Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax: Sundries from Zinacantan

Abstract

This volume is divided into two sections. Part 1 contains the trav- els of two Mayan Indians from Zinacantan, Chiapas, Mexico, who accompanied the author to the United States in 1963 and again in 1967. The first trip was de- scribed as it unfolded and then again after the passage of eight years. The second trip was described four years later. The travelers comment on such varied sub- jects as the assassination of President Kennedy, the Zuni Shalako, a football game, first views of snow and of the ocean, black-white relations, automation, and the "March on the Pentagon" in November 1967. Part 2 is a miscellany of ethnographic texts supplied by Romin Teratol, one of the above travelers, in response to the author's occasional requests for re-cre- ations of Zinacantec dialogue and activities. The subjects range from seductions, a birth, requests for loans and repayment, requests for godparents, and for the return of a wife, house-dedication prayers, common prayers, religious officials' prayers, shamans' prayers, oaths of office, religious officials' songs, a wedding song, and a drunkard's song. Together they provide a convincing if haphazard exhibit of the richness and variety of Zinacantec oral literature as it is created daily by the citizens of Zinacantan.