Abstract
According to ethnographic material collected since 2003, the Chol Mayan indigenous people in southern Mexico have different causal explanations for suicide. It can be attributed to witchcraft that forces victims to take their lives against their own will, to excessive drinking, or to fate determined by God. However, it can also be conceived of as a conscious decision made by a person overwhelmed by daily problems. Drawing from the theoretical framework developed by Laura M. Ahearn, inspired by practice theory, the paper contends that these different explanations operate within two different logics or understandings of human agency. The first logic attributes responsibility to supernatural causes such as witchcraft or divine destiny, and reflects Chol notions of personhood. The second logic accepts personal responsibility for suicide, and is related to processes of social change such as the introduction of wage labor, education and a market economy. The contemporary Chol resort to both logics to make sense of the human drama of suicide.
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Notes
Out of 43 cases in two villages only 14 were registered as suicide.
The languages of all indigenous groups in Chiapas (except the Zoque) belong to the Mayan linguistic family. The most numerous groups are the Tzotzil and Tzeltal, followed by the Chol and Tojolabal.
According to the 2010 census, out of the total population of both localities only 23 individuals (2 from Álamos and 21 from Buenavista) came from elsewhere, even though it is not clear from where they came, nor whether they are indigenous or not (INEGI 2011). During fieldwork I observed, however, that some outsiders came from neighboring Chol localities, and others, principally women, came as non-indigenous wives of Chol peasants.
Various synonymous terms are used locally to refer to the non-indigenous population: ladino, mestizo and kaxlán. The anthropological literature has discussed the diverse connotations of these terms, highlighting their ambiguity and difficult conceptualization. Anthropologists in Chiapas generally define “ladino” as a cultural category (rather than a racial one) that describes the “non-indigenous” that speak Spanish (Rus 2009, p. 170; see the discussion in Alejos 1999a). “Mestizo” refers to a racial category indicating a mix of indigenous and Spanish background, with an emphasis on the biological aspect. “Kaxlán,” on the other hand, seems to be a loanword derived from Castilian, a term that was used by the indigenous Nahua in the sixteenth century to name the Spanish or Castillians (Pitarch 2010a, p. 6). Currently, “kaxlán” is used to refer to non-indigenous and foreigners. I chose to use the term “ladino” to refer to this population to emphasize the cultural aspect over the racial, which in the region of study is also associated with the socioeconomic position of landowner, merchant, or “rich” person.
Beginning with the Spanish conquest in the region (before 1528), the Chol were initially converted to Christianity by the Dominican Order, and, towards the end of the sixteenth century, by the regular clergy (Monroy 2004). Since then, the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church—in its local version, known as “traditionalism”—has been the most important in the area. The religious practices in these villages, described as “syncretism” by many scholars (see Ruz 2005), combine Catholic elements with others of pre-Columbian origin. In the last four decades or so, several Protestant and Pentecostal groups have also made their appearance. Catholic authorities as well as Protestant groups disapprove of “traditionalist” practices, considering them to be pagan.
The Mexican Agrarian Reform established the ejido regime that gave peasants the right to possess, but not to own, land. In 1934, the possession of the lands inhabited by the Chol was ratified, as they were included in the ejido of Tila. However, in 1992, agrarian legislation was modified and private property is now legal.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, coffee plantations usually owned by Germans or Americans were installed in the Chol region. Although these estates occupied indigenous land and forced entire villages into labor, Álamos and Buenavista were not included in this dynamic. The inhabitants were able to preserve their land and subsistence agriculture, work occasionally on the plantations, and maintain a certain degree of autonomy.
The most relevant agricultural crisis, however, began in the early 1990s with the collapse of international coffee prices and the decision of the Mexican State to stimulate the free market sphere, opting for economic deregulation and commercial liberalization. Those most affected by these measures were the small producers who ceased to receive various State supports.
Certain people in the region claim to “speak” to an image of Saint Michael (San Miguelito, in Spanish) or to a box where the saint is said to live. They ask him for advice on topics such as medical diagnoses, or to clarify a theft or the loss of an object or animal.
The Chol word for problems is wokol, but they generally use the Spanish term problemas even when speaking Chol.
To date, there has been no research on suicide among the other indigenous groups of Chiapas to shed light on whether or not they, too, explain it as a result of witchcraft. Groark speaks of suicidal ideation in relation to an extended practice, mainly among Tzotzil women, who “request illness” in order to die. However, he was also informed by just one person that this suicidal ideation could be induced by a witch (2005, p. 204). Outside of Chiapas, many anthropologists have noted witchcraft as a cause of suicide: Evans-Pritchard (1976), Ayers Counts (1980), to name a few.
Beliefs that hold certain foods, as well as illnesses, as “hot” or “cold,” with no necessary connection to their temperature, are common throughout Mexico.
Literature on the Chol is scarce: there are two Chol-Spanish dictionaries (Schumann 1973; Aulie and Aulie 1978) and only a few social and anthropological studies (Alejos 1999a, b; Coello 1998; Agudo 2005; Morales 1984; Manca 1997), but none deal specifically with the Chol notions of person. For this reason, I have found support in authors who have researched similar topics among other Mayan groups: Pitarch (2010a, b), on the Tzeltal; Guiteras-Holmes (1965) and Groark (2005, 2010), on the Tzotzil; Hirose (2008) on the Maya of Campeche and Yucatán; and Fischer et al. (1999) on the Kaqchikel of Guatemala.
In terms of the composition of the person, for example, Pitarch (2010a) states that the Tzotzil recognize the body (bak’etal) and three different souls: mutil o’tan (the bird of our heart), the ch’ulel (the genuine soul) and the lab (an animal companion), the last of which can total up to thirteen. Groark (2010) distinguishes three components in the Tzotzil sense of person: the bek’talil (the waking self or physical body), the ch’ulel (the essential soul) and the vayijel (an animal companion). Among the peninsular Maya, Hirose (2008) describes the person as shaped by the body (cucut) and six vital properties: pixan (the soul), óol (the breath of life or of the heart), kinam (the force associated with heat), k’awil (the energy of the ancestors), íik (breath), and way (an animal companion). Among the Kaqchiquel of Guatemala, Fischer et al. (1999) emphasizes two elements: k’u’x (the heart, soul, center or essence) and anima (the spirit or soul).
Moreover, anthropologists have interpreted these conceptions of personhood diversely. Here I mention some only briefly, since a more complete analysis would exceed the limits of this article. Functionalist-oriented works, such as that of Guiteras-Holmes (1965), indicate that these beliefs operate like a mechanism of social control that regulates social relations and separates the indigenous people from the ladino environment. For Fischer et al. (1999), these beliefs house key cognitive patterns that underlie thought and practice, which in turn guarantee socialization of the person, as well as the continuity of a Mayan cultural logic and identity. Pitarch (2010a), in his view, deepens the conceptualization of the Tzeltal person to show that in souls the “other”—the European—is encountered, and souls therefore contain the history of relations with the Europeans.
The Chol speak of shame as an illness, referring to social tensions that they associate with physical malaise. See Imberton 2002.
A common belief not only in indigenous people, but in ladino society as well, holds fright as a kind of illness brought upon when a person becomes so scared that the soul leaves the body. Hirose (2008, p. 90) draws a parallel between the óol of the Yucatán and the ch’ulel of the Tzotzil, based on the fact that these are the entities affected by susto.
Nagual is a Nahuatl word which has spread into other indigenous languages and refers to a supernatural animal companion. Aulie and Aulie (1978) define it as “companion (a spirit)”. The Chol, when speaking Spanish, use arte (art), nagual and wäy synonymously.
Unlike other indigenous groups in Chiapas, the Chol do not believe that the ch’ujlel can leave their sleeping body and wander. Only the wäy can do so.
It is difficult to make out a clear distinction between a witch and a shaman. A single practitioner can be considered a witch by some and a shaman by others. I have witnessed cases of families who had always consulted the same shaman, until a failed treatment lead the family to grow suspicious, eventually declaring the practitioner to be a witch.
Radio and television stations often broadcast programs offering cures for harm caused by black magic or witchcraft, and envy.
Owens and Lambert (2012) show that in contemporary Britain, medical and psychological explanations exist alongside others that relieve the individual of agency by attributing suicide to a possession-like state, or describing it as indirect murder, thus blaming a third party for inducing the victim to take his own life.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tom Widger and James Staples for their thoughtful comments and valuable criticisms of earlier versions of this article, as well as to Sonia Toledo, José Luis Escalona, Anna Garza and an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments. Names of towns and personal names have been changed to protect anonymity. I thank Michael Hipson and Rebecca Englert for translating this article.
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Imberton, G. Chol Understandings of Suicide and Human Agency. Cult Med Psychiatry 36, 245–263 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-012-9252-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-012-9252-4