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When Francisca Elías began teaching Mayan pelota , she didn't know how to play. She had the theory, having read it in the Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of the Mayans. Since her students at the "NIM NA'OJ" intercultural bilingual teacher training school were enthusiastic, she decided to take up the gauntlet and learn. At a Mayan epigraphy workshop, she found a teacher who knew how to play and asked him to teach her.

"Since I work with young men and women, I took them all to the workshop, asked them for the sports equipment for the ancient sport: the belts, the hip protector. I asked them all for it and started the activity with both men and women," says the trainer. 

Already aware of her experience, in 2018 the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports invited her to take teams to a Mayan pelota tournament. She organized one for men and one for women. The surprise was complete.

"Well, teacher, congratulations on bringing a women's team, but it's the only one. What we're going to do is have them play with men; their team is integrated. We're going to prioritize: the serve, where the ball is thrown 30 meters, is without a bounce, but we're going to do it with a bounce at 15 meters for the women, so it arrives more quickly."

Francisca didn't like that. "I'm including you, but I'm making you believe you're different, that you have fewer opportunities. I'm including you, but I'm going to spoil you because you're a woman," she thought.

Years and tournaments passed, and the women's teams began to increasingly beat the men. Francisca, 36, ended up forming the first women's Mayan pelota team in all of Guatemala.

What colonization left behind

“With colonization, the social integration of women diminished . If we go back to the glyphs, we see that there were women warriors, rulers, players. But now, sociopolitical participation is invisible. The fact that women play this sport, which is supposed to be extreme, is like saying: here we are, a people in resistance, a people in rebellion,” Francisca says proudly.

Jesica Esmeralda Bernardino and Lize García Saravia—ages 21 and 25—are players on the I'xk'at team, the first women's Mayan pelota team in Guatemala, which Francisca formed four years ago. For them, the sport changed their lives and their perception of being Mayan.  

“Since I arrived at I'xK'at, I've felt fulfilled in every way. I dedicated 20 years to soccer, but since I started playing Mayan pelota, it has healed and liberated me. I used to live closed off, and now everything is open. You have to do things with your heart, as my teammates say,” says Lize, an athlete and mountaineer. The only time she'd heard about the sport was in National Geographic .

Strength, agility, confidence, camaraderie. That's what Lize says Maya pelota gives her. Her eyes sparkle when she tells us that her mother gave her a belt to protect her hip, and so did her grandmother. She works with her mother, planting corn and fertilizing coffee. With that, she earns about 50 quetzales. 

Jesica was the one who invited Lize to play. They lived three blocks apart, but it was through Instagram that they started talking. They share a community, a large family (Jesica has 11 siblings and Lize has 12), work on the land, and now a love of their ancestral sport. 

“When I play at I'xk'at, I feel more like I'm part of a family. They know how our environment works. We can talk openly, we can hug, we can share. When I'm there, I forget about everything. This is synchronization. Giving everything from the heart. We do something extraordinary. It's like going to another dimension. It brings us closer to what our grandparents did. It's inexplicable,” says Jessica, clutching the baby ball in her hands.

The ball is made of rubber. It's made by scooping out the rubber, which is like milk, and shaping it. Then they add medicinal plants. The one they use weighs 7 pounds (3.1 kg). "For us, this is also medicinal. When someone gets injured, we go with the ball," says Jessica. 

It's raining torrentially in Guatemala City, and they traveled from San Martín Jilotepeque to the capital to leave the next day to represent their country in a Mayan pelota demonstration in El Salvador. They're carrying a smaller ball than the one they normally use. It smells of earth and herbs. They take great care of it.

Warrior and powerful woman

San Martín Jilotepeque has about 70,000 inhabitants and is located about 70 kilometers from the capital. There are several women's soccer teams, but until 2018, there was no women's Mayan pelota team, and very few people dared to play.

In 2018 and 2019, the team trained in a covered space, but when the pandemic hit, the municipality denied them access to a gym. So they decided to play on a field up El Reformador , a 45-minute bus ride away. It's a public park. The problem now is how hard to hit it, because when the ball goes wide, it starts rolling downhill and can land on a house, or a person. They can no longer play with the same confidence as before. But they don't seem to have any sense of discouragement in their minds.

“The sun strengthens us. And it makes us more resilient. We play in the sun, in the rain, we don't give up. That's part of being stronger,” says Jesica, proudly showing off the I'xk'at Facebook page she created, where videos of the team playing in Mexico for the first time can be seen. In the page's description, they define themselves thus: “We are women of corn, and we value the knowledge of our grandparents, putting it into practice.”

Before starting the game, they put on a leather hip protector to protect themselves from the ball. Their clothing bears the team logo and team number. They wear woven belts, which are moldable and flexible so they can bend.

The second tournament, in 2019, was a forearm version (in Sololá, Guatemala). There are two versions of the game: the forearm version, which requires more technique and has air inside the ball, and the hip version, which requires great agility to bend down, hit with the hip, and get up quickly. 

Although the school where the team was conceived is bilingual and intercultural, Jessica says the teachers are very closed-minded. “This time when we went to Mexico to represent Guatemala, the teachers disagreed. They say we have to fulfill our responsibility at school.”

Recovering the ancestors

“Ix means beautiful women, powerful women, intelligent women, warriors. We put the red here to identify Kat, which is fire,” says Jessica, showing the team logo. 

And she explains: “We researched Mayan epigraphy, the writing of our ancestors, and decided to represent I'xk'at as a weaver woman with a heart of fire and light. We've been weaving our knowledge and rescuing it.”

The Popol Vuh mentions two men who play Mayan pelota against the gods: Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Jesica and Lize explain that they read research on the subject that indicates that since Ix means woman and is the moon, they don't believe the two players were 100% men.

"Many people are embarrassed or laughed at because they speak their native language or because they wear their clothing and weave their weaving. Other students are like, 'What a shame, you Mayan idiot.' It's due to a lack of self-esteem or a lack of knowledge. 

“I have never been ashamed of my identity,” says Jessica.

For Francisca, fifteen years older, the same thing happened in her surroundings: “ In my family, we don't talk about the Popol Vuh; colonization has hit us very hard. There was an extermination of knowledge to the point of making people believe they don't even have an identity. History now connects us with our reality.”

Before starting the game, the team gives thanks and kisses the earth so it can play on it. Sometimes they do this with candles or medicinal plants, too. But their families don't like that. If they see a flame or a candle, they think it's witchcraft. They don't see it that way anymore. 

Both Jessica's father and mother are 100% bilingual, but they didn't teach their daughters the Mayan language. "If you go somewhere and speak the language, they'll look down on you, you'll be excluded," they told us. "My mother wears a huipil, but we don't anymore. For now, I still dress like this, with jeans, but later I'd like to wear a huipil. I know a part of history," Jessica says.

“Before the arrival of the invaders, our ancestors had a way of giving thanks, which was with fire. The invaders brought their religion, and through it they built the submission of our people. Religion has served as a rudder for their enslavement,” Francisca explains.

She knows that there are families in Guatemala deeply rooted in the Catholic faith and have a negative view of the Mayan worldview: "In the church, we've been told that what the Mayans do is a sin, so don't do it. It's difficult to change that outlook."

Proud to be part of an ancient civilization

In 2020, the team traveled to Palenque, Chiapas. It was their first experience competing with other women in Mexico, and they really enjoyed it. There were teams from Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. They finished fourth. That year, they also played against men in their home country and won. In 2021, they competed against the men's champions from Guatemala: "We lost the match, but by a small margin. That's when we realized that progress had already been made," says the coach.

The players' wish is for the sport of Mayan pelota to be federated in Guatemala. Each trip they plan and each tournament costs them a lot. They constantly seek funding, even asking individuals who give them 10 quetzales for clean water. In November 2022, the first Mayan pelota tournament coordinated by women was held in Chimaltenango . Two men's teams also participated in that competition, out of the eight that exist in the country.

“Before playing, each player knows their story, the why and purpose of playing. That grounds empowerment and the conclusion,” says Francisca. For her, playing is about energy, about managing physical strength in a synchronized, highly focused way to balance physical strength and emotional issues. 

His students began to comment that they didn't need to imitate what we have from abroad, that they felt proud to be part of an ancient civilization. 

Over time, the coach realized there were more and more players who weren't her students. "During the pandemic, the students were going to train under their responsibility as individuals, and they brought friends, neighbors, and other family members."

The I'xK'at team now includes a math teacher, a mountain climber, a weaver and huipil maker, and another marimba player. Francisca smiles: “I realized they came to understand that it solidifies their self-esteem and they put on Facebook: I am Mayan, I am a Mayan pelota player.”