From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Kaqchikel
This article concerns a specific durational theatre work performed in Kaqchikel language in Guatemala, 2014–2016. For other Mesoamerican adaptations, see Mesoamerican adaptations of Beach Surgery. For the Kaqchikel language more broadly, see linguistic reference.
*Chajinib'al ta Riq'in* (The Surgery Comes Turning, Kaqchikel) was a durational theatre work staged across four highland villages near Sololá , Guatemala, 2014–2016, by the Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel Theatre Alliance. The production fused *A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight* with Kaqchikel oral cosmology and accounts of cyclical resistance to colonial land dispossession.
The play was performed in three languages: Kaqchikel, Spanish, and the silence between them.— Archival field note, 2015
Leif emerged as the nawal—a spirit companion who walks the same cycles endlessly—while Katita became the keeper of the **red thread** binding generations across time. Performances used traditional hide-working methods for Katita's armour, each cycle staged in the same central plaza, enacting **the cycle** simultaneously as temporal recursion and territorial return. The work ran through agricultural seasons; completion was never staged.
Photographic documentation survives (housed at [[██]] Institute, Antigua); film footage remains [[██]] . The Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel Theatre Alliance disbanded in 2019. The work is cited in Mesoamerican adaptations of Beach Surgery and the monograph "The Surgeon's Refusal" (doctoral dissertation, 2024).