En la tierra de San Francisco el conquistador: Identity, faith, and livelihood in Quezaltepeque, Chiquimula
Description
The research of this dissertation took place in San Francisco Quezaltepeque, a community of the much understudied region of el oriente in the Eastern Highlands of Guatemala. This ethnographic study in a municipio of Chiquimula privileges local understandings of peoples' concepts of social identity. In this community the generic labels 'ladino' and 'indigena' which in the anthropological literature are usually referred to as labels of ethnic identity are embedded with relevant meanings of other social identities. In Quezaltepeque labels of identity such as 'natural, sambo, misteado, verdadero ladino' and campesino which, although not exclusive in existence and usage of this community, defy the social and political significance of the pervasive and paradigmatic dichotomous model that has been used in studies of Guatemala. Constructions of social identity are particularly examined in the contexts of two institutions, the cofradia system and the Comunidad de Indigenas which currently keeps control of the communal lands of the municipio. The research takes place over a decade's spans (starting in 1993), a period in which social identity was much contested academically and socially in the country given the important political implications that such identities could spare. Therefore this work is not only contextualized in the identity politics of the 1990's but documents in part the changes in discourse that have taken place at the local level along this time. Finally, an overall intent is to draw attention to studies of populations in regions that have been much under the shadow of the interpretations generalized from the long decades of dedicated ethnographic search of the Western Highlands