96 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 4 
A little over one-fifth of the total territory of Guate- 
mala (approximately 48,000 sq. miles, or 120,000 sq. 
km.) is privately owned, by only about one-fifteenth 
of the total population. This amounts roughly to 
one-eighth of a square kilometer, or about 32 acres 
for each landowner; but not over one-seventh of 
all privately owned land is under cultivation (Jones, 
1940, pp. 176-177). These estimates are for the 
period preceding the declaration of war on Germany 
by Guatemala in 1941. Over one-third of the privately 
owned land under cultivation was then in the hands 
of foreigners, especially Germans in the coffee regions 
of Alta Vera Paz and the western Pacific Lowlands 
and volcanic slopes. German lands were confiscated 
by the Guatemalan Government after war was de- 
clared. 
A number of attempts have been made, since 
shortly after Guatemala gained its independence, to 
distribute lands for improvement and development. 
Appeals were made to foreign colonists, and also to 
native Indians, but with indifferent success. For- 
eigners encountered great difficulties in tropical 
agriculture, and the Indians seemed content to go 
on as they were, eking out a bare existence through 
primitive methods, many of them on municipal lands. 
Surveys.—The four-fifths of Guatemala that is 
government-owned land is very imperfectly known 
as to extent and location. This is due partly to in- 
complete and poorly kept records of titles and partly 
to inaccurate mapping of the country. Urrutia care- 
fully surveyed most of the privately owned coffee 
fincas of the Pacific versant, especially, and the Ger- 
man plantations of the Alta Vera Paz have also been 
fairly well mapped. The eastern boundaries of Guate- 
mala have been surveyed in recent years by aerial 
photography, under the direction of Sidney Birdseye 
for the Guatemala—Honduras Boundary Survey Com- 
mission (see Informe detalledo de la Comision, etc., 
1937). Aerial surveys have also been made in parts 
of the Petén by the Shell Oil Company. Elsewhere, 
most of the country has been very inadequately 
mapped. Municipio and even Department boundaries 
are often indefinite, but where they consist of streams 
and drainage divides, as is often the case (map 20), 
good maps would entirely clarify boundary questions. 
CLUSTERED AND DISPERSED SETTLEMENTS 
A distinction may be made between (1) muni- 
cipios in which settlements are clustered, most of the 
inhabitants living in one or more hamlets, villages, 
or towns and going out into the surrounding country 
to plant their fields, and (2) dispersed settlements in 
which the greater proportion of the Indians of the 
municipio are scattered rural dwellers who only 
occasionally come into their town or village, usually 
to trade or conduct some official business. The 
former is illustrated by Santiago Atitlan and other 
lakeside villages built on limited favorable sites (see 
pp. 97-126 and map 20). Since agricultural activity 
must be conducted chiefly upon steep ‘surrounding 
slopes and people must go out from the center where 
they live, such settlements are centrifugal insofar as 
economic activity is concerned. Men of Santiago 
even sell their goods almost entirely in outside 
markets. The second type, illustrated to some de- 
gree by Solola, but much better by Chichicastenango, 
tends to be centripetal, in that trade and religious 
activities bring the scattered inhabitants into the 
village at frequent intervals. They take up their 
temporary residence often in town houses that may 
otherwise be unoccupied. Though few in Solola, 
these houses are numerous in Chichicastenango. 
Tax has classified municipios in the midwestern 
highlands of Guatemala “according to ecological type 
and the composition of population” as follows: (1) 
“Town-nucleus” type, dispersed and close-knit vari- 
eties (corresponding with my “clustered” type), and 
(2) “vacant-town” type (ordinarily equivalent to 
what I call “dispersed” ), with small-town and large- 
town varieties (Tax, 1937, pp. 427-429). The 
“vacant-town” center is defined as having ‘‘prac- 
tically no permanent Indian residents,” since many 
of them own both town and country houses, and 
occupy the former only on certain market and fiesta 
days. Those who have no town houses stay with 
friends on these occasions, so that there are few 
permanent Indian residents other than officials, who 
remain in town only during their terms of office. 
Chichicastenango, where Tax studied intensively 
over a period of years, is cited by him as a typical 
illustration of the ‘‘vacant-town” type, with which he 
includes also many of the larger towns of the High- 
lands, even Quezaltenango. Though these towns do 
have many houses which are left unoccupied when 
the owners are tending their fields, working on Low- 
land fincas, or engaged in other activities that may 
even keep them away much of the time, there are 
nevertheless enough permanent Indian inhabitants 
(even local ones, to whom he refers) to make the 
“vacant-town”’ classification seem unsuited to them. 
The phenomenon of the “vacant-town” in almost 
a literal sense, is well exemplified by Tenejapa, in 
Chiapas, a bordering Mexican State which is cul- 
