The Town
Though most visitors come here for the market, Chichicastenango also offers an unusual insight into traditional religious practices in the highlands. At the main Iglesia de Santo Tomas , in the southeast corner of the plaza, the K'iche' Maya have been left to adopt their own style of worship, blending pre-Columbian and Catholic rituals. The church was built in 1540 on the site of a Maya altar, and rebuilt in the eighteenth century. It's said that indigenous locals became interested in worshipping here after Francisco Ximenez, the priest from 1701 to 1703, started reading their holy book, the Popul Vuh. Before entering the church, it's customary to make offerings in a fire at the base of the steps or to burn incense in perforated cans, a practice that leaves a cloud of thin, sweet smoke hanging over the entrance. Inside is an astonishing scene of avid worship. A soft hum of constant murmuring fills the air as the faithful kneel to place candles on low-level stone platforms for their ancestors and the saints. For these people, the entire building is alive with the souls of the dead, each located in a specific part of the church. Don't enter the building by the front door, which is reserved for cofrades and senior church officials; use the side door instead and be warned that taking photographs inside the building is considered deeply offensive - don't even contemplate it. Beside the church is a former monastery, now used by the parish administration. It was here that the Spanish priest Francisco Ximenez became the first outsider to be shown the Popol Vuh. His copy of the manuscript is now housed in the Newberry Library in Chicago: the original was lost some time later in the eighteenth century. The text itself was written just to the north of here, in Utatlan, shortly after the arrival of the Spanish, and is a brilliant poem of over nine thousand lines that details the cosmology, mythology and traditional history of the K'iche'. On the south side of the plaza, often hidden by stalls on market day, the newly renovated Rossbach Museum (Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat 8am-noon & 2-4pm, Thurs & Sun 8am-1pm & 2-4pm; US$0.15) houses a wide-ranging collection of pre-Columbian artefacts, mostly small pieces of ceramics (including some demonic-looking incense burners), jade jewellery and stone carvings, some as old as two thousand years, that had been kept by local people in their homes. A second room, due to open in the near future, will be dedicated to local artesanias, including weavings, masks and carvings. Facing Santo Tomas across on the west side of the plaza, the whitewashed El Calvario chapel is like a miniature version of Chichi's main church. Inside, the atmosphere is equally reverential as prayers are recited around the smoke-blackened wooden altar, and women offer flowers and stoop to kiss a supine image of Christ, entombed inside a glass cabinet.
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