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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 2 



recent years it is said that these restrictions 

 have disappeared. 



One reason for the free union is the difficulty 

 of securing a legal divorce. Such a divorce 

 can be granted only by a court of first instance 

 {juzgado de primer instancia) . The nearest 

 court of this kind is in Uruapan, and to secure 

 a divorce requires many trips to Uruapan and 

 an outlay of more money than most Cheran 

 residents can afford. Moreover, most people 

 do not understand the needed steps. 



Causes of divorce are drunkenness, wife 

 beating, failure to support the family, or 

 abandoning the family for another woman on 

 the part of the man. On the part of the 

 woman, infidelity is an important cause. Lack 

 of children is rarely if ever the direct cause of 

 divorce, and is not recognized as a sufficient 

 reason. Incompatibility evidently may play a 

 part also. Uncles and grandfathers of the 

 married couple and the godparents of the 

 marriage intervene if a marriage is not going 

 smoothly, and attempt to persuade the couple to 

 change their habits. 



In all cases of divorce for whatever cause, 

 the officials of the municipio investigate. If 

 they find the divorce not justified, the officials 

 may force the couple to continue living together. 

 If the causes are deemed sufficient, the officials 

 do not interfere, although they may supervise 

 disposition of children so that they will have 

 the best care. If children are less than 6 or 7 

 they are usually put in charge of the mother. 

 Over that age they are usually given to the 

 parent best able to rear them properly. If the 

 mother is industrious and the father a drunk- 

 ard, the children will be given to the mother, 

 but if the mother is careless of her obligations, 

 the father will receive the children. Dislike or 

 quarrels rarely arise between relatives of a 

 divorced couple. In free unions, as in mar- 

 riages of widows or widowers, sometimes a 

 parent is jealous of the spouse's children by a 

 previous marriage, sometimes not. 



ADULT LIFE 



Entry into adult status is closely associated 

 with marriage. Normally a child is not con- 

 sulted in family affairs until he is married ; the 

 only exceptions are a few families where youths 

 have not married at the customary ages. Usu- 



ally by the time of marriage, individuals of 

 both sexes have mastered the essential technolo- 

 gies for carrying on life. 



Nevertheless, marriage rarely if ever means 

 complete independence for either sex. The 

 couple almost invariably lives with the groom's 

 parents after the marriage, usually for a year 

 or longer. Even if the husband has enough 

 resources to set up a separate establishment, 

 he will rarely do so until after the first child is 

 born and often he will not do so for several 

 years. 



For the wife, this appears to be a somewhat 

 difficult time. She is definitely under the 

 thumb of her mother-in-law and for the first 

 month after the wedding she is supposed to get 

 up before daylight and make atole for everyone 

 living in her new home. She is sent on errands 

 and given orders constantly. Nevertheless, the 

 difficulties can easily be overemphasized by a 

 person from outside the culture. The bride 

 is called "daughter" by her mother-in-law and 

 in large measure is treated exactly as a daugh- 

 ter would be. In the relatively few instances 

 in which it was possible to observe behaviors, 

 outwardly a friendly and perhaps even affec- 

 tionate relationship existed between mother 

 and daughter-in-law, although one woman said 

 she greatly feared her parents-in-law, who 

 were very hard on her. 



Although the daughter-in-law appears to be 

 imposed upon by her mother-in-law to some ex- 

 tent, in some sense this is part of the process of 

 gaining adult status and of the retirement of 

 the parents to a less active life. The father 

 does less work in the fields and leaves more 

 and more of the harder labor and more and 

 more of the responsibility to his son. In the 

 same way, the mother leaves more and more 

 of the running of the house to her daugh- 

 ter-in-law. If the parents have worked hard 

 and have accumulated a reasonable amount of 

 property, some of which they have probably 

 expended in giving their children a proper 

 marriage, it is considered right and proper that 

 they should begin to work less hard. 



After a year or more of marriage, or after 

 the birth of the first child, some change of 

 status will begin to occur. In a minority of 

 cases, a new kitchen will be prepared and the 

 young couple will move out of the "troje" where 



