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When Francisca Elías began teaching Mayan ballgame , she didn't know how to play. She had the theory; she had read it in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya. Since her students at the bilingual intercultural teachers' college "NIM NA'OJ" were so enthusiastic, she decided to take the plunge and learn. In 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 and asked them for the sports equipment needed for the ancestral sport: the belts, the hip protector. I asked everyone and started the activity with both men and women,” says the trainer. 

Knowing of her experience, in 2018 the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports invited her to lead teams in a Mayan ballgame tournament. She put together one team for men and another 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 the boys; their team will be integrated. We're going to give them priorities: in the serve where the ball is thrown 30 meters, it's without a bounce, but we're going to do it with a bounce at 15 meters for women, so that it arrives lighter.".

Francisca didn't like that. "I'll include you, but I'll make you believe you're different, that you have fewer opportunities. I'll include you, but I'll indulge you because you're a woman," she thought.

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

What colonization left behind

“Colonization brought a decrease in women’s social integration . If we look back at the glyphs, we see that there were women warriors, rulers, and players. But now their sociopolitical participation is made 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,” says Francisca, proudly.

Jesica Esmeralda Bernardino and Lize García Saravia—21 and 25 years old, respectively—are players on the I'xk'at team, the first all-female Mayan ballgame team in Guatemala, which Francisca founded four years ago. The sport has changed their lives and their perception of being Mayan.  

“Since arriving in I'xK'at, I feel fulfilled in every way. I dedicated 20 years to soccer, but since I started playing Mayan ball, it has healed and liberated me. I used to live confined, and now everything is expansive. You have to do things with your heart, as my teammates say,” says Lize, an athlete and mountaineer. The only time she had heard of the sport before was in National Geographic .

Strength, agility, confidence, camaraderie. That's what Lize says Mayan ball gives her. Her eyes light up when she recounts how her mother gave her a hip brace, and her grandmother did too. 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 they started talking through Instagram. They share the same community, large families (Jesica has 11 siblings and Lize 12), working the land, and now a love for the sport of their ancestors. 

“When I play at I'xk'at, I feel more like I'm with family. They know how our community operates. We can talk openly, we can hug, we can share. When I'm there, I forget everything. This is synchronization. Giving your all with your heart. We do something extraordinary. It's like going to another dimension. It connects us more to what our grandparents did. It's something inexplicable,” says Jesica, holding the baby ball in her hands.

The ball is made of rubber. It's made by extracting 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 Jesica. 

It's raining torrentially in Guatemala City, and they've traveled from San Martín Jilotepeque to the capital to leave the next day to represent their country in a Mayan ballgame demonstration in El Salvador. They're carrying a smaller ball than 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 team for the Mayan ball game, and very few people were interested in playing it.

In 2018 and 2019, the team trained indoors, but when the pandemic hit, the municipality denied them access to the gym. So they decided to play on a field atop El Reformador , a 45-minute bus ride away. It's a public park. The problem now is how hard to hit the ball, because when it goes out of bounds, it rolls downhill and could land on a house or someone. They can no longer play with the same confidence as before. But they don't seem to be discouraged.

“The sun strengthens us. And it will make us more resilient. We play in the sun, in the rain, we don't give up. That's part of the strengthening ,” says Jesica, proudly showing the Facebook page I'xk'at, which she created, where videos of the team playing in Mexico for the first time can be seen. The page's description defines them as: “We are women of corn and we value the knowledge of our grandparents, putting it into practice.”

Before the game begins, they put on leather hip protectors to shield themselves from the impact of the ball. Their clothing displays the team logo and their energy number. They wear woven belts, which are moldable and flexible, allowing them to bend over.

The second tournament, in 2019, was the forearm version (in Sololá, Guatemala). There are two versions of the game: the forearm version, which requires more technique and uses an air-filled ball, and the hip version, which requires a lot of agility to crouch down, hit the ball with the hip, and stand up quickly. 

Despite the fact that the school where the team idea originated is intercultural bilingual, Jesica 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 responsibilities at school.”.

Recovering the ancestors

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

And she explains: “We researched Mayan epigraphy, the writing of our ancestors, and decided to take the representation of I'xk'at as Woman Weaver, heart of fire and light. We have been weaving our knowledge, and rescuing it.”.

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

“Many people are ashamed or laugh because they speak their native language or because they wear their traditional clothing and weave their textiles. For other students, it's like: 'how embarrassing, Mayan ball game.' It's due to a lack of self-esteem, or a lack of knowledge.”. 

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

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

Before the game begins, the team gives thanks and kisses the earth so that it will allow them to play on it. Sometimes they also use candles or medicinal plants. But their families don't like that. If they see a flame or a candle, they immediately think it's witchcraft. The women don't see it that way anymore. 

Both Jesica's parents are fully 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 mom wears a huipil, but we don't anymore. For now, I still dress like this, in jeans, but later on I'd like to wear a huipil. I know part of the history," says Jesica.

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

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

Proud to be part of an ancient civilization

In 2020, the team traveled to Palenque, Chiapas. It was their first experience competing against other women in Mexico, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. Teams from Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala participated. They finished fourth. That same year, they also played against men in their home country and won. In 2021, they competed against the Guatemalan men's champions: “We lost the match, but by a very narrow margin. That's when we realized we had already made progress,” says the coach.

The players' dream is for the Mayan ballgame to be officially recognized in Guatemala. Each trip they plan, each tournament, is a significant expense. They constantly seek funding, even asking for donations from individuals who give them 10 quetzales for drinking water. In November 2022, the first Mayan ballgame tournament coordinated by women was held in Chimaltenango . Two men's teams, out of the eight that exist in the country, also participated in that competition.

“Each player, before playing, knows their story, the why and the purpose of their game. This fosters empowerment and brings them to a close,” says Francisca. For her, playing is an energetic experience, where physical strength is managed in a synchronized and highly focused way to balance physical power with emotional intelligence. 

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

Over time, the coach realized that there were more and more players who weren't her students. "During the pandemic, students were coming to train on their own initiative, as individuals, and they started bringing along friends, neighbors, and other family members.".

The I'xK'at team now includes a math teacher, a mountain climber, a woman who weaves and makes huipiles, and another marimba player. Francisca smiles: “I realized that they came to understand that they are building their self-esteem and posting on Facebook: I am Maya, I am a Maya ballplayer.”