Rabinal

Rabinal is an Achi Maya town in a valley in Baja Verapaz, and it keeps something that survives nowhere else: the Rabinal Achi, a dance drama with music, masks and a text in Achi that dates in substance to before the Spanish arrival and tells of a conflict between two lords ending in a sacrifice. It is performed around the feast of Saint Paul in January by townspeople who inherit the roles, after preparation that includes visits to the sites the text names, and it was inscribed by UNESCO on its intangible heritage list in 2005. The town also makes lacquered gourds and pottery, and its oranges are known across the country.

History

Rabinal was founded by the friar Bartolomé de las Casas during his expedition into the Maya lands in 1537, as a test of his method of peaceful, voluntary conversion, and its large Baroque church, begun under him, was finished in 1572. In the mid-19th century the parish priest Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg carried out some of the first ethnographic studies of the highland Maya here and made the first translations of the Rabinal Achí into European languages; in 1850 the population was estimated at 6,500 (Wikipedia, Rabinal).

What's there

• The Rabinal Achi dance drama - a pre-conquest text still performed.
• Masks and inherited roles - the parts passed down within families.
• Lacquered gourds and pottery - the crafts the town makes.
• The January festival - the days around the feast of Saint Paul.

When to go

January, around the twentieth to the twenty-fifth, for the performances; the town is quiet the rest of the year. A day or two. Confirm dates locally, as they move.

What to expect

The performance happens on a handful of days a year and nothing of it is staged for visitors at other times. It is long, in Achi, and follows a ritual logic that is hard to follow without preparation. Accommodation in the town is very limited.

Nearby

Salama is east; Coban lies north.