MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ / UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE,
Plurality of Perspectives and
Subjects in the Literary Genres of
the Yucatec Maya
IN THIS ESSAY I use the term perspective neither in its
strict technical sense (as a system for the projection of
three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional plane
and their spatial relations) nor in its limited historical
sense (as a process of the rationalization of vision ap-
plied to painting during the Renaissance and abandoned
with cubism in the 20th century). Rather, I use the term
in the broad sense that it has been given in art criticism:
as a synomyn for spatial conception or for the empirical
representation of depth and relief. In this sense there is
no period or area in the history of world art that does
not possess "a perspective," or several, that character-
izes it (Dalai 1968).
I do not agree with Erwin Panofsky (1973) in con-
sidering perspective to be a "symbolic form" (in the
sense that Ernst Cassirer gave this expression); rather, I
see it as a device of utterance and, as such, as a gener-
ator of signs or symbols that are susceptible to semiotic
study (see Damisch 1987). Hence, I am going to use the
term perspective somewhat as it is used in narrative
analysis, as a "point of view" or a "focalization" that, on
the one hand, determines the place or the person from
whose perspective the narrative unfolds and, on the
other, reflects a series of value-conferring positions in
regard to the events described. Nonetheless, unlike
Gerard Genette (1989) and many others, I do not believe
that the enunciator's perspective is transferred onto the
work, but rather that the perspective of the work, in so
far as it belongs to a genre and conforms to Mikhail
Bakhtin's (1994) statements about the primacy of genre,
is imposed upon the enunciator.1
MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ is chair of Antropologia de America,
Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.
Copyright 1998, American Anthropological Association.
MADRID
At the same time, while recognizing that perspec-
tive is manifested in discourse by means of a series of
stylistic features (certain verbs, adverbs, adjectives, or
pithy phrases), I am going to try something different: to
apply to literary texts some of the parameters used by
art criticism in reference to questions of perspective in
plastic works ("vanishing point," "plane and direction of
view," "distance of the observer"). In this way, I trust
that a strong sense of the word perspective can be main-
tained, so as to distinguish its different kinds. My argu-
ment seeks to show that each literary genre adopts a
peculiar perspective to fulfill its task of textually con-
structing some fragment of the world and that the pecu-
liar perspective of each genre situates the enunciator of
the discourse in a specific place in relation to the world
and shapes him differentially as subject in the fragment
of the world which the text constructs.2
The Genres of Utterance
In the Mayero versions of Genesis, Adam's need to
have someone by his side to talk with is emphasized.3
"Adam desired his companion because of the two birds
that come to sing and are looking for their food where
he is sitting. And he thought he wanted his companion
(his male companion, not his mate) so that he could
converse (as we are right now)." God satisfies him by
creating a companion, who later, as a consequence of
having eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree, will be
transformed into a woman, Eve. What that first man
lacked in paradise, what caused him grief in the place of
maximum abundance, is the absence of conversation.
Conversation produces the greatest enjoyment and
310 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 1 0 0 ,N o . 2 J U N E 1 9 9 8
constitutes, as well, the most important measure of an
individual's moral quality.
In another version of Genesis, it is said that, as a
consequence of the intervention of Lucifer or the devil
in this world, "there are misfortunes, there are wicked
acts, there are rudenesses, there is a bit of everything."
Rudeness is, thus, not only comparable to misfortune or
wickedness but also, in a rhetorical crescendo, occu-
pies the dominant position. There is nothing more seri-
ous than rudeness, and while it can have multiple mani-
festations in behavior, the principal object of disfavor
and public sanction is rudeness in speech. Also, at the
end of time, at the Last Judgment, rudeness and utter-
ance will be the object of the Supreme Judge's special
attention, because "there are times when we don't know
what we say, making many insults. If I am insulting in
any word, I am not thinking of God. I am inverted to bad-
ness; I cannot enter heaven. For that reason, punish-
ment is going to be born; this is the fault for which the
Mayero has to pay." The most intense emotions have to
be expressed in formula, with set phrases and cliches,
to attenuate the risk of hurting others with rudeness, as
could happen if one were allowed expressive spontane-
ity. Even plays on words with a bawdy intent are strictly
regulated.4 Direct utterance, without euphemisms or el-
lipses, is socially dangerous; the most valued utterance
is that which contains abundant conventional figures of
Mayero rhetoric. When an individual uses them in a
proper manner, he deserves to be called a "good conver-
sationalist," a highly valued epithet.
The Mayeros differentiate genres within the whole
of utterance by their social uses and by their distinct
epistemological order.5 One of these consists of the ver-
bal manifestations of ritual. In it we can distinguish the
"major words" that, recited or sung, are used in the invo-
cations of the winds and other supernatural characters
from the pantheon of the Yucatec Maya, such as the
tatabalanes or the chac'ob or los regadores. The major
words have a symbolic effectiveness of an automatic
nature, and their execution produces certain effects
that are sometimes difficult to control. Included in the
same category of words associated with rituals are the
prayer and the oration. The prayer, recited by a special-
ist (rezador), has a closed and fixed structure, while the
oration can be said by anyone and has an open and vari-
able structure.
In addition, we can distinguish two categories of
narrative discourse. The first is characterized as an ut-
terance "to pass the time"; it includes the "story," di-
rected mainly at children or young people, and the
"joke" (vacilada), which is used among adults. The sec-
ond category is "conversation": "Listen, I'm going to
make you a conversation about this." The genres of the
"example" (ejemplo), the "true narrative," and the "hap-
pening" (sucedido) are included here. A true narrative
is sometimes similar to an example, except that it lacks
the example's explicit moral purpose. At other times,
because of an action-packed, entertaining, and almost
unbelievable plot, the true narrative is more like a story.
Usually, however, a true narrative inscribes as memora-
ble certain events from a local past, which can range
through miracles of the saints, war stories, agricultural
catastrophes, and prodigious acts of witchcraft. The
content of the example is nearly always related directly
to the Gospels or to sacerdotal preaching, although
the current influence of converts to neo-Protestant
churches has increased the number of examples from
the Old Testament. There are also examples that de-
scribe the bad consequences of failing to comply with
farming or hunting rites, although these accentuate
their moralizing effect when they are told according to
the model of a different narrative genre: the happening.
The latter genre forms a heterogeneous whole that cov-
ers the field, ranging, in our terminology, from gossip to
news, from the anecdote to the secret. The incidents
narrated in a happening are susceptible to verification,
or at least have particular persons with specified names
and circumstances as protogonists. During the narra-
tion of a happening, the listeners learn how certain as-
pects of the natural or social order were transgressed
and what the consequences were. Nowadays, it could
almost be said that a conversation is made, preferably,
with happenings, with some true narratives of a re-
stricted repertory, and, occasionally, with evangelical
or biblical examples.
All of these genres of Mayero conversation have
their own formal exigencies, although they are not nec-
essarily constructive or imperative in the same way. The
major words hardly allow for any variation in their ca-
nonical formulation, while at the opposite extreme, the
happenings allow numerous idiosyncrasies, but with-
out violating the tacit rules of the genre. This is not the
occasion to show the stylistic or syntagmatic character-
istics of each genre. It is enough, for the argument that
follows, to affirm that these genres are named and dif-
ferentiated by the enunciators, who therefore possess
"generic competence," a knowledge of the characteris-
tics of each genre that allows them not only to execute
each correctly but also to judge critically any deviations
that might be made within the implicit model of each
genre.6
Generic Perspectives
The first of the texts belongs to the genre of hap-
penings and is included in a particular type within the
genre: autobiographical happenings.7 In this case the
happening describes certain events that would allow it
to be included among one of the more usual kinds of
 PERSPECTIVES I NMAYAN
true-narrative genre, the "true narrative of ruins." None-
theless, its autobiographical style and even its confiden-
tial nature situate it clearly in the company of other hap-
penings about whatever topic.
At night, next to my house by the edge of the sea
and very close to where the events took place, he told
me this surprising event.
I am going to tell to you this thing that happened to me. It
was back in the years of '61, like in '61 or '62. I had a little
dog; it was already old, that dog. We had it since it was very
little and it was growing up. It was very happy, and we loved
it a lot. Then, one time, my mama traveled to Siho Chac with
my Uncle Gonzalo in a three-mule cart, and midway she met
up with a family that had some 20 or 30 dogs, and all the
dogs got themselves in a dispute. Palomo [our dog] got
between the mules' feet, and one of the mules, which was
surly like that, gave him a kick and hit him in the eye. His
eye was left jutting out, and it hung down. It made us sad
to see him, sometimes he grabbed it with his two front paws
and stretched it out. But one day my papa, seeing that the
dog suffered a lot, grabbed the eye, and with a machete, like
this in one swoop, he did chas!, and it was cut. He cut it,
and the dog was lef I Like that; that is, one-eyed, right? Well,
this dog was a hunting dog. Once he found an animal, he
wasn't satisfied until he got it out.
Well then, in '61,1 was working over there, around 11 in
the morning. Fixing, breaking up some sticks and all of that,
when I heard him start to bark on the hill. I said, "Well, this
guy has already found something, I.e's already taken my
time." Well, an animal like that takes your time. You have
to dig and all that; if not, he won't move from there, and
he'll stay. Well, so I arrived and began to dig. Since it was
up against a flat stone, the animal, an armadillo, didn't
move forward, and I hit it in the head with my machete. But
it swiped the dog with its claw, in the neck, and went off
running. The dog got up and followed it. He followed it,
barking, "Cai, cai, cai, cai." I went after them, also running
behind them. The brush was like this [very high]. I kept on
going and was hearing the barking, but very faintly, Xai,
cai, cai." And I followed until I arrived. I saw that the
harrow [trail] went where a big stone was, and under it was
a little cave that the animal entered. I held on as best I
could, because it was a big stone, and I pushed it to one
side. Then appeared other little stones, covering a hole. I
uncovered it, until I could see the little edge of a well, but
round-like, like well-carved. I started to take off the gar-
bage and all that, until I could put myself in it. I was thinner,
and as I could, I put myself in it. I entered the cave or, that
is, the well. Inside it was like this, just like a jug, it had a
little bitty mouth and then Lt did like this [it widened] like
a large earthen jar.
I was going down and I found like three stairs: I went
down and already, then, there were some holes like some
tunnels.
I was listening to the dog's barking and a continuous noise
that went "Sssss!" and it was even hurting my ear. I was
walking up hill, and it was very curvy, [with] lots of turns
LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 311
I started to follow it like this, and I was hearing barks, 'Cai,
cai, cai," but you could hardly hear.
At moments, I was frightened, but I said, "If this dog stays
here because of me, it would be a wickedness. And I
continued walking. I arrived at a part where the cave was
falling down, where the way was blocked. I couldn't go on
any further; there was only the hole where the dog and the
animal went through. "This is it, no more, I'm not going to
follow anymore," I said. But I was hearing the barking of
the dog, and it was what made me most desperate, because
I was saying, "If I leave him here, I will always have to return
to look for him.' So that I started to move the stones to one
side. There, in that chunk, it took me more or less an hour
a little more. I continued advancing, advancing, and I heard
the cry of the animal. Then I continued, I walked with more
desperation. Two more times I found the collapse of the
rock. I turned to find another part collapsed. That really
gave me work, because it had son e very big stones. As I
could, scratching and all that, I managed to move them a
little and I got by.
When I entered, below, I saw a hole the size of a house
When I arrived, I saw the dog. His hair was up like a
hedgehog, and he had his tail like this [raised], and h
barked and barked and barked. And then I noticed [that] ii
the middle there was a small table, about 1.8 meters long,
made of stone but well carved. And in the middle was thi
armadillo. But not like in life anymore, it was made of stone.
And, with the machete blow I had given it, it had its head
split in two and blood was dripping out of it. [See Figure 1.]
When I saw this, now it scared me. It almost made my skin
crawl, I don't know. I said to myself, "And now how am I
going to get out of here 9 I want to return." Then I turned
around and found myself facing two snakes, two rattle-
snakes, two huge piles of viper, that kept watch, one on
each side of where I had entered. And when I entered I
hadn't seen that. Well it scared me. and I started to think
what would I do. The dog ran away, and the snakes, when
he passed, pulled at him, they zigzagged as if they wanted
to strike him, they wanted to bite him. Then I noticed that
the house was about five meters by four and had a relief
ft 4
H . I . / I
Figure 1
La casa del armadillo. By Leopoldo Garcia-Echeveste. Used by
permission.
312 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, No. 2 JUNE
sculpture that I didn't understand. It had a serpent all
around, about six centimeters thick, that ran all around the
edge as decoration. Well. I noticed that there was a hand,
all stone, that pointed. "What's this? What does it mean?
This thing might be an exit," I thought. Because I had
entered from this side and there could be a door over on
the other side. And I said, "Well, here I go." But then I saw
lots of little figures, like little figurines: some little clay
figures, some little pots completely filled with little figures
of houses. But green. That was from jade. Now I say it was
jade, but I didn't know at the time. Well, I put several little
figurines in my shirt. I was wearing a thick-woven cotton
shirt that my mama made me, with long sleeves to protect
me from the rain. I put several figurines in my shirt, but then
I couldn't get out any more. I wasn't able to leave anymore.
Like a . . . that didn't let me go. Who knows how long I was
stuck in there? I wanted to leave, and I couldn't. Then I said,
"What am I going to do?" Until it came to me to get rid of
those things. I decided, "If I can't take these out, let them
stay." I went back and put them in their place.
Now I could leave, and I started to go over to where that
hand was. So I left. There was an exit. After walking a bit,
some five or ten meters, ten, it fell like this, like the sun.
Like the sun, the light was that bright, and I began walking,
walking. I walked all that distance until reaching the end.
When I said goodbye, I said goodbye to that thing; I got to
walking, and I went quickly. Maybe the light dazzled me,
maybe I had gone blind. I walked and went to the gorge. I
felt that I was in among the waters, but there I stayed. I
knew no more. I was stunned for a long time; who knows
how long? Half hour, maybe a few hours. When I came to,
I was on the shore, on a beach. I fell down more or less
where I was fishing with you the other day. It helped me
that the water was high. Now that compadre of mine always
asks me, "Why are you terrified to go over there?" I haven't
even told him about it. I wanted to tell him, but he tried to
tease me, and I haven't conversed with him about anything.
A doctor who came to do social work and was here one year
put me down as crazy. Candelaria, my wife, she's the only
one I conversed with, and she told me, "You better not do
those things. Why do you have to go meddling to tell about
anything?" I didn't tell it again to anybody, until I saw this
opportunity. Don't you tell me; don't you put me down as
crazy. It was the real thing. Look, if one of these days we
have the time, let's go into the cave with a light. To see.
The tale constitutes a description of a journey through
the inside of the earth, of a descensum ad infemus that
lacks any consequences. The hero, the enunciator him-
self, does not acquire any knowledge or power as a con-
sequence of his journey. When, after his adventure, he
recovers consciousness on the shore of the sea, he re-
members what happened but does not draw any kind of
lesson from it, only a certain fear of the place where it
happened and a nagging doubt about the solidity of his
Mayero common sense.
Perhaps what stands out most in the text is the em-
phasis put on the protagonist's own feeling of wonder.
The tale is a succession of surprises, and it seems as
1998
though the hero, unable to exercise his will, were being
moved without knowing where he was going, as if he
were some food that had been swallowed and carried
along a digestive tract, through the bowels of the earth.
To maintain his image as a reasonable and sensible man
before his listener, the enunciator must express repeat-
edly his amazement about what he has gone through. So
there is a constant tension between madness and com-
mon sense in the text, a tension that is drawn without
any possible mediation, that, like two parallel lines,
stretches all along the tale toward a vanishing point
situated in infinity.
The hero, moreover, paradoxically finds himself
both alone and accompanied. His dog, who before en-
tering the underground house is highly individualized
through references to his appearance, his talents, and
his name (Palomo), later becomes a being who is not
only anonymous but also alien, a being with whom no
relationship can be reestablished. Everything appears
to be self-contained, as if surrounded by an invisible veil
that prevented their mutual relation. The armadillo di-
rects a swipe at the dog but does not actually touch him,
nor do the snakes. The hero can touch the jade figures,
but he must leave them in their place; the armadillo is
petrified on top of an elevated altar. Not everything in-
side the underground house is immobile (the snakes zig-
zag and the dog runs away from them), but everything
seems to be petrified, as if\ paintings by the early-20th-
century Belgian artist Rene Magritte (Figure 2).
On the other hand, everything is described as
though the forms of the beings and things inside the
house lacked the volume defined by light and shade. It is
as though they were not three-dimensional, as though
they existed only in the limited profile they present to
the observer at any moment. But at least there, inside
the cave, the hero is capable of seeing something. Ear-
lier, when he is removing stones from the opening,
everything is too dark and only the dog's barking guides
him. Afterward, on the way out, everything is too illumi-
nated, and the brightness prevents him from seeing. But
nonetheless, inside the house he sees, though only in
fragments, as though he had lost stereoscopic vision
and could focus only on what is directly in front of him:
the entry, the altar, the stone hand. His sight is annulled
at the beginning and the end of his itinerary and is di-
minished or portioned during the central stay.
This hazy perception reinforces the dreamlike tone
of the entire tale, a tale in which the events are never
fully understood and in which things can be different
from the way they appear. It is as though the text pre-
sented something seen from a greater distance than it
should be in order to make out the details. Like the nar-
rator, the listener feels the need to make an effort to
concentrate his view because he is too far away to see
clearly what is happening. This distance is established
 PERSPECTIVES IN MAYAN LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 313

title: "The Dwarf of L xmal. The version that follows is

peculiar for several reasons that are not nec< ssary to
specify now (see Gutierrez 1988b).
There is a king they call, here in L xmal, KingTutu]-\iu. Yes,
King Tutul-Xiu was the first king there was. The second
king is Half Little Chicken. Half Little Chicken is nothing
more than what the people call the "half little chic-ken." He
is an egg.
Once there was in the ruins over therewell they
weren't ruins, it was a city at that time. Then that little old
woman used to walk around begging, and they gave her an
egg. And she began to pray over the egg. She put it between
layers of cotton and began to pray, at night she began to
pray, to make her prayers. But this means that these people
are sorcerers. It means that the sorcerers have contact w ith
the bad thing, because how are they going to do that?
Because they have special powers, they have powers, they
do it with the Bad One. Then that egg sprouted. What size
could the man have been? When it sprouted, he was a man,
a lad, a boy, but of this little size [barely a meter]: half body,
from here, he has feet, he has the form of a Christian. But
from here, pure feathers to here, hen s feathers. From the
waist up, body of a Christian and hairs, like this, like what
comes out of us.

Figure 2
Rene Magritte, Souvenir de Voyage, 1 9 5 1 , oil on canvas. Photo
courtesy Artists Rights Society, New York.

not on a horizontal plane but on a vertical plane. That is,

what takes place is situated in a lower chronotope (at an
earlier time and in a lower space i It is as if narrating
and listening to something that happened 20 years be
fore, underground, literally prevented sight, limited the
possibilities for a precise and clear description.
An analogy can be made between this tale and a pic-
ture with a disturbed perspective: with two vanishing
points not represented in the painting, whose figures
lack relief and volume and appear in profile but are con-
templated from above, and moreover, as if viewed
through an unfocused lense (see Figure 3). It is as
though, through the haze, something were escaping the
field of vision. And nonetheless, the image is presented
with the pretension of a kind of photographic realism,
resembling the work done in 1929-0 by Paul Nouge in
his Subversion of Images (1968).
The following text forms part of the 'true narrative"
genre. It is the best-known true narrative in all Yucatan,
not only among the Mayero population. It has been
widely published in popular magazines and school
books and forms part of the regional corpus of legends. Figure 3
It comes in many versions and variants under the same M C. Escher, Staircase, 1931 woodcut.
314 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, No. 2 JUNE
So the little old woman then told him, she gave him his
name: "Half Little Chicken." But he was a very agile man,
agile when he arrived like this, in this tiny size. His grand-
mother (or rather, his mama; he treated her as his mama,
she was his mama) went to look for water in the ruins.
Because over there, it is known, there were no wells, noth-
ing more than a watering hole there behind the ruins.
Behind the ruins is a watering hole. It is called Chen-Chan.
Over there that old woman was going to look for water, and
he then started to wonder why, each time the old woman
came back, she went close to the fire of her candle. At night
she was over here, next to the fire of the candle. And Half
Little Chicken started to think, "What is my mama taking
care of here?" For sure, she has something hidden over
there, what is over there doesn't allow it.
Well, one day, then, he made a hole in her water jar, the
jar she was going to get the water with. He made the hole,
and the little old woman left. And she was filling her jugs
and they didn't fill up, filling her jugs and they didn't fill up.
Then that Half Little Chicken started to dig in the fire, and
he took out an apparatus, like a little tube. Here we call it
hobon. Hobon, we call it, an apparatus that has its exit, all
empty inside, but it's made of wood. The hobon that Half
Little Chicken found was made of clay, what he took out
was clay. It had a lid. He took off the lid and took out a little
plate about this size, and it had a drumstick of gold. Half
Little Chicken grabbed it and played it with the gold drum-
stick, and music was heard all through the city. Yes, he
heard it and was frightened when he heard the music.
Immediately he put it back, covered it, and put it under the
earth and put the top on again. He buried it. Then the little
old woman arrived, frightened.
"But son, Oh! What have you done?"
He came running out to the patio and said, "It's the
turkeys singing, it's the turkeys singing."
"Ah ha!"
Well, so now the old woman knows it already. Night came,
and she began to put a spell on him, and she was explaining
to him what he was going to do. But so, with the boy
sleeping, she is explaining to him that they are going to call
him; they are going to look for who played this music that
the king has never heard before.
The boy was sleeping, and when he woke up the old
woman told him: "Listen, Half Little Chicken, today they are
coming to summon you, because all the neighbors who
heard you play music here already gave the king an account
of where it happened. So they are coming to look for you,
but don't be dumb; remember what I am going to tell you.
When you arrive, the king will ask you how you played the
music. Don't deny it. Tell him yes, that you played it. Then
people are going to come around; all the people of this city
are going to come together in order to hear it, in order to
hear what justice the king will do. Then the king will tell
you: 'Tomorrow at 4:00 I'll wait for you. Today you're going
to do no more than a divination for me.' And he's going to
ask you: 'How much fruit do these two ceiba trees have?'
He is going to tell you that, and you will tell him: 'Very good,
Mr. King, everything you are talking about, you want me to
tell you? I'll tell you, but we have to make a deal: what falls
1998
on me, falls on you.' But the king was thinking, 'What more
could he do to me?'8
'Well, I'll make a deal on the conditions you mentioned. I
am king.'
'Very good.'
'After you divine for me, tell me all you think; then I give
you what's mine.'
'That's fine. A deal. Well, this ceiba tree has 100,000, two
times three, two times one.'
'Ah ha! We'll have them take down that fruit from the
ceiba to count whether this is right.'
Then into those two trees the same sorceress had sent
two bats. So those bats flew out and they said: "What the
dwarf Half Little Chicken says, we can serve as witnesses;
we'll prove that it's right."
Right off, the king's words died. The bats proved it; they
didn't take the fruit down.
"Well, go away now."
The next day at 4 in the morning he went back to the king,
who said: "Well, gentlemen, the Half Little Chicken has
arrived. Now we are going to see if he can stand having a
dozen cocoyoles [a kind of palm nut] broken on his head.
If he can, he will be king. He is my second, I will hand over
my crown to him."
"Approved," shouted all the people, with applause.
"Very good, very good, gentlemen. Very good, I accept."
But here, at night, that old woman put a little hole here
(in his head). Who knows how she did it, but going through
his head from one side to the other was a little shaft of clay
or of stone.
And they put on Half Little Chicken a worked stone, like
this, where he was going to set his head. He set his head
down, they brought the cocoyol, they set it, and Ta! It was
left in pieces. Ta! It was left in pieces. After they broke the
12 cocoyoles, he said:
"Well, gentlemen, I complied with what the king said. The
king now must withstand having 12 cocoyoles broken on
his head."
"No, no, no. Let's just leave it as it is. You beat me."
The public then said: "No sir, the king should have the
final say."
"Well, no way. Very well," said the king. The king got
down. Paf! it went. They put another one; paf! it went. And
all 12 cocoyoles went, until they crossed through his head,
and there the king came to an end, King Tutul-Xiu. There
he ended.
Then a group of those people told him: "You are the king
now," the Half Little Chicken.
Half Little Chicken, then, I believe, it had already come
to him that the flood was coming. So he said to the people:
"I don't know what is going to happen to us, but it seems to
me that we are going to end. The only way we can know
this is that there be a witness who proves what is going to
happen to us. It's good. Now make a wooden saint."
They made a wooden saint, but they put it in the fire and
it turned to ash. It turned to ash. They made another of
stone, and it turned to lime.
"Well, we already failed twice," said Half Little Chicken.
"Well, look, we are going to make the last one out of clay."
 PERSPECTIVES INMAYAN LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTVEZ 3 1 5

Nine days and nine nights it was burning, burning, until mensions and in its appropriate relations so that the de-
the clay stayed red. Then yes, it spoke: tails and the whole can be seen at the same time. The
'Know, let Half Little Chicken know, that the flood is view is stereoscopic and is on th< same plane as the ac-
going to be made from negation (inundation) of water." tion in the story. It does not matter that the events oc-
Then, for that reason they made those constmctions curred in Uxmal, far from the place where they are be-
(pyramids) high up on the hills. The first king was Tutul- ing narrated. It does not matter that they took place
Xiu. The second, Half Little Chicken. There wasn't any before the flood, at an earlier age. Everything is de-
third. There wasn't any.
scribed as though it were taking place before us, con-
It is already the end of the emigration that came. Half
Little Chicken was ruling when the flood entered. I
current with the enunciator's recounting, as he speaks.
dreamed how the world is going to end, with pure fire. What This suppression of distance between the representa-
I tell you is coming close, but it is not going to arrive in the tion and the represented, this absence of any differenti-
next 20 years. Many Christians don't believe it, but yes, it ating markings between mythical and ordinary dis-
is going to arrive. When it joins the highway, it has to soak course, produces a disconcerting feeling such as one
all the people, until the end of the world, to listen to the might experience when looking at certain Magritte
justice in the ruins of Uxmal. paintings in which what appears to be a painted canvas
is equally a view through a window i Figure 41.
Unlike the earlier story (a happening), this story
has been told by the enunciator on numerous occasions, On the other hand, the tale has a very pronounced
which has doubtless allowed him to increase his narra- teleological bent. Tht vanishing | oint of this text is not
tive mastery. The story is told from the point of view of only explicit and visualized, but it is also foreseen, al-
the protagonist, Half Little Chicken, but from time to most predicted from the beginning. The syntagmatic
time, mostly in the beginning, the narrator interjects structure of this story Ls much like that of thousands of
comments, remarks, and explanations. He explains other stories: it begins with a prohibition and its trans-
what takes place in the story to the listener and to him- gression, then subjects the hero to three tests, and ends
self. There do not appear to be any obstacles to his
knowledge; the story is absolutely comprehensible to
him, and if he is sometimes a bit pedantic, it is only be-
cause of his previous experience with me and my diffi-
culty in understanding what he tells me. The narrator is
omniscient: he knows what Half Little Chicken thinks at
any time, and he knows all about his secret agreements
and the tricks that he contrives with his mother, the sor
ceress. This clarity, this illumination of the central plot,
makes the entire narrative unfold as something known
and unsurprising (in contrast to what takes place in the
earlier text). From our point of view, the events de-
scribed in the true narrative of the Dwarf of Uxmal seem
quite as unbelievable as the events in the armadillo's un-
derground house, or even more unbelievable, their logic
and veracity is unquestioned, contained wholly within
the realm of Mayero common sense. Paradoxically,
something that was experienced by the narrator is tex-
tually construed as being more unreal, verging on mad-
ness and the impossible, than something that was expe-
rienced by an imaginary creature with a body that
challenges the conventions of possible beings.
Due to its different generic perspectives and tex-
tual elaborations, the autobiographical happening is
less believable, appears less real, than the mythical true
narrative of the Dwarf of Uxmal. This implies that in the
latter story, the distance between the observer and the
observed, between the enunciator and the utterance, is
small enough to allow him to see and describe every- Figure 4
thing in detail (from the ashes in the fire to the clay hole Rene Magritte, Les Promenades d'Euclide, 1955. Photo courtesy
in the hero's head). Everything appears in its proper di- Artists Rights Society, New York.
316 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, Wo 2 J U N E 1998

with his public recognition. This makes us feel entirely
familiar with the architecture of the text, in which it is
impossible to get lost (see Figure 5). Its perspective is,
in this sense, canonical, almost like one constructed for
the purpose of teaching what perspective is to theoreti-
cians and artists after the Renaissance. But the tale has
a somewhat more complex form than if it consisted of
only one scene. It is more like a triptych, in which an
event or a series of events is represented in the center
while on either side the donors are viewing the scene
whose representation they commissioned (Figure 6).
They are located, formally and conceptually, in the
same place as the enunciator of the tale, who, appearing
at the beginning and at the end, introduces his point of
view and inserts the ancient history he has told into the
present conversation.
The third text we are going to consider is not a nar-
rative. It belongs to the genre of 'major words,' that is,
of the words that automatically produce a change in the
state of the world.' In this case it is a magic spell, and as
such its effectiveness is therapeutic. It was said to cure
a woman of a kind of stupefaction (pastnadura) caused
by a "bad wind" that produces great weakness, espe-
cially in her legs, and a continual cough. The spell is re-
cited while the patient is sitting down and the h-men
(the curer or herbalist) makes counterclockwise circu-
lar movements over her head with a branch of basil, ex-
pelling what she might have taken on with gestures and
movements that hardly touch the patient's body. The
basil also follows a linear motion up the patient's limbs,
from her hands to her shoulders and from her feet to her
waist. Some movements, always from left to right, run
up her back and chest, but most of the prayer is made
around her head. Although the textual transcription I
have made distinguishes different lines visually, the
audible breaks in the discourse are caused by the deep
sighs of the h-men and by very slight changes in intona-
tion. It begins, "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in
earth as it is in heaven," and continues with, "Hail Mary
Mother of God, pray for us sinners at our death, amen."
Then it goes like this:

Figure 5
Peter Neefs, Interior of a Church, 1616. Photo courtesy Fundaci6n Collecci6n Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
 PERSPECTIVES IN MAYAN L I T E R A R Y GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 317

Figure 6
Master of the Legend of St. Lucy, Triptych of the Lamentation, c. 1475. Photo courtesy Fundacion Colleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

I Sanctuary, so that his evil enemies,

give me luck, also, do not have even one power,
at these moments, also. do not have eyes to see him,
4 Sanctuary, do not have tongues to speak to him,
if firearms come over him do not have feet to reach him.
may you not shoot him, also, Finally, Lord,
if sabres come to wound him granted that you have more power, also.
you break them, also, 35 Hours of days, hours of nights, also,
if knives come over him I come praying over him, also,
may you fold them, also. this prayer, also.
II At these moments, also. I come taking him away,
I come untying him, also, I come taking him out,
from these evils, also, I come throwing him out, also"
I come bringing him together, at these moments, also.
I come throwing him out, 4? Virgin Saint Rita,
I come taking him away, also, Virgin Saint Rosa,
at these moments, also. Virgin Pilar,
18 May you not let him fall Saint Isabel.
in evil temptations over him. that you have more power, also,
Also Lord, Virgin of Carmen,
that you free him, also Virgin Candelaria
as you have freed all the virgins that you have more power, also,
Virgin Mary, Virgin Magdalene. to all the Virgins,
24 Protect him with your Most Holy Wound who are more powerful, also
of your Most Holy Rib. who are in heaven, also.
Wrap him, also 53 That it be known, also,
with the veil of the Holy Sacrament at these moments, also,
318 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, No. 2 JUNE 1998

to unloosen those evils, also, so that his evil enemies

to take them away, do not have even one power,
to clean, also, do not have eyes to see him,
this body, also. do not have tongues to speak to him,
[Deep sigh.] do not have hands to catch him,
60 Come, o invisible ones! do not have feet to reach him.
O invisible ones, o invisible ones, 119 Finally, Lord,
O invisible ones, o invisible ones, granted that you have more power, also.
O invisible ones, o invisible ones, Do not allow him to fall
O invisible ones, o invisible ones, into temptation over him.
O invisible ones, o invisible ones, Also, Lord,
0 invisible ones, o invisible ones! that you free him, also,
67 At these moments, also, as you have freed all the virgins,
granted that you have more power, also, Virgin Mary, Virgin Magdalene,
Saint George and Saint Paul and Saint Thomas, that you have more power, also.
Saint Roch and Saint Matthew, [Deep sigh.]
that you have more power, also, Name of God, Holy Ghost, Amen Jesus.
Saint Isidore, Name of God, Holy Ghost, Amen Jesus.
that you have more power, [Four deep sighs.]
Saint Bartholomew, The spell lacks narrative articulation, and there are
that you have more power,
hardly any verses that describe actions; most are
Saint Joachim,
that you have more power, also.
formed by the reiteration of proper names. The spell
78 Hours of days, hours of nights, also, starts with a syncopated version of the Paternoster and
1 come speaking of him, also, the Ave Maria and ends with the duplication of a for-
I come taking him away, also. mula reminiscent of the one used when crossing one-
81 In these evils that are, self. Between the supposedly orthodox beginning and
at these moments, also, the end stretch more than 120 lines that revolve upon
that you accompany him at every moment, themselves.
in every place, By means of the spell, the h-men convokes a broad
on the road, assembly of powerful beings around him. Under the
in his home. maximum hierarchy of the Lord, they have to cooperate
Finally, Lord, granted in his therapeutic task. All are named in relation to the
that you have more power, also. same point, the point that forms the patient's body, the
89 Eternal Father, Holy Ghost, body of "him." But the patient is not named; she is re-
Creator of heaven and of earth,
ferred to as "he." Nor are her ills, pains, or circum-
do your blessed will, also,
on earth, as in heaven, also.
stances told. She is nearly erased from the text and only
Granted that you have more power, also, appears as the indirect reference on which the names of
may you not allow him to fall into temptation, all the powerful beings converge. An analogous rela-
at these moments, also, tionship exists between the worshiper and the tympa-
that you accompany him at all moments, num and archivolts above the portals of a Romanesque
in all places, or Gothic church (Figure 7). Although not a literal part
on the road, of the sculptural program, the worshiper nonetheless
in his home. has a place in the realm of the sacred images: as the
Finally, Lord, audience for the work and the recipient of its message.
granted that you have more power, also. The spiriting away of the patient, the concealing of
(Deep sigh.} the person designated "he," is even more surprising
102 O my Just Judge! when, as in this case, the patient is a "she," a woman. It
divine maker of heaven, is her body that gives form to the verbal ritual of the
of universal earth,
spell. The rite, a measure of time, becomes a place as
Saint Paul and Saint Thomas,
free him, also,
the branch of basil runs over her body. The rhythm that
as you have freed all the virgins, rules the lines takes the form of her body; an unnamed,
Virgin Mary, Virgin Magdalene. unsexed, indifferent body is made, but it is a body cov-
109 Protect him with your Most Holy Wound ered with the names of saints and virgins. A parallel can
of your Most Holy Rib. be found in Japanese tattoos, where the shapes of the
Envelop him, also, image adapt themselves to the volume of the body and
with the veil of the Holy Sacrament change with each position, making the body more than
 PERSPECTIVES IN MAYAN LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 319

Hence, the text combines monotony and dyna-

mism. What could be called its curvilinear perspective
is hardly seen. Each thing disappears, only to reappear
as another, similar thing, and then another, and, at the
end, again, as the first of the whole lot. It is like spinning
a glass or jar that has intermittent drawings and frets
that circle around and outline an empty space (Figure
9), in the text this empty space corresponds to the singu-
larity of the patient's body. But one might also think of a
Giuseppe Arcimboldi painting in which fruit and flow-
ers make up a figure or a face (Figure 10); the numerous
forms together establish a metaform giving them a new
meaning. In Arcimboldi, as in the spell, we have before
us an ambiguous image that is radically transformed ac-
cording to the way it is seen. For the patient, who per-
ceives only aurally a rhythm that ties together a succes-
sion of names and verbs, the spell, like the body of
Vetunno-Rodolfo II in Arcimboldi's painting, is an unin-
telligible reflection of power. For the reader, who per-
ceives visually each one of the sequences and segments
of the spell, the flowers and fruit in the painting have re-
covered their familiar triviality.
The last text that we are going to consider, a frag
ment of an ethnographic interview, does not fit the
genres of Mayero utterance but is a Mayero utterance
encrusted in a genre of our own. At the same time, how-
ever, since it is possible to conduct an interview with a
Mayero, it may be thought of as a "virtual" genre, per-
haps translatable as a conversation with strangers."101
include it only as a complement and contrast to the
spell, and my commentary will be much briefer. It is an
Figure 7
Tympanum with Christ Surrounded by the Four Evangelists and
Their Symbols, Cathedral of Burgos, Spain, 13th century.

the tattoo's mere frame and support. The body is actu-

ally the tatto's perspective, its depth, its relief, and the
thing that establishes the relations among its parts. The
prayer is drawn over the body like a tattoo whose fig
ures are the Virgin Candelaria, the Virgin Magdalene,
Saint Roch, and Saint George, plus the invisible ones,
the Lord, the Just Judge, and all the others needed to
complete the configuration until the last millimeters of
skin are covered. The text itself comes to take the form
of a body, with the head constituted by the initial Pater-
noster, the two feet by the duplicated short prayer at the
end. In the center of the text, in the area of the body's
unnameable orifices, is the stanza dedicated to the in-
visible ones. Except for these invisible ones, who are
named only once, everything else is repeated so often
that the whole thing seems to flow like an inexhaustible
litany, or like an object moving along a Mobius strip,
which has no beginning or end (see M. C. Escher's ver- Figure 8
sion, Figure 8). M. C. Escfier, Mobius Strip 1,1961, woodcut.
320 A M E R I C A N A N T H R O P O L O G I S T V O L 1 0 0 , No. 2 J U N E 1 9 9 8

up. Then they pass '.t [through] the machines, and that is
penicillin. It wasn't a great thing, but one doesn't know.
MGE: Right. Or, so, don Placido, the doctors cannot cure
all the ills of the wind.
PPQ: No, they can't cure it; they can't cure that. Like that
one I did to the boy: he came here so that I would carve him
give him a massage], but I got ahold of his body, and it
wasn't disconcertedness, it was like wind that he had in his
body. But one has to think about age, about the care of the
person who is not careful. For example, he gets drunk;
suddenly he falls where the bad wind crosses under the
ground. There he is: he s got it, he got it. Since he was drunk,
well, he doesn't even feel it, but it's already in his body. So
it's what is making him sick. Then, we aren't going to quiet
anything other than this. One has to see what the thing is
that each person's body has.
MGE: Another thing you told me yesterday, I don't know if
I understood you well: that only children who are born on
Good Friday have a purple vein here on their nose.
PPQ: Yes, yes, that's right.

Figure 9
Aribalo inca. Photo courtesy the Museo de America, Madrid.

interview about illness, conducted two months after I

had begun my fieldwork and therefore at a time when I
still asked questions. My personal relationships with
people were not intense enough to permit a true conver-
sation. Here is the text:
M. Gutierrez-Estevez: Because what are the ills or ill-
nesses doctors can't cure?
P. Poot Qu.: Well, I'll tell you: it's the pure wind, the wind,
yes. Because there is wind, for example, that comes out
from here [from the floor of the home].
MGE: Those winds cannot be cured; the rest can be cured''
PPQ: Yes. The doctors, yes, yes, they can cure it. But
mostly, what the doctors cure with today is always these
vegetable herbs. Only now, they are prepared in pure pow-
der. Like that penicillin, that is very good medicine. But,
what do you think? Penicillin, what do you think about that
form it comes in? It's pure powder of pozolf "
MGE: Ah, it is pozole powder.
PPQ: It is pozole powder, that red thing you see. Here [in
the family], nobody besides me likes it. They hang the
pozole over there on the little liiir Three days ago four
days, over there; and when it blossoms, then the powder is Figure 10
red. Then, that is what the doctors take, and they make it Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Rudolph II, oil on canvas.
 PERSPECTIVES IN MAYAN LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 321

MGE: That's right, isn't it' And why do they have that purple encyclopedia which are connected only by the tacit as-
vein there? sociations in the mind of the interviewer. And so the
PPQ: Well, for being a human being. He carries it by birth. doctors, the winds, the vein of the tongue, Holy Friday,
MGE: The child born on Good Friday, or all of them? and so many other things that could come up appear on
PPQ: Not all. Good Friday, just Good Friday. Whoever the surface of the text. My words at the beginning and
wants to save their child brings him here to me. his at the end, excerpted arbitrarily from an undefined
MGE: Yes, but do all human beings have a purple vein? whole, provide the frame that delimits the text. But it is
PPQ: Not all. There are boys who are born, or girls who are
born, who are clean: it is not noticeable. But underneath a frame that does not delimit anything articulated
the tongue, they've got it. Then, that is the cause of hyster within as a totality. It is like the frame of a cubist collage
ICS. Because once this vein is filled a lot, then it attacks him. that could be made smaller or larger at whim without
So, then, you go with the doctor, he tells you that you have changing its condition as a collage.
hysteria, because he doesn't know the form it comes in. If this ethnographic interview is like a collage, it is
MGE: Riqht, so then one has to prick it. so because its parts are heterogeneous and naturally in-
PPQ: One has to prick it just on Good Friday. So that that dependent-, they are related only through physical conti-
comes out. It's like draining that vein. The blood comes out; guity (see Figure 11). My interventions (my questions or
it should be six, eight drops. It isn't that a lot should come my commentaries) represent both the seams, the cuts
out, but when that blood comes out, it no longer attacks between the different parts of the collage, and the glue
him. So the person can grow, this evil, this sickness doesn't
appear in him. that holds them together on the board or canvas. The
narrative disarticulation of the interview irremediabl
Leaving aside for now any analysis of asymmetries has an effect on me and contaminates me, turning me
between the enunciators in terms of what they know, into a dislocated being. It is as if I were transformed into
can do, or want, a textual asymmetry can be found. It an "exquisite corpse" (the cudarr^ ext\u is of the surreal-
exists in every interview, but in one like this, where my ists) (Figure 12) who tries to represent on paper what i
questions or observations are almost telegraphic in being shown to him, while his head is boiling and his
their brevity, it is more accentuated. This asymmetry
makes the interview approximate a monologue prompt-
ed by me, in which I behave like a listener who tends
either to be silent or to echo occasionally what is said.
In a way, this monologue-like condition matches this
text to the previous one. The spell is like a conversation
with numerous beings who remain silent; the interview
is like a conversation with someone who would like to
be silent: to know without having to ask. On the other
I Museam fOr Kuntf- und
hand, the spell has a rhythm of repetitions that create a | folturjeschlchte, Lftuk
curvilinear perspective, whereas here there is an accu-
mulation of heterogeneous detail without rhythm and
with a flat perspective: with neither lights nor shadow,
relief, or volume. Moreover, whereas forceful state-
ments are made in the spell ("granted that you have
more power"), here there are questions and misunder-
standings. The form of the openings is also opposed: the
spell's indefinite encompassing of a void within a de-
fined form (thr body, the mouth of the glass) becomes
the interview's linear itinerary with an abrupt and un-
foreseeable end. The interview ends simply because
either I decided to stop asking questions or the person
answering got tired.
In the spell, more names of virgins and saints could
be added or the names of the numerous winds that af-
flict the Mayero could be given. But the whole is finite,
and the structure of the spell itself obliges that it be so:
it must end with a short final prayer. In contrast to both Figure 11
the spell and the tale, the interview has no logically nec- Kurt Schwitters, Admission Ticket, 1922, collage Fundacion Colec-
essary ending. The respondent provides information, ci6n Thyssen-Bornemisza. Photo courtesy Artists Rights Society,
isolated and heterogeneous features from his cultural New York.
322 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST V O L 1 0 0 ,No 2 JUNE 1 9 9 8
chest is open to he doesn't know what. Or it is like what
we find in Jan "Velvet" Brueghel's depiction of a
kunstkammer (cabinet of curiosities), in which paint-
ings are propped against each other and can be seen
only partially (like what I listen to in the interview);
where the sense of smell is represented by a lady who
smells a flower that I can see but cannot smell and the
sense of sight is represented by another lady who does
not look at the multitude of images around her but
rather at her own image in the mirror (Figure 13). Still,
in response to my questions, she could look and speak
of the paintings that surround her and perhaps even
take me through the dark and endless gallery that seems
to disappear into a blurry garden. There is a very clear
linear perspective (like my ethnographic objective) that
is in tension, without clear dominance, with the multi-
ple perspectives and different vanishing points of each
one of the paintings represented in the work: like the
Figure 12
Yves Tanguy, Andre Breton, and J Tanguy, Cadavre Exquis, 1938,
collage. Photo courtesy Art'sts Rights Society, New York.
point of view of Mayero common sense and that of the
doctors, and that of the patient, and that of my inter-
locutor and myself. Is this not the tension of perspec-
tives experienced in the ethnographic interview? In this
sense, as a textual product, the interview is the antithe-
sis of myth, with its single, well-structured, canonical
perspective. And what is most idiosyncratic, as in the
case of the happening, appears to be what is also the
most colorless, the least structured, and, textually the
least believable, the most unreal.
The Perspective of the Enunciator and the
Diversity of Subjects
If the Mayero people invest utterance in general
and conversation in particular with the highest moral
value and if they distinguish genres of utterance by their
respective stylistic and structural conventions, then it is
reasonable to deduce that the rules of genre have con-
siderable coercive power over the enunciators. This
means that when an enunciator opts to "make a conver-
sation" of one kind or another, his possible idiosyn-
cratic creativity is limited to what the chosen genre (the
true narrative or the happening) permits. This leads us
to consider the perspectives the genres offer to the
enunciator, revealing a whole other series of possible
forms by which to constitute some fragment of the
world and himself as a subject related to this world.
Although briefly, I am now going to suggest that the
kind of subject, through the act of enunciating, is con-
structed by the perspective of the literary genre corre-
sponding to the previous texts.
In our analysis of the kind of perspective used in
the autobiographical happening narrative, we spoke of
an undetermined vanishing point, views from above, ab-
sence of light, shadow, and volume and a dreamlike at-
mosphere, and we made analogies to Magritte or Esch-
er. The subject of the utterance (who in this case is also
identified as the hero of the tale) situates himself on the
boundaries between madness and common sense, in an
area that he perceives as mobile and undefined. He is
suspicious of his listener (of his judgment regarding the
nature of the experience as madness, dream, or fan-
tasy), and he doubts himself (his opportunity to spea
and the effectiveness of his narrative). As in so many
other tales in the same literary genre, in so many "hap-
penings of fright" and in so many "stories about ruins,"
experienced directly by their narrators, what takes
place or unfolds in the story escapes the possibilities of
the subject's full comprehension. For that reason it is
told, and must be told, within the stylistic and structural
rules of a genre that exists in order to preserve the ex-
traordinary and incomprehensible nature of what hap-
pened. For that reason this text's perspecthe (and that
 PERSPECTIVES IN MAYAN LITERARY GENRES / MANUEL GUTIERREZ-ESTEVEZ 323

Figure 13
Jan 'Velvet" Brueghel. The Senses: l//s/b/7a/7tfSme//(AKunstkammer), late 16th century. Photo courtesy Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

of others like it) constructs a particular subject, one
whose ordinary capacities (of knowing or doing) have
been diminished, one who is dragged along by the
events and does not understand what is happening to
him. This subject does not understand what he will later
tell, to the amazement of his listeners, whenever, in the
afternoons, he makes a conversation. At each telling of
a new happening, both the enunciator and his listeners
will be certain that such things, sometimes, do occur,
and that the world appears as it does even though it is
not understood. And this makes the enunciator become
a subject estranged even from himbelf, one who is both
inside and outside (so far outside that he doesn't under-
stand it and so far inside that he experiences it): a het-
eronomous subject whose norms of interpretation, of
resignification. are displaced with regard to the norms
that appear to rule the functioning of things in the
world
The situation of the enunciator of the true narrative
of the Dwarf of Uxmal is as antithetical to this one as, to
a large extent, are the respective conventions of the lit-
erary genres used and the perspectives they contain.
Here, nothing appears dark or incomprehensible. The
enunciator supposes that, perhaps, part of what he tells
could be unbelievable (the hero's prodigious birth from
a hen's egg), and he is quick to explain and justify it
("they have special powers"). In regard to his perspec
tive, we have spoken of a visible and explicit vanishing
point, of figures organized by their respective dimen-
sions, of a clear and detailed frontal vision, of a canoni-
cal composition, of Renaissance painting, of realistic
impression. The enunciator, who in this case is not the
hero of the tale, nonetheless identifies entirely with
him, what Half Little Chicken does seems under-
standable to him, and, as marvelous and magical as it is,
it is recounted as something "natural,' with allusions to
tricks where necessary. The subject of the utterance is
speaking of a world, ancient though it is, that seems
close to him. It is a world that, within the conventions of
the genre, is seen as his own world, the same world as
that of Half Little Chicken or Tutul Xiu. He is a subject
who, in contrast to the enunciator of the tale of the
324 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, No. 2 JUNE
armadillo, we could call "homonomous": that is, a sub-
ject who is identified to the highest degree with the
norms governing the narrative universe he reproduces
with his words.
The situation of the person reciting the spell is
quite different. In this case, we have perceived a dislo-
cated perspective in which the closest thing (the pa-
tient's body) is neither seen nor looked at, while the far-
thest things (the powerful beings) are named repeatedly
so that they are felt to be immediately present. This kind
of perspective constitutes a subject who succeeds in
seeing in detail only a part of the whole configured by
his own text, the part that corresponds to the powerful
beings. And precisely with regard to these beings, he re-
veals his subordination: subordination to those whose
names he uses, to recall their power and ask for their
protection not for himself but for a "him" who is she.
The spell is packed with characters, and although they
could have their own histories and attributes, they are
present only as names in the text, as insignificant forms
that are adapted to the shape of the body like a tattoo, or
like a fret whose decorative design is adapted to the
form of a vase. The enunciator situates the names and
pronouns in this text without establishing any relation
to himself that might denote his comprehension or iden-
tification or even his capacity for manipulation. Only
what he himself does ("I come taking it away, I come
taking it out, I come removing it") appears to be an ef-
fective action, although its efficacy is limited and de-
pends on being recognized by the powerful beings
("also, that it be known, also"). The rhythmic style limits
his expressive capacity, reducing it to a constant echo;
the same words are heard over and over as though the
enunciator had lost the faculty of producing meaningful
sentences, which appear in the text only exceptionally
and without connection. His subordination and subjec-
tion are expressed metaphorically in a nonverbal fea-
ture: the deep sighs that connote the subject, not as an
actor with his own voice, but as a cleansing instrument.
(His actions are popularly called a "cleansing.") In
short, this is a subject who, limited by the genre he inter-
prets, has no other role than that of mediator among
names and pronouns, since the text, his script, permits
him to say no more. We could say that in this case we
find a subject situated below the norms governing the
fragment of world the text constructs and represents.
Below means that these norms are not incomprehensi-
ble to him, as a heteronomous subject; they are known,
but he is prevented from glossing or expanding his nar-
rative. Thus we could say that this rhythmic, curvilinear
perspective produces a hyponomous subject.
In the interview, within the perspective of a cubist
collage, the enunciator reveals himself as a subject who
decides, criticizes, controls, and segments the scene at
will without having any syntagmatic limits or paradigms
1998
to follow. We find here a subject who handles the ency-
clopedia of his culture in order to answer various de-
mands and questions never heard before. In short, he
emerges as a strongly autonomous subject, despite the
asymmetrical dynamic of the interview's tendency to
make him into an object.
The four texts discussed here, representative of
four genres with their corresponding perspectives, have
generated kinds of subjects so different one from an-
other that they cannot be considered mere circumstan-
tial modalities of a single subject but, rather, are differ-
ent subjects in themselves.12 By adopting a point of view
from art criticism and using the concept of perspective
in its pictorial sense, we have been able to see more
clearly that the locus of the enunciation (like the
painter's gaze) forms part of what is uttered (or painted
or represented) and mimetically transforms the enun-
ciator himself. That is to say, if each literary genre im-
plies the constitution of a specific place of utterance, it
also implies a different enunciator. The plurality of the
subject, derived from the variety of his roles and de-
sires, expands and is multiplied by the plurality of possi-
ble enunciations offered by the genres of his literary tra-
dition.
Notes
Acknowledgments. I am very grateful to Carmen Bernand,
Marcelo Dascal, Estrella de Diego, Miguel Leon-Portilla, Fran-
cisco Lisi, Walter Mignolo, Pedro Pitarch, Richard Price,
Jaime de Salas, and Carlos Thiebaut. All of them kindly read
a first version of this essay, and their comments have been of
tremendous use. I am also grateful to Barbara and Dennis
Tedlock for their help with the present version, and to Alison
Hughes for her translation from Spanish.
1. Bakhtin claims that "poetics should take genre as a point
of departure. Genre is the typified form of the whole of the
work, of the whole of what is told. A work is only real in the
form of a particular genre. The structural importance of each
element can be understood only in relation to the genre"
(1994:207-208).
2. Bakhtin says something very similar, although he takes
a more "realistic" position when he says, "Each genre pos-
sesses certain principles of selection, certain forms of vision
and conception of reality, certain degrees in the ability to
grasp it and in the depth of penetration in it" (1994:210).
3. The term Mayero (refering to a person who speaks the
Maya language) is the ethnic designation of choice in the
villages of Campeche (Halacho, Haltunchen, Villa Madero)
from which these texts come. Mayero not only distinguishes
these people from those who speak Spanish but also, and
above all, from the Mayan people who lived long ago and
disappeared as a result of the Spanish conquest (see Gutierrez
1992). The quote below is from an oral Mayero version.
4. As Bricker (1973) has shown. She also devotes some
pages to "ritual humor" in Yucatan.
 PERSPECTIVES INMAYAN LITERARY GENRES
5. Regarding the genres of Yucatec utterance, see Gutier-
rez 1982 and, especially, Burns 1983 and Ligorred 1990. See
also the more general discussion in Edmonson and Bricker
1985.
6. There is no need to exaggerate the necessary requisites
to possessing "generic competence." As Marie-Laure Ryan
(1979) indicates, while it is acknowledged that readers or
listeners cannot rightly understand a text without knowing
something about the genre to which it belongs, it is not
necessary that they be fully aware of each of the rules and
options applicable to each genre.
7. Regarding the influence of listener relations in the Ma-
yero autobiographical genres, see Gutierrez 1988a.
8. The tense change here (from future to past) follows that
of the original narrative.
9. Regarding the way in which Mayan ritual genres produce
spatial frames, see Hanks's interesting analysis (1990:
235-254).
10. I owe this suggestion to Pedro Pitarch.
11. In Yucatan, the term pozole is used differently than it
is in the rest of Mexico. In Yucatan it is one of the most
important daily beverages and is called keyem in Maya. To
make it, corn is cooked lightly in water with lime; afterwards
it is cooked again in clean water until the kernels burst and
open. Once the batter has been ground, it is left two or three
days to sour before being used. Keyem comes from mixing
this sour batter with water, sometime sweetened with honey.
12. It could be supposed that the Mayeros, if they became
aware of the plurality of voices that they have at their dis-
posal, would experience the enjoyment (and the vertigo) of
personal heteronomia, as, for example, Pessoa choosing a
name, biography, and style to write as Alberto Caeiro, or as
Alvaro de Campos or Ricardo Reis.
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