The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town: Revised Edition Paperback – 1 April 2011

The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town  This is an ethnographic study of Santiago Atitlán. This book came in two parts, the first published in 1997 with a substantial update in 2011. I didn't like it. I loved it.Let's start at the end. "...Santiago Atitlán, nestled as it is between Lake Atitlán and the three volcanoes towering above ... thunderstorms roll in from the coast ... lightning crashes in on the town ... clouds swirl around the volcano tops, forming delicate rings ... orchestrated by the rain gods and the martyred shamans who shoot lightning from their mountaintop thrones. To paraphrase the great nineteenth-century explorer John Lloyd Stephens’s reaction when he first gazed at Lake Atitlán, it is the most remarkable spectacle that one has ever seen. This is what it is like at the center, in the Umbilicus of the world"I have made a quarter century of annual visits to Santiago Atitlán. It has been to learn about and pray to the martyred [28 July, 1981] and now beatified, Blessed Fr. Stanley Rother. As I climbed Volcán San Pedro a few years back I learned from my Atiteco [native of Santiago Atitlán] guide of the deep and growing love that the indigenous have for Fr. Stan, Aplas as the Atitecos know him. More than the Shepherd Who Did Not Run the Atitecos know Aplas as the American priest who came back from the safety of his native Oklahoma to care for, administer the sacraments to and forfeit his own life for them. He is already their own saint.Carlsen's book goes back before Fr. Stan's arrival in the mid 1960s, at least a thousand years further back. It goes back to Popol Vuh and the World Tree and the Flowering Mountain Earth and the Roman Catholic cofradías cum pre-Colombian societies and much more. Carlsen's book includes solid scholarship supported by reference to the relevant literature that is both voluminous and meticulous. It includes his own original research. It draws on his years as participant observer. Carlsen sustains a treatise on his anthropological method and is continually noting both what he is about to demonstrate and what he has shown. Woven through the text are his own anecdotes, his friendships and observations. His description of the Holy Week confrontation between Jesus Christ and Maximón is vivid. Carlsen's accounts of civil war atrocities fill in gaps and give texture to what I already knew. Summary executions at the hands of today's "Social Cleansers" is entirely new and most disquieting. He takes the story to the presence of Mara Salvatrucha in Santiago Atitlán. The Old Ways are passing. The future is most uncertain.I have passed a quarter century serving the Cachequel of Patzún by showing up and providing time, treasure and talent at the Franciscan Missions there. I have been drawn to Santiago Atitlán during that whole time. Last year, when I was 68, I swan Lake Atitlán from Santa Caterina to Cerro de Oro. My side of the lake to Fr. Stan's side. The idea was to honor the martyr and bring attention to the cause for his sainthood. The plan was to swim on into the bay and right to the docks of Santiago Atitlán. But thunderstorms rolled in from the coast just as I reached land after a 4 hour swim. Lightning crashed, my entourage and I were caught in a deluge. Volcano tops disappeared into clouds. Angry shamans shot lightening, spoken thunder and drenched us. It was beautiful and terrible. We were on our way to see where my friend recovered the tortured, murdered body of Fr. Stan in the wee hours on 29 July 1981. It was a remarkable sight. We were at the center, the umbilicus of the world. The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town