Indigenous farewell customs in Mexico

I'm wondering about general customs or rituals that might surround people who are about to take a journey, or who are leaving home and may not come back. Anything related to a farewell or wishing someone safe travels, a healthy life, or good luck could be useful. What about homecoming rituals?

These could be standard phrases, offerings, whatever comes to mind as characteristic. The setting is a Mexico fairly early after the Spanish conquest, when native practices would have been affected by Spanish influence, but not wiped out. Anything surviving today, from any of the native cultures, could be useful.

That particular phrase emphasizes the Spanish influence. I'm looking for something distinctively native.

Also, would farewells likely to be restrained, emotional or physically demonstrative? Elaborate or simple? At all ritualistic?

Yes, indeed, multiple groups. But they did interact and influence each other, and my story has enough flexibility that I can base details on whatever group I can get the most information on. My preference would be for a group of Maya, but Nahuatl speakers would work, too.

That's the problem--I'm not finding such information on any of them. Can you recommend any resources? Lots of information online about "big" customs at the level of kings and priests of the Classic Maya and Aztec Empire: blood sacrifices, offerings for rain. Not much about how villagers interacted day-to-day.

Isn't that true, Karen? Thank you, that would really be appreciated. Glad someone is trying to preserve what history and traditions remain. Kudos to your daughter.

Thanks, Karen. I'm aware that there are lots of groups. I've tried searching on the best-known and come up blank when trying to find this information. I can easily find well-known rituals from classic civilizations, and heavily Spanish-influenced greetings from today.

The information I'm looking for is probably on the Internet somewhere, but the search terms I'm using don't bring them up in the first few pages of results. I was happy to see your link, but it's as generic as everything else I've run across.

Thanks everyone, even if this is a dead end. I was hoping someone would know of a resource or two for a group that someone's documented well.

That's a thought, Karen. I guess my first instinct is to look for written sources, so even coming here was a bit out of my comfort zone. But naturally, unless someone had first-hand knowledge, written sources were still what I anticipated learning about.

Since in a fictional work, I can suppose almost any group in the region might live in the Yucatan if events are right, I figured that flexibility could be an advantage. But whatever group I picked, I wanted the culture to be authentic.

I did have a realization after reading your earlier post today that other than locals, scholars might have access to better information. So I hit Google Scholar and found a few more promising sources today. Only problem is I'm not a member of any institution with a subscription, and it's going to be tricky to find out, first if they're going to be useful, and then, how to obtain them. But it's start at least on finding out what I don't know to ask yet. Trying to find information on traditional homecoming rituals, for example, is going to be very frustrating if there simply are *not* any.

Really appreciate your suggestion. This may be a good strategy for another story too!

For what it's worth to anyone else happening by, that resource (Google Scholar) might be a good place for others looking for information that must exist somewhere but it hard to find in the more popular general references.