Nahualá

Nahualá (Spanish pronunciation:

Nahualá or Nawala' is also the Kʼicheʼ (Quiché) language name for the Nahualate River, which is called Niwala' in the local Nahualá dialect. The river has its source in the north of the township of Nahualá, and flows through the center of the town's cabecera ("head-town").

Nahualá is the location of radio station Nawal Estereo, the Internet-accessible modern successor to the station La Voz de Nahualá, which was founded in Nahualá with the assistance of Roman Catholic clerics from the Diocese of Helena Montana in the 1960s. Nowadays, the station broadcasts primarily in the Kʼicheʼ language, with some broadcasts also done in Kaqchikel and Spanish.

Meaning of the name

Local residents translate the name Nahualá roughly as "enchanted waters," "water of the spirits," and "magical water(s)," and they often object to the common Spanish translation of the name as agua de los brujos ("water of the shamans"). Scholars have typically argued that the name Nahualá derives from a compound of the

Several other sixteenth and early seventeenth-century titles in Spanish and Kʼicheʼ mention Nahualá either directly (as "navala" or "nauala") or obliquely, in terms of the landmarks of the community. The Título de Totonicapán mentions Siija (a Late Post-Classic fortress settlement located atop a hill of the same name, 12 kilometers west of the central plaza of Nahualá) and Pa Raxk'im ("in the green bunchgrass/thatch", the name of the mountain chain that envelops most of the township's highland territory, as well as a Nahualeño canton and village of the same name that is the second most distant canton from the central plaza), for example. Other Nahualeño sites mentioned in that text and other early colonial chronicles include Chi Q'al[i]b'al ("at the throne" a site located near Siija and Chwi'/Cho Poop Ab'aj ("Above/At [the] Reed-mat Stone[s]," sites located northeast of the main town, along the pre-colonial road that became part of El Camino Real during the Spanish period), both of which are mentioned in the Anales de los Cakchiqueles). Other local sites mentioned in títulos include Chwi' Raxon or Pa Raxon ("above/at the cotinga/verdure/green feathers/wealth," the mountain in the center of the township's head town), Xajil Juyub', Pa Tz'itee', Chwi' Patan, and others.

History

Despite early references to the community, foreign scholars and many Mayas themselves have ironically tended to claim that the community was only founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, promoting particularly apocryphal interpretations of local legends.

Nahualá was settled at least as early as the

Nearly the entire population of the municipality is made up of ethnic Kʼicheʼ Maya who speak the Kʼicheʼ language. The population of the township is estimated to be between 50,000 and 85,000 individuals, about 10% of whom live in the head-town. Statistics vary widely because much of the township's territory and several large villages are also claimed by Nahualá' sister township,

Land conflict

Officially, according to the 1779 título of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán share their territory according to ancient custom (mancomunado)^{[citation needed]}. Today, the vast territory of the two municipios covers 218 square kilometers, about 2/3 of which is under the control of Nahualeños (or AjNawala'iib'), the "people of Nahualá". Disputes between the two towns have been common, especially since 1999, when the government of Guatemala arranged for the cabecera of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán to be moved to the site of Chwi' Patan (nicknamed "Alaska" by a North American Catholic priest who worked in Nahualá during the 1960s) within Nahualá's territory, after the original cabecera of Ixtahuacán in a remote piedmont site was damaged by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Officials of the national government negotiated a treaty between the mayors of Nahualá and Ixtahuacán to allow for the re-location of Ixtahuacán's cabecera. However, residents of Ixtahuacán occupied the land in question early, before the treaty was completely negotiated, before the land had been surveyed, and before any compensation had been paid to the town of Nahualá and to the private owners of land in the area. Several Nahualeños were killed and injured by Ixtahuacanecos during conflicts that resulted from Ixtahuacán's precipitous occupation of the Chwi' Patan, which many Nahualeños consider a theft. The national government and the elected local governments or Nahualá and Ixtahuacán subsequently agreed to a modification of the original agreement, but compensation has still not been paid completely. Many Nahualeños refuse to accept the agreement, arguing that neither the general population nor Nahualá's local elders (known as principales in Spanish and as ri'j'laab' in Kʼicheʼ) have been given an opportunity to approve the treaty, even though both traditionally hold a higher authority than the elected local officials (such as the town mayor). Nahualeños insist that Ixtahuacanecos have been increasing the size of Nueva Ixtahuacán by illegally seizing farmland from Nahualeños living near the settlement. They also report that Ixtahuacanecos have repeatedly harassed Nahualeño farmers, blocked their access to fields, and destroyed their crops and sheds in the area of Chwi' Pataan.

Since 1999, the government of the Republic of Guatemala has repeatedly attempted to resolve the conflict between the communities by fixing a border between their respective territories, but its efforts have been thwarted not only by continuing confrontations and land-invasions, but also by a misunderstanding of the complexity of indigenous systems of land-use and property.

Linguistic Affiliation

The principal language of the town is Kʼicheʼ. Although a growing portion of the township is bilingual in

Unlike the most prominent Kʼicheʼ dialects, the Nahualá dialect of Kʼicheʼ also has a phoneme /h/ and a phoneme /ŋ/, both of which occur only at the ends of words. Linguists have established firmly that the /h/ is a reflex of a proto-Mayan */h/. Linguists have not thoroughly investigated the origin of the /ŋ/ phoneme, which occurs only in a small number of words, and therefore is not believed to have enough "phonemic weight" to deserve official recognition.

Notes

References

• Municipal site (in Spanish)

14°51′N 91°19′W / 14.850°N 91.317°W / 14.850; -91.317

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