The visions and rites of the Mayan ancestors in Yucatan: A historical account of the continuity of Mayan cosmovision among the milperos of the Chilam Balam route

The Mayas are one of the ethnic groups of Mexico that have maintained a cultural continuity despite centuries of invasions and pressures from the outside world. Today, some Mayan peasant communities (milperos ) in the Yucatan peninsula and Central America still preserve the religious and cosmological traditions and beliefs of their ancestors, making thus the continuation of their pre-Columbian cosmovision possible. Within this context, my dissertation centers on the historical continuity of Mayan cosmovision along the pueblos where mystical and divination writings of Yucatan's Mayas - Chilam Balam manuscripts - have been found.;-Sacred Spaces, Ancestral Rites- The Continuity of Mayan Cosmovision in Yucatan occurred in the sacred spaces of rituals, myth, and dreams associated with the lords of nature (nature cult), the milpa and healing deities (agrarian cult), and the ancestor spirits (ancestor cult). Since indigenous Yucatan has historically depended on traditional medicine and subsistence farming for its survival, the Mayan religious worldview - the cosmology and mythology - persisted more strongly among agricultural communities (milperos) in the spaces of healing and agrarian ceremonies. The pre-Columbian religious notion of nature, best expressed in the Mayan medical paradigm and the field for the cultivation of corn (the milpa), conceives a supernatural realm of deities and spirits responsible for the wellbeing of the cosmos and its inhabitants. Due to their traditional healing methods and modes of production - as well as a cultural survival strategy - Yucatan's Mayan agrarian communities continued to appeal to their pre-Columbian deities and ancestor-spirits for the blessings of health and good harvest.;Therefore, for centuries, Mayan milperos maintained their ancestral religious beliefs and practices in the sacred spaces of rituals associated with healing and agriculture. These spaces - which inherently contained the Mesoamerican ethnic ideas and historical memories - turned into powerful mechanisms for reasserting cultural and religious autonomy. To this day, Mayan peasants of Yucatan continue practicing these pre-Hispanic rites, a tradition that has helped maintain their ancestral cosmovision alive.;The Continuity in the realm of the Mayan priest or Ah-men. My thesis states that - since the Mayas of Yucatan remained as peasant societies highly dependent on traditional healing and agrarian practices - the role of the Mayan shaman-priests and their rituals played a crucial role in the reproduction (and preservation) of Mayan cosmovision. While Mayan milperos of Yucatan carried on their Mesoamerican religious worldview throughout centuries after the Spanish invasion, they also preserved a class of ritual-specialists who served as intermediaries between the supernatural world and the rest of society. This central figure of indigenous spirituality or theology refers to the surviving Mayan shaman-priest, the Ah-Men, the recipient of Mayan oral tradition and ancestral wisdom. These religious leaders, the Ah-meno'ob, preserved important elements of the ancestral knowledge necessary to maintain their cosmology, mythology, and religion alive among these Chilam Balam pueblos. From generation to generation, they transmitted their specialized knowledge on medicine and rituals, in this way maintaining their pre-Columbian memories alive. Mayan shaman-priests, Ah-meno'ob, have left marks on the annals of history by writing their knowledge-wisdom in manuscripts widely known today as the Chilam Balam books. They remained active as indigenous priests, rural doctors, and healers of community and the earth.