Sacred skull ritual keeps link to Guatemala's Maya

SAN JOSE, Guatemala, Nov 3 (Reuters) A sacred skull toured a Guatemalan town in a ritual thought to be among the few surviving links to the practices of the ancient Maya whose stone pyramids still soar above the jungle.

Wheelchair-bound Silveria Chayax received the skull just after dawn, wrapped in white cloth and carried on a plate by a procession of children and old people holding candles, marking its 15th stop on an overnight journey across town yesterday.

Three sacred skulls reside in the church in San Jose, a sleepy shore town perched on the banks of Lake Peten-Itza in the northern Guatemalan jungle, and every year one is selected to make the rounds, in a ritual to bring good fortune to the sick and needy.

The annual procession, part of Day of the Dead festivities celebrated widely in Latin America, is one of the last traditions of the Itza people, said to be the closest living descendants of the ancient Maya.

At their height, the Maya built monumental cities in the Peten region of Guatemala, but for reasons still unclear the culture went into decline after the 8th century.

Yesterday, some two dozen devotees followed the procession all night to 22 houses in winding streets and prayed over the skull surrounded by offerings of traditional food and drink in gourds.

No one knows who exactly the skulls belong to but most believe they were ancient Mayan priests or warriors. The rite has now been adopted by the Roman Catholic church, but historians say it has been around since before the Spanish conquest.

The visited families feed all the participants, along with spirits of ancestors believed to accompany the skull. Custom says food must be served hot because the spirits eat vapors.

''On this day, we are sure the dead come to see us and it is our obligation to attend to them,'' said Zacal Chayax, one of the few remaining speakers of the Itza language.

The Maya-Itza people put up some of the fiercest resistance to the Spanish invaders, but their royal capital on the nearby island of Flores finally fell in 1697.

Now the traditional costumes are lost and the Itza language is in danger of extinction with only around 75 speakers left, most over the age of 60.

Graciela Suntecun, awake at 0600 hrs after following the skull for 10 hours, said the ritual preserves disappearing traditions for future generations.

''The children carry the candles and take the skull out of the church,'' the 72-year-old woman said at the home of Chayax, her cousin. ''So they remember what our ancestors did when this was still a virgin jungle'' Reuters SHB DB1059