Pejelagartos (tropical gar), crocodiles and canoes. Water animals and objects at the domain of Ix Bolon among the Maya Chontal of Tabasco

Abstract

This paper explores the figure of Thunder God among the Chontal Maya who inabit in the state of Tabasco, Mexico. It pursues to analyze how the multifunctionality of this character is built through an exam of the Chontal mythology. In it, the deity’s functions and attributes fluctuate from one context to another. Apparently, myths refer to gods who act in different areas, present differentiated attributes and manifest heterogeneous functions and skills. Thunder God make lightning, is an illness giver also involved in healing, an agent that controls the water of rivers, lagoons and the sea, and a plant provider while dismembering his own body to transform it into vegetable life, bonding himself with agriculture. Each activity refers to specific attributes that generate at the same time an identification or fusión of Thunder with other deities involved in his domains. The paper intends, in one hand, to capture the principles that reveal how the different fields of action are linked and make Thunder a complex, diverse, and polysemic character. In the other hand, it offers a methodological proposal to examine the construction of the multifunctionality of mesoamerican deities through the analysis of mythology.