Cabrakan

He taps his foot. That is all it takes. A light tap on the skin of the earth, and somewhere ahead of him a ridge loses its footing and pours downhill like water out of a spring. He watches it settle and walks on to the next one.

This is Cabrakan, and wrecking mountains is the whole of his work. The Popol Vuh, the book of the K’iche’ Maya of highland Guatemala, written down in the sixteenth century, introduces him as the second son of Seven Macaw, the gaudy bird who told an unfinished world that he was its sun. The mother is Chimalmat. The elder brother is Zipacna, who claims to have raised the great mountains in a single night. Cabrakan knocks them over. Between them the brothers had a complete business, and each of them said so loudly. Zipacna called himself the maker of the earth. Cabrakan went one better and said he was the one who fells the sky and makes the earth tumble down.

His name is plainer than his boast. In K’iche’ it reads as “two his legs,” and it is also the ordinary word for an earthquake, the thing a person says when the ground moves.

What he looked like is never set down. The book tells of his legs and arms, his wrists and ankles and his mouth, and of his foot, because the foot is where the trouble starts. It does not say how tall he was, what colour, or whether he had the shape of a man at all. His father is a macaw and his brother’s name is close kin to the word for a crocodile. Cabrakan gets only the legs he is named for.

The gods had no patience for the family. Huracan, the Heart of Sky, with his two companion thunderbolts, had already sent the twin boys Hunahpu and Xbalanque against Seven Macaw and then against Zipacna, and both were finished. Now he spoke to them a third time. The second son had made himself weightier than the sun, and that was not how things should be. Lure him east, said Huracan, to where the sun rises.

The twins found him on the road and asked where he was going. Nowhere, he said. He was only a feller of mountains and would go on wrecking them as long as there was sun and light. He did not know their faces and asked their names. They said they had none. They were poor orphans, hunters with blowguns, and they had seen a mountain in the east that kept on growing, higher than every other peak. Was it true he could bring down any mountain?

It was the right question. Cabrakan demanded to be shown. The boys put him between them, one on his left hand and one on his right, and the three walked toward the sunrise. On the way the twins shot birds out of the trees. Their blowguns held no clay pellets. They only blew, and the birds dropped, and Cabrakan was amazed.

Then they stopped and made a fire with a twist drill. They roasted the birds until the skins went golden and the fat ran and hissed, and the smell drifted over to him. One bird they had treated differently. They coated its skin with quicklime until it was white with earth, and they said quietly to each other what it meant: earth on the skin, cooked in earth, and so he would be buried in earth.

Cabrakan’s mouth watered. He gulped and drooled. He asked what they were eating and begged a little for himself. They handed him the white bird, and he ate all of it.

They walked on and reached the great mountain in the east. By then his arms and legs had gone slack, weak as worn-out cloth. He could do nothing to the mountain. He could not make one stone of it fall. The boys tied his hands behind his back, checked the knots, tied his ankles together, threw him down into the ground and buried him.

He was beaten by his lunch.

His one power was enormous and very narrow. He could level whatever stood up, and nothing in the story suggests he could do anything else. He built nothing and ruled nothing. His father at least had jewels to guard.

His weaknesses were the family ones, pride and appetite, and the twins used both in order. A dare got him walking. A smell got him eating. The earth he had spent his days throwing around was the thing that undid him, taken in through his own mouth, and once his limbs failed there was no second strength to call on.

The burial did not quite end him. A Spanish friar’s dictionary from the colonial highlands gives cabrakan as the word for a tremor of the earth, and adds that people believed a giant lay beneath the ground and that the earth shook when he moved. In the twentieth century the anthropologist Ruth Bunzel heard the same thing in the K’iche’ town of Chichicastenango. There is a giant under the earth, she was told, bound hand and foot. A small tremor means he has moved a hand or a foot a little. A strong earthquake means he has turned over onto his other side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Cabrakan in Maya mythology?

Cabrakan is the mountain-wrecker of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K’iche’ Maya of Guatemala. He is the second son of Seven Macaw and Chimalmat and the younger brother of Zipacna. Cabrakan knocks down mountains by tapping his foot on the ground.

What does the name Cabrakan mean?

Cabrakan, written Kab’raqan in modern K’iche’, can be read literally as “two his legs”. It is also the ordinary K’iche’ word for an earthquake.

How was Cabrakan defeated?

Cabrakan was defeated by the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who were sent by Huracan, the Heart of Sky. They lured him east with a story about a mountain that kept growing, then fed him a roasted bird coated in quicklime. The earth on the bird made his arms and legs weak, and the twins tied his wrists and ankles and buried him in the ground.

What is the difference between Cabrakan and Zipacna?

Cabrakan and Zipacna are brothers with opposite work. Zipacna claims to have made the great mountains in a single night, and Cabrakan shakes them and knocks them down. Both are sons of Seven Macaw, and both are defeated by Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

Do the Maya still connect Cabrakan with earthquakes?

Yes. Cabrakan is still the K’iche’ word for an earthquake. In the K’iche’ town of Chichicastenango the anthropologist Ruth Bunzel recorded the belief that a giant lies bound hand and foot under the earth, and that the ground shakes when he moves.

Related Entries

Zipacna, Vucub Caquix, Hunahpu, Xbalanque, Huracán, Xibalba, Camazotz, Cipactli, Tlaltecuhtli, Namazu, Typhon, Loki