6 - Naturalized Authority of the Royal Court

Summary

So it was when the first people emerged. Jaguars accompanied some of them; coyotes accompanied some; weasels accompanied others. But those whom the jaguars accompany, these are the richest. Those whom the coyote accompany, these are not so rich. Those whom the weasel accompanies, these people are poorer. Those whom the fox accompany, these are the poorest, just as poor as those of the weasel. … Those human counterparts of both the fox and the weasel, they do not live very long. … Our Father long ago gave us dreams about our animal-soul companions. That is why it remains the same even today, that not all of us have jaguars as animal souls.

Gossen 1993:428–429

This “true, ancient narrative” spoken by Méndez Tzotzek to anthropologist Gary Gossen in 1969 provides a matter-of-fact statement of the profound cosmological underpinnings of inequality in twentieth-century Maya society, complete with differential life-span expectations. To most Westerners who embrace the ethos, if not the reality, of equality, such a matter-of-fact statement that explains hierarchy as the result of a natural cause (i.e., animal soul companion) seems very foreign. Yet, the most powerful and enduring forces of hierarchizing are those that naturalize difference so that it is beyond dispute and something to be tacitly accepted. Such hierarchization has been described by Touraine (1977:461) as a type of historical action by which a cultural model is transformed into a principle of social order.