EMPIRES CHILDREN: THE PEOPLE OF TZINTZUNTZAN FOSTER 



261 



Though signs of outward affection between 

 spouses are few, it is not difficult to tell when a 

 couple are content with each other's company. 

 Teresa is seated beside her husband, Romulo, 

 and in an affectionate manner tries to feed him 

 a piece of sugarcane. He at first rejects the 

 offering, then acquiesces while she giggles, very 

 satisfied with the outcome. Mariana seats her- 

 self at the feet of her husband Severiano and 

 turns her face up in an affectionate manner. 

 He, embarrassed, pushes it away, but a moment 

 later, when he thinks he is not being seen, lays 

 his cheek against hers. Kissing is used but rare- 

 ly as a demonstration of affection, except to- 

 ward infants. A quick smile or a few words 

 which might pass almost unnoticed are much 

 more frequent. 



Philandering and drunkenness on the part of 

 a husband are frequent causes of discord. A 

 reasonable amount of both are expected and 

 accepted by most (but not all) women, but 

 when the former is too open, and involves a lo- 

 cal woman as contrasted to visits to prostitutes 

 in other towns, and when the latter becomes too 

 frequent, the family situation may become 

 unbearable. Undue laziness on the part of a 

 husband may also be a cause of friction, and 

 in some cases, coupled with other causes, has 

 led to separation. Likewise, mistreatment at the 

 hands of a husband's family has been known to 

 cause a wife to desert him. Shrewish tempers 

 of wives, and their failure to pay proper respect 

 to the husband's relatives, and, of course, infi- 

 delity, put a severe strain on any union. Since 

 the local culture pattern does not provide for 

 divorce, and since unions without benefit of 

 clergy are severely condemned, mismatches, in 

 most cases, continue through the years, with an 

 armed truce at best and open fighting at worst 

 the rule. The picture is rather like that of our 

 own country during the 19th century where 

 mismated people simply made the best of a bad 

 situation. In a few cases, however, a situation 

 becomes so intolerable that separation followed 

 by realliance takes place. It is not surprising 

 that often this is done by individuals distinctly 

 above average in strength of character, for 

 actually pulling up stakes, deserting one's wife 

 or husband, and going to live with any other 

 spouse means arousing the antagonism not only 

 of the Church but also of the holier-than-thou 



element of the population, which at such times 

 comprises most of the adults. If such new unions 

 endure, little by little they come to be accepted, 

 but the stigma never quite wears off. 



Maria F. deserted her first husband when she 

 had two children, because he was continually 

 drunk and refused to work. She was quite self- 

 sufficient with her potter's trade and felt that, 

 alone at least, she would not have to support 

 an indolent husband in addition to children. 

 Subsequently she went to live with Agustin U. 

 by whom she had two more children. Her eldest 

 son Gildardo is very critical of her, not so much 

 because she deserted his father as because her 

 new partner is as lazy as the first; it shows, he 

 thinks, very bad judgment on her part. Boni- 

 facia E. lived with her husband who shared a 

 house with his mother and a sister. The latter 

 continually made life miserable for her, and 

 after they beat her — while the husband stood 

 by and watched — she ran to the house of a 

 friend who later went with her to Morelia and 

 helped her obtain work as a domestic. 



Men, on the other hand, tend more often to 

 desert their wives because they find other women 

 sexually more attractive. Often such separations 

 begin when a man tries to set up a second house- 

 hold, hoping to continue with the first as well. 

 Jaime P. has lived for the past 10 years with 

 Maria L. by whom he has had three children. 

 For the first years he continued to visit his first 

 wife, who continued to live with his mother, but 

 gradually he shifted his attentions to his mis- 

 tress and now never visits the wife. Yet he con- 

 tinues to contribute to her support and takes a 

 keen interest in his two children by her. It is 

 hard to tell how much his legal wife's inability 

 to have more children, the result of a difficult 

 childbirth, had to do with the change. Jaime 

 is a man who likes women as such, and prob- 

 ably never would be content with one. Paren- 

 thetically it may be said that the mistress is a 

 woman of much stronger will and far more in- 

 teresting than the legal wife. 



Though such generalizations are difficult and 

 dangerous, an impressionistic estimate would 

 place the number of stable unions at about the 

 same level as in our own society, and the amount 

 of discord about equal. 



Most widowers except the very aged remarry, 

 as do a surprising number of widows as well. 



