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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