sábado, 20 de diciembre de 2014

Indians of Santa Barbara and Who Owns the Mines in Honduras According to Indians and Government


New Book Explains Who  and Where Were the Indians of Santa Barbara and what happened to Them

(part 1 of 3)

By Wendy Griffin

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the department with the greatest population in Northwestern Honduras has been Cortés, where San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortes are.  But throughout the colonial period, however,  the majority of the population in Northwestern Honduras lived in what is now the department of Santa Barbara.  The town of Chinda, Santa Barbara, now a small coffee growing municipio which does a Guancasco  dance ceremony with Ilama and Gualala, was at least 10 times bigger than San Pedro Sula during most of the colonial period and around the time independence the name of the department in Northwestern Honduras was Chinda and not San Pedro Sula, notes Raul Alvarado in his new book on Santa Barbara and Tencoa which is being presented at the San Pedro Sula Museum of Anthropology and History 14 November 2013 at 6pm.  The book is for sale at Libraría Caminante and at the Museum in San Pedro and at Libraria Guaymuras in Tegucigalpa.

There was, during most of the colonial period, only one town, and  Jicaque Indians lived there, between San Pedro Sula and the Coastal ports of Puerto Caballos and Omoa. In 1890 when the Honduran government felt they were getting control of the North Coast thanks to immigration and railroads, they sent fact finding missions to find out what was in the “unexplored areas” of Colon, the Mosquitia and Cortés!  In contrast to the low population of Cortes, part of which was not under the control of the Spanish in the colonial era due to the inability to totally conquer free Indians and runaway slaves, there were a number of large Indian towns in Santa Barbara that existed throughout the colonial period  with land titles and most of the names of these towns still exist today.

In the 2001 Ethnic Census in Honduras, analyzed by Dr. William Davidson, 30 communities in the Department of Santa Barbara reported having 100 or more Lenca Indians. These communities were located in 6 municipios or counties of Santa Barbara. In the colonial period, there do appear to  have been Lenca Indians in the department of Santa Barbara, who were refered to generally as Care or Taulepa (house or cave of the jaguar in Lenca, remembered in the place name Taulabé) or Ulúa Indians. However, colonial documents also clearly mention Jucap speaking Indians and Mexican Indians in what is now the Department of Santa Barbara and which was, throughout  the colonial period, called the Partido de Tencoa.

 In the 2001 census it was not possible to choose Nahua or Pipil Indian. It was also not possible to choose Care or Jucap. While Care is generally assumed to be Lencas, the linguistic affiliation of Jucap is not known.  So yes, there is historic and modern evidence of Lenca Indians as such in Santa Barbara, but the picture is more confusing than the first look at the 2001 census would lead you to believe.

The town of Nueva Celilac,  was originally called Julcap  according to Antonio Vallejo or Tulipan (place of lots of tule in nahua) according to colonial documents cited by Raul Alvarado before people from Celilac settled there, after a cholera epidemic  in the 1800’s broke out that affected most of the Indian towns along the Ulua river. Some of the largest “pueblos de indios” (Indian communities with colonial land titles) in the colonial era in Santa Barbara, including Ilamatepeque (hill of the old woman or grandmother or creator goddess of the Nicaraos in Nahua) and Gualala, claimed to speak Jucap, and that if the priest spoke to them in Care they did not understand.

Spanish linguist Atanasio Herranz thinks Guala- is a Lenca word meaning hand and referring to a place where rivers are born, and is also found in the place name Gualaco in the Agalta Valley of Olancho, but many place names with gua-  and near water including Gualala reported having  Mexican or Nahua speaking Indians in the colonial period. Modern descents of the people of Gualaco say their grandparents were Payas, but they were not Pech. This may come from the name of the kingdom founded by Ce Acatl Topiltzin. called  Payaqui translated as “among Nahuas”  in the colonial period or “among Yaquis” by Tulane linguist Dr. Judith Maxwell. Yaquis spoke a  Mexican language related to Nahua, according to Wikipedia, and the term Yaquis in colonial documents often refer to people now called Pipils in Guatemala and El Salvador, notes Dr. Maxwell.

This interview on which languages were spoken in Tencoa is in Hector Leiva’s collection of Colonial Documents published by the Bishopric of Choluteca. William Davidson has analyzed the relationships of these Jucap towns of Santa Barbara in his book Ethnohistoria y Etnodocumentos, for example almost all the people in Jucap towns married people in other Jucap towns, which would make sense if they all spoke the same language.  According to Padre Manuel Subirana, the Indians of Ilamatepeque spoke the same languages as the “jicaques” ( meaning unconquered and non-Christian Indians, not just the speakers of Tol) of Yoro, and that is why he used translators from there to preach to the Jicaques, but the Indians  of the town of Ilamatepeque  may have been multilingual.

So in the 2001 Ethnic Census, some Santa Barbara towns which were known to be fairly large “pueblos de indios” in the colonial period, and which still today do traditional Lenca ceremonies like the Guancasco, like Gualala (a Jucap town in the colonial era) reported few Lenca Indians in the 2001 Census.  If the people of Santa Barbara felt they belonged to Nahua, Pipil, or Jucap groups, they might have chosen “other”, rather than Lenca. So “other” does not necessarily mean that the people there are not Indians, they might be members of Indian tribes that were not included in the census.

Also as Atanasio Herranz points out, Lencas who know their families were identified as Care, or Poton, or Taulepa, or Cerquín, or  Ulúa or another internal division of the people currently called Lencas, because the US Counsul in the 1850’s  E. G. Squiers said all of these Indians were Lencas, they might have chosen “other” also.   Traditionally only the Indians around Francisco Morazan like Aguanterique were called Lencas and the other groups had their own names, like Care.

For some historic tribal names in the Lenca area like Colos, because the place names had colo in them like colosuka, colohete, etc., as with Jucap, there is controversy if these names were in fact related to Lenca speaking populations. The ethnic and linguistic identification of other groups in Northwestern Honduras like Sulas (of Sula, Santa Barbara and Sulaco, Yoro originally  and later in the Valley of Agalta, Olancho), Toqueguas, and which modern groups the Nahua Indians called Chontales (foreigners) or Jicaques (the people who were here before us)  or Payas (maybe referring to the residents of Payaqui)  in Northwestern and northeastern Honduras is also controversial.

In the census of 2001 it was also not possible to choose Indian, tribe unknown.  In a number of places where there used to be Nahua or Mexican Indians and there are still people who consider themselves Indians like the Catacamas, Olancho area, the Texiguat, El Paraiso area, and the Santa Barbara area, they often are not sure which tribe they were from. The Indian towns in border areas like Santa Barbara on the edge of the Jicaque area were often used to settle Indians from the mountains in, and the Spanish missionaries often tried to mix different ethnic groups in the same “reduccion” or town founded by the missionaries in the valleys for previously free and not Christian Indians.

In the Department of El Paraiso, where about 10% of the people considered themselves Lencas in the 2001 Ethnic Census, the undercount was probably significant because the ethnic census did not permit people to choose Nahua or Pipil, Matagalpa or Pantasma, or  Chorotega or Sumu speaking groups of dialects other than Tawahka like Ulwa, the ethnic groups generally reported there in the colonial era, identified through place names, and by the oral tradition.

Unlike Santa Barbara which was under Spanish control during the colonial period, much of the Department of El Paraiso was not under the control of the Spanish during the colonial period, and free Indians still lived in the Department of El Paraiso along the Azacualpa Valley (Azacualpa means in the pyramid according to Alberto Membreño and the place of the god of the Pochteca merchant class among the Aztecs and Nahua speakers according to Dr. Hugo Nutini) and in the Pochteca River area along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border at the time of independence in 1821, according to Tulane anthropology student Roberto Rivera.  The situation was similar in Colon and Olancho, with wide parts of these  modern departments not under Spanish control. Both the governor of Honduras in 1801 and the Bishop agreed that Indians in the mountains  just before Independence were not following the teachings of the Catholic church and often refused to act in compliance with Spanish law.

Azacualpa is an extremely common place name in Honduras including in addition to El Paraiso, there is an Azacualpa, Santa Barbara near Quimistan  (originally Quiatlan-the place of the Nicarao rain god Quia) and Sula  (deer in Miskito and dove in Nahua) and Azacualpa, Olancho (now Esquipulas del Norte-originally Olancho was Ulanco-place of rubber in Nahua) and Azacualpa, Ocotepeque (now Antigua Ocotepeque—ocotepeque in hill of pine trees in Nahua).

Between 1524 when Hernan Cortes’s men began to conquer Honduras and the New Laws of 1545 which made Indian slaver illegal,  the Spanish  hauled the Indians of Western Honduras, especially from areas now in Santa Barbara and Cortes, all over the country to force them to mine for gold, especially in the gold bearing Guayape River. In the period of 1542-1545, the more than 30,000 Indian slaves  and the 1,500  Black slaves in the gold mining regions in Olancho, in Southwestern Honduras where Lempira rose up, in the area of the modern departments Santa Barbara and in Cortes, the Indians and Blacks all rose up, and many after rising up, ran away into the mountains. This  is one reason why you have similar place names and similar ethnic groups (Sules, Comayagues, Ulúa, Mexican Indians, Agaltecas, Mayan Indians)  reported in Olancho, Colon, and El Paraiso later in the colonial period, in addition to local Pech, Matagalpa, Tawahka and Lenca Indians.


Who Owns the Mines and Natural Resources of Honduras?—The heart of the Honduran government’s conflict with the Honduras Indians

(part 2 of 3)

By Wendy Griffin

At the recent SALALM conference in Miami, Teresa Miguel-Stern, a lecturer in law at Yale University’s Law School noted that textbooks about Latin America teach that the law that exists in these countries is the law written in the national laws.  However, Indians both in the US and in Latin America often feel that there is another set of laws, which regulates hunting and fishing rights, inheritance of land, land use,  ownership of trees, interpersonal relations like theft, divorce, murder, marriage, etc.  The conflict between this traditional law and the national law was identified as at the core of the problems of the Indians of Guatemala according to CERMA’s  (Center for Mesoamerican Research) study of traditional law there among the Mayas which is on their website.

The issue of what law will operate in different parts of  Honduras has been at the core of Spanish government and later the Honduran republican government’s relationships with the Honduran Indians. When the Spanish arrived in eastern Honduras and apparently decided that here in Olancho would be a good place to put a city, and so they traced out the town square of Frontera de Caceras, where they were going to put the house plots,  they assigned house plots to each other, and ordered the  chiefs and nobles of the Indians of Olancho to provide the Spanish with good service, when these Indians were used to be the Lords of Olancho themselves.  The Indians of Olancho rose up against them immediately and forced them to flee for their lives. Other than the document which states that it was founded, no trace of that Spanish town is still found.

This was fairly typical of the Spanish government’s experience in Honduras where they commented, “Every day the Indians rise up who were before at peace.”  Cesar Indiano notes in his book “The Sons of Misfortune” (Los hijos de Infortunio), people do not rise up because of good governments. If Honduras was experiencing an average of  5.6 revolutions a year during much of the 19th century, why has no one looked to see what the government was doing to make them rise up? They were taking away Indian lands, taking away the vote, moving the seat of the “muncipio” or county which affected which ethnic group controlled the local government and the right to assign lands, still requiring forced Indian labor throughout the 19th century, murder, theft, burning their houses and destroying their crops.

While Francisco Morazon is almost a saint according to Honduran schools, his reputation among the ethnic groups is often that he took away lands of Indian communities and opened them up to Ladino settlement, took money or cattle of the Indian churches, tried to have cut down trees for exporting wood in the area between the Ulua river and the Aguan River which the Honduran government did not control as so the Indians believed these trees were theirs and also belonged to spirits of trees, his armies destroyed whole Indian communities. There were reasons why the Brujos or Witches of Ilamatepeque, Santa Barbara, the subject of a still in print Ramon Amaya Amador novel, were against him. There  are reasons the Garifuna closed the ports of Omoa and Trujillo to him, the Garifunas of the Bay Islands immigrated to Belize in the rainy season, and the Garifunas  of Trujillo supported an attempt to bring back the Spanish government after Independence.  If Francisco Morazon was shot in front of a firing squad in Costa Rica, this should give you an idea that some people were not happy with what he was doing. That few Honduran presidents finished their term in office until Luis Bogran at the end of the 1880’s, what were those Honduran presidents doing that made people so angry they rose up and threw them out of office and often out of the country. While Hondurans are retaking up Neo-Liberalism, the president that brought Liberal Reform to Honduras in the 1880’s Marco Aurelio Soto died in exile and when he tried running for reelection, he lost decisively.

 This traditional law among Indian peoples in Honduras  is often tied up with their traditional religion and with systems of belief about how people become ill. While in the laws of the Honduran government, in theory the state is responsible for determining if a law has been broken and  punishing the wrongdoer, in traditional law systems, often the spirits of the land or the water or the spiritual owners of the animals or the fish, punish wrongdoers directly themselves.

These punishments are often collective, that is the whole community or maybe even the whole country, can be affected by these punishments, such as the withholding of rain, wild animals or fish or the coming of illness, and so steps need to be taken to ensure that all community members adhere to the rules, so that not everyone is affected. In Guatemala, some of the Mayan shaman that Krystyna Duess interviewed in her book, felt that there were not cataclysmic floods or earthquakes or that the sun continued to shine and the rain to come because they were faithful in “costumbre”, the traditional Mayan ceremonies and customs. In cases where people do not follow the norms, they are often thrown out of the community and can not return, as in the case of the character Miguel, in the Garifuna in Peril movie, who sells the land, or in the case of a Garifuna who refused to participate in a ceremony to be thankful for fish in Limon, and the other fishermen made him leave Limon.

Europeans who came to Latin America in the colonial period and  the Americans who came after Independence generally were not interested in what the local Indians thought about the spirits and their punishments. Almost every American authored document about Honduran workers in the 19th and early 20th century complain about them being superstitious. You can imagine the situation that if the British tell the Miskito Indians, go cut down that mahoghany tree, they were not excited to hear that before a Miskito Indian would cut down a tree, he must first put a circle of stones around it and ask the spirit for permission to cut down the tree, and then wait for three days for the spirit to go and find another home. The British considered this very annoying, but from the Miskito point of view they were protecting their health, because if you cut down a tree without the spirit’s permission, then the spirits could make you sick, or make your children sick, and you could die or your children could die.

Although most Hondurans are nominally Catholic, most Honduran ethnic groups maintain beliefs about nature spirits, although often their names have been translated to Spanish. The words “Sirena”, “Duende”, “Angeles” (angels), or “diablo” (devil) as used by Lencas and Pipils, Miskitos, Pech, and their Ladino descendants appear to be the Spanish translations of a number of nature spirits, generally divided by water (Sirena), earth, trees, animals (duende), spirits that live in the sky or go to the sky or come down from the sky  (ángeles), and spirits that live below the earth like spirits who own trees or spirits who own the mines and the hills (diablo or duende). The Mayan Chorti have these beliefs too, but often use different words for the spirits than other Hondurans.

Among the Lencas in particular, the owner of the earth was often feminine and so the owner of gold mines is often the Virgin in traditional stories.  The continued  importance of the celebrations of Virgins among the Lencas-Virgin of Candelaria 2 February and the Virgin of Suyapa 3 February whose dates coincided with the Pipil dates for the beginning of the 240 day sacred calendar related to the rain cycle is striking.   The Honduran Chortis used to do “demandas” a ceremony with processions and drums for fulfilling promises to the Virgin in February, too. At the time of Conquest, the Lencas had the custom of doing religious processions led by carrying  a goddess the size of a hand, according to Bartholomé de las Casas. The Virgin of Suyapa is a statue the size of a hand that was found by a Lenca Indian outside of Tegucigalpa, in the village, now suburb of Suyapa one of the places where the referendum on becoming a Model city is scheduled to be held, much to the consternation of local residents.

 So obviously the Honduran government’s feeling that the 250  mines  and 50 rivers they are planning to give in concession under the “idle assets of the State” Law belong to them, clashes with traditional Honduran beliefs that these assets have spiritual owners who punish people for taking them without payment. In most mining related stories in Honduras, the owner of the mine pays for the gold or silver with the souls of his workers, but when he runs out of workers, the devil comes for his soul. 

This way of becoming rich is called being “enpactado con el diablo” (having a pact with the devil), and in both Santa Barbara and in Trujillo, Hondurans have mentioned names of modern Ladino families who became rich due to selling their workers’ souls to the devil and their workers die every year because of it.  The murder of the American mine owner in the Cedros mine in Francisco Morazán in the 1920’s by his own workers, may have been caused because the workers thought he was selling their souls in return for becoming rich through the mine. This belief that mine caves ins or accidents are caused because the mine owner has sold the souls of the workers are rife throughout the stories in the Honduran mining districts like Aqui en El Corpus or Aqui en Choluteca series, published by the Ministry of Culture. Americans and Europeans often call Hondurans lazy in historical documents because they do not want to work for them, and particularly not in mining, but again the people are worried about their health and their lives.

While European stories about fairies, brownies, leprechauns and other spiritual folk are usually told as amusement of children, and the people who tell them do not believe them, this is not the case in Honduras. When a Ladino man from Betulia, west of Trujillo and Santa Fe, tells me about the “Sucia”, a female spirit who appears to men often by the water at and who rocks hammocks at night if you are hunting tepescuintles in an area she is protecting, he tells the story that she personally rocked his hammock personally just a few years ago. When he tells about the Llorona, a spirit that cries in relation to children and how he had to go and get holy water and herbs and scare her aware from his house personally, because she kept him personally awake by making his twin daughters cry all night for six months when they were young, you realize that even for Ladinos, and even more for the Indians these spirits are still alive.

For example when bulldozers were putting in a road past the Pech villages in the 1960’s or 1970’s, a green duende (short male nature spirit) jumped up in front of the bulldozer and said, I do not bother your home, why are you bothering my home?” The bulldozer operator ran away and the bulldozer sat idle for at least a month. Honduran Spanish language newspapers  have reported Ladinos planning to move whole villages, because green duendes were taking their children, since I have been in Honduras.

Asking for permission and respectfully giving thanks, are essential parts of most of the religious ceremonies still done today, such as the “compostura” of the Lencas. The name of the ceremony comes from the Spanish verb “componer” which means to fix so that something works again like your refrigerator or a relationship, or to come to an agreement when there was some problem or disagreement.  Interestingly the Spanish colonial government also used the idea of “componer” a land title, that when there was some disagreement between the Spanish government and the Indians or the Spanish government and the Spanish subjects it was necessary to “componer” the land title, which usually consisted of paying money to the Spanish King. In Lenca composturas, the payment is made to the angels, to the devils (spirits who might bother the crops), spirits associated with the land and the sun and with the corn itself, as these are the forces that will determine if there is a good crop or not and ultimately if the family will eat or not.

The fact that nature spirits kill people or make them sick who violate traditional laws of respect for nature are part of many narratives regarding traditional healing techniques among the Honduran Indians such as the Miskitos, the Pech, the Lencas, and even the Garifuna. Several books and articles have been written about the beliefs of the Miskito Indians that they suffer from decompression sickness, or “the bends” specifically because they accept to take out more lobster, or more conch, or more fish, than the spirit who cares for the fish, “La Sirena” in Spanish and “Liwa Mairin” in Miskito, has given permission for them to take.  Other times the Sirena kills the person by drowning or kills their favorite daughter or son.  Among the Lencas, often lightening bolts which hit their house or hit them show that the spirits are angry, and a special ceremony of the “raising of the angel” is needed.

The Pech report both the Sirena and the Spiritual owners of the animals, such as the owner of the deer, the owner of peccaries (quequeo, jagüilla), the owner of the deer, etc. will take the life of a Pech who hunts or fishes disrespecting the laws established for these activities, specifically so that they will help the owner of the fish or the animals take care of them.  In the case of mine cave ins, the “animas” of the Indian workers whose souls were sold to the deveil are stuck mining gold the rest of eternity, just as the Pech hunter has to take care of wounded deer for the rest of eternity.   So by not respecting the natural resources, and the spiritual owners who own them and make available a few of them to the people who respectfully request them and thank them for them, so that they can live, and the taboos associated with them, if the Indians permit it, either by other Indians, or by the other people in the area,  they may suffer, their families may suffer, and their communities may suffer, not just now, but also through all eternity.

In Anne Chapman’s book on the Tolupan Indians and their myths, that problem of other people acting disrespectfully to the nature spirits and this affecting the Tolupan Indians  is shown clearly in the story of why there are no more “jagüillas”, the collared peccaries. The spirit who owns the “jagüillas” is angry with the people who have killed too many jagüillas, who took them disrespectfully, and so the owner of the “jagüillas” has hidden them in a cave and does not let them out, so the Tolupan Indians are suffering from hunger even if they did not cause the problem, and they continue to be respectful to the animals they have killed in the past, so that the spiritual owner of the animals will not be made angry even further.


Beliefs About Water and Water Resources among Western Honduran Indians

(Part 3 of 3)

By Wendy Griffin

If you are searching on the Internet for information about Central American Indians, such as the Nicaraos, the Nahua speaking Indians of Nicaragua, a UNESCO site based in Uraguay, often comes up as one of the first choices to see. In this time when all over the world, people are saying the next big conflicts are going to be over water and water rights, apparrantly UNESCO commissioned a study on “Water Cultures”, what are the beliefs about water of the different Indian peoples of the Americas.

Ever since I read in Honduras Weekly about the Lencas protesting dams on the Rio Blanco in the Department of Santa Barbara,  which led to the arrest of Lenca leader Bertha Caceres of COPIN, I have had an interest to know where the Rio Blanco was.  It turns out that one Rio Blanco in Western Honduras is a small river that flows from Lake Yojoa on the northside to the North, according to Antonio Vallejo’s description of River of Santa Barbara in “El Primer Anuarion Estadistico de 1889”. Lake Yojoa is the largest freshwater lake in Honduras and has two protected around it:.Cerro Azul Meambar and Cerro Santa Barbara.  It is located in the Cortes, Santa Barbara, and Comayagua Departments. Vallejo also confirms that in the 1880’s the Lake also was called Taulabé Lake, the same as the caves. This comes from the Lenca words Taulepa, the house or cave (tau) of the jaguar, or puma (lepa).

The Lake Yojoa basin is one of the rainiest areas in Honduras and its mountains provide a lot of biodiversity of plants, animals and birds, as noted in Honduras Tips, which is why they are part of protected areas. Río Blanco is also the river that provides the water of the Pulapanzak Falls, according to Honduras Tips. These falls are quite high, very picturesque, and a common tourist trip south of San Pedro Sula. They were a sacred site in pre-columbina times.In the colonial period, Taulepa Indians who would be called Lencas today were reported near the lake, and also in Western El Salvador. Ulúa Indians were also reported in both places.  Rio Ulúa is not far away.

Also located around Lake Yojoa is the archaeological site open to the public “Los Naranjos”.  At Los Naranjos and other sites around the Lake there are ruins that show the Lake Yojoa area was used by Honduran Indians since at least 1,000 BC.  Some of the Olmec influenced artifacts from ruins from the Lake Yojoa region are in the San Pedro Sula Anthropology and History Museum. As a lake site, it was important as a source of fish from early times. The archaeology of the Ulua Valley, the Los Naranjos area, the Comayagua area, and Western Salvador are usually similar from the pre-classic and classic periods, indicating that probably all of these areas were inhabited by Lenca Indians.

Most large lakes in Central America—Lake Nicaragua, Lake Managua, Lake Güijar, were sacred to pre-Columbian Indians and Lake Yojoa was no exception.  Copper bells found in nearby Taulabé caves, reported by Doris Stone in her article on the Lencas in the Handbook of South American Indians, shows that pre-Columbian Indians, probably Nahua speaking Pipils, did ceremonies there before the Spanish came. In Honduras, the female spirit who took care of fish and made them available to people is known as “La Sirena” (the mermaid) in Honduran Spanish, but this spirit also had names in different Indian languages.

Among the Nahua speakers of Honduras, who arrived in the Postclassic Period in the Santa Barbara area such as at Machaloa, she seems to have been called Texiguat or Siguaté, which probably mean the Woman in the pool or in the depths of the water, or the deep water of the woman who takes care of the fish. This name is remembered in place names in Texiguat in Atlántida and El Paraíso Departments, and Siguaté, outside of Catacamas, Olancho.

She might also be the woman “Sigua” remembered in the place name Siguatepeque (mountain of the woman), Comayagua just south of the Lake Yojoa and Taulabé areas. This is different than the name of this goddess among the Aztecs who were Nahuatl speakers in Mexico, who called her the lady of the jade skirts or Princess Green, so she may have been the large green stone feminine idol reported in the Trujillo area, in the Olancho area and in the Bay Islands at the time of Cortes’s visit to Trujillo in 1524.  “La Poza de la Sirena” (The pool of the goddess who protects the fish) is on a hill in Betulia, west of Santa Fe and Trujillo, which was recently privatized and has a fence around it as Canadians move into the Betulia area.

Among the Aztecs, this goddess of terrestrial waters was the sister of the rain god Tlaloc or Quia (remembered in the name of nearby Quiatlan, Santa Barbara, now Quimistan) and that was one reason that ceremonies of Mesoamerican Indians in Honduras to ask for rain often started besides pools of earthly water. Among both the Lencas who call them “angelitos” (little angels)and the Honduran Chortis who call them sierpes, they believe that spirits in the water or in the pool rise up to call the rain gods  or saints (now called los hombres trabajando-the working men, los nagualitios-the little spirits, 4 saints who have Spanish names) with the clouds to bring the rain as a result of these ceremonies. Among the Chortí, the burning of the new fire, started on Good Friday and the smoke from burning the fields after Easter is believed to help call these rain spirits, too.

In the Mexican ruin of Teotihuacan, in the valley of Mexico, which influenced the Mesoamerican Indians of Honduras like Chortis, the Lencas and the Pipils or Nahuas, this goddess of terrestrial waters is shown as both the provider of water and of fish and a painting of her in the form of a world tree (usually symbolized now by crosses) is in a cave under a mountain/pyramid in one of the two main temples in Teotihuacan, according to David Dominici’s book The Aztecs. This goddess of the waters, la Sirena, is remembered all over Honduras, including in Santa Barbara, La Paz, Tegucigalpa, Olancho, etc. in the rule that you should not bathe in water like a river, stream, or the ocean on Good Friday, because  you will turn into a Sirena.

An example of a Sirena story of Ladinos of Santa Barbara, is a story told by Doña Trini, from Trinidad, Santa Barbara.  When she was young,  a man she knew in Santa Barbara tried to get undressed to bathe in a river on Good Friday, a “cadejo” (a good or bad spirit that has a dog form) appeared to the man to warn him, and then jumped across the river and ran away. The man, frightened, put on his clothes, did not go for a swim, and walked home. The cadejo (who can be a good protective spirit or “nagual” who helps people) probably appeared to warn him that if he bathed  in the river on Good Friday he would turn into a Sirena.

 Since Good Friday which is shortly before the rainy season begins in Honduras was the day most Hondurans ate fish, which was usually killed ceremonially  and communally with many taboos by fish poison such as pate (which means medicine or poison in Nahua), and it is also the day of ceremonies related to bringing of the rains such as bringing the water from the pool of the source of water to the New Fire ceremony held in the church among the Chortis of Queztalpeque, Guatemala and in a Chorti village in Honduras, this prohibition and its reference to the Sirena or spirit who takes care of the fish probably relates to pre-Columbian beliefs such as not swimming on a day you eat fish killed by chilpate or other fish poisons  or the day the rain spirits are called and not specifically to Catholic beliefs related to Good Friday.

 Among Honduran Indians, the water, the fish and the other animals like turtles and alligators in the lakes, in the rivers, and in the streams belonged to the Sirena, and not to them and so obviously not to any government.  The Sirena could punish them for taking too many fish or being disrespectful of the fish or other aquatic life and the water, by making them ill, by killing them or their family members, or by becoming angry and taking away all the fish. Obviously the Honduran government which has recently given concessions on at least 51 rivers, under a law that classifies the rivers as “unused goods of the State” does not recognize the ownership of the Sirena or of the local Indians either.

In the municipio of Santa Fe, west of Trujillo, there is a pool known as the Poza de la Sirena, and the Ladinos who live near there say, someone dropped dynamite in there to fish, and killed all the fish and the Sirena got angry and took all the fish away and that is why this pool of water has no fish.  Recently this pool which used to be open to the public, was also privatized and now has a fence around it report Santa Fe Garifunas. The Tolupan Indians say similar things about the wild animals like the peccaries (quequeo, jagüilla) that the spiritual owners are hiding them in caves because the modern people did not take care of them correctly or respectfully. 

Miskito Indians and Pech Indians still report people who are made sick or even killed by the Sirena or other water spirits.  The illness is called liwa siknis (illness of the mermaid) in Miskito, and because of the belief of its relation of causing illness for having taken too many lobsters and conchs, it has been the subject of a book on the lobster diving industry and the Miskitos by anthropologist Laura Herlihy. A Garifuna healer in Trujillo Yaya or Doña Clara has healed Ladinos who live next to streams in the mountains of illnesses caused by spirits who live near the stream.

The Garifunas also believe in spiritual owners of fish, who in the case of the sea is man with a wife, and of female spirits in rivers, like Agayuma, and ,like among Honduran Indians, believed that if Garifuna fishermen did not do ceremonies to thank the spirit of sea for fish, the spirit could refuse to give him fish or even refuse to give fish to the whole community. This is the reason the Garifunas of Limon made a Garifuna  teacher who owned boats that were used for fishing leave the community when he would not participate in the ceremony to thank the spirit of sea for the fish he took out. Among Bay Islanders, sea spirits, like all other spirits of nature or of the dead are called “duppeys”.

Both Doris Zemurray Stone in the 1940’s and Rafael Girard in the 1950’s reported that Lenca Indians from all over Western Honduras came to the Taulabé caves to do religious ceremonies 24-25 April prior to the rains beginning around 3 May in Honduras. This date of 25 April is also when the Chorti Indians  of Copan Ruinas do  the ceremony of Padrineo de Agua (godfather of the water) besides a well, which they call poza in Honduran Spanish, but in Mexico these pools are known as cenotes, a Nahua word. This was also the date of the Pipil ceremonies including human sacrifice to bring the rains in El Salvador at the time of Conquest according to Wikipedia articles on mitología pipil and Señorio de Cuscatlan, and the time of the similar Aztec ceremony in Central Mexico. The Honduran Lencas and the Maya-Chortis also celebrate in a different way on 3 May, the day of the Cross, for the beginning of the rainy season.

Padre Manuel de Jesus Subirana, a Spanish Jesuit more famous for his work among the Jicaques of Yoro, also noticed this custom of the Lencas from all over Honduras to come on a pilgrimage (which he calls romería) to do a ceremony in the Taulabé Caves 24-25 April in the 1850’s and gave the Lencas a statue of San Gaspar and established the custom of visiting the statue of this saint in a church still known as La Misión (The Mission) in the 1940’s for the Fair of San Gaspar 24 April, before the Lencas went to the Taulabé caves for the rest of the rain ceremony. 

New books about Indians of Santa Barbara and Western Honduras such as Raul Alvarado’s book “Perspectiva histórica del Partido de Tencoa y el Sugermiento de la Ciudad de Santa Barbara” (Historic Perspective of the Department of Tencoa and the Development of the City of Santa Barbara) and Walter Ulloa’s book on Meámbar and The History of the Liberal Party in Siguatepeque, a book on Erandique by a Lenca Indian, and Atanasio Herranz’s book on the Estado, Sociedad and Lenguaje (State, Society, and Language)  collect stories of Subirana’s visits to various Santa Barbara and Lenca towns which tell of curses and amazing feats and struggles with witches, so you can why Father Subirana would have put the fear of God in these Indians.   The Lencas still had traditional religious leaders known as the “henchicero” (the one who put curses)  and were second in command in Lenca villages in the 1940’s, according to Doris Stone .

Rafael Girard tells that during the Presidency of General Ponciana Leiva who was a native of Santa Barbara, at the end of the 19th century, he had thrown into Lake Taulabé or Yojoa, the statue of the idol that the Lencas worshiped in the Taulabé caves 24-25 April prior to the rains coming around May 3 when the Lencas and the Chortis celebrate another ceremony, now known as the Day of the Cross. Apparantly the Lencas felt the idol was still effective, even if under water, as the ceremonies were still being done in the 1950’s when a German who lived around the lake managed to see the ceremony and tell Rafael Girard. Girard who is more famous for studying the Chortis, was interested in knowing where the dividing line was between the Lencas and Maya Chortis in Honduras.

According to Girard the Lencas apparently felt that they had a special relationship with “lepa” which is “Tigre” in Honduran Spanish and variously translated as puma or jaguar in English. They did ceremonies in places called “lepa” like Taulepa (cave of the Jaguar) now Taulabé, or piedra del Tigre (the rock of the jaguar) in the Celaque region in Lempira, their towns were often called “lepa” like Lepaterique (the creek of the jaguar), Francisco Morazan.  The Island where the port of Amapala is called Tigre in Spanish, but that may be a translation of its Lenca name. On their ceramics, the dancers at ceremonies often wore jaguar skins, and Doris Stone said the wearing of animal skins by Lenca men continued into the 19th century. Witches, male or female, who could change into jaguars, coyotes, dogs (cadejos),  pigs, or owls (lechuzas) are reported in stories and dances in the Lenca area.

The Mesoamerican belief in naguals, animal protector spirits that one has at birth, existed among the Lencas and the Maya-Chorti, and the stories of witches who change shapes probably show that  the belief that shaman (nahuat) could change into his nagual or animal spirit, also existed, so the Lencas may have had a collective animal which watched over them like the Jaguar. This special belief that there were those whose animal was the jaguar and those whose special animal was the Eagle also existed among Nahua speakers and the Maya-Quiche in Central America. So the House of the Tiger (Taulepa), both the cave and the Lake, had a very special significance to the Lenca Indians of Western Honduras, especially those who identified themselves as Taulepas.

The change of the name from Taulabé to Yojoa probably indicates conflict between the Lenca Indians and other Indians who arrived later. What is the language of the towns that end in –oa, like Omoa, Tocoa, Toloa, Yojoa, Machaloa, Petoa, Tencoa, and hence what ethnic group they represent is hotly debated. In Machaloa there were Mexican Indians, but in Tencoa there were Lenca Indians who spoke Care, so it is not clear if the language is a Mexican Indian language or a native Honduran one.

Nearby was also Agalteca, Santa Barbara and all of the at least 4 towns named Agalteca (Yoro, Olancho. Comayagua, Santa Barbara) and now their ruins of Agalteca or Acalteca (from acalt-tule water reed or junco water reed) in Honduras were associated with Mesoamericans at the time of Spanish conquest and possibly with followers of Ce Acalt, the Toltec King. Santa Barbara’s original name was Cataquile.  Quile in Santa Barbara and Jutiquile, Olancho may also be related to other place names in Olancho, like Jamasquire (now Nahua Indians), Aguaguire (Pech until the 1970’s, now Ladino who changed the name to Zopilote), Conquire (the Indians were taken away in the 19th century, now Ladino), etc., because while some dialects of Nahua have no r, the Pech almost never use the l, so when one group pronounced the words of the other language, they often changed the r and l’s to the other one. Both –quile and –quire seem to refer to water, as Alberto Membreño notes in his book on place names in Honduras, which coincided with the location of these places all near water.

Although the ceremony was secret, because it was a two day ceremony (most Chorti and Lenca and Pech ceremonies last all night), and the Lencas drank corn beer, called chicha in Honduran Spanish, they would sleep outside around the caves at night during the ceremony.  The Taulabé caves are right off the highway between San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa and in the 1940’s Hedman Alas already functioned along the route, although they crossed Lake Yojoa by ferry and the road was unpaved until 1954. Dozens of Lenca men sleeping outside during the ceremony would have been noticeable. 

The claim of Honduras Tips that the Taulabe Caves were “discovered” in 1968 does not match historical documents. These caves now have a private owner and are only available to tourists who pay to enter and so obviously the Lencas can not do their ceremony there now. The Pulapanzak Waterfalls are also privately owned and one pays a private owner to enter. Miskitos have commented that the Honduran government already wants to sell the Ciudad Blanca, a ruin in the Mosquitia, and they have not even found it yet.


 

 

 

 

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