Fire Heart (eBook)

The Life and Teachings of Traditional Maya Healer of Belize

Beatrice Torres Waight (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
232 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-4125-8 (ISBN)

Infos

In her charming Belizean style, Beatrice Torres Waight shares her ancestors' history, her own life story, delicious Maya culinary recipes, powerful herbal remedies, and the profound healing traditions of the Yucateca Maya culture. Discover authentic, Belizean history and traditions from a Yucateca Maya Healer!

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"e;Fire Heart"e; is a rich and informative first-person narrative following the life and traditions of a Yucateca Maya Healer in Belize, Central America. In her charming Belizean style, Beatrice Torres Waight shares her ancestors' history, her own life story, delicious Maya culinary recipes, powerful herbal remedies, and the profound healing traditions of the Yucateca Maya culture. She shares many secrets about Maya Abdominal Massage and Maya midwifery practices. The book also includes many stories written by Torres Waight's family members, friends, clients, and students. All proceeds from this book fund the education of Beatrice's grandchildren in Belize.

Textauszug

Chapter 1.

My Heritage and My Birth

Photo 3.Miss Beatrice’s grandmother, Delfina Tun

My name is Miss Beatrice Torres Waight. I am 100% Yucateca Maya, and Maya is my first language. I come from a long line of healers, midwives and H’Men.4 My grandmother, on my mother’s side, was Delfina Zib Tun. She was a midwife and an herbalist, as were her mother and grandmothers before her. My maternal grandfather died before my mother even knew him. His name was Guillermo Guillen. My maternal grandmother then married Pedro Tun who became my mother’s true father. Pedro was a healer and an H’Men who came from many generations of H’Men. Everybody loved him as the true father of the family. He was truly my grandfather.

My paternal grandmother was named Anastacia Euan de Torres. She was a midwife and an herbalist and her husband, my father’s father, was a snake doctor, a healer who specializes in treating snake bites.

My father was named Alejandro Torres. He was a Maya healer, a ceremony leader, a massage therapist, an H’Men, a farmer, an herbalist, a snake doctor, a bone setter and an acupuncturist in his own way. My father used thorns called “scorpion thorns” from the female scorpion plant for acupuncture treatments instead of needles. Sometimes a snake tooth was also used. Mayas have their own system of acupuncture which is somewhat like Chinese acupuncture. Maya acupuncture is used to move wind out of the body in the case of wind invasion and to move stagnant blood. My father often used nine thorns in a cross form with prayers.

We Maya have many powerful healing practices. We also hold many mysteries. Amongst ourselves, we do not call ourselves Mayas, we call ourselves Masahual because our true origin is unknown.

Some people say we came from Tibet a long long time ago and some say we emerged from a cave near México City even further back in time. But nobody knows for sure just where we Maya migrated from. Up until this day, it remains a mystery.

My mother, Dominga Guillen de Torres was a midwife, a mama, a nurse and an economist because she took care of us very well.

Both sets of my grandparents were born in Valladolid in the Yucatan Peninsula of México near the city of Merida. For my grandparents, life in México was very difficult. There was famine because the land was dry and parched.

Also, the Caste War was going on. It was called the Caste War because Mayas were revolting against the caste system that the Spanish were enforcing upon them. The Mayas were also fighting for their homeland. The Caste War lasted from 1847-1901. During those years, many people escaped from México. This was very dangerous. The Mexican government, called the Alcalde, would shoot anyone who tried to leave México, calling them a traitor. It was one of the most violent conflicts of the Maya people. The Alcalde would do whatever they wanted. If they wanted someone’s woman, they would kill her man and take her for themselves. If someone had many daughters, they would take some of them and make them into slaves. A group, including my mother’s and father’s parents, fled from Valladolid during the war to spare the men from being sent to war and the women from being separated from their children and forced to take care of the fighting soldiers. They migrated from the Yucatan to a Guatemalan settlement called Chuch Kitam. Chuch kitam means “intestine of the wild pig.” They walked through the jungle by day and on the road by night as not to get caught. Thank God, they made it.

They stayed in Chuch Kitam, which was right on the border of Belize, for about 10 years. In Chuch Kitam, my grandparents and their little group were constantly harassed by outlaws called bandidos. To relieve themselves of this trouble, they migrated to another little town in Northern México on the border of Belize called Ik K’aay Che’. Ik K’aay Che’ means “wind is singing in the tree.” We pronounce it, “EEK ky CHAY.” It seemed like nobody could bother them there because it was so close to Belize. Belize was a safe place with a better government. The British were ruling in Belize, which at that time was called British Honduras. My father was born in Ik K’aay Che’ in 1905 and my mother was born in 1915.

The group stayed in Ik K’aay Che’ for a long time. They became known as the Ik K’aay Che’ Mayas. However, life in Ik K’aay Che’ was not entirely peaceful. A group of people called the Crusoob were raiding them regularly. The Crusoob lived in a town called Santa Cruz, also known as U Noh Kaah Balam Nah Chan, in what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo near Ik K’aay Che’. U Noh Kaah Balam Nah Chan means, “the place of the little jaguar house.” The Crusoob were a mixed people descended from shipwrecked Spaniards, refugee Arawak people and Carib Islanders from the north coast of South America and the Southern West Indies. They were also mixed with escaped African slaves. The Crusoob were very strong fighters who had forced recruitments who fought alongside them. About every 3 months, they would raid Ik K’aay Che’ and steal corn, rice, beans, chickens, pigs and horses.

Finally, my ancestors, the Ik K’aay Che’ Mayas, decided to put an end to the Santa Cruz raids. A group of Maya elders came together in counsel to plan. My father, Alejandro Torres, became the leader of the last war against the Crusoob. The Ik K’aay Che’ Maya secretly spread a thorny plant called Cockspur on all the passageways out of the village and sneakily covered them with leaves so that they were invisible. They also made a homemade bomb that would go off when the Crusoob entered the village by the main road which was the only place where there were no thorny plants laid down. When the Crusoob entered Ik K’aay Che’, the Ik K’aay Che’ Maya were prepared to fight. They killed all 300 Crusoob who had raided the village that day. The Crusoob could not escape because when they tried to flee by the back roads, their feet were torn by the cockspur. The Mayas laid the Crusoob bodies in a big ditch that they dug in the ground. No Ik K’aay Che’ Mayas died. It was a great victory. However, they soon began to fear that another army of Crusoob would form to take revenge on them, so they migrated into Belize to a place called San Jose, Yalbec. Yalbec means “big deer have big antlers.”

When my grandfather stepped into Belize, he said to the group, “We must never leave this place. It is a paradise on earth!”

My mother and father got married after they had landed in Belize. However, in Yalbec there came some more trouble. Yalbec was owned by Belize Estate Company (BEC). BEC owned most of the land in Belize. Initially, the manager of BEC, Mr. Brown, allowed the Ik K’aay Che’ Maya to settle there, but then changed his mind a few years later. He decided that he wanted to start logging on the land and harvest lumber there, and the Maya were only in the way of his project. He came around with a paper and told everyone that, if they signed the paper, they could have lots and lots of land. Without even thinking, the people became greedy and thoughtless and signed the paper, even though they could not read it. The paper was an eviction notice, and thus they had unknowingly agreed to leave Yalbec. Once they realized they had been tricked, the Mayas refused to leave yet another home that they had settled into, so Mr. Brown ordered his workers to burn down all their homes. Needless to say, the Ik K’aay Che’ Maya moved on once again.

Most of the group headed to San Jose Palmar in the Orange Walk District of Belize, but my father said:

I don’t want to do that! If most of the people are going there, let them go! I’m not going to follow them. No way am I going to that swampy place where there are mosquitoes biting all the time!

They heard that down here in the Cayo District of Belize, the mosquitoes are only seasonal, so a small group of seven families, including my parents and their parents, decided to head to Cayo District, to Santa Familia, where we are right now. The number “7” is a sacred number to the Maya and finally the weary group found some good luck!

When the small group migrated here, they had to walk long hours and pass 3 days without food. It was 1927 and my mother was pregnant with her first son. They left all their corn, beans, chickens, pigs and everything behind, because how much can two mules carry? Besides, so much was lost in the fires. They couldn’t bring much at all. It took them 3 days to move from Northern Belize to here. When they arrived here in Cayo, my grandfather, Pedro, said, “I think we have hit paradise. We are not going to move from here. The only place we are going to move from here is to the cemetery.” Well, he ended up being totally right!

When my family first came to Santa Familia, it was called the Village of Johnny Sam. The village was named after its owner’s older brothers, Johnny and Sam. Originally, Johnny, Sam, Arthur and James Humes owned the place...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.1.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Naturheilkunde
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-4125-8 / 9798350941258