Resumen de Maintenance of Kaqchikel ritual speech in the confraternities of San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
Andreas koechert, Barbara Pfeiler
Syncretism has been a profound influence on Guatemalan society of which it has been a part since early Spanish colonization in the 16th Century. Both the incorporation and application of Spanish borrowings, as well as notions of Catholic doctrine in ritual Kaqchikel speech can be seen as a permanent process of religious, cultural, economic and social contact. The spiritual concepts of Kaqchikel traditionalist believers and their representative confraternities in San Juan Sacatepéquez have been transmitted and preserved during these five centuries through their prayers. The prayers are characterized by a high rhetorical style of formal language, a wide variety of invocations to the Christian God and Catholic saints and use of Spanish borrowings, none of which have apparently eclipsed this indigenous oral traditional genre. Certain literary figures typical of Mesoamerican ritual speech, such as parallelism, diphrasism and other types of repetitions, continue to appear in the prayers. In the present study, we analyze this ritual speech form from its literary and linguistic aspects, as well as the “inner view” of the confraternity members of San Juan Sacatepéquez. We focus on syncretism in the prayers to better understand how the confraternities have conserved their indigenous spirituality despite pressure from the Catholic Church.
