In this paper, I show how contemporary Mayan poetic discourses treat natural elements as sentient, willing, non-human persons, in accordance with an ancient philosophy still prevalent among First nations throughout Abya Yala, called “Indigenous Cosmopolitics” by Marisol de la Cadena and “Amerindian Perspectivism” by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, also commonly known as “Buen vivir” or “Good living” (from the Quechua Sumak Kawsay), Múul kuxtal in Yucatec Mayan.
“Xma’ t’aanil, jkíim yóok’ol kaab” / “Silence, the Earth Has Died” (in Voz viva del Mayab, 2012), a poem by Isaac Esaú Carrillo Can (1983-2017), is a clear example of this. It begins with the lines:
| Jkíim yóok’ol kaab
In na’e’ tu síijsaj tikin paalalo’ob, Mix máak jóoyja’btej, xíibla’anchaj u yich le ka’ano’, mina’an u cháakil utia’al u yok’omtal u yóol, |
My mother gave birth to dry children.
Nobody watered her. The eyes of the heavens have faded out. There is still no rain to dress your soul in mourning. Translation by Jonathan Harrington (In Túumben Ja’ab, 2017), |
In Mayan tradition, death/rebirth is a yearly cycle, and the soil dying is a part of it. García Quintanilla (2000) explains that, in Mayan cosmic geography, after death all souls descend to the underworld—Metnal or Mitnal in Yucatec tradition, Xibalba in K’iche’ tradition—to be recycled before reincarnating (269). The poem continues and ends with the following lines:
| Jkíim yóok’ol kaab,
Mix máak kuchik u bis u sak máabenil, Mix máak t’abik u kibil tu’ux ku chúunul ka’an, Mix máak beetik u payalchi’il yo’olal u piixan, Mix máak taskúuntik loolo’ob, Mix máak ku p’áatal xma’ t’aanil, Ch’ajch’ajankil ku beetik k’iin, Jkíim yóok’ol kaab, Mix máak ok’tik Mix máak. |
The earth has died,
nobody is burdened with a white casket, nobody says a prayer for the adventure undertaken by the wandering soul. Nobody sets out flowers, nobody keeps silent. The sun falls drop by drop. The earth has died. Nobody cries. Nobody. |
In the environment described, only the sun can be felt, and the lack of tears reinforces the notion of a dry season. I agree with Descola (2015) in his assertion that it is a mistake to regard a humanization of natural elements (in this case, earth portrayed as a mother and an emotional rain) as metaphor or intellectual playfulness (15). While the reading of the soil giving birth or the sky crying is typically read as prosopopoeia or personification, it reflects a Western view of a non-Western poem. However, I believe the author succeeds as jumping from a cosmopolitical perspective to a naturalistic one and back, knowing that the poem works the same in both readings. Furthermore, I also believe the author intentionally maintain yet another ambiguity: In Yucatec Mayan, the word kaab may be read as earth/soil or as planet Earth. If we read it as soil, the poem refers to dry season, but if we read it as planet Earth, the poet’s view turns bleak. The latter reading is what comes to mind at a first glance both in Yucatec Mayan and in English, making the poem an artistic environmental protest with a cosmopolitical dimension clear to any reader familiar with Cosmopolitics, and that is comfortable at jumping worlds or modes of reading.
This is only a small example of the way contemporary Mayan poets draw on an ancestral but current philosophy that regards nature as a co-citizen with humans in a shared cosmopoliteia. Although much has been written about Cosmopolitics in the field of Anthropology, there is much to be written on what literary works of First-nation poets can reveal about our relationship with a suffering natural world.
References
- Carrillo Can, I. E., et al. (2017). “Xma’ t’aanil, jkíim yóok’ol kaab” / “Silence, the Earth Has Died”. In Túumben Ja’ab. Poesía en tres lenguas y tres generaciones/Three generations and languages of poetry/K’ayt’aan ich óoxp’éel t’aan, Óoxp’éel jats ja’abil (pp. 4–7). Mérida, Yuc.
- Carrillo Can, I. E. (2012). “Xma’ t’aanil, jkíim yóok’ol kaab”. In Kuxaán taán: Voz viva del Mayab (pp. 171–199). (Primera edición.). Univerdidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro Penínsular en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales.
- Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture (J. Lloyd, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 2005).
- García Quintanilla, A. (2000). El dilema de ‘Ah Kimsah K’ax’, ‘el que mata al monte’: Significados del monte entre los mayas milperos de Yucatán. Mesoamérica, 21(39), 255–286.
About the Author
Fer de la Cruz is a poet and PhD candidate in Spanish at the University of California, Irvine, and holds a master’s degree from Ohio University. He is originally from Yucatán, Mexico. He has published more than twenty books, mostly of poetry (lyrical, satirical, and for children), but also narrative and literary translation. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation titled Múul kuxtal Cosmopolítica y oralidad en la poesía maya contemporánea.