ABSTRACT
The Mayan stories of the Popol Vuh represent the epitome of success, both for the stories themselves and for the very fact that they have survived and proliferated into a multitude of adaptations and translations for Spanish- speaking children. The history of the Popol Vuh, or Popol Wuj as it is spelled in K'iche', is an interesting story in itself. The original text upon which the stories in the Popol Vuh are based was most probably destroyed during the Spanish purges of indigenous cultural artifacts during the conquest and colonial periods. In 1980, Lionel Mendez D'avila published a futuristic, theatrical version of the Popol Vuh that included robots and cybernetic characters, along with characters from the Mayan creation myth. A previous adaptation of the Popol Vuh for children, published in 1999 by Guatemalan anthropologist Victor Montejo, came out simultaneously in both the original Spanish and an English translation by David Unger.
