Una leyenda tseltal: El infierno o K'atimbak (Calentar conhuesos)

Resumen

In a distant past, say our mothers and fathers (ancestors), there was a Tseltal couple. Husband and wife loved each other deeply. They were very poor but, nevertheless the woman brought home exquisite meals every day. One day she died; and the husband, who cried sadly in the fields, was invited by a ladino horseman (the devil) to ride with him to the place where his wife lived (hell, or k'atimbak in Tseltal: warming with bones). When they got there, the man was asked by the ladino to bring some firewood (bones) and was given a mule to carry it. When he hit her because she did not want to walk, the mule started speaking to him. (By her way of speaking he recognized his wife.) She told him that he was also guilty because he accepted the goods she used to bring home, without asking her where she got them. She invited him to lunch and they ate worms, to which the woman was already accustomed. The man was given some iron sandals (huaraches) which he should wear out before being allowed to go back to the world. This did not take him long because, advised by his mule-wife, he rubbed them in her urine. Before leaving, he received a message from his wife to be carried to the world: people should not do what they themselves (husband and wife) had done. The man died soon after, but there is nobody to tell us if he went back to hell and met his wife again, or if he went somewhere else.