The Popol Vuh and the Dominican Religious Extirpation in Highland Guatemala: Prologues and Annotations of Fr. Francisco Ximénez

Abstract

In 2006, the Newberry Library in Chicago announced its digitization of the ancient Maya-K’iche’ myth, the Popol Vuh. While digitization ensures the preservation of the document and easier access for researchers, it is also significant in that it marks a new stage in the long historical trajectory of the manuscript itself. The Popol Vuh, or “Maya Bible,” is the most studied indigenous document of Mesoamerica. Contemporary scholarship has considered it, among all the early colonial documents, to best reflect a pre-Hispanic native voice. It provides a breadth and depth of detail concerning Maya religion, cosmology, and society, and its contents have been generalized to apply to virtually all of the ancient Maya religions. Additionally, the text has been used as a source for numerous ethnohistorical studies, and its mythological context has profoundly influenced most Guatemalan literature from the early nineteenth century to the present. More important, the Popol Vuh has become a symbol of Guatemalan national “indigenousness” and was officially declared Guatemala’s national book in 1971.