The Adventures of Mr. Puttison Among the Maya
By Victor D. Montejo
Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I read this book years ago in Spanish and decided to obtain the English version to review in order to introduce it to a broader audience. I have interacted with the author during my research for the production of a documentary on immigration, “Guatemala: Trouble in the Highlands.” He is a distinguished Anthropologist, author, poet and a native speaker of the Maya Popb’alti language.
The principal character, an American traveler turns up in a remote Maya village in the Department of Huehuetenango in the 1930’s. Initially the community assumes that he’s a missionary and assume he’ll lead their religious ceremony since the Catholic Priest hadn’t visited them in quite some time.
Over time the American (known as “Dudley”) begins to get to know their culture. The author describes how the locals make brown sugar, “panela” and ask him to chew the sugar cane and make himself at home. Then they go to a bucket of sugar water and offer a gourdful of sugar water when Dudley tastes the sweet liquid a few slivers of cane got caught in his teeth. He thanks them when asked to drink more with, “Oh no, one is enough…” I remember being offered a cup of this sugar water as well and thought my teeth would dissolve it was so sweet! And naturally the locals also introduce him to their local moonshine “chicha”, which also led to other interesting situations.
But this is both a satirical as well as a historic one and reflects much of the local Maya traditions and the local population’s worldview. Dudley meets the local “healer” after writhing in agony and “emitting spine-chilling cries” at being bitten by a snake. The healer, Don Kux Ahawis utters an inaudible prayer and makes a sign of the cross over the wound with ocote (from the pine tree—pitch) slivers, then washed it with his concoction of medicinal herbs. Then he blows several times on the wound grinds up tobacco and bark of the tree they make marimba keys out of (hormigo) and “began to implant the curative spirit with three strong puffs of air.” Once he applies the concoction on the wound the treatment is complete.
After a difficult night when Dudley was bathed in perspiration and hallucinating and his cries woke all of those around him and in the morning, he describes a strange dream in which a woman in traditional Maya clothing beseeches him to return a skull Dudley had taken from a ceremonial cave of the local community which he doesn’t consider a “problem” but the family he’s staying with says, “Well, maybe it’s not a problem for you, but it is for us because we respect the memory of our ancestors, and we know that they watch over and protect us from wherever they are, if we respect them and remember them every moment of our existence” reflecting a very different world view as well as the historic problem of outsiders stealing their relics and religious items.
When the healer returns later that morning, he removes the medicinal herbs he’d applied, muttered something nobody understood and blew nine times on the wound after which he gave instructions which would lead to Dudley’s full recovery. To which Dudley replies, “Many thanks, my dear friend Kux Ahawis. You are a magnificent doctor, a living testimony to the great medical knowledge of the Maya.”
Dudley learns about the customs and traditions of the Yulwitz people by their elders, including the central role of corn in their society, “A family may lack salt, sugar, chile, beans and even clothing, but corn, never, because it is the sacred food indispensable to the family. For example, a jug of posol sustains you and fills you up more than any other food. One may lack anything except corn, which is every peasant’s wealth.”
The author reveals many of the injustices the Maya population endures such was their being considered beasts of burden and were used as horses to carry heavy cargo and even individuals. Forced labor would also take its toll: “When the day of the men’s return (from forced labor mandated by the Guatemalan government), they were received with great joy in every home. The men, however, returned with an air of sorrow and despair. Some were ill. Their provisions had run out sooner than expected, and they had gone hungry, lacking the necessary nourishment to keep themselves strong and healthy for the heavy work of breaking up rocks, and digging with picks, shovels and hoes…”
At the end of the book, Puttison’s “Adventures” takes a very dark and tragic turn as he invites two friends to stay with him and they pillage the local cave where many artifacts and religious items are kept, “The three foreigners then dragged the sack into the bushes and, unseen by Xhuxh Antil, divided up its content. Each one carried his own share, and suddenly bidding a hasty farewell to Xhuxh Antil, they headed up a shortcut through the mountains to the Mexican border. Like souls possessed by the devil, the three thieves began to run like crazy, trying to get out of Guatemala as quickly as possible. The book is beautifully written, comical in places and yet reveals much about the Maya people and injustices they’ve endured over the centuries.
The two translators, Susan Giersbach Rascón and Fernando Peñalosa are veteran translators of Maya literature. The author is a Jakaltek Maya and an internationally recognized author, scholar, and intellectual. As a young schoolteacher in Guatemala in 1982, Montejo was forced to flee his home to escape being murdered by the Guatemalan Army during that country’s decades-long civil war. After a period in a U.N.-sponsored refugee camp in Chiapas, Mexico, he managed to make his way to the United States, bringing his family shortly thereafter. Once in the United States, he received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut in 1993. He later taught at the University of California-Davis in the Department of Native American Studies, eventually becoming its chair. In 2004 he returned to Guatemala to serve first as Ministro de Paz [Secretary of Peace] in the cabinet of Guatemalan president Roberto Berger, and then as a member of Guatemala’s National Congress from 2004 to 2008. He was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003. He formally retired from UC-Davis in 2011, and currently lives in his hometown of Jacaltenango
Table of Contents
Mr. Puttison comes to Yulwitz
Communal laws
The rabid dog
The sugar mill
The snake bite
The spirits of the ancestors
The Llorona at the spring
Hunting legends
Mr. Puttison’s friendship
Witz, the Lord of the Hill
Wonderful, wonderful!
Farewell to Yulwitz.
Product details
⦁ Paperback: 182 pages
⦁ Publisher: Quaking Aspen Books (May 1, 2002)
⦁ Language: English
⦁ ISBN-10: 1886502382
⦁ ISBN-13: 978-1886502383
Reviewer Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He came to Phoenix as a Senior Director for Food for the Hungry, worked with other groups like Make-A-Wish International and was the CEO of Hagar USA, a Christian-based organization that supports survivors of human trafficking. He’s presently the Producer of a documentary film, “Guatemala: Trouble in the Highlands.”
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association for Non-Fiction and, according to the Midwest Review, “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery…”
Several of his articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Literary Travelers and Quail BELL, while another appeared in “Crossing Class: The Invisible Wall” anthology published by Wising Up Press. His reviews have been published in the Midwest Book Review, by Revue Magazine, as well as Peace Corps Worldwide, and he has his own column in the “Arizona Authors Association” newsletter, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why.” His essay, “Hugs not Walls: Returning the Children,” was a winner in the Arizona Authors Association literary competition 2020 and was reissued in “Revue Magazine.” Another article was recognized in the “Solas Literary Awards for Best Travel Writing.”
His honors include the “Service Above Self” award from Rotary International. He is a board member of “Advance Guatemala” and the membership chair for “Partnering for Peace.” His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com and www.Guatemalastory.net or follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/