Cultural Respect

The strong emphasis on community really astonished me in this reading. I had gotten a sense of community in the previous readings of course, such as Tecpán Guatemala and A Beauty that Hurts¸ but I don’t think I fully understood the role that community plays in the Mayan lifestyle. Community affects this culture to a much larger extent than just everyday life, meals, family and tradition. It also extends into the work field and is interconnected with other neighboring communities, where its role really shines.

The commonality between the responses of the people that Smith interviewed emphasize the concept of community even more. I eagerly continued reading Smith’s paper, desperate to know why Totonicapán artisans didn’t “recruit workers from outside their own community” (213). The mystery really baffled me and like Smith, I couldn’t fathom a reason. As Lenin himself declared, the conditions for Mayan capitalists taking advantage of other communities were already set in place. Therefore, what was the barrier that was holding them back from creating dynasties?

The answer seems so simple and basic and humane, now that I look back on it. However, at the time, I was surprised to read the Totonicapán perspective of how why “petty capitalists…did not try to obtain cheaper wage labor for their enterprises” (213). I found Smith’s use of the word “petty” to be interesting. Often in the essay she says describes capitalists in a degrading light, hinting capitalists as the cause of inequality and class division. This view of capitalism doesn’t seem to fully apply in Totonicapán since the class division in Guatemala arises not from economic reasons, but rather from the background of oppression.

This background of oppression has had unique effects on the concept of community. Instead of creating only one class division between the Indians and the ladinos, it has preserved the traditional Mayan style of separate villages and small pockets of culture. Mayan oppression has not unified the entire Indian population. Of even greater interest is the Spanish phrase “tienen otras costumbres” (216). This sensitivity to the feelings and lifestyles of other communities really astounds me. Not to say that Americans aren’t also sensitive people, but rarely do we worry about others not fitting into our community. Yes, we do think of the comfort level of others, but we seem to focus more on shaping their lifestyle to ours and making them comfortable in our setting. It doesn’t occur to us that we should just let them be in their own environment. Even when us Americans visit other countries, we attempt to assimilate ourselves into foreign cultures. Regardless of who’s a guest in which country, rarely do two cultures not mix or put up a barrier to prevent mingling. (I personally believe that cultures should overlap for the purpose of education and globalization but that is another topic all together.)

The U.S. especially, is a melting pot of cultures to the point that it’s hard to define what the culture of our country is. However, Guatemala seems to have distinct community cultures, even if they only vary by a little bit. You would think that these communities would be able to congregate more easily than say Japanese and American cultures, yet the people of Totonicapán are very aware of each other and prefer to stay separate because they don’t want to pry others from their kin, their comfort zone. The residents of Totonicapán understand the isolation and loneliness that an outside laborer would experience, and as such they don’t want to place someone in that position. Whereas in the U.S. we have a tendency to adapt to whatever environment we are placed in.

I don’t want to say too much about this last point, but I admit that I was slightly taken aback when I read that some scholars consider tradition to be “nothing more than historical residue” and that “cultural baggage” is a “convenient explanation for the contradictory features of any given society” (215). Are scholars making this assumption while making comparisons to modernized nations? Are we placing ourselves as the standard and claiming that anything different from this is contradictory? I feel like that is oversimplifying the situation, especially when considering the notion of development.