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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
In May 1975, Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, noted scholar of the Mayan language and culture, was meeting with a group of graduate students; suddenly he looked at his watch and said: “In a few minutes I must go to the dictionary.”
Only then did I become aware of a project that, after six years of intensive work, would result in one of the most valuable contributions to the field of Mayan linguistics in the twentieth century. Each weekday at four p.m., a group of highly talented specialists met in a small building in Mérida to labor on the dictionary. The team worked with a sense of dedication and purpose, and those of us fortunate enough to visit the project became filled with a feeling of excitement. The resulting publication, issued in January 1980, was the Diccionario Maya Cordemex: Maya-Español, Español-Maya (Mérida, Yucatán: Ediciones Cordemex, 1980). It is not the first dictionary of the Mayan language, but is in many ways the culmination of all previous studies relating to the subject.
1. Information set forth in this review is taken primarily from the introduction to the work, the source utilized unless otherwise indicated.
2. There are four separate dialects in this group: Mayan of Yucatán, Lacandón of Chiapas, Itzá of Petén, Guatemala, and Mopán of Belize. See the work of Grant D.
Jones, ed., Anthropology and History of Yucatán (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977).
3. Fray Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, Introduction and notes by Héctor Pérez Martínez, 7th ed. (México, D. F.: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1938).
4. This work was found in Mexico City and bought for three pesos in the middle of the nineteenth century by Abate Carlos Esteban Brasseur de Bourbourg; it was sold for $150.00 to John Carter Brown of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1929 an edition was published in Mérida.
5. Also in the John Carter Brown Library.
6. This work has been dated from 1608 to 1670 and was first brought to Yucatán in 1937, where it was examined by the noted historian Antonio Canto López.
7. The original has been lost, but a copy dating from 1898 is still available.
8. Following the Spanish conquest, Mayan priests transcribed religious and historical texts from hieroglyphic sources into Mayan text, utilizing an alphabet that had been developed by Franciscan friars. A number of the Libros de Chilam Balam came to be identified with specific towns throughout Yucatán. See Alfredo Barrera Vásquez and Silvia Rendón, El libro de los Libros de Chilam Balam, Colección Popular, No. 42 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1969).
9. This decision came about the time that Cordemex entered one of its few profitable periods, largely due to the increased price of synthetic fibers following OPEC's increase in petroleum prices. Arq. Norbeto González Crespo was the INAH official who authorized the dictionary project.
10. The numbering system for the sources is carefully explained in the introduction.
11. Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, “Memorandum sobre el diccionario Maya-Español, Español-Maya Cordemex, en proceso de elaboración,” (Mérida, Yucatán, 17 de mayo de 1975).
12. Personal letters of Barrera to the author.
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