Composite photograph of a vase from Finca Esquipulitas, Escuintla, Guatemala, Pacific Coast of Guatemala

This was how people learned to die. Before, people died for three days only and then came back to life. Guiteras Holmes, Perils of the Soul, 187–88. Thus Manuel Arias Sojom explained the meaning of a key episode in Mesoamerican myths, versions of which had been compiled since the sixteenth century. This is often the...