The Word Made Maya: Tsotsil Bible Translations and the Ritualistic Poetry of Ruperta Bautista

Over the last three decades, there has been a boom in Bible translations into Maya Tsotsil. This phenomenon remains understudied even as religious autonomy constantly resurfaces as a theme affecting Indigenous sovereignties. In this essay, I theorize how the Tsotsil language functions as a site of epistemological resistance through which the language inherently corrodes monotheistic principles imbued in the Judeo-Christian religious texts. The Tsotsil language has two expressions to denote translation: one referring to semantic relocation ( J'ech'esc'op [or jevelel ] ti yan li k'ope ), while the other invokes agricultural metaphors ( jelum'tasel ). By attending to the ways the latter advances critical engagements with the land, I argue that Maya Tsotsil resists epistemological erasure, prompting the evangelizing impulse to either accept its intruder positionality or reckon with a distinct conception of holiness. Simultaneous to this phenomenon, Indigenous writers have increasingly self-translated their works into Spanish. Focusing on the oeuvre of Ruperta Bautista, I observe how her praying-poetry or "flowered word" ( nichimal k'op ) brings together ecological and linguistic relevance to spirituality, rejecting interpretations that silo Indigenous experiences to transcendence, potentially disregarding concrete political demands. In parallel to afterlife conceptions of Judgment, Bautista's poetry introduces a notion of spirituality that insists on justice as earthly and territorial matters.