In the house of a brotherhood devoted to Judas, his figure gets 

 a morning kiss from the caretaker's wife. The choice of a coffin for 

 Judas 's resting place may be unique to this brotherhood in a 

 Maya village near Santiago Atitldn. 



Jim Pieper 



These offerings were considered an im- 

 portant part of bfusiness management. I re- 

 call the great anxiety of the druggist, a de 

 vestido Indian, when she learned that the 

 image had passed her shop while she was 

 out, and how she ran to catch up with the 

 entourage to make her offering. Although 

 presumably introduced into the local cul- 

 ture as a villain, Judas was welcomed in 

 his peregrination, at least by those en- 

 gaged in commerce. Perhaps they recog- 

 nized, in his transaction for thirty pieces of 

 silver, Judas's commitment to commerce 

 at any cost. 



The priest frowned on the whole Judas 

 cult and had even ordered the catechists to 

 raid the brotherhood house and destroy the 

 figure. But although the catechists had ap- 

 parently succeeded on several occasions 

 in burning the straw body and wooden 

 mask, the brotherhood always secreted the 

 "true" mask, tying it to a new straw effigy 

 each year. Except for his appearance dur- 

 ing Holy Week, Judas remained safe in an 

 altar in the brotherhood house. 



I met Judas in another guise in 1957, 

 when I was assigned to do fieldwork in the 

 Tzeltal-speaking Maya community of 

 Amatenango del Valle. A pottery-making 

 town in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, 

 Amatenango was known to outsiders as 

 one of the most hostile of nineteen indige- 

 nous communities surrounding the Span- 

 ish "royal city" of San Cristobal de las 

 Casas. Early in my fieldwork, I learned 

 that the homicide rate was high and rising. 

 I also learned that two anthropologists had 

 been ordered to leave there because the 

 community did not appreciate their pres- 

 ence. I found it difficult to start a conversa- 

 tion with any of the Indians. The area 

 priest who served the community con- 

 firmed my impression, adding that the 

 hostility of the inhabitants to outsiders 

 made his work easier because it kept away 

 the Protestant missionaries. Despite the 

 proximity of the (as yet unpaved) Pan- 

 American highway, the only Ladino living 

 in town was the schoolteacher, who barri- 

 caded himself with his family in the large 

 adobe schoolhouse on the plaza, with an 

 arsenal of rifles for protection. 



IP^ ■^^. 



As might be expected, folk behefs had 

 made severe inroads on whatever Catholic 

 orthodoxy the community had absorbed. 

 Mariano Lopez Shunton, one of the town 

 elders, gave me a vivid example of this 

 when he told me the story of "How Jesus 

 Gained Control over the World." In an- 

 cient times, Mariano said, Judas prevented 

 the com plants from growing by making 

 them come out with one "arm" and one 

 "leg," so that they fell over. Jesus and 

 Mary outwitted him by enticing Judas, 

 whom Mariano called "the leader of the 

 Jews," to a fiesta. Mary danced with Judas 

 and plied him with liquor so that he forgot 

 the fields. Meanwhile, Jesus guarded the 

 fields of corn so that the plants grew 

 straight and tall. In this role, Jesus was 

 identified with the preconquest deity 

 Cananlum, "caretaker of the earth," while 

 Mary was identified with Me'tikchik, "our 

 grandmother the moon," who was also in 

 charge of crops. 



While in this story Christ appeared in a 

 positive light, images of Christ — espe- 

 cially the figure of Christ on the Cross — 

 were regarded with ambivalence. In Ama- 

 tenango, men who claimed extraordinary 

 powers over life and death without valida- 

 tion as folk healers were killed as witches. 

 Saint Peter the Martyr, whose image in 



Amatenango showed him with a cleaver 

 imbedded in his skull, was taken to have 

 been a powerful witch, later redeemed by 

 his role as the protector against Ughtoing. 

 Similarly, the crucified Christ could have 

 been viewed as a punished witch, evoking 

 little sympathy. 



I spent varying amounts of time in Am- 

 atenango over the next decade. During the 

 Holy Week rituals, the Crucifixion was 

 reenacted in the church under the supervi- 

 sion of the Ladino priest, with the assis- 

 tance of the mayordomos, who manipu- 

 lated the images like puppets. The 

 participation of the mayordomos in the of- 

 ficial drama was welcomed, in contrast to 

 the situation in Cantel, where members of 

 the religious brotherhoods were in conflict 

 with the priest. 



Although Judas enjoyed some popular- 

 ity as a cult figure in Cantel, in Amate- 

 nango he was almost universally reviled. 

 The priest referred to him as the King of 

 the Jews and identified him as flie "killer 

 of Christ." And on Good Friday, following 

 die enactment of the Crucifixion, tiie may- 

 ordomos hauled the effigy of Judas up the 

 belfry "to show the world that he killed 

 Christ." They jabbed him with long poles, 

 laughing when one well-directed blow 

 landed and someone yelled, "Eunuch!" 



48 Natural History 3/94 



