THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE 



different parts of the Republic, but in general a 

 Ladino is anybody who is not an Indian, and an 

 Indian is defined on the basis of cultural and 

 linguistic criteria rather than on physical features 

 (Tax, 1937, p. 432).' In Panajachel the Indians 

 are distinguishable from Ladinos because their 

 mother tongue is Indian and their command of 

 Spanish relatively poor, because they wear a 

 costume distinct from that of the Ladinos (which 

 is pretty uniform over the whole country), and 

 because their surnames are usually of Indian 

 rather than of Spanish origin. It is possible for 

 an Indian to come to be considered a Ladino by 

 both groups if he speaks Spanish like a Ladino, 

 bears a Spanish surname, and adopts the clothing 

 and the ways of life of the Ladinos. It must be 

 borne in mind that since the distinction is cultm^al 

 rather than physical, Indian and Ladino are not 

 primarily thought of as race designations in the 

 sense that Negro and WTiite are in the United 

 States. But there are important economic and 

 social differences between the two classes, and each 

 constitutes in large degree a community apart 

 from the other. This study is concerned primarily 

 and almost entirely wath the Indians of Panajachel. 



' Compiled from records ic the Municipal Hall of Panajachel. The figures 

 represent totals of all births and deaths registered; at the time the figures were 

 abstracted from the records (a long task because each case is hand-written in 

 paragraph form) we were too insufficiently acquainted to be able to distin- 

 guish registrations of local residents from those of transients; nor could we 

 distinguish those of Patanatic and the various /i/icos from those of the town. 

 This should have been done. Stillbirths are excluded here; in the records they 

 are registered only as births. 



Although officially the population is divided 

 into Indian and Ladino, actually four classes of 

 people are distinguishable in Panajachel. First 

 there are the wealthy and educated Ladinos who 

 participate almost completely in the culture of 



' In the 1940 census, for the first time, the phrase "Whites and Mestiios" 

 W.1S substituted for "Ladinos," however, the change represents one only of 

 official language. 



modern civihzation. They aie relatively large 

 landholders, government officials, and keepers of 

 large stores. They may own automobiles and 

 radios and they sometimes have homes in Guate- 

 mala City. They always wear good store clothes, 

 shoes, and neckties; they normally speak a culti- 

 vated Spanish and no Indian, and are usually fair- 

 ly well educated. In this class are included the 

 few foreigners in town. Second, there are the 

 poor Ladinos, who participate less in the culture 

 of modern civihzation and are culturally more akin 

 to the Indians. Unlike the first group, and like 

 the Indians, they are proletarian rather than 

 bourgeois, working on the soil or as artisans; their 

 clothes are countrified and they often do not wear 

 shoes or neckties; their Spanish is that of unedu- 

 cated persons, and their literacy rate is very low. 

 Many of them speak the Indian language in ad- 

 dition to Spanish. The first class may be called 

 m-ban, the second rural. The rural Ladinos came 

 to Panajachel for the most part from other small 

 towns, the urban Ladinos from the cities and larger 

 towns. All came within the present century, the 

 rural Ladinos generally earlier than the others. 

 Although in cultural, social, and economic ways of 

 life the two groups are easily distinguishable, 

 there are cases of passage of individuals from the 

 poor to the wealthy class. In such cases more 

 than economic success, however, is necessary, for 

 education and general sophistication are also pre- 

 requisites of the higher status. 



The Indians are also divisible into two gi'oups, 

 but these groups are not thought of as relatively 

 inferior or superior, as are the two kinds of La- 

 dinos. First, there are the Indians of the Pana- 

 jachel community who may or may not trace all of 

 their ancestry back to Panajachel forefathers, but 

 who consider themselves Panajachehnos cultm'ally, 

 speak the Panajachel dialect, and participate in 

 the politico-rehgious organization of the commu- 

 nity. Indians from other towns have married 

 Panajachelenos, and their offspring have become in 

 every social sense Panajachelenos. Indeed, there 

 is at least one case of a family with not a drop of 

 old Panajachelefio blood that is in every other 

 sense a Panajachelefio family — thought of so by 

 themselves and by the others as well.° Pana- 



* Descended from an immigrant from Sta. Lucia UtatlSn who married a 

 woman of Patziin who later married a Panajacheleiio and brought up her 

 first children in the local community. One of these married a Sololateca 

 whose family are all in Panajachel, and this couple have children indistin- 

 guishable from local Indians except that the daughters — like some other 

 Panajachelenas— wear the San Audrfs blousel 



