The Mayans
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I heard the familiar sound of the back door closing gently. My father was returning from weeding the vast amounts fields, with is old sickle, and planting more corn crops in one of our fields. He usually starts his day at 5:00 a.m. every morning, he wakes up to the superb aroma of a sweet honey that fills the whole room and which drags him into the kitchen, the smell of hot tortillas. “Good Morning father” greeted by his beautiful wife and children. They are wearing loose dresses that reached their ankles; his wife’s clothing was embroiled with elegant ornaments, and both females wore stunning necklaces made from the finest green jades in Guatemala. It has been almost 30 minutes since the Komatuk family have been enjoying their tortillas and balche (alcoholic drink). “Ok dear ones its time to get ready” the lady of the house would exclaim. It was time for the family to pay a visit Jolomk’u.
Jolomku, according to the stories of the grandparents, was the name of a village situated on a tall ridge among a multitude of hills and mountains. It was a colorful village, woven with the work of men and women, with their lives, illusions and failures. Cold air rode freely among the savage hills, coming face to face with the people of Jolomku. The Komatuk family walked down the dusty brown road with his family as the hot bright sun shined on to them. As the enormous temple on top of the great sandy pyramid, they would then climb up the great sandy pyramid to get the sacred temple.
When they reach the top of the pyramid they meet hundreds of other Mayans who are waiting in line to get their blessing from the high priest. After waiting in line as the scorching and sizzling sun shined on them. As Mekel and his family enters the sanctified holy temple he prays with the hundreds of Mayans as they worship their god as animals and prisoners of wars were being sacrificed to tribute and honor their great god. The crowd at the base of the enormous blood red pyramid has been standing for hours in the dripping heat of the Guatemalan jungle. No one moves; every eye stays fixed on the buildings summit, where the king, his head adorned with feathers, his scepter a two-headed crocodile, is about to emerge from a sacred chamber with instructions from his long-dead ancestors. The crowd sees nothing of his movements, but it knows the ritual: lifted into the next world by hallucinogenic drugs, the king will take an obsidian blade or the spine of a stingray, pierce his own penis, and then draw a rope through the wound, letting the blood drip onto bits of bark paper. Then he will take the bark and set it afire, and out of the rising smoke a vision of a serpent will appear to him. When the king finally emerges, on the verge of collapse, he reaches under his loincloth, displays a bloodstained hand and announces the ancestors message–the same message he has received so many times in the past: “Let the sacrificing begin” The crowd erupts in wild cheers. The bloodletting has barely begun.
Praying was an essential part for the komatuk family; however moreover sustaining a health field was even more important because they did not want to upset the gods. Mekel along with his son would then make their way to the fields; there he and his son dug incredible terraces to it level surfaces for planting corn crops. When the corn is ripe, the sons bend the ears over so that they dry out in the sun on the stalk and in this way they can be stored and preserved for the months between harvests. The most common and successful method to get the most out of the corns would be called the Milpa technique, also known as slash and burn. They would clear the