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Xun Vaskis
FIGURE 2.—Xun Vaskis, 1971 (photo by Frank Cancian).
If he is not immortal, he is well advanced in that
direction. At last report Xun Vaskis claimed to be
one hundred and twenty years old, but, when the
ashes fell from the sky in 1902, he was still a young
boy. Whatever his age, there is no man today in
Zinacantan who would not bow to him. In 1934 he
passed through the fourth and highest rank of the
religious hierarchy, having attained the most coveted
post at each level. Probably no other Zinacantec
has lived so long as to see his own son too become an
elder and even one of the six holy elders to whom
alone is entrusted the duty of fastening Christ's body
to the cross on Good Friday.
Unschooled, his knowledge of Spanish is prodigious
in obscenities, but otherwise atrociously deficient.
Even so he became for many years the secular
leader of his hamlet, Naben Chauk, and, after a
political schism, the chief representative of the opposition.
Indeed, Xun (pronounced Shoon) was a principal
apponent of the township boss, and his
assistant, Xun 7Akov. There was no mistaking the
Vaskis crowd when it arrived in San Cristobal to
lodge a complaint, with Xun in an antediluvian gait
at the forefront, his hobnailed sandals clacking
smartly down the center of the "King's Highway."
It was difficult to censure this youthful potentate for
the chicanery that his political ascendance must have
demanded.
Xun is, of course, a veteran of the Revolution
(captor of one horse).
Though too infirm now to reach the lowlands,
Xun is patriarch of a lineage that for many years has
farmed on a grand scale with hired foremen, rented
trucks, and even bank accounts.
Xun's gracious hospitality to American anthropologists
enveloped every visit. But he thought in
exchange we ought at least to find him a pretty
American girl for a wife. When I asked what would
happen to his present wife, he replied loftily with a
chauvinistic twinkle in his eye, "Oh, she can sleep by
my ass!"
Once when my infant daughter refused to nurse
for anxious days on end, Xun told us that "evil eye"
was the cause and offered to pray on her behalf. He
prescribed in addition to the burning of candles, a
rubdown with elderberry branches and eggs. When I
asked if the eggs should be hard-boiled, he roared
with laughter, "Why she would be dead then!"
Shortly after Xun performed the ceremony, my
daughter resumed nursing and since that day Xun
and his wife know full well that my daughter's soul
is safely in his care.