Gary H. Gossen

The forty-two stories presented in this book were told to Robert Laughlin in Tzotzil by Francisca Hernández Hernández, an elderly woman known as Doña Pancha, the only speaker of Tzotzil left in the village of San Felipe Ecatepec in Chiapas, Mexico. Laughlin and Doña Pancha’s running conversation is the source for the stories, which means they are told in much the same way that stories are told in traditional native settings.Doña Pancha is bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish, and the stories are presented here in English, Tzotzil, and Spanish. They range from mythological sacred stories to quasi-historical legends to historical accounts of life in the twentieth century.

Four Creations is a collection of seventy-four stories told to Gary H. Gossen by Tzotzil Maya storytellers in San Juan Chamula, Mexico. Spanning four cycles of creations, destructions, and restorations from the dawn of cosmic order to the present era, this epic history reveals a distinctly Maya vision of the universe, grand in scope yet leavened with local humor, irony, and the Tzotzil narrators' own critical commentaries.Four Creations includes mythic accounts of modern history, such as the Wars of Independence, the Mexican Revolution, and the current Protestant evangelical movement. Given in both transcribed Tzotzil and English translations, the texts are enlivened by more than one hundred Maya Indian drawings and by Gossen's extensive ethnographic and historical notes based on his conversations with the narrators and more than thirty-five years of study.Miguel León-Portílla's Foreword situates Four Creations within the broader context of Mesoamerican culture and traditions, while the Afterword by Jan Rus relates this work to recent events in modern-day Chamula.

Telling Maya Tales offers an experimental ethnographic portrait of the San Juan Chamula, the largest and most influential Maya community of Highland Chiapas, in the late twentieth century--the era of the Zapatistas. In this collection of essays, the author, whose field work in the area spans two generations of anthropological thought, explores several expressions of Tzotzil ethnic affirmation, ranging from oral narrative to ritual drama and political action. His work covers the current era, when the Chamula Tzotzils mingle chaotically and sometimes violently with the social and political space of modern Mexico--most recently, in the context of the Maya Zapatista movement of 1994.

Telling Maya Tales offers an experimental ethnographic portrait of the San Juan Chamula, the largest and most influential Maya community of Highland Chiapas, in the late twentieth century--the era of the Zapatistas. In this collection of essays, the author, whose field work in the area spans two generations of anthropological thought, explores several expressions of Tzotzil ethnic affirmation, ranging from oral narrative to ritual drama and political action. His work covers the current era, when the Chamula Tzotzils mingle chaotically and sometimes violently with the social and political space of modern Mexico--most recently, in the context of the Maya Zapatista movement of 1994.