Table of Contents

• Foreword by Roy Wagner
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
  • What Are the Souls?
  • The Self as European
  • Conversations about Souls
  • The Town of Cancuc
• 2. The Ethnography of Souls
  • The Bird of Our Heart
  • The ch'ulel
    • The ch'ulel in ch'iibal Mountain
    • The ch'ulel inside the Heart
    • Dreams
    • Death and the ch'ulel
  • The lab
    • Lab That Are Animals
    • Water lab
    • Meteor lab
    • The "Illness-Giver" lab
    • The lab as Personal Power
    • Complete Human Beings
    • The Internal lab
    • The Transference of lab
  • Further Interpretations
• 3. Souls and Signs
  • Signs in Gestures
  • Signs in Dreams
  • "Comparing, Harmonizing like Voices"
  • The Person
  • Words
  • Fostering Knowledge
• 4. The European Within
  • The Magic Mountain
  • A Perpetual Fiesta
  • Castilian Features in the lab
  • The Ethnic Contrast between Heart and Head
  • Loss of the Senses and Exposing the Heart
• 5. Animism as History
  • Birds of the Heart, Livestock, Metal Tools
  • Priests
  • Scribes and Writing
  • Cattle Ranchers
  • Christian Music
  • The lab "Mothers-Fathers" and Coffee Cultivation
  • Soul History and the Body
• 6. Narrative, Ritual, Silence
  • The Past in Narrative
  • Exceptions to Neutrality
  • Ritual
  • Christian Rituals, Indian Simulation
  • Difficulties of Dialogue with the "Castilians"
  • Crosses
  • New Religious Identifications
• 7. The Mirror in the Saints
  • The Body of the Saints
  • Saints in Narrative
  • Images of Origins in the Mirror
• 8. A Case of Healing: Text and Ritual
  • The Ceremony
  • The Text
  • Commentary
• 9. Conclusion: The Fold
  • Person, History, and Memory
  • The Counterpoint between the Indigenous and the European
  • The Redoubling of the Other
• Appendix: An Outline of Tzeltal Souls
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Promotional Information

This pathfinding ethnography investigates how Indian concepts of the soul offer a new way of understanding personhood and historical memory in highland Chiapas, Mexico.

About the Author

Pedro Pitarch is Professor of Anthropology at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and Invited Researcher at the Instituto de Estudios IndÍgenas in Chiapas. He has edited or coedited several books, among them Human Rights in the Maya Region: Global Politics, Moral Engagements, and Cultural Contentions.

Reviews

"It is beautifully written and produced and is clearly a unique and important contribution to Mesoamerican scholarship and beyond...In a land of intensive studies and restudies, the findings of The Jaguar and the Priest are instructive, salutary, and profound." - Thor Anderson, San Francisco State University, American Anthropologist "This very rich, relevant and significant contribution to the ethnography of souls is not exactly about the jaguar and the priest, but about the concept of 'folds' and the body in Tzeltal ontology. It is about the identity of the Mayan community of Cancuc in Chiapas, Mexico, belonging to the Tzeltal language group.[...] Thanks to the vision of the editors of this series, this magnificent text is now available to the English-speaking scientific community. The title unfortunately does not do justice to the profound content of the text and might be confused with similar commercial titles already on the market. This book should not only be used for courses in ethnography, anthropology of the body, Maya archaeology, history, and religious studies, but should be read by anyone who desires a greater understanding of Mesoamerican indigenous past and present." - Bulletin of Latin American Research