The ancestors of the Lenateros-Woodlanders created the Maya codices, magnificent books written when only Native People inhabited the Americas. On stuccoed bark paper pages they painted forecasts of the movements of the heavenly bodies, prophesies, divinations, and spells. In his chronicle, The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz de Castillo, a soldier who accompanied Cortes in the invasion of Mexico, wrote:

We found temples and places of sacrifice, and blood splashed about, and the incense they burnt, and other properties of their idols, also the stones on which they made their sacrifices, and parrots' feathers, and many of their books, which are folded as cloth is in Spain.

INSPIRED BY THE PREHISPANIC tradition of painted codices, contemporary Mayan book artists are producing some extraordinary work in Taller Lenateros, the Woodlanders' Workshop in southern Mexico. This studio in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, not only prints and binds books, but also produces handmade paper for the covers and endpapers.

The Mayan word for book, jun or vun, also means paper, and the making of paper and books is an important Mesoamerican tradition. The ancient Mayan creator god, Itzamna, is credited with the invention of writing. His wife is said to have originated the universe by painting everything into existence.

We know of only four pre-Columbian Mayan books that survived the ravages of time and war; many were destroyed by Friar Diego de Landa in the sixteenth century, as documented in his Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan:

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