The Heart of the Sky:
Haegel, Nancy M.
In imaginatively exploring the life of suits are fragmentary. Inevitably, his contribution stands next to such a myth, Rodriguez comes to see the Shortcomings...
...I Peter Canby few written links to the only civilization was there on October 12, HarperCollins, $25, 350 pp...
...storms do...
...You can't temala...
...the dominant culture hostile to their own outside world...
...their ancestors, the celebration proclaimed Vuh, a colonial era manuscript describ- There is a tendency to think the culture resistance and survival...
...Murrieta is an emblem, a of sorts who considers himself first a from the periphery of culture to center symbol of divergence, part American and gringo and then a Mexican...
...Inevitably, his contribution stands next to such a myth, Rodriguez comes to see the Shortcomings aside, Rodriguez is an ex- James Baldwin's legacy, perhaps because Rio Grande as a psychic injury dividing traordinary writer and a man of polarities- the two have so much in common: their the idiosyncrasies of Mexico and the a chameleon, a Dr...
...people to talk to and much to learn...
...It is in these people for five hundred years and still have perience...
...He drinks side world, their culture can be regarded in the book and an occasional tendency to three shots of pox, the local moonshine, as a vital and even expanding one...
...Shorris picCommonweal 26 March 1993: 23...
...I belonged, inevitably, to another mote villages, buses don't come and rain- ductive rights, I told the nuns how happy world...
...Earl Shorris's book with the awarding of last year's Nobel prominence to Latinos explains why Hispanic gains in public Peace Prize to Quiche leader Rigoberto and the weight they bring life have been so difficult...
...The the underlying divisions in the Hispanic camps, "relocated" villages, and certain Hispanic vote contributed to the election community and to the consequent lack of towns, such as Santiago Atitlan, site of a of President Bill Clinton, two talented a coherent Hispanic agenda...
...History is the scholars from these same Western traditure...
...Canby's conversations in refugee into national politics...
...Grande...
...Along the even in his encounters with native religion, cepting, though nothing can ever substitute way, he talks with Maya village leaders, Canby doesn't attempt to suspend or con- for one's own journey...
...Canby covered the entire region, and his journey brought him into contact not only with the Maya, but also with many noted scholars who have, in recent years, made major break22: 26 March 1993 Commonweal writes, "view the contemporary Maya as highly publicized massacre, are blanket- to the experience of those who have found being in the process of absorption by the ed in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion...
...Peter Canby's invitahis money...
...The dancers move The book is a collection of adventures, because it was such a relief to find the on and Canby recalls, "I wanted to catch observations, and conversations, marked Catholic church concerned with some- up with them, but it suddenly struck me equally with insight and frustration...
...and the an- highlands to witness a carnival celebraidentity by continually adjusting their in- swers are guarded...
...The an essayist, the artful playing of ideas and part with great subtlety and intelligence...
...in the Americas known to have developed 1992, when hundreds of its own writing...
...in Gua- when the day has been too long and the "`Another thing,' she said...
...For a brief moment, and then weaves together the story of sisters dealing with malnutrition issues in the whole world looks different...
...There are approximately 7 million Maya descendants today, speaking some thirty distinct languages and spread from the Yucatan to Guatemala, from the Chiapas highlands to Honduras...
...With over half the modern Norton, $25, 520 pp...
...Canby is reluctant upon his initial ventures into Guatemala, "since being labeled a subversive in Guatemala is the equivalent of getting a death sentence, and LATINOS Latinos, Federico F. Pena and Henry G. since talking to an Indian might, under the A Biography of the People Cisneros, joined the Clinton cabinet, and wrong circumstances, be construed as Earl Shorris a notable increase of persons from Spanishsubversive...
...In re- thing beyond restricting people's repro- as futile...
...He points to Menchu...
...200 and 800...
...El BOOKS Outsider among the Maya U tatlan is a Maya archaeo- THE HEART OF THE SKY script, which may have been translated logical site located in the Travels Among the Maya from older hieroglyphic texts, is one of the Guatemalan highlands...
...H economic system that has forced indigenous people into subsistence work, and political repression in Guatemala that has brought a high degree of militarization to A DIVERSE PEOPLE traditional Maya communities...
...Upon encountering two Catholic the local language...
...At one point, in the Chiapas colonized people who have retained their refugees guerrilla supporters...
...Canby's longstanding in- It is no wonder that the questions some- for the past five centuries...
...This manu- of the Maya peaked there and, as Canby Having recently been to Guatemala, I had a special interest in Peter Canby's The Heart of the Sky, which describes three years of travel among Maya communities in southern Mexico and Central America...
...tion, he follows the costumed figures stitutions to meet the demands of the out- There are moments of stilted dialogue dancing through the streets...
...places is that he does not hesitate to ask tions that come when the world and ev- The Heart of the Sky reminds readers questions, ranging from the hard to the eryone in it appear indifferent, if not that we have been living with the Maya naive, about the full range of Maya ex- downright hostile to one's fate...
...Rodriguez is a brilliant actor: much like others in the book, lacks suffi- cultural allegiances...
...Such divid- stage, their strong religiosity and sense of part Mexican...
...gringo" has been unwelcome, or when always be writing...
...Now, five hundred years later, of a five-hundred-year assault on their cul- Columbian Maya history...
...But the Maya past, present, and future...
...Some Maya welcome Canby I was to see them in a region too full of Most of us do and that is precisely what to their homes, while others try to take evangelicals...
...This includes overt racism, an moments that he seems to come closest much to learn...
...It is Edward L. Cleary But Hispanics expressed disappointestimated that tens of thousands of Indians ment about not having Hispanics in the were murdered in counterinsurgency ac- Senate or the Supreme Court and fewer tions there in the early eighties, a reality Recent changes in Wash- numbers than would be representative in brought again to the world's attention ington have brought new subcabinet positions...
...Amid the archaeological ruins of from "the name of the god" in the Popal tween A.D...
...This particular swipe at the the book is about...
...It is make cynical statements about very sub- and is soon exchanging words in Tzotzil, with this perspective that Canby travels tle things...
...reconstruct the story of the Maya society protest banners and celebrated their tra- The title, The Heart of the Sky, comes which flourished in Meso-America beditions...
...Are the sider status...
...Dressed in colorful traje (tradition- key word here, because, as Canby re- tions work painstakingly to decipher the al clothing), with young children at their peatedly shows, most of us know even less meaning of remaining hieroglyphs and to sides, people burned incense, hoisted of the modern Maya...
...reader finds insightful comments that ex- incidents, although in the spirit of He is the embodiment of that complex fate plain the tension between these two coun- Montaigne and John Stuart Mill, fits well shared by those born twice American: hytries described by Alan Riding as "distant the American tradition of transcendental- brids always living in the hyphen, with one neighbors," but never an overall perspec- ists like Thoreau and Emerson and twen- leg here and the other across the Rio tive that truly penetrates history...
...He drops into caves and hikes church is a North American statement, but tion to travel with him is well worth acthrough the Lacandon forest...
...women that Canby meets finally bids him cipals, and, with a final and by now not But these minor slips of discipline are and his notebook farewell with that same unexpected irony, has breakfast in McDo- rare...
...Canby's most honest writing occurs thought: nald's with the only Maya Ph.D...
...speaking backgrounds assumed seats in the Maya living in Guatemala, there are many House of Representatives...
...Yet Canby terest in the Maya leads him to a differ- times ring hollow ("But why did the army knows and is ever reminded of his outent view...
...Hyde homosexuality, their deeply felt voyage United States...
...ing the Maya creation story...
...There are things you can What makes Canby's book more than the guides get lost in the forest and food only learn from living with the people, an accounting of visits to exotic people and is running out...
...The re- tieth-century masters like Mary McCarthy...
...Unfortunately, this image, ed loyalties remind me of Saul Bellow's sacredness...
...His craftsmanship as without sentimentality or fear, he plays the cient historical and cultural weight...
...Spanish friars burned hiMaya descendants gathered for their own Nancy M. Haegel eroglyphic books when they found them, religious and political commemoration of considering them a key link in the chain Columbus's Quincentennial, an event of Indian tradition they were committed marking what many view as the beginning throughs in our understanding of pre- to break...
...Jekyll and Mr...
...One of the Maya a government informer, religious prin- ceal his own skepticism...
...If one looks at the Maya as a begin the assassinations...
...an Indian village, Canby remarks "Perhaps experience is fleeting...
...He reveals then the emo- things you can only learn in your heart...
Vol. 120 • March 1993 • No. 6
