Chapter 28: B'anob'äl - Crafts and the Work of Hands

Starting point#

At te Ixk'at's house. She is kneeling at her backstrap loom, tied to a house post; Ana and xta Ixchel are watching her work.

ANA: ¿Achike nab'än, te Ixk'at?
What are you doing, te Ixk'at?

IXK'AT: Ninkem jun ti po't richin ri Ix'ey, ri wiy.
I am weaving a little po't for Ix'ey, my granddaughter.

ANA: ¡Yalan jeb'ël ri taq b'onil! ¿Achike rub'anik jun po't?
The colors are beautiful! How is a po't made?

IXK'AT: Nab'ey ninq'ïn ri q'in rik'in ri q'inob'äl. K'a ri' ninnük' ri b'ätz' chi jujun pa ruwi' ri taq che'.
First I set up the warp with the warping frame. Then I arrange the threads one by one on the loom sticks.

ANA: ¿Achike ri' ri etz'ab'äl pa runik'ajal?
What is that design in the middle?

IXK'AT: Jun kumatzin. Chuqa' ninya' rachib'äl jun masat chuqa' jun äk'. Ri taq chikopi' yeto'on qichin pa qak'aslem.
A snake design. I am also putting in the picture of a deer and a hen. The animals help us in our life.

IXCHEL: Ri nute' nikemon po't. Kemoy po't rija'. Konojel ri winaqi' pa qatinamit ketaman ruwäch.
My mother weaves po'ts. She is a po't-weaver. Everyone in our town knows her.

ANA: ¿Janipe' ramaj nrajo' jun po't?
How much time does a po't take?

IXK'AT: K'ïy ramaj. Ka'i', oxi' ik', roma k'ïy retz'ab'al. Roma ri', jotöl rajil jun po't b'anon chi q'ab'aj.
A lot of time. Two or three months, because it has many designs. That is why a po't made by hand is expensive.

ANA: Ninwajo' ninwetamaj yikemon. ¿La yinatijoj? I want to learn to weave. Will you teach me?

IXK'AT: Ütz k'a, po eqal eqal. Nab'ey nakem jun ti su't, man jun po't ta. K'a ri' xtawetamaj ronojel.
All right, but slowly, slowly. First you weave a little su't, not a po't. Then you will learn everything.

Look at what is doing the work here. Ninkem jun ti po't is the plain transitive of Chapter 11: one specific po't, for one specific baby. Nikemon po't is the antipassive of Chapter 17 with a bare incorporated object: no particular po't, just what te Ixk'at does, her trade. And kemoy po't is that same antipassive turned into a noun, "po't-weaver". Around them, everything is old machinery in new clothes: rub'anik "its making" is a possessed action noun (Chapter 7), q'inob'äl is an instrument noun in -b'äl, jotöl rajil is Chapter 23's price talk, and nab'ey ... k'a ri' sequences the process (Chapter 9, Chapter 22).

How it works#

Saying what you do: the trade antipassive#

Chapter 17 introduced the antipassive twice: as the activity voice (yikemon "I weave, I do weaving") and as the object-incorporating construction (nikemon po't "she weaves po'ts"). In craft talk this second use moves from the margins to the center, because a trade is exactly the situation the construction was made for: a habitual action paired with a generic object. Nobody who says "she is a tortilla-maker" has particular tortillas in mind.

Compare the two ways of talking, side by side:

Remember the shape of each side. On the left, the verb carries a Set A (ergative) agent prefix (nu-) and a zero 3s Set B object, and the object noun keeps its article ri. On the right, the verb is intransitive: aspect + Set B subject + antipassive stem, and the object stands right after the verb, bare, with no article and no plural marking. The grammar of Chapter 17 has not changed; what is new is how much weight everyday Kaqchikel puts on this frame for identity. Ask ¿Achike rusamaj ri achin? "What is the man's work?" and a natural answer is a verb, not a noun:

Nib'anon xajab'; nuk'ayij pa rutinamit.
He makes sandals; he sells them in his town.

Ri wati't niponon wäy; ri numama' nib'anon si' pa juyu'.
My grandmother makes tortillas; my grandfather cuts firewood on the mountain.

Because these are ordinary antipassives, everything else from Chapter 17 still applies: the agent can be questioned (¿Achike xkemon re su't re'? "Who wove this su't?"), clefted (Ja ri te Ixk'at ri xkemon. "It was te Ixk'at who wove it."), and the demoted patient can go into a richin phrase (Xkemon richin ri po't.).

Naming the maker: -el, aj-, and the new -oy#

You already own two machines for making "person who does X" nouns. Chapter 24 taught the suffix -el on (mostly antipassive) verb stems, k'ayinel "vendor", tijonel "teacher", samajel "worker", and the prefix aj- on nouns, ajkem "weaver", ajq'ij "daykeeper", ajtz'aq "builder, mason". The sequel to our main source, Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', documents a third: take the incorporating antipassive phrase and replace the final n of the antipassive suffix with y. The verb phrase becomes a compound noun, and the bare object comes along:

The vowel of the suffix stays what it was, and since it now sits in the word's final syllable it is usually written lax: -on gives -öy (ponöy, b'anöy), -un gives -üy (yuq'üy). The sources write kemoy and q'atoy with a plain vowel; this book keeps those as attested. And the incorporated object is part of the name: a kemoy po't is not just any weaver but a weaver of po'ts, in the way an English "housebuilder" differs from a "builder".

The three machines are not interchangeable. Here is the division of labor:

A few -oy forms have fossilized into words you will meet constantly. Q'atoy tzij, literally "cutter of the word", is the ordinary term for a judge, mayor, or civil authority, and both of our sources use it as a plain noun. Our main source also has q'atöy b'ey "assailant", literally "road-cutter". So the pattern is old and productive enough to have made common vocabulary.

Better still, the machines stack. The sequel's narratives put aj- directly onto an -oy compound. Describing a grandmother who comes to rescue a hopeless basket-making attempt, it says:

Ojer kan xok ajb'anöy chakäch rija'. "Long ago she had become a basket-maker." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 81)

aj-b'an-öy   chakäch
AGT-make-AGT basket
"basket-maker (by trade)"

Note the two agent markers wrapped around one stem: aj- says "person of the trade", -oy plus the object says which trade. (The ö in ajb'anöy is the sequel's spelling; the same word appears in its market chapter as ajb'onöy b'ojo'y "pot-painter", from -b'onij "paint".) You do not need to coin such forms yourself; learn the attested ones as vocabulary, and use the rule to read new ones. When you need to produce a maker-word and are unsure, the -el noun or aj- noun, or simply the antipassive sentence (nib'anon chakäch "she makes baskets"), is always safe.

How it is made: rub'anik and the process nouns#

Every craft section of the sequel is titled the same way: Rub'anik pop "the making of mats", Rub'anik chakäch, Rub'anik b'ojo'y, Rub'anik xik'awuj. The pattern is one you can already parse. B'anik is the action noun of -b'än "make, do" (the -ik nominalizations of Chapter 7), and the Set A prefix ru- marks its understood object: "its making", that is, "the making of it, how it is made". Put the possessor noun after, exactly as with any possessed noun (Chapter 4):

Do not confuse rub'anik "its making" with rub'anikil "its nature, what it is like" from Chapter 8. ¿Achike rub'anikil? asks what something is like; ¿Achike rub'anik? asks how it is made or done. The extra -il turns the process into a quality. (You will also meet rub'anoj in the sequel's own section headings, a variant action noun on the same stem; treat it as the same construction.)

The same mold produces a process noun from almost any verb, usually on the passive stem, with -ik after a consonant and -xik after a vowel:

These nouns are the backbone of process description, because each step becomes a noun you can list, and the ordinals of Chapter 9 do the sequencing. Here is pot-making in San Juan Sacatepéquez, compressed to its attested skeleton:

Nab'ey, nikanüx ri kach'ulew.
First, the clay is sought out.

Ruka'n, nixol rik'in ya' chuqa' sanayi', richin nk'oje' rukowil.
Second, it is mixed with water and sand, so that it has strength.

Rox, nib'an rub'anikil chi q'ab'aj: läq, xara, b'ojo'y.
Third, its shape is made by hand: bowls, jugs, pots.

Rukaj, niya'öx pa q'aq'.
Fourth, it is put in the fire.

Pa ruk'isib'al, nik'ayïx pa k'ayb'äl.
Finally, it is sold in the market.

Notice that the whole passage runs on passives (Chapter 17): the potter never needs to be named, because the topic is the pot. This is exactly how the sequel's craft essays are written, and it is the register to imitate when you explain any rub'anik.

One process detail worth knowing because it explains a word: the first task of weaving is ruju'ik ri q'in chupam ri q'or, dipping the warp threads in corn dough. The dough stiffens the thread so it will not fray. Q'or here is "maize dough", a different word from the adjective q'or "lazy" you met in Chapter 8; only context tells them apart, which has amused Kaqchikel punsters forever.

The tools: -b'äl in the workshop#

No new grammar here, only a harvest. Chapter 7's instrument suffix -b'äl names most of what hangs on a workshop wall, and seeing the family together fixes the pattern for good:

And a reminder from Chapter 24 that not every -b'äl noun is a tool: muqb'äl, from -müq "bury", is the burying-place, the cemetery. It returns in this chapter's reading.

The instrumental voice -b'ej: a grammatical fossil#

Kaqchikel today has four voices: active, passive, antipassive, and the middle voice in -täj. Within living memory it had a fifth. Until about two generations ago, the suffix -b'ej on a transitive verb promoted the instrument: the tool phrase moved in front of the verb, out of its rik'in phrase, while the verb kept both its Set A agent and its Set B object. Maxwell's grammar in the sequel records it with examples like this one:

Rajil jun ik' nusamaj xinloq'b'ej rusipanik nute'. "(With) my month's salary I bought my mother's present." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 229)

x-Ø-in-löq'-b'ej
COMPL-3sB-1sA-buy-INSTR
"I bought it with (something fronted)"

The instrument, rajil jun ik' nusamaj "the pay of one month of my work", stands before the verb with no rik'in at all; -b'ej on the verb is what licenses that. The construction differs from the instrumental voices of K'iche' and Tz'utujiil, and, like the strict old focus antipassive of Chapter 17, it has been retreating: the sequel states plainly that the voice is no longer productive. Modern speakers keep the instrument in its oblique phrase:

Xinlöq' jun po't richin nute' rik'in ri pwäq xinch'äk.
I bought a po't for my mother with the money I earned.

Why learn a dead voice? Two reasons. First, you will meet it: in texts from the mid-twentieth century and earlier, and in the speech of elders, a preposed instrument with a -b'ej verb is normal, and now you can parse it instead of stumbling. Second, -b'ej did not vanish; it fossilized. Loq'b'ej "buy (something) with X" survives as a verb, now used with rik'in like any other. And a set of everyday transitive verbs you already know carry the same syllable frozen inside them: -oyob'ej "wait for", -tojtob'ej "try, attempt", -tzeqelb'ej "follow", -palb'ej "step on". Whether each of these historically contains the old instrumental is a question for etymologists; for you they are simply transitive stems, but the shared ending is why they all look alike. You may also notice the family resemblance to the instrument suffix -b'äl; true kin or not, it makes -b'ej easy to remember: -b'äl builds the tool's name, -b'ej built the tool's sentence.

The crafts, their towns, and their economics#

Handicrafts in the Kaqchikel area are not museum pieces; most are working objects, and each has a geography. The sequel's essays, written by the same team as our main source, are the factual backbone of what follows.

Mats and fans. The pop, the woven reed mat, is close to universal in Kaqchikel households: weavers kneel on one at the loom, guests sit on them, and they serve as spare bedding. In Santiago Zamora, near Lake Atitlán's smaller cousin lakes, families cut tul (thick reed) and puj (thin reed) at the water's edge and plait them; the work is explicitly cooperative between women and men, and the sequel's dialogues make a point of the pride the makers take in it. The xupub'äl, the woven fan, lives beside every rute' q'aq' (hearth): fanned at the embers, it brings the xot (griddle) up to heat. The sequel's comic reading about a couple who try to plait their own fan, watch it unravel, and resign themselves to buying one in Santiago Zamora, is a parable with an economic moral: skilled work looks easy until you try it.

Baskets. Chakäch of every size are made in San José Poaquil (Pwaqil) from aj, cane. Only the tender cane, altu't aj, can be bent; the sequel's basket story turns on a man who scorns "women's work", cuts mature cane, and produces a chiyichïk (ragged-edged) basket that a piece of bread falls straight through. Small baskets hold tortillas under a su't; the great ones, nimachakäch, are ceremonial: filled with sweet bread, chocolate, and drink and covered with a fine su't, they are carried, by two to four people, as betrothal gifts to a bride's family. Towns differ: in Meq'ën Ya' (San Antonio Aguas Calientes) one round of basket-giving opens the marriage talks; in Chiq'a'l (Comalapa) and Iximche' (Tecpán) custom expects three. Giving too little is read as disrespect to the young woman, and families are expected to give until they feel it.

Pottery. B'ojo'y are made, as the potters say, achi'el ri kati't kimama' "like their grandmothers and grandfathers", in San Juan Sacatepéquez, Chinautla, and around the lake. Everyday cooking has largely moved to metal and plastic, but no festival cook will make xaq q'utu'n (pepián) or pul ik (chicken in ground squash-seed sauce) in anything but a big clay pot over a wood fire; food from an old pot, everyone agrees, comes out simïl, delicious. A wedding needs four of the big ones.

Leather. Pastores (Pa Ajyuq') is the shoe town; its workshops turn tz'um (leather; rij wakx, cowhide, and costlier hides) into b'uk'üt (boots), xajab' (sandals), belts, and bags. The two footwear words have walked opposite directions: factory-style boots are fashionable with the young, while xajab', once dismissed, have been embraced by Maya leaders, linguists, and daykeepers as a visible sign of identity, and in the big Kaqchikel towns you can have a pair made to order. Prices track the hide: cowhide is moderate, deer higher, snake and crocodile highest, and a leather jacket is rich people's wear.

The money. Between maker and buyer stand costs and middlemen, and the sequel is refreshingly concrete about both. The basket-maker must buy her cane from the rajaw aj, the cane-field owner, who takes his profit; the mat-maker needs lake access; the kite-builders need k'ïy pwäq "a lot of money" for tissue paper alone. Sellers carry baskets to the market at Iximche' rather than sell at home. Tourism cuts both ways: visitors (ula'i') pay well, but they pull design and color choices toward their own taste. The sequel sketches a weaver, Saqkotz'i'j, who weaves for foreign buyers:

Nukusaj ri taq b'onil ri k'o kib'is. "She uses the colors that carry sadness." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 109)

Muted colors, kaqköj "pinkish", raxröj "pale green", xarxöj "pale blue" (the -öj approximatives of Chapter 8), because that is what sells to outsiders, while local taste runs to colors ri k'o kikikotemal, "that carry joy". Meanwhile a fine brocaded po't takes months of work and is priced accordingly; some women buy a machine-woven panel (peraj kem) or a kaxlan po't (factory blouse) instead, and weavers' cooperatives run weaving schools to keep the backstrap loom alive and to fight the copying of town designs by foreign fashion houses. When you bargain for handwork (Chapter 23), bargain gently: the price of a po't is mostly a woman's time.

Reading: Ri Kiq'ij Anima'i' pa Pa K'im#

The greatest of the craft spectacles comes on the first two days of November, Kiq'ij Anima'i' "the Day of the Souls" (All Saints and Day of the Dead), when families go to the muqb'äl to be with their dead, and the sky over two towns, Pa K'im (Santiago Sacatepéquez) and Tz'um Pam (Sumpango), fills with kites. Small xik'awuj (you can read the word as xik' "wing" plus wuj "paper": the winged paper) fly over the graves; the giant ones, nimaxik'awuj, sixty feet and more across, built by teams of young men over some seven months from xax b'onin wuj (colored tissue paper), tz'ulu' (bamboo), and k'an (maguey twine), are too big to fly and stand at the cemetery's edge as painted declarations: Maya history, Maya rights, grief and pride. Judges (q'atoy tzij) choose the three finest, and the winners travel to the capital to be shown. Behind the festival is a precise idea, which the sequel's sidebar states in one line:

Ronojel ri koyowal, ri k'ayewal, ri itzel nel pa kaq'ïq'. "All the anger, the troubles, the ill goes out on the wind." (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 90)

The kite string is a channel: greetings and messages for the grandmothers and grandfathers go up; the year's quarrels and pains are carried off by the wind. This is why, in the old practice, the great kites were burned after the festival, and why their sale abroad makes some people uneasy: an unburned kite keeps what it absorbed.

Now the reading. The family goes to see it.

Pa ri rujulaj ik' k'o ri Kiq'ij Anima'i'. Ri ma Kawoq, ri te Ixk'at, ri a Tz'ikin chuqa' ri xta Ixchel xeb'e pa Pa K'im, roma aj Pa K'im jun rachib'il ri a Tz'ikin. Pa ri muqb'äl e k'ïy winaqi'. Xkiwëq ri muqb'äl rik'in taq kotz'i'j chuqa' chäj; xkik'waj q'utu'n chuqa' q'ojom; xexajon. Ri ak'wala' xkixik'aj taq xik'awuj; xexik'an pa ruwi' ri muqb'äl. Ri k'ajola' xkik'üt ri nimaxik'awuj. Xesamäj wuqu' ik' pa ruwi': xkijäch ri samaj, jun xloq'on xax b'onin wuj, jun xuk'äm pe tz'ulu', jun xulöq' ri k'an. Yalan e nima'q ri nimaxik'awuj; man yexik'an ta. Ri taq achib'äl chupam nikitzijoj ri Maya' na'oj chuqa' ri k'aslem pa Iximulew. E k'o q'atoy tzij: xkicha' ri oxi' nimaxik'awuj ri janila e jeb'ël chi kiwäch. Ri te Ixk'at xub'ij chike ri ral: "Töq nixik'an jun xik'awuj, ri kaq'iq' nrelesaj el ri itzel. Nuya' apo ri qatzij chike ri qati't qamama'."

In the eleventh month comes the Day of the Souls. Ma Kawoq, te Ixk'at, a Tz'ikin and xta Ixchel went to Pa K'im, because one of Tz'ikin's friends is from Pa K'im. In the cemetery there were many people. They decorated the graves with flowers and pine boughs; they brought food and music; they danced. The children flew little kites; they flew above the cemetery. The young men displayed the giant kites. They worked seven months on them: they divided up the work, one bought tissue paper, one fetched bamboo, one bought the twine. The giant kites are very big; they do not fly. The pictures on them tell of Maya thought and of life in Guatemala. There were judges: they chose the three giant kites that were most beautiful in their eyes. Te Ixk'at said to her children: "When a kite flies, the wind removes the ill. It delivers our words to our grandmothers and grandfathers."

Patterns at a glance#

Trade talk: three ways to say what someone does

The three agent-noun machines

Process description

The instrumental voice (recognition only)

Vocabulary#

Reference: The loom and the workshop#

Not for drilling; browse it when you meet the terms in texts or in a weaver's house.

Usage and dialect notes#

• How productive is -oy? Treat it as a small, real pattern, not an open machine. The sequel presents four compounds (kemoy po't, ponöy wäy, yuq'üy karne'l, b'anöy si'), the lexicalized q'atoy tzij, and the stacked ajb'anöy chakäch, ajb'onöy b'ojo'y. Read any new one you meet by the rule (antipassive n > y); to produce a maker-word beyond these, prefer -el, aj-, or the antipassive sentence.
• Bare means bare. In both nikemon po't and kemoy po't, the object never takes ri, taq, or a plural. If you need "the po't", you need the transitive verb back: nukem ri po't (Chapter 17's rule, now doing trade work).
• rub'anik vs rub'anikil. "How is it made?" ¿Achike rub'anik?; "what is it like?" ¿Achike rub'anikil? The sequel's own headings also use rub'anoj for "the making"; same job.
• Two q'or, two etz'ab'äl. q'or "maize dough" vs q'or "lazy" (Chapter 8); etz'ab'äl "woven design, figure" vs etz'ab'äl "toy" (both current in the sequel, and the small kites are called both things at once, which is rather the point).
• Spelling variation as usual. The sequel writes kaq'ïq', chïk, wakamïn, rajïl with its systematic final lax vowels; this book keeps kaq'iq', chik, wakami, rajil (see Chapter 1). Its samajb'äl beside samajib'äl, and q'inab'äl beside q'inob'äl, are ordinary linking-vowel variation in -b'äl nouns (Chapter 7). Our -kem appears there as -këm.
• Gender and craft. Kaqchikel agent nouns are gender-neutral: an ajkem, a t'isonel, a b'anöy si' can be a woman, a man, or a non-binary person; only context tells you. In practice the crafts are gendered (backstrap-loom weaving is largely women's work; treadle looms were historically men's; mat-making is shared by design), but the boundaries are real only until they are crossed, and the sequel's stories delight in crossing them, including a man whose basket falls apart because he thought "women's work" was easy.
• A euphemism to know. Chapter 24 noted it, and it matters in this chapter's domain: ajkem "weaver" is an old polite way to say a woman is pregnant. If someone smiles when you praise a bride as a weaver, that is why.
• Pitfalls. (1) English "she weaves po'ts" tempts you to yerukem po't with a plural object; the trade reading needs the antipassive, nikemon po't. (2) Do not build -b'ej instrumentals yourself; the voice is not productive. Say it with rik'in. (3) kemoy, ponöy end in y, not n; the n-forms are verbs, the y-forms are nouns.

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter is Part I's machinery earning its keep in one cultural domain: the antipassive and passive of Chapter 17 (Voice: Passive, Antipassive, and Focus) carry the trades and the process descriptions, the word-building of Chapter 7 (Nouns: Plurals, People Words, and Word-Building) supplies -b'äl tools and -ik process nouns, the agent nouns of Chapter 24 (People, Work, Body, and Feelings) gain their third member in -oy, and the market talk of Chapter 23 (Market, Food, and Home) prices the results. The instrumental -b'ej joins the old focus antipassive of Chapter 17 in your growing file of constructions in motion, alive in older texts, fossilized today. The remaining chapters of Part II keep working this way: one domain of Kaqchikel life, a few new tools, and everything you already know, recycled hard.