Critique de CHOICE

Early, professor emeritus of anthropology at Florida Atlantic Univ., was in younger times a Catholic priest. While doing his dissertation fieldwork among Mayas of southern Mexico back in the early 1960s, he occasionally assisted the local cleric in saying mass and performing baptisms. Over the decades, his research followed other paths, but in this book, Early returns to a question that has nagged him since those days in Mexico. Mayas clearly were not orthodox Christians. They had they own shamans who propitiated their own gods. Why, then, do they also worship the Europeans' god and saints and insist that to honor those supernaturals properly, services must be said by outside, non-Indian priests, not by Maya holy men and women? To answer that question, Early in this engaging essay ranges widely across the history and ethnography of Maya lands. He shows how conquest impressed upon Indians the power of foreign gods, how Christian missionizing conveyed the formulas but not the substance of the new religion, and how to this day, Mayas believe the foreign-derived deities require strict observance of those ritual formulas under the guidance of white priests. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. P. R. Sullivan independent scholar