Unraveling Ixtab: Revisiting the Suicide

Ethnohistory

Unraveling Ix Tab: Revisiting the “Suicide Goddess” in Maya Archaeology

Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster, University of Central Florida Rachael Kangas, University of Central Florida

Abstract. Ix Tab, the ancient Maya suicide goddess, appears in various settings in the contemporary popular culture of Yucatán, Mexico. In a state where the suicide rate is double the Mexican national average, discourses about Ix Tab feed misconceptions about indigenous proclivities to suicide and render Maya people exotic. In an effort to unravel the origins of Ix Tab and the contemporary beliefs about indigenous suicide, we studied the ethnohistoric origins of Ix Tab in Diego de Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán and reviewed iconography from art databases and more than forty-four hundred pages of published works to identify either an ancient Maya suicide deity or suicide by hanging as a motif in ancient Maya art. Our research found no iconographic evidence of a suicide deity, and we came upon only two images of humans hanging by the neck, neither representing suicide. This indicates that there was no ancient Maya suicide deity and that suicide by hanging was not a signiﬁcant motif among the ancient Maya. Keywords. Maya, suicide, Ix Tab, Yucatán (Mexico), iconography

Introduction

The Yucatán, Mexico, Ministry of Culture declared 2012 the Año de la Cultura Maya (the year of Maya culture), part of an ongoing strategy for developing Yucatán’s tourism economy around its Maya “heritage” (Castañeda 1996; Breglia 2006). A centerpiece of this strategy was the grand opening of the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya (Great Museum of Maya Culture). Billed as a “celebration and encounter with the strongest roots of Yucatecan identity” (Instituto de Historia n.d.), the museum

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2 Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster and Rachael Kangas features a collection of more than five hundred examples of archaeological artifacts, textiles, and contemporary material culture. Like its pre- decessor, the Museo de Antropología e Historia de Yucatán, this new museum devotes a space to introducing the public to the ancient Maya deities. Inside the massive glass and metal structure, which resembles a rain forest canopy, the museum’s gleaming, modern halls profile Yuca- tán’s past and present from the time of the meteor strike believed to have destroyed the dinosaurs through the rise and transformations of ancient and contemporary Maya culture. In a hall dominated by a life-size replica of Ek Balam’s famous stucco facade, among the images of various deities is a familiar iconographic depiction of a female figure suspended by the neck from a sky band (fig. 1). The figure is labeled “Ix Tab, Goddess J: Suicide Deity.” This article is about the production of archaeological knowledge taken from ethnohistoric sources, how this knowledge can foster unquestioned assumptions—in this case, the existence of a so-called ancient Maya suicide deity represented pictorially in the Dresden Codex— and how these assumptions have important consequences in the ethnographic present. This is the story of Ix Tab, the ancient Maya suicide goddess. As she is presented in the Gran Museo to tourists and locals alike, the female figurelabeledIxTabappearstobeanaccepteddeityinthe Maya pantheon. This, however, is not the case: the image in question, borrowed from the Dresden Codex, is thought to be related to an eclipse. Moreover, Ix Tab is not the subject of archaeological or iconographic inquiry today. The figure is not recognized by Maya scholars as a goddess in ancient Maya pantheons as we know them for the Classic and Post- classic periods. Although Ix Tab is not recognized as a deity in Maya scholarship today, her origins can be found in the archaeological knowledge produced by early Mayanists such as Paul Schellhas and in the contributions of ethnohistorians such as Alfred M. Tozzer. As we discuss below, archaeological knowledge has currency in Yucatán, informing important conversations in a state that is building its economy around its Maya heritage, arguably at the expense of its Maya people. In this article we are concerned with the origins of Ix Tabin early Maya archaeology, with the early acceptance of claims made about suicide among the ancient Maya, and with the depiction of death by hanging and, in particular, of suicide by hanging in Maya iconography. By unraveling Ix Tab in her ethnohistoric and iconographic context, we deconstruct how archaeological knowledge produced at one moment in time can reverberate into another.

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Unraveling Ix Tab 3

Figure 1. Ix Tab, the suicide deity. Photograph taken by author at the Museum of Maya Culture

Contemporary Expressions and Questions of Heritage

The ﬁgure of Ix Tab appears in various settings in Yucatán’s contemporary popular culture. In addition to being prominently featured in tourist art, Ix Tab appears in material culture produced for local consumption. For example, a children’s book by Yucatecan folklorist Roldán Peniche Barrera (2011), Mitología Maya: Serpientes, gigantes, y pájaros mágicos (Maya Mythology: Serpents, Giants, and Magic Birds), features a stylized image of Ix Tab as a young woman hanging by the neck, casting a shadow of the original Dresden Codex icon’s silhouette (ﬁg. 2). In the text, Peniche Barrera notes, “The Maya also reverenced Ix’tab [sic], goddess of suicide by hanging. They believed that if they committed suicide in this manner, they went directly to paradise” (4; italics in original; all translations are our own unless otherwise noted). Another children’s book, Leovigildo B. Tuyub Collí’s (n.d.) Ixtab [sic], Xtabay, y Xtabentún, is a rendition of a popular local fairy tale, the story of Xkeban and Utzcolel, two women of equal beauty, one of them (Xkeban) free with her physical affections and thus ostracized as a prostitute but kindhearted and generous, the other (Utzcolel) a paragon of womanly virtue but cold and proud. When both women die, Xkeban’s corpse releases a sweet aroma, whereas Utzcolel’s body decomposes and gives off a fetid smell. It is said that Utzcolel’s spirit dwells inside a ceiba tree, emerging at night as the spirit called Xtabay to seduce and harm hapless travelers. In Tuyub Collí’s

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Figure 2. Ix Tab illustration by Juan Ramón Chan (Peniche Barrera 2011). Reprinted with permission from Editorial Dante, Mérida

version, the author adds, “Today, the captivating woman is called Xtabay, because she is like Ixtab, the ancient goddess of suicide, and because she is on the hunt for men drunk on the drink distilled from the Xtabentún” (29; italics in original),1 a statement that appears to be purely speculative. Ix Tab is present not only in children’s literature and popular archaeology; the suicide goddess also frequently appears in Mexican tabloids, called nota roja, or red journalism, in stories of suicides. De Peso, Yucatán’s most visible example of this genre, circulates seventy thousand copies a day. Suicides get frequent coverage, often accompanied by headlines such as

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Unraveling Ix Tab 5

Figure 3. “Ilman Worshipped Ixtab,” De Peso 2008

“Ixtab TookHim,”“He Worshipped Ixtab,” or “He Followed the Funereal Steps of Ixtab” (see De Peso 2008; see also fig. 3). The examples discussed here, gleaned from museums, tourist art, children’s literature, and journalism, exemplify the consumption of archaeological knowledge in present-day culture. In the same way that the moon goddess Ix Chel and her iconographic representation are appropriated for local consumption (Ardren 2006), Ix Tab has become a recurring trope in Yucatán’s popular imagination. However, whereas the popular consumption of Ix Chel functions to make claims about Mayanness and authenticity, the figure of Ix Tab has further rendered Yucatec Maya people and culture exotic. Yucatán’s suicide rate is more than double the national average (INEGI 2011). Current research on suicide among contemporary Maya and non- Maya people in Yucatán— a problematic distinction to draw (Castañeda 2004; Castillo Cocom 2005; Reyes-Foster 2012)—has revealed that suicide is frequently attributed to demonic intervention but has not uncovered whether suicide is more prevalent among Mayas than among non-Mayas or whether culture is a sufficient explanation for the elevated suicide rate (Baquedano 2009; Hernández Ruiz 2010; Reyes-Foster 2013). The Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía, e Informática (INEGI),

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Mexico’s census bureau, does not compile suicide statistics by ethnicity. Notably absent in Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster’s own and others’ (Baquedano 2009; Hernández Ruiz 2010) ethnographic research on suicide in Yucatán is any mention of Ix Tab in interviews with Maya people about suicide. If there ever was a suicide deity, she has likely long vanished from contemporary worldviews, as evidenced by her absence from the earliest descriptive ethnographies, which include descriptions of other spirits and deities (see Redfield and Villa Rojas 1962). Thus, while Yucatán’s elevated suicide rate may be cause for concern and warrant further research, it is reasonable to say that the only relationship between Ix Tab and suicide in Yucatán today is the figure’s role as a distraction in public discourse. Yucatán’s newspaper media regularly construct suicide as an indigenous problem, using Ix Tab as a trope to reify this unsubstantiated claim (Reyes- Foster 2013). In this sense, Ix Tab has become what Traci Ardren (2006) calls a “pop goddess.” Without evidence to support a role for the Maya suicide goddess in suicide today, why does she remain a recurrent trope in popular discourse? At the heart of this phenomenon is a question of heritage as process (Skeates 2000; Breglia 2006): the material culture of the past—in this case, the iconographic depiction of a female figure in a Maya codex—is inscribed with the identity of a supposed suicide goddess and used to explain a pervasive social problem. In her study of heritage and local communities near archaeological sites in Yucatán, Lisa Breglia (2006) conceptualizes heritage as a social relationship among all of the users of a heritage site. Likewise, Ardren (2006) notes that archaeological knowledge is produced in historically contingent ways and consumed differently by people with varying interests. In Mexico, the state has a long history of appropriating archaeological knowledge as nationalist strategy (Lomnitz 2005; Gamio 2010 [1916]; Gruzinski 2001). Yucatec Maya intellectual Juan Castillo Cocom argues that “the Maya” is simultaneously a category of identity and a tourist commodity (2005). Archaeological and anthropological knowledge about ancient and contemporary Maya, he argues, is used by actors in the state’s political machinery to turn such knowledge into commodities to be sold in the state’s tourism-driven economy. In their postcolonial condition, he continues, Maya people are constructed in terms of their pre-Columbian past; more recent histories of repression and resistance are ignored. Ix Tab’s salience, like that of other Maya deities in various settings of Yucatán’s popular culture, fits within this paradigm. This article is part of a broader effort (Reyes-Foster 2013) to dispel the myth that people in Yucatán are suicidal because of some connection to the pre-Columbian past. Rather, Ix

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Unraveling Ix Tab 7

Tabis one of several modern tropes used to explain away the contemporary reality of suicide. An important ﬁrst step in dispelling this myth is to con- sider the ﬁgure of Ix Tab in its iconographic and ethnohistoric context.

Hanging, Suicide, and the Dresden Codex 53b

Ix Tab emerged in the archaeological imagination as a result of scholars’ reliance on Alfred Tozzer’s (1941) translation of Diego de Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, one of the most widely read and cited ethnohistoric works about the ancient Maya. Landa’s Relación has been called many things: an ethnography, an apology, a legal defense (Restall and Chuchiak 2002; Clendinnen 1987). The Relación contains a detailed account of everyday life in Yucatán before and after the Spanish Conquest and has been used by archaeologists in their reconstructions of everyday life among the ancient Maya. The earliest mention of Ix Tab appears in this passage: Decían también, y lo tenían por muy cierto, [que] iban a esta su gloria los que se ahorcaban; y así había muchos que con pequeñas ocasiones de tristeza, trabajos o enfermedades se ahorcaban para salir dellas e ir a descansar a esta su gloria donde decían los venía a llevar la diosa de la horca que llamaban Ixtab. (Landa 2011: 84) [They said also and held it as absolutely certain that those who hanged themselves went to this heaven of theirs; and on this account, there were many persons who on slight occasions of sorrows, trou- bles or sickness, hanged themselves in order to escape these things and to go and rest in their heaven, where they said that the goddess of the gallows, whom they called Ix Tab, came to fetch them.] (Tozzer 1941: 132) Maya scholars may recognize figure 1 as a redrawing of a figure on page 53b of the Dresden Codex (fig. 4). However, the connection between D53b and Landa’s Ix Tab is tenuous. A footnote by Tozzer (1941: 132n619) that accompanies the passage above created the connection between Ix Tab and the figure depicted in the Dresden Codex: “On Dresden 53a there is a death god and below a woman suspended by a rope around her neck, undoubt- edly Ix Tab.” The enduring connection between Ix Tab and Dresden 53b originated in this footnote. The Dresden Codex image 53b depicts a woman with clear signs of death (including closed eye) hanging by the neck from a rope. This seem- ingly obvious identification of D53b as the suicide goddess, Ix Tab,sparked an early and lasting trend in the archaeological literature. An early reference

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Figure 4. The Dresden Codex, 53b. Drawing by Linda Schele, © David Schele. Courtesy of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies by Schellhas (1910: 14–15) states that “the curious picture of a hanged woman on Dr. 53b, a picture which is interesting from the fact that it recalls vividly a communication of Bishop Landa. . . . It is, in all probability, the goddess of the gallows and halter, Ix Tab, the patroness of the hanged.” Subsequent references follow this observation, connecting Ix Tab as the suicide goddess with D53b (Baquedano 2009: 79; Gates 1978; McGee 1984, 1990: 70; Tozzer 1941: 132n619). Outside Landa’s description of the goddess of hanging, there is a reference to Ix Tab in the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin. Makesom’s (1951) translation states: “The number of men here in our land shall be increased tenfold, and when they arrive, they will fulﬁll the words of the warriors of the katun. May the drunkards be torn up by the roots! May Ix Tab carry them dangling from her hands, even before we have tied up the face of the katun” (44 [22 in original document]). The associated footnote deﬁnes Ix Tab as “Goddess of suicides and of hangings” (44n120). The

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Unraveling Ix Tab 9 footnote (likely a result of Makemson’s study of Landa) is the only part of this passage explicitly tying Ix Tab to suicide; the translation on its own is vaguer. Moreover, this passage is absent in Munro S. Edmonson’s (1982) transcription and translation of the same text. The only two references to Ix Tab are in the author’s footnotes (lines 426 and 3129). The footnote cor- responding to line 426 is a description of Maya priesthood. Edmonson makes the unsubstantiated claim that Ix Tab is among the deities with dedicated priests. The footnote associated with line 3129 is a reference to Tozzer. Closer examination of the Books of Chilam Balam further complicates this interpretation. Helga-Maria Miram and Wolfgang Miram’s (1988) Concordance of the Chilam Balames reveals that a passage referring to Ixtab appears in the Chilam Balam of Tizimin (24, 13) and in the Perez Codex (119, 27). In both texts, the original Mayan reads, “uch’uimaob ix tab tu kab” (orthography from original), “they suspended ix tab from their hands,” or “ix tab suspended them from (her) hands.”2 Contextual examination of the original texts reveals that the passages preceding the token are about periods of generalized chaos and suffering, where hanging appears as a form of execution. There is one mention of suicide by hanging in the Chilam Balam of Tizimin, but Ix Tabis not mentioned by name: “Hex te Sututa e u tabah u cal u ch’upil D. Fan Cocom,”“And it was there at Sotuta, that there hung herself, Don Francisco Cocom’s girl” (Edmonson 1982: 118). In the limited instances where she is mentioned, Ix Tabseems to reference death by hanging in general, not suicide. The “goddess of the gallows” is not mentioned in other Spanish- language colonial writings (Lopez de Cogolludo 1971; Barrera Vásquez and Rendón 1992; Roys 1933; Sánchez de Aguilar (1937 [1633]). A note- worthy mention of prevalent suicide by hanging is made in the seventeenth century by Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar (ibid.). Sánchez de Aguilar’s Informe contra idolorum cultores is a report on the state of idolatry in early seventeenth-century Yucatán. The Informe, after presenting evidence of frequent apostasy and idolatry among converted Indians in Yucatán, presents a series of recommendations to the Spanish crown for addressing what Sánchez de Aguilar perceives as the failure of the spiritual conquest. It is among these recommendations that he notes the frequency of suicides in Yucatán. Stating the necessity for an increase in the numbers of ﬁscales (priest’s agents) in every parish, Sánchez de Aguilar notes: Y este Fiscal, sabiendo leer, y escriuir, ayudara a bien morir a los enfermos,dandolelaformaqueponeelRitual...yalgunaplaticapara exhorar y auiuar la Fe, y esperanza del enfermo; porque faltandoles

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este consuelo, y conhorte, desesperan, y son tentados fuertemente del demonio para ahorcarse. (131) [This ﬁscal, knowing how to read, and write, should help the ill to die well, giving form to the ritual . . . and talking to him to encourage him and revive his faith and hope. Because, without this consolation and comfort, [the dying] despair, and are strongly tempted by the Devil to hang themselves.] (our translation) Thus, while observing that suicide is commonplace among the dying, Sánchez de Aguilar makes no mention of Ix Tab or of a suicide goddess at all, instead attributing suicide to demonic intervention. Scholars have long used Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán as the oldest and most reliable Spanish historical document of the Maya at the time of the Spanish conquest. However, the use of the Relación and the document itself bear further scrutiny. In the English-speaking world, two translations of Landa are frequently relied upon. The ﬁrst is a translation by William Gates, originally published in 1937 and reprinted by Dover Books in 1978. It is the only English translation of the Relación in print today. However, Gates’s edition contains no commentary and few notes. The only scholarly translation of the Relación is Alfred Tozzer’s 1941 translation. The Tozzer edition of the Relación is notorious for its copious footnotes, which are longer than the Landa text itself. Tozzer’s edition served as an early bedrock of ethnohistoric and iconographic information for archaeologists of the ancient Maya. It presents a wealth of information, a true compendium of Maya scholarship at the time it was published. The Tozzeredition, however, is problematic: the translation was made by a team of assistants working with antiquarian Abbé Brasseur de Bour- bourg’s French translation of the original manuscript, and the original manuscript was seen by only one member of the team, Eleanor Adams (Tozzer 1941: ix). Comparing the Tozzer and Gates editions to the original Spanish manuscript, Matthew Restall and John F. Chuchiak (2002) note that Gates’s translation glosses parts of the text better than Tozzer’s. If Tozzer’s edition, with its wealth of notes, is untrustworthy, Restall and Chuchiak convincingly argue that the Landa manuscript is often misun- derstood in contemporary scholarly literature: “The Franciscan friar never wrote a book called Relación de las cosas de Yucatán; put another way, the Relación as it is known and used today was not written by Landa” (651). Landa wrote a large recopilación, but this document has never been recovered. The existing manuscript is not a cohesive document written at one time by a single person but a set of haphazardly arranged folios penned by at least two hands (662). The order and headings present in some

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