They have also created their own unique styles of speaking Spanish in some cases. The Lacandón have long been traders with other Maya in the area and have adopted some words of Ch'ol and Tzeltal into their lexicon. In their own language they call themselves Hach Winik ('Real People', pronounced ) and they call their language Hach T'ana ('Real Language'). The Lacandon speak a Mayan language closely related to Yucatec Maya. Chan K'in urged his people to maintain a respectful distance from the outside world, taking some things of value, but not allowing outside influences to overwhelm the Lacandon way of life. But in the north the spiritual leader Chan K'in, who lived to an advanced age and died in 1996, helped keep the ancient traditions alive. Southern Lacandon helped SIL missionaries translate the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into their language. The southern group abandoned their pantheon of gods in the 1950s and were later Christianized through the efforts of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). In the south, a yellow fever epidemic in the 1940s took many lives and caused a high degree of social disruption. The Maya site of Bonampak, famous for its preserved temple murals, became known to the outside world when Lacandóns led American photographer Giles Healy there in 1946.Ī few Lacandon continue their traditional religious practices today, especially in the north around Lakes Naja and Mensabok. They believe that the Maya sites are places where their gods once dwelled before moving to new domains they constructed in the sky and below the earth. The Lacandon also made pilgrimages to ancient Maya cities to pray and to remove stone pebbles from the ruins for ritual purposes. These sacred structures contain a shelf of clay incense burners, each decorated with the face of a Lacandon deity.

They worshiped their own pantheon of gods and goddesses in small huts set aside for religious worship at the edge of their villages. Until the mid-20th century the Lacandon had little contact with the outside world. Today they sell versions of these to tourists. And well into the 20th century, they continued using bows and arrows and making arrowheads from flint they quarried in the rainforest. As recently as the late 19th century some bound the heads of infants, resulting in the distinctively shaped foreheads seen in Classic Maya art. Lacandon customs remain close to those of their pre-Columbian Mesoamerican ancestors. The Lacandon escaped Spanish control throughout the colonial era by living in small, remote farming communities in the jungles of what is now Chiapas and the Guatemalan department of El Petén, avoiding contact with whites and Ladinos. ( January 2010) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

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Mayan ways of life