(Guatemala) -- In a ramshackle home in Guatemala's rural highlands, farmer and odd job man
Lucas Asicona made for an unlikely curator of treasured art - until he decided
to redo his kitchen.
When he pulled back the plaster in his humble
colonial-era home of stone, adobe and haphazard wooden boards, he discovered
300-year-old murals, a priceless piece of Guatemalan history.
Scenes of
tall Europeans beating drums and playing flutes stare out over the one-room
dwelling where his family, including five children cooked, slept and
played.
So he carefully drew back the furniture and moved his wood
burning kitchen stove outside to protect the treasured artwork, an informal
curator of Guatemala's rich past.
"This is very important for us. We hope
they don't fade in the future. We need to preserve them (murals). We hope to
receive support from an interested party but we would have to approach them in
order to ask for support," said 38-year-old Asicona.
The house has been
in his family for generations.
Asicona is among four householders in
Chajul, an Ixil Maya community some 220 miles (350 kms) from Guatemala City,
struggling to preserve murals revealed after peeling back plaster on the walls
of ancient homes. Experts believe similar murals could lie hidden in a further
eight homes in the town.
Around half of Guatemala's 14.5 million people
are of indigenous descent, many of whom continue to speak 21 officially
recognized languages and wear brightly coloured traditional
dress.
Historians in Chajul say conserving the rich pictorial heritage is
vital for the town of 25,000 people, which was settled four centuries ago by
Mayan groups who fled Spanish settlers in Antigua, a few miles (kms) from
Guatemala City.
"Our forefathers (ancestors) did this. They left
everything they owned at home so we would remember them. They were intelligent
and they painted what they went through, their suffering, at home," said
historian Felipe Rivera.
The murals are believed to have been painted by
descendants of the ancient Maya civilization which thrived between AD 250 and
900 and extended from modern day Honduras to central Mexico. It left behind a
trove of pyramids and dozens of distinct Mayan groups who continue to
endure.
The friezes cover several walls of the homes, whose colonial
history is glimpsed in details including heavy hardwood doors and carved stone
pillars propping up modern tin roofs.
The murals show a moment in history
when the local Maya - some depicted in plumed costumes - encountered the tall,
bearded conquistadors from Spain who tried to convert them to
Christianity.
Historians say the murals peeping through the plaster at
Asicona's home illustrate the so-called "conquest dance," from a time in the
1650s when Spaniards forced locals to build a Catholic Church which still stands
at the centre of town.
Other paintings in a neighbour's home show
spiralling fireballs that local lore says fell from the sky at the height of the
colonial encounter in the 17th century and were thought by the Maya to be a sign
of anger from the gods.
"We consider these murals to be very unique. It's
a unique evidence that encompasses not only a tangible heritage but a painting
technique, the support and murals in the house, the architectural design and the
tangible heritage showed there. That form of communication we were talking about
and that wish to represent scenes or a moment in time, at home," Guatemalan
anthropologist Ivonne Putzeys said of the trove found in the pine-ringed
highland town.
But in a country where more than half the population live
in poverty, conservation is proving a challenge.
Asicona said he last
contacted the government for help in 2007 but never received a response. Like
other families, he says he is simply doing his best to conserve the
friezes.
After making the discovery, Asicona swiftly made repairs to his
home to prevent leaks during the country's soggy rainy season and pushed the
family's beds to opposite walls where his kids jump up and down.
Cabinets
have been moved to the centre of the room in order to keep dust from dirtying
the murals.
He has received visitors from as far away as Europe who have
paid up to $10 dollars to come in and see the paintings, but without more
support he worries that the prized artwork could disappear.
Culture
Ministry spokesman Sergio Igax said that for the families to receive funding to
preserve the murals, the homes have to be declared national heritage - a long
process that involves lots of paperwork.
He said the ministry had not
received a request from Chajul for an evaluation in recent years.