Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas

by Victoria Reifler Bricker

Overview

Zinacantan, Chamula, and Chenalhó are neighboring Mayan communities situated in highland Chiapas, Mexico, near the city of San Cristóbal Las Casas. The inhabitants of the three communities speak dialects of the Tzotzil language. Five religious fiestas, celebrated by these communities in honor of their saints, provide the data for Victoria Bricker's comparative study of ritual humor.

In Chenalhó and Chamula performances of ritual humor are concentrated in the five-day period of a single fiesta, while in Zanacantan similar performances are distributed over threee fiestas. In these fiesta settings, performers in distinctive costumes make obscene and sacreligious remarks in the context of religious ritual. These performances are defined as ritual humor because they occur only in ritual settings.

Bricker's study constitutes a controlled cross-cultural comparison of ceremonial or ritual humor in its social and cultural setting. Much new information is provided in verbatim texts, recorded during actual fiesta performances. The study reveals that, although the three communities share a common pool of ritual symbols, they elaborate them differently in ritual humor. The study analyzes the symbolic expression of values, social organization, and interethnic relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292719361
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	01/01/1973
Series:	Texas Pan American Series , #12
Pages:	293
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Victoria R. Bricker is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Tulane University.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. A Woman’s Place
• 3. The Entertainers
• 4. ¡Bomba!
• 5. Chamula: Crazy February!
• 6. Pandora’s Box
• 7. The Moral Dimension of Ritual Humor
• 8. Metaphors of Social Criticism
• 9. Ritual Humor in Space and Time
• 10. The Social Meaning of Ritual Humor
• Bibliography
• Index

Editorial Reviews

There is every reason to believe that Victoria Bricker's monograph will become a classic in its niche of Mesoamerican studies. It is at once an application, based on the author's own fieldwork in three Tzotzil-speaking Indian communities in Chiapas, Mexico, of the much-lauded ... middle range of generalization in the tradition of controlled comparison; a comprehensive survey of ritual humor in Mesoamerican ethnohistoric documents; and, finally, a broad comparative overview of ritual humor throughout modern Mesoamerica and the United States Southwest.

American Anthropologist