Books - Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology

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  B'oxb'o'l

  Grupo de Mujeres y Hombres por la Paz and María Luz García

  Boxbol (pronounced as boshe-bowl) is a favorite food in the Ixil Maya area of Guatemala. It is made from the leaves of chayote squash and corn dough and topped with a chili tomato sauce and a sauce made from roasted squash seeds. It is so beloved that many Guatemalans think of it as a national dish of Guatemala. In the pages that follow, a team from Nebaj, Guatemala, the largest city in the Ixil area, explains how they make boxbol. They explain first in Ixil, the language spoken by most people in the Ixil area, then in Spanish, and then in English.

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  Lejich Yol tu Yolb'al Ixhil / Adivinanzas Ixiles / Ixil Riddles

  Ma'l B'alay Raymundo Pérez, Juan Romeo Guzaro Luis, and María Luz García

  This collection of riddles began in Ixil as a way to share the playfulness that Ixilspeaking members of the team of authors enjoy in their language. We have paid careful attention to how language and culture work together in creating meaning and a sense of playfulness. Like all poetic and playful forms, riddles can never be the same in translation. They work because of the way that forms of the language interact with expected or unexpected cultural meanings. We have tried to choose riddles that can be understood in all three languages, but the fullest meanings are available only in the original Ixil. Puns (or near puns) are an important source of humor in Ixil, and some of these riddles depend on a pun in Ixil, which is not a pun in English or Spanish. Also, many of the riddles here are based on commonly recognized properties of everyday objects in the Ixil area. Some of these objects or their properties are not as commonly recognized outside of the Maya world or Mesoamerica more broadly. Here we have tried to choose riddles that we hope are recognizable to English and Spanish speakers, even if their fullest sense is not possible in all three languages. Our translations attempt to preserve as much of the playfulness in all three languages as possible (so they are not always word-for-word translations) while still being faithful to the original Ixil meanings.

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  Nuk'ich Tz'Ib' - Los Abecedarios en Ixil de Nebaj

  Juan Romeo Guzaro Luis and Maria Luz García

  Ixil is the first language for over 100,000 people who live in Guatemala and now in the United States as well. It is one of 30 Mayan languages that are natively spoken in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras by over 7 million people. In the Ixil municipalities of Nebaj, Chajul, and Cotzal, Ixil is learned in homes and spoken in businesses, government institutions, and schools. It has a rich tradition of verbal artistry and a well-established system of writing that is taught in most schools in the Ixil area today. The way that Ixil is spoken is somewhat different in each of the three Ixil municipalities. These books are written in Ixil as it is spoken in Santa María Nebaj.

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  Saach B'a'x ta'n Naj La's / Chamuscas con Francisco / A Soccer Game with Francisco

  Juan Romeo Guzaro Luis and María Luz García

  Hi! I’m Francisco. I’m eight years old, and I was born in Nebaj. I live with my grandma and a total of 30 souls: eight people, five dogs, four cats, one bird, a pig, three hens, two roosters, two ducks, and five chicks. The eight people living with my grandma and me are my aunt, my uncle, my sister, my brother, and my mom. I never had the chance to meet my dad because my mom says that he died when I was just a baby, and we miss him a lot. Now let me tell you what my life is like from when I wake up in the morning until night.

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  U B'ooq'ol Tenam tuk' Vime'al / El Rey y su Hija / The King and His Daughter

  Juan Romeo Guzaro Luis and María Luz García

  This book is an artistic creation with multiple influences. Many different people throughout the Ixil area tell the story of the king’s daughter and her beloved who turns into a hummingbird, and this story appears in many books and essays about the region. Each version is a bit different from the next. The tasks that the king asks the boyfriend to perform, the level of detail, and where the story begins or ends are different in different versions. However, the basic structure of a king’s daughter and a young man who fall in love, the disapproval of the king, and the boyfriend turning into a hummingbird until his trick is discovered by the king who then chases him are consistent. In this book, we are not trying to propose one version of the story that is “true” or “authentic” since each one of these versions has its own history. The version that we share here is the one that was told by Juan Guzaro to his son, Xhun (Juan Romeo Guzaro de Luis). Xhun wrote down the story as he remembered it and worked with Domingo Abraham Cedillo de Paz, an Ixil speaker with training in Ixil linguistics, to produce the best written version.