Also called Maximón, Rilaj Mam, Ri Laj Mam, Don Ximon, El Gran Abuelo
Maximón, also called San Simón or Rilaj Mam, is a Maya folk saint of the Guatemalan highlands whose dressed effigy receives candles, cigars and liquor from people asking for help with health, love, crops and business.
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Take care: Pay fees and ask before photographing; many keepers do not allow pictures of petitioners. Do not try to recreate his altar with tobacco and alcohol at home, and never give either to minors.
Here Maximón is a wooden figure wrapped in many colorful scarves, with a cigar in his mouth. He changes host households each year and is brought out publicly during Holy Week, when his role in the town's Easter rites is at its height. Attendants stay with him all year, smoking and drinking alongside the image.
In Zunil the figure is dressed as a ladino gentleman with sunglasses and a bandana. Petitioners pour liquor for him and light candles of different colors according to their request, with his keepers guiding the offering.
Seated statues of San Simón in a black suit and hat are sold in markets, and shrines exist in Guatemala City and among Guatemalan communities in the United States. Devotees light colored candles and keep his image at home altars.
Maximón's figure blends Maya and Christian elements. Scholars link him to Mam, a Maya grandfather deity of the earth and the year's end, and also to Judas Iscariot, Saint Simon and even the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. He is a trickster, both a womanizer and a guardian of couples, both dangerous and protective. One Atitlán story says shamans carved him to guard the town, then twisted his head and broke his legs when he misbehaved, after which he did his job properly.
In the mid 20th century the anthropologist E. Michael Mendelson studied the Atitlán image and the conflicts it stirred between its traditional keepers and reforming Catholics, who saw the cult as idolatry. Today Maximón draws both local devotees and tourists, and the cofradías charge small fees that help sustain their year of service. The Catholic Church does not recognize him as a saint, yet many devotees pray to him alongside the saints in their parish church.
A small, regularly tended shrine where a family remembers its dead with photographs, light, water and offerings, a practice shared in different forms by Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, African, Afro-Caribbean, Mexican and modern pagan households.
A home altar built for the Mexican Day of the Dead, set with photographs, marigolds, candles, water, salt, pan de muerto and the favorite foods of the dead so that their spirits feel welcome when they return on November 1 and 2.
Milagros are small metal charms shaped like body parts, people, animals or objects, pinned to a saint's image to ask for healing or to give thanks; ex-voto paintings tell the story of a miracle in thanks for help received.
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