I sat quietly in the far corner of a dimly lit, dank concrete room. Dull, lime-green paint, dirty and peeling, covered the walls, making me feel as if I had been transported into the film ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. All around me were strings of bright flashing lights - blue, orange, white, red - adorning every conceivable corner, wall, and piece of furniture in the room, making it look like a house that had been garishly decorated for Christmas. On my right hung lights in the form of stars, suspended over and quietly illuminating a glass coffin containing the effigy of Jesus Christ, wrapped eloquently in colorful weavings of blue, red, and yellow. Copious fake red roses interlaced with strings of white flashing lights decorated the exterior perimeter of the coffin. Next to it, an statue of Christ on the cross during his crucifixion lie forgotten in the shadows against the corner wall.
Balloons and plastic streamers of every imaginable hue hung from the ceiling, occupying every square inch of space to the point that the actual ceiling itself was no longer visible. Placed irregularly between all this were hanging ceiling lights, casting a soft radiant glow barely strong enough to illuminate the room. This place took gaudy to a whole new level.
To my left, smoke billowed from a metal canteen, clouding the room and providing a lingering scent of juniper, incense, and wood smoke. In the center of it all, guarded on both sides by members of his loyal Cofradías (‘Brotherhood’), defiantly stands a life-size wooden effigy depicting the Mayan saint Maximón (Mah-she-moan).
Numerous candles stand burning on the floor in front of him, with melted wax coalescing into small pools on the concrete ground. Covered head-to-toe in silk ties and scarves, wearing a jet-black cowboy hat, backed by flashing orange string lights and surrounded by fresh flowers, Maximón is quite a site to see.
Maximón, sometimes referred to as San Simón, is a mischievous Mayan deity and folk saint native to the indigenous Mayan people of the Guatemalan Highlands. His origins are complex, but he represents something of a religious amalgam - a mix, if you will, between indigenous Mayan folk religion and traditional Spanish Catholicism, brought here in the 16th-century by the invading Conquistadors. Hence the life-size representation of Christ to my right, just steps from Maximón in the center of the room.
His appearance changes somewhat based on location, but here in the Guatemalan town of Santiago Atitlán, he is dressed in a typical male suit, complete with collar, tie, and cowboy hat. A small cigar hangs from his wooden mouth. Unlike the other saints of Christianity you may be familiar with, Maximón is the polar opposite: Liquor-drinking, cigarette-smoking, womanizing, and mischievous, he embodies the traditional vices of life you may encounter every day. Yet, he retains healing powers... so long as you provide him with said vices (more on that later).
Depending on who you ask - and where you are in the Guatemalan Highlands - his origin story can change wildly. In some tales, he was a Mayan elder named Ri Laj Mam (‘Grandfather’), who encouraged his people to rebel against the Conquistadors but was ultimately defeated and executed. Returning to life in the form of a judge, he gave land back to the native people of Guatemala. In yet another legend, he was a protector enlisted by local fishermen to look over their wives while away from home on fishing excursions. Unfortunately, this plan backfired, and Maximón instead tricked the fishermen so he could have indiscriminate affairs with all of their wives. Quite a guy, I must say.
However, regardless of which origin tale you choose to believe, one thing about Maximón seems to always hold true: He is the embodiment of both good and evil, light and dark. Santiago Atitlán, however, is where the story of Maximón takes on its most ancient and traditional form. Santiago Atitlán, or simply Santiago as the locals refer to it, is one of many picturesque villages surrounding Lake Atitlán, a beautiful body of water located in the Sololá Department of the Guatemalan Highlands. Formed around 85,000 years ago by a volcanic eruption so huge that it formed a crater in the earth which ultimately filled with water, it is today Central America’s deepest lake at nearly 350 meters. Standing defiantly over this beautiful ecosystem are the volcanoes: San Pedro, Toliman, and Atitlán, with Atitlán being the youngest and most active.
In many of the villages that line the lake, traditional Mayan culture is alive and well. In fact, it thrives. Women still walk the streets in outfits of colorful cortes and huipiles; men wear traditional white- and red-striped pants; and the languages you hear are often not Spanish, but rather indigenous Mayan. In Santiago, the community is Tz’utujil Mayan, and daily life is conducted entirely in the native Tz’utujil tongue, with many inhabitants, particularly the elders, not speaking any Spanish whatsoever.
Like many of the lakeside villages, Santiago is a labyrinth of winding, cobbled streets emanating uphill from the lake. The hub of daily life is the Parque Central (Central Park), where the local market thrives with women selling fresh produce, homewares, and trinkets. Typical Guatemalan fruits of jocote, avocado, and granadilla are here in abundance alongside onions, tomatoes, and plantains.
Santiago is also a center of weaving, and the art of traditional foot-loom and backstrap-loom weaving is practiced here at its highest craft. Custom orders for textiles and clothing can take upwards of three months to complete using these traditional methods.
I disembark from the local taxi boat at Santiago's main dock and meet my guide. Following her down the twisting, narrow alleys of Santiago, I slowly begin to smell incense and visualize smoke wafting in the air. Subtle at first, and then stronger as we venture further along. We turned yet another corner, and there it was: A small, non-descript concrete home, unadorned on the exterior, with bright gray smoke billowing out of the front door. Seated just inside were three individuals: A woman between two men, all facing Maximón. The man to her right wore a brown cowboy hat adorned on three sides by a handkerchief that draped down over his neck. To her left, a village elder in traditional dress, chanting prayers and swinging a metal canteen containing smoldering incense - the source of all that gray smoke. He was the Shaman, and I was lucky enough to visit on a morning during which a ceremony was being conducted for the two individuals to his right.
I took my seat in the corner, pulled out my camera, and sat in pure amazement at what I was witnessing. This was a traditional Maximón ceremony, conducted entirely in Tz’utujil Mayan, with customs and folklore dating back hundreds of years.
The home in which Maximón is located is precisely that - a home. It is the house of one of the members of Maximón’s cofridías, or brotherhood. These are the men tasked with protecting Maximón. Each year during Holy Week in the Christian calendar, Maximón is taken out and paraded through the streets of Santiago by his cofridías, before being placed into a new ceremonial home. Hence, the location of Maximón changes every year, and thus in order to find him, you will need to enlist the help of a guide (or local tuk tuk driver, who no doubt will be waiting for you at the dock).
This particular ceremony involves two individuals praying to Maximón for help in finding employment. However, Maximón is quite a fickle deity, and in order to please him (and thus obtain his healing prowess), he requires donations in the form of liquor, cigarettes, and cigars, amongst other things. I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of empty liquor bottles resting, quite ironically, just beyond the glass coffin of Christ. “If Church were more like this”, I thought to myself, “perhaps I would have attended more often in my youth”.
The ceremony progresses through various stages of prayers by the Shaman intermixed with pauses to place a lit cigarette in Maximón’s mouth or give Maximón a sip of liquor (in this case rum, but the local Guatemalan liquor Quetzalteca is frequently used as well). The Shaman says prayers and indiscriminately swings the canteen of smoldering incense so smoke constantly billows out and fills the chamber.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the Shaman takes a shot of rum himself - however, he does not drink it. As a way to cleanse and purify his clients, he takes the rum in his mouth and then forcibly sprays it outwards over the seated man and woman. He does this repeatedly, with many a droplet landing on my hands and arms.
A few final prayers are exchanged by the Shaman, and just like that, the ceremony is over. The brown cowboy hat worn by the Shaman’s male client is placed atop Maximón’s black hat. His clients thank him and pay their respects to Maximón through monetary donations and kissing of his silk scarves before leaving.
After the ceremony is over, Maximón looks much like he does most of the time: Sitting in the middle of a garishly-decorated room, candles illuminating the concrete floor in front of him, his cofridías seated on both sides of him. String lights glow and twinkle throughout the space. I imagine the smell of juniper and incense rarely, if ever, leaves this place.
His cofridías will sit guard with Maximón for the entire year, twenty-four hours a day, until he is ultimately moved to a new location the following Holy Week. And of course, his attendants engage in some liquor-drinking and cigarette-smoking, just as their deity would prefer.
