Community...a Different Perspective

While initially this particular reading appears to give a very different perspective on some of the conclusions that we have developed concerning Indians in Guatemala, after digesting some of the material, I also understand that it actually reinforces some of the main point of our discussions. Through the author's detailed descriptions of Totonicapan, I thought about the amount of diversity that exists within the Indian population in Guatemala. This is easy for me to forget because so often I gather from the discussions and the readings that the Indians as a whole are the oppressed population while the ladinos are the more highly esteemed privileged population of Guatemala. With this, it is easy to simply lump all of the Indians into one group, but as this reading indicates, this should not the case.

This idea is reinforced by the idea that workers in the community of Totonicapan passed up increased profits simply to preserve their community. Coming from a capitalist society where many businesses strive to minimize cost and maximize profit in many cases using cheap labor as a strategy, this was some what shocking to me as it was to the author as indicated by some of my peers mentioned below. Several of the people of the Totonicapan community simply responded to the author that those from outside communities have different customs than they have, and this was the reason that the people of Totonicapan did not invite outside labor even if it was cheaper. Although it may be difficult initially to grasp due to my background, it is a good demonstration of the immense amount of diversity within the Indian population of Guatemala. Thinking about this even further reminded me of some of the topics that have risen in class discussions. For instance, we have talked about the difficulties that would occur in uniting all of the Indian population through legislation or even centralized public health systems (last week with Danielle). Applying this to this week's readings, it makes me wonder if inviting outside labor to Totonicapan would even be effective. Due to the level of diversity that exists, how would outside laborers even communicate with those of Totonicapan who speak a different language or has "costumbres diferentes"? In light of these questions, it begins to make sense why the Totonicapan may not invite outside labor even if it may be cheaper.

Finally, another section of the reading that I found interesting is when the people speaking to the author explicitly compared themselves to other Indian groups and basically described their way of doing things in a superior fashion. This reminded me of Manuel's presentation when he described his native group as having the most beautiful culture and language; however, I got the sense that this was the type of pride that resulted from the ladinos trying to oppress and eradicate his people. I didn't expect this same type of pride in their respective communities to apply when comparing the Totonicapan community to other Indian communities. Thus although this reading spends a lot of time describing the community of Totonicapan and the unity presented within the community, ironically on a larger scale, this reading helped present a more fragmented image of Guatemala than I had envisioned before.