8 



THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE 



jachelenos speak a dialect, wear a costume, and 

 have certain beliefs and ways of life distinct from 

 those of the Indians of other towns; they are a 

 social and cultural unity. Secondly, there are 

 in Panajachel a number of Indian families, origi- 

 nally of other towns, who do not participate, or 

 who participate very little, in the social, political, 

 and religious community of Panajachelenos. They 

 wear the costumes of their own towns, and often 

 continue the pursuit of economic specialties 

 brought with them; their language and mentality 

 is more hke that of their blood relatives than of 

 their present neighbors. Some of these families 

 have lived in Panajachel only a few years; some 

 indeed came just before the time of this study and 

 have since left. Those that are more perma- 

 nently settled tend to marry their children wath 

 Panajachelenos and thus eventually become ab- 

 sorbed into the local community. The allocation 

 of particular individuals or families to one Indian 

 gi-oup or the other is therefore to some extent 

 arbitrary; and that is one reason why all locally 

 resident Indians were included in this study of the 

 economic life of the community. 



The municipios of Guatemala (and Chiapas as 

 well: Redfield and Villa, 1939, p. 107) are of two 

 general kinds. In the one, the Indians live on 

 their farms in the country and come into the town 

 where they often set up housekeeping at intervals. 

 In the other, they live in the town itself and repair 

 to the surrounding countryside when necessary 

 to tiU the fields (Tax, 1937, pp. 427-433). Pos- 

 sible explanations of the difference need not be 

 discusse 1 here. A consequence of it is that in the 

 "vacant town" mmiicipios the Indians tend to 

 lead a dual life alternating between their isolated 

 country homes and the towni, while in the "town- 

 nucleus'" municipios the rural territory, which is 

 uninhabited, achieves importance only incident- 

 ally to agriculture. Unlike the Indians of Yuca- 

 tan, for example, the Guatemalans of this region 

 are not accustomed to live on their cornfields 

 during periods of work (Redfield and Villa, 1934, 

 p. 68) ; hence in tovm-nucleus municipios the men 

 leave their town homes for no more than a day at 

 a time to work in their cornfields. 



It is apparent from the description already given 

 that Panajachel is a variety of town-nucleus 

 municipios. The Indians live in a restricted area, 

 and their cornfields are outside this area. It is 

 true that they do not live in a compact town, that 



their homes are dispersed outside of the town 

 center, and that orchards and gardens lie around 

 their houses; but the whole delta is considered 

 the "town," the Indians have but one home, and 

 their cornfields, to which they go to work a day 

 at a time, lie outside. The allocation of Pana- 

 jachel to one town type or the other is not in itself 

 important; but it is well to remember that Pana- 

 jachel and the other municipios of the lake differ 

 in this fundamental ecological respect — with 

 whatever economic and social consequences are 

 involved^ — from most of the other municipios of 

 the region. 



THE INDIAN COMMUNITY 



In the portion of Panajachel under discussion 

 there lived, in 1936, an Indian community of 780 

 persons. This figure does not include Indians 

 for the most part from other towns who lived as 

 servants in hotels or the homes of Ladinos or as 

 laborers on the plantations. It does include 

 Indians from other towns who lived as domestics 

 and hired hands in the homes of local Indians. 

 It does not include three families, part Indian, 

 who, in all respects but ancestry, are Ladino. 

 Of the 780 individuals, 688 might be called "Pana- 

 jacheleiios," having at least some Panajachel 

 blood or family connections, and entering into 

 the religious and political life of the local Indian 

 community. The remainder, 92 in number, were 

 "foreign" Indians with no Panajachel family 

 connections. Included among the Panajache- 

 lenos were additional foreign Indians, 8 men and 

 28 women, married to Panajachelenos,' having 

 thereby become part of the traditional community. 

 The remainder of 652 "ultra-pure" and part-blood 

 Panajachelenos does not represent the total of 

 the species in the wider region, however. Con- 

 siderable numbers have migrated from Pana- 

 jachel to other to\vns, to the capital, and to the 

 coast plantations and have lost their connections 

 with the local community. The genealogies 

 collected uncovered 46 such who are still remem- 

 bered (and some of whom occasionally return) 

 but there must be more. 



Table 2 classifies the 780 Indians of this study 

 by sex and age. The figures on age, data for 

 which were not collected with sufl!icient complete- 

 ness or accmacy to be used, are based on the 



' One man and three women were not married to Panajachelenos, but 

 related in other ways. 



