The title of this book refers to the widespread and ancient Mayan belief that the prime purpose of ritual is to feed the gods. As its subtitle implies, the book subjects the rituals of the Zotzil Maya of Zinacantan Chiapas to a “symbolic” analysis. It leans heavily on Turner, Lévi-Strauss, Douglas, Leach and Geertz in about that order. Vogt presents in detail a number of descriptions of representative Zotzil rituals episode by episode, quoting from particular rites verbatim, and accompanying the text with informative photographs and drawings of the ritual and its locale and paraphernalia. Each ritual is then analyzed somewhat eclectically in terms of historical, sociological, psychological and structural features.
Disclaiming completeness (probably unattainable anyway), the work nonetheless synthesizes a huge amount of information on the religious ethnography of Zinacantan based upon Vogt’s own observations and those of his many students covering the past twenty years. These materials are carefully presented in considerable detail, though here and there an occasional slip-up occurs. Thus in Figure 29 (p. 113), I cannot decipher the abbreviations T. and Y.B. Or again in Figure 35 (p. 131) the abbreviations B and I for bankilal and ’iz’inal are left unkeyed. The text is liberally sprinkled with Zotzil words which often add nothing and sometimes get in the way. The fact that these are spelled throughout in capitals gives them a portentous look which the words themselves do not often justify, e.g. MIXATIK (Masses).
The analytic commentary contains very valuable insights into the strata of meaning embodied in Zotzil ritual. These cover the spectrum from demonstrable Mayan ideas to the ecumenical dichotomy of nature and culture, and it is not always easy to tell where you are on this spectrum. Even Vogt appears to lose his bearings occasionally, as when he says (p. 199): “A hypothesis corroborating the aboriginal nature of the talking saint is based on an extrapolation of the account of a talking idol encountered on the island of Cozumel .. . .” I do not understand how a hypothesis can corroborate anything, particularly one “based on an extrapolation.”
The main thrust of the analysis sometimes seems to be to arrive at binary oppositions. A number of these are mentioned, but those that are stressed turn out to be older and younger, hot and cold, rising and setting sun, center and hamlet, and of course nature and culture (symbolized as house and woods). Vogt’s use of these concepts is neither strictly comparable to that of Lévi-Strauss nor clearly different. In the end, Vogt tends to emphasize the mediating function of ritual in relation to these and other dichotomies, and he identifies five “symbolic themes” distinctive to Zinacanteco culture: the acts of talking, seeing and embracing, and the states of heat and time. In effect his analysis is indeed more symbolist than structuralist, as his subtitle states.
Somewhat apart from the main argument of the book is a brief but highly illuminating chapter on change and nativism over the period 1942-1972. Here and throughout, the work benefits enormously from the labors of the 150 field workers on the Harvard Chiapas Project between 1957 and 1975. It is nonetheless greatly to Vogt’s credit that he has been able to keep abreast of the resultant vast body of materials and to weave them into coherent summary works of a high order of interest and expertise.
If Tortillas for the Gods does not resolve the dilemmas of contemporary anthropology concerning ritual it does confront them comprehensively. At the same time it breaks new ground in the systematic presentation of the subject matter, and is an invaluable contribution to Mayan studies.
