Day Four: Mayhem in the Medical Wing, and Yelena tells the story of Juan Pistolas
Yesterday we returned to the topic of ghosts and monsters in local and Mayan mythology.
Upon our arrival, we were told to wait. A prisoner in the men’s area had thrown a temper tantrum in the medical wing and destroyed prison property.
Finally they allow us to pass through. Navigating the labyrinthine passageways of the prison, I nearly step through a door that led to the men’s side. The guards laugh that I still don’t know my way, after coming to the prison now for three weeks. I think it’s a combination of the dazzling Yucatan sun, the mid-afternoon heat, and the endless locks and bars and white walls that to me all look the same.
Again, the students are slow to arrive, but when they do they come prepared. I later learn that some of them have scrambled to finish the assignment in the moments before class.
Sophia and Yelena arrive first. I ask if they’d like to meditate or skip straight to reading. They say they’d like to begin as usual. So we start with a short visual meditation.
I ask them to read their assignments. Yelena silences all of us with her telling of “Juan Pistolas,” a legend she heard growing up in her childhood pueblo, about a creature that bears relation to the Huay-Chivo, a greedy goat-like demon known to cause mayhem and infamous for stealing livestock. At the end of the story, Juan Pistolas is neatly disposed of by the villagers with a canister of gasoline thrown in his jacal. Her version is succinct and well-framed, and I ask her to flesh it in with more detail, such as a physical description of Juan Pistolas and his dwelling, applying her imagination to fill in the gaps of the story.
Sophia reads a story about a haunted abortion clinic here in Mérida, relating the death of a young woman there and her subsequent conversion into a phantom. The topic is powerful, but again I ask her to flesh it in with detail, supplying her imagination to fill in the parts she doesn´t know. Another student, who rarely writes but enjoys coming to class to listen and give her opinion, is familiar with the story, and supplies information about the clinic: its location (around the corner from a park with a church) color (melon and white, with green shutters—Mérida is a city of candy-colored houses) and the abortionist (rumored to be gay, and to have disappeared after a botched abortion). “There’s your story,” I tell Sophie.
Another student, Nadia, a slightly older woman with Mayan features, reads her first story for the class, and draws applause. It is about a man who discovers the land of gnomes, a beautiful paradise, and who decides to stay forever. She supplies vivid description of the land, its flora and fauna. We talk about potential improvements, and I ask her, Sophie, and Yelena to rewrite their stories for the following week.
For inspiration, we read stories from a book of legends, gathered by Roldán Peniche Barrera and told by Lorenzo Chan, entitled Relatos Mayas. According to its introduction, ¨Almost all of these stories are based on mystery, on apparitions and on unusual events. These facts can be attributed either to the ancestral fear of the Mayans of things they couldn’t explain, or the surpassingly rich imagination of the narrator or of the people who transmitted these narratives.* (translation mine)
We notice in the stories how quotidian details of everyday life—details such as the narrator lighting a cigar in “Extraña experiencia,” or the promise of a pot of chocolate warming on the stove in “La Xtabay”—blend with more unusual events: robbers counting gold in hennequin sacks, or a woman with the voice of the narrator’s wife but an utterly different appearance, who enchants the narrator only to disappear after he prays three times. “Extraña experiencia” takes the border between the world of the everyday and the supernatural realm as its topic: its hero encounters a cave filled with spirits, but refuses to enter despite the riches promised for him within, preferring to return directly home as he had promised.
Something else I notice about these accounts, although we do not have time to discuss it, is their violence (also reflected in the narratives presented in class by Yelena and Sophia). In “La Xtabay,” the narrator’s father throws rocks at the female form of the Xtabay, until she screams, “Why do you throw rocks at me? You’ve bruised my ribs. You’ve wounded me in my chest. You’ve torn my throat. How can you do this to your wife?” Though the false wife later disappears when he prays three times, the violence of the story lingers. It is as present an element in these tales, and in life in the Yucatán, as the animals, both domestic and mythological, that appear in them and that occupy such an important place in village life here.
Near the end of class, we discuss the upcoming deadline for the 23rd annual José Revueltas Short Story Prize, a national Mexican literary award specifically for prison writing. The call for submissions has been posted on the door to the classroom; we read it together. Since the deadline is Thursday, the women convince me to return to the CERESO on Wednesday to look over their texts and correct them for grammar and spelling. One of them ask if these old Yucatecan legends, whose telling has made the hours of the workshop fly by (so fast that, this week and last, class has ended over 20 minutes late) enter in the category of stories, doubtful that they might not count. I assure her that they do. Though here they may seem everyday, the rich folktales of the Mayab hold a magnetic sway over audiences and readers far and wide.
Readings: Lorenzo Chan with Roldán Peniche Barrera, “La Xtabay” and “Extraña experiencia” , Relatos Mayas
Homework:
Write or re-write a supernatural story, legend or myth that you have heard or witnessed. Try to combine descriptions of facts and everyday details, true to life dialogues, and descriptions of characters and places, with the supernatural events.