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 Ethnohistory 63:1 (January 2016) doi 10.1215/00141801-3325358 Copyright 2016 by American Society for Ethnohistory Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory 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. Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory 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 Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory 4 Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster and Rachael Kangas 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 Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory 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), Published by Duke University Press Ethnohistory 6 Beatriz M. Reyes-Foster and Rachael Kangas 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

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