World of the Ch’ol

            As I said in my previous blog, the Ch’ol Maya make a living off of the land.  Their main crops are corn, beans, and squash, but they also harvest coffee, sugarcane, potatoes, rice, and vegetables. The Ch’oles most sacred crop is Corn, or maize, and they have referred to themselves as “los miliperos” for centuries.  Miliperos roughly translates to “the people whose lives and existence have revolved around the cultivation of maize.” (Shmal)  They even had a corn god whom they worshipped called Yum Kaaz. The Mayans had many god’s that they worshipped, but after the Spanish conquest they were forced to conform to what their conquerors wished.  In Chiapas a strong following formed around the Virgin Mary and Saint Rose of Lima.

            The Ch’ol people lived quite a different life then I do today in Pennsylvania, it’s difficult to imagine worshipping a god that was connected to a crop.  It’s even more difficult to imagine being forced to change my religion by new conquerors.  What the Spanish did to the natives of Central and South America was brutal.  They killed so many people and destroyed so much knowledge that now can never be retrieved about these ancient people.

Ch'ol Mayan women cultivating their fertile land

(www.atlas.gc.ca)

Chiapas: Homeland of the Ch'ol Maya

             The Ch’ol have lived in a variety of landscapes, although they are mainly lowlanders in Chiapas, Mexico. The climate is humid and it rains often.  The highlands have valleys with fertile land and large lakes so it is perfect for growing corn, beans, and squash.  In the lowland they harvest salt and cacao and mine limestone, which is essential to the construction of their cities and sculptures. Poultry and pigs are also now economically important.  It seems that the majority of the Ch’ol people are modernizing, as their clothing is now semi-traditional and they worship a combination or Roman Catholic and their traditional pagan syncretism.  Saints are worshipped in the church, while mountains, caves, the Sun, and the Moon are also worshipped.

            I find the history and culture of the Maya so interesting, all the mysterious pyramids must be related to their ancient worshipping of the moon and stars.  I wish there were more records of the ancient Mayan culture.

This is a picture of a modern Ch'ol Mayan wearing semi-traditional clothing













(Alejandro Linares Garcia)

History of the Ch'ol Maya

There aren’t many specifics known about the Ch’ol Mayan people at the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16^th century. They were located in what is now northern Chiapas in southeastern Mexico. Some Mayan linguists suspect that the language of the Mayan hieroglyphs was an earlier form of Ch’ol. I think this puts this branch of the Maya in a particularly cool position.  They could be one of the most important branches in the history of the Maya people.  The Cholan branch of the language is known to be very conservative, meaning it has not changed very much over time.  Maybe the Ch’ol people are the closet speakers to the original Maya before the Spanish conquered them.

There are still two dialects of the Ch’ol language: the Ch’ol of Tila and the Ch’ol of Tumbala.  43,870 people speak the Ch’ol of Tila, of which 10,000 are monolinguals, and 90,000 speak the Ch’ol of Tumbala, where 1/3 of the speakers are monolinguals. I wonder if the monolingual speakers still live a very traditional Mayan life or if they have modernized at all.

               
        

These pictures show the Ch'oles location in southeastern Mexico