Icon of Mayan Christian art
The parish church of Chikindzonot, under the protection of the Virgin of Candelaria, whose feast is celebrated each 2nd of February, was originally built in the 16th century of perishable materials on top of a Mayan stone platform, making it an architype of Christian architectural syncretism in the Peninsula.
The church as it is now, with its beautiful façade, began as an open chapel. It was built at the end of the 18th century, as evidenced by a stone inscribed “1793” which was found by a villager near the south side of the building, although it has since gone missing.
The church does not appear in the Catalogue of Religious Buildings in Yucatan, and was first described in 1981 by the anthropologist Indalecio Cardeña Vázquez, who went on to publish the first symbolic analysis of the church in 1989. In his article Symbols and meanings in Mayan Art, published in the Diario de Yucatan on the 4th of August 2012, Cardeña Vázquez states that the church at Chikindzonot constitutes the most important example of Christian Mayan art in the Peninsula.
According to the Account of the Encomenderos of Yucatan, the Mayan chief Nacahum Cochuac founded the village in the 14th century, although after the Conquest it was occupied by the families of Spanish encomenderos.
The Mayan name Chikindzonot means “western cenote”, from chik’in, west, and ts’onot, a cenote, according to the Dictionary of Yucatecan Spanish.
One of the principal features of the church is its façade, beautifully decorated with motifs of flowers and fish, with bell tower on either side. The choir window is surrounded by a carved stone frame, above which is a niche containing a relief sculpture of the Virgin og Candelaria. The doorway is flanked by two pilasters containing images of Adam and Eve, and topped by stone statues of Sts Peter and Paul.
According to Cardeña Vázquez, one of the strongest pieces of evidence for Mayan symbolism in Yucatecan churches can be found in “the allegorical sculptures in which Adam and Eve, man and woman, arise from the corn from which they have been created by the Mayan divinities residing in the underworld, the air and the water”.
He notes that the decoration on the façade of the church at Chikindzonot is a prime example of Mayan Christian art in religious buildings of the time, consisting as it does of an allegory of creation containing pre-Hispanic elements taken from indigenous mythology and the Popol Vuh, along with Christian details from the Book of Genesis.
Furthermore, these iconographic details underline the presence and significance of Mayan sculptors, such as Pascual Estrella or Ek, mentioned by the historian Miguel Bretos in his books, and their essential role in imprinting the ideology and aesthetic of their culture onto the churches of Yucatan.
Inside at the base on either side of the triumphal arch, there stands an angel with arms extended, as if pointing at something, similar to pre-Hispanic sculptures of the bacabo’ob, ancient Mayan deities who hold up the sky. The baptismal font has relief carvings of the faces of cherubim, framed by water-lilies, a flower with mystical and magical associations for the ancient Maya.
In 1847, during the Caste War, Chikindzonot was among those villages sacked and burned, which resulted in the destruction of part of the church. The village remained abandoned for the rest of the 19th century.
In the early 20th century, Chikindzonot was repopulated, and the church was restored. Today the interior can be visited when the church is open for services.
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