-spirit companion, shared with a chanul, a wild animal. Throughout each person's life, whatever happens to the animal spirit also happens to the person and vice versa. These animal-spirit companions, consisting of jaguars, ocelots, coyotes, and smaller animals such as squirrel
Squirrel
Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...
s and opossums, are kept by the ancestral gods in four corrals inside the "Senior Large Mountain" in the east side of the world. If the animal spirit is let off its corral by the ancestral gods, the person is in mortal danger and must undergo a lengthy ceremony to round up the chanul and return it to its corral. Only human beings have a wayhel soul.
Each town is associated to a sacred mountain. The god Manojel-Tojel created humans by leading them out of the caves of the original hills. According to myth, each one of the patron-gods "installed himself in a hill, by order of the gods of the four corners of the earth".
Yahwal Balamil is agod who lives inside the earth. He rides a deer with serpent bridles, and frees the water-filled clouds from inside the earth through caves. He announces himself with the croaking of frogs".
Syncretism
In the centuries since the Conquest, under the influence of Catholicism, the Tzotzil have come to associate the Sun with God the Father or Jesus Christ and the Moon with the Virgin Mary. They also revere carved wooden or plaster images and pictures of Catholic saints, dressed in a mixture of colonial- Zinacanteco-style dresses.Additional readings
|year=2003 |title=Beware the Great Horned Serpent!: Chiapas Under the Threat of Napoleon |series=IMS Studies on Culture and Society, |location=Albany, New York |publisher=Institute of Mesoamerican Studies, University at Albany, SUNYUniversity at Albany, The State University of New York
The State University of New York at Albany, also known as University at Albany, State University of New York, SUNY Albany or simply UAlbany, is a public university located in Albany, Guilderland, and East Greenbush, New York, United States; is the senior campus of the State University of New York ...
; distributed by University of Texas Press
University of Texas Press
The University of Texas Press is a university press that is part of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly books in several areas, including Latin American studies, Texana, anthropology, U.S...
|isbn=0-942041-19-4 |oclc=52341702}} |authorlink=Alfredo López Austin |coauthors=and |year=2001 |title=Mexico's Indigenous Past |series=Civilization of the American Indian series, |others=Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano (trans.) |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press
University of Oklahoma Press
The University of Oklahoma Press is the publishing arm of the University of Oklahoma. It has been in operation for over seventy-five years, and was the first university press established in the American Southwest. It was founded by William Bennett Bizzell, the fifth president of the University of...
|isbn=0-8061-3214-0 |oclc=45879556}}