Abstract
Indigenous confraternities of Mexico and Guatemala have received considerable attention in ethnographic research as key institutions of the civil-religious hierarchy of Native communities. Nevertheless, in many regions the origins and developments of such confraternities are poorly known. Through the study of ecclesiastical documents related to the parish life of the Ixil Maya of northwestern Guatemala, this article tracks down the historical development of the Indigenous brotherhoods in the town of Chajul, from the seventeenth century to present day. Data reveal that cofradias and other religious sodalities of the colonial period operated rather differently from what ethnographers observed during the twentieth century in terms of ritual behavior and communal financial matters. Moreover, ethnographic data show that in Chajul these organizations might have been associated to the colonial mural art that has been lately uncovered there, offering a new insight into the ritual life of colonial cofradias. This raises important questions regarding the transformations of the cofradia in the Maya highlands—from an institution under constant economic duress to a powerful local organization—and the timing of such changes.
