28 Singing Valleys 



the brush in the milpas and the invocation of the rain-god's 

 blessing upon the crops are observed. 



True, the Catholic Church has thrown a veil of Christian 

 symbolism around them, but the old gods of the earth and 

 the fields look through the veil. They are very little changed. 

 For example, the pagan Dinner of the Milpa which falls in the 

 month of Pop (July) continues to be the chief holiday of the 

 season, though in these later years it has been renamed "Fiesta 

 of Santa Cruz." At this time three bowls of ground corn are 

 set out in every house before the crucifix. At the same time 

 thirteen roasting ears are laid on the ground outdoors to feed 

 the Yuntizilob, protectors of the cornfields. 



The priests in the parishes have learned what Bishop de 

 Landa could not learn, that is, the virtue of tolerance. When 

 they see, between the rows of sprouting ears, little clay images 

 of the fertility gods, omphallic and obscene and frequently 

 with rosaries twined about their squat bodies, they look the 

 other way. They know that the old gods never die. They take 

 new names, and new faces, that is all. 



The greatness of the Maya covers more than one thousand 

 years. By the end of the first half of this period, when they 

 migrated to Yucatan, they had developed out of the earlier 

 communal life a society and a caste system made possible by 

 an abundance of food produced with small amount of labor. 

 Cheap food meant then, as now, cheap men. The tropical 

 climate made men, as well as the maize, prolific. So there 

 were thousands of hands to cut and carve the stones, to build 

 the cities with their temples and pyramids, their palaces and 

 sculptured walls. There was a serf caste to labor in the corn- 

 fields, a numerous priesthood and a leisure class to listen to 

 the tale tellers recount legends of the fabled past of Mayach. 

 Even the Plumed Serpent, Kukulkan, seemed not so far re- 

 moved from man now that man had progressed to a state that 

 approached the power and wisdom of the gods. With the com- 



