The sound and fury
In our home, stands a prized life-size panel of fine Belizean mahogany carved with an imposing figure of Hunaphu, one of the handsome hero twins of the Classic Maya creation myth, soundlessly striding with the axe that he furiously wields to help his brother Xbalanque defeat the lords of the underworld in a series of intense battles. Eventually transformed into the shining sun and moon, the ball-players become the new world’s steady sources of illumination, symbolically launching a fresh, enlightened age.
The pair are central figures in Mayan iconography and feature in a famous colonial document the Popol Vuh or Book of the People, recorded by the Spanish 18th century Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez from historical accounts of the K’iche’ people, and now housed in the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Many translations exist but there is a simple elegance and eloquent beauty to the phrases that read almost like poetry whether in the original K’iche’, the friar’s archaic Spanish or any of countless contemporary English variations. “In the beginning, nothing existed but the sky and the sea. Everything was empty, silent, and motionless,” one version recites. Another states: “This is the account of how all was in suspense, all calm, in silence; all motionless, quiet, and empty was the expanse of the sky.”
The narrative recalls: “There was neither man, nor animals, birds, fishes, crabs, trees, stones, caves, ravines, grasses, nor forests; there was only the sky. The surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the great expanse. There was nothing brought together, nothing which could make a sound, nor anything which might move, or tremble, or could make a noise. There was nothing standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone and tranquil. Nothing existed.”
Portrayed as complementary forces, the hero twins represent the duality of nature be it life and death, sky and earth, day and night, creation and destruction. Among the legend’s trio of creator deities is the powerful Huracan, the ancient Mayan Weather God of wind, storm, and fire, who participates in ill-fated but wellmeaning cycles of fashioning humanity, first from mud, then wood.
Summoning the elements after the Gods become angry with these early humans, Huracan causes a super storm and great flood to ravage the land and destroy the flawed generation with no souls, the Popol Vuh states. He blows his breath across the chaotic water, invokes the ground until it rose out of the seas and finally succeeds in creating modern people from maize on the third attempt. To separate the sky from the Earth he plants a tall ceiba or silk cotton tree, making space for all sacred life, with the roots sinking deep into the underworld, the trunk sustaining fertile lands and crops, and the branches ascending to the heavens.
Another prominent regional indigenous group, the Tainos, who spread out from South America across the Caribbean islands around 400 B.C would adopt the onelegged Mayan god of natural catastrophes as their “Hurricán” from the devil “hura” or wind, also dreaded as the Carib divine personification of evil. Hurrican was believed to control the fierce gales that regularly slammed their island homes including Trinidad, Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos and The Bahamas.
Incorporated by the Spanish conquistadores into their vocabulary, there were dozens of different spellings for Hurrican or Hurakan by the late 16th century ranging from “hurlicano,” “hericano,” “furicano,” “foracane” and “herrycano” to “harrycain” and “hurlecane,” and even “hurleblast.”
William Shakespeare in his tragedies, “Troilus and Cressida” composed about 1602 and “King Lear” of 1608 would use the strange word making an early reference to waterspouts. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!/ You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/ Till you have drench’d our steeples” comes from Act Three of “King Lear”.
“Were it a casque composed by Vulcan’s skill, / My sword should bite it: not the dreadful spout/Which shipmen do the hurricano call, /Constringed in mass by the almighty sun, Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune’s ear…” muses the Trojan Prince Troilus as he ponders punishment for love rival Diomed.
Some four centuries later, the Mayan and Taino God is in full and fearsome reign with the second maximum force Category Five cyclone in a fortnight to batter the storm-weary Caribbean, this month, as devastated countries and thousands of affected residents struggle to suddenly cope with the catastrophic loss of normalcy. Homes, livelihoods and entire territories lie ruined, broken and desolate. Hurricane Maria has followed Irma, smashing areas that were previously spared and bringing misery to some of those who had extended crucial help, as the staggering costs and still mercifully-low death tolls mount.
Just a week ago in the stunning aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit generously offered Antigua and flattened Barbuda, more than US$250, 000 in aid as part of an assistance package to Eastern Caribbean sister countries and Cuba. By last Monday, the roles had reversed as Maria mangled Dominica at the end of an extraordinary