When prey is winik (person): the relationship between people, animals, and their Masters in Lacandon hunting

Abstract

The Lacandon Maya of Chiapas (Southern Mexico) conceive animals as subjects endowed with a soul (pixan) and agency. Therefore, they are considered to be ‘persons’ (winik) whose mode of living is analogous to the humans’: they’re socially organized, they work in their milpas, they perform rituals and worship their gods. The attribution of personhood to animals becomes an ethical problem during hunt, when the Lacandon hunter kills a prey considered to be a ‘fellow man’. Consequently, the hunt needs to be ritually justified and takes the form of a contract established between the hunters, the animals and the entities who protect them – the gods, the animal masters. It will be shown how the extension of the concept of personhood to animals influences Lacandon hunting ceremonialism, and how the theories proposed by the ‘Ontological Turn’ allowed to shed light on the Northern Lacandon hunt.