Sympathetic Ethnocentrism, Repression, and Auto-repression of Q’eqchi’ Maya Blood Sacrifice

Abstract

From the period of the contact with Europeans up to the present, blood sacrifice of turkeys and other animals has been a fundamental element in Q’eqchi’ Maya ritual, religion, and culture. In the face of suppression by the church, evangelicals, and, especially, the government, such sacrifices actually became a form of resistance in the 1960s–1980s. Today, however, institutions and individuals sympathetic to the Q’eqchi’ and their struggles systematically omit animal sacrifice from descriptions of Maya culture and from educational programs on Maya culture, even in Q’eqchi’ schools. Similarly, elements of the Maya movement, national spiritual leaders, and government-sponsored publications also omit discussion of sacrifice or they grossly underestimate its scale, importance, and nature. Some educational programs, religious groups, and support organizations even verbally discourage such practices, believing that they reflect poorly on the Maya and on the contemporary sanitized visions of an environmentally sensitive and pantheistic people. These manifestations of sympathetic ethnocentrism have a damaging effect in some communities and on Q’eqchi’ self-image. The issue has become divisive, affecting community and interregional unity. Disagreements concerning animal sacrifice are also causing intergenerational conflict within communities, as younger members are more influenced by education programs and other sources that deprecate animal sacrifice. Thus, well-meaning attempts to sanitize the Q’eqchi’ Maya “image” are, in fact, instruments of assimilation which are ultimately repressive and deleterious to Q’eqchi’ communities, intracommunity and intercommunity identity, solidarity, and resistance.