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Voces Femeninas: A Study of the Lives of the Women of Santa Catarina Palopo, Guatemala

INTRODUCTION

When I first arrived in Santa Catarina Palopo this question played in mind: who are the Catarinecas? The women of Sta. Catarina can be seen washing their hair, bent upside down, lathering, and rinsing in the clear shore water of Lake Atitlan. They are cleansing their huipiles[1]in ankle deep waters and spreading their traditional blue clothing out on rocks to dry. They are walking with a baby tied up in a woven blanket on their backs. Large bundles rest on their straight heads as they walk the streets and alleys of their hometown. They are sitting with legs stretched out in front of them, ankles crossed, weaving threads of all colors on a hand loom. Their nimble fingers work the thread tightly composing intricate designs and patterns. They are mothers nursing small children through a narrow slit on each side of their huipil, part of their breast exposed. They are looking for a tourist, offering a price, and trying to sell the tejidos[2] that they have labored months and years over.

Certainly the women of Sta. Catarina are unique from women of other communities. They are distinct to the shores of Lake Atitlan, nestled in between mountain, rock, vegetation and volcanoes. Their vibrant blue tipico[3] denotes them from women of other towns. They are, as well, individuals in and of themselves. Some are wealthy and own stores; others are poor, in comparison, and live higher up the hill in the town, raising families, crops and weaving. As unique as the women are, they share the identity of being a woman from Sta. Catarina. These women are wives, mothers, cleaners, cooks, weavers, business women, artists, friends, and daughters.

Before I arrived in Santa Catarina I was told that it was a weaving community. I had vague images of women making handicrafts but the picture was obscure. When I first arrived and saw the indigenous Maya women, I was taken back by their physical identities and then their feminine voices and lives. When I first arrived in Santa Catarina I began to see what it was the women were weaving; how they sit on the ground for hours a day, with their ankles crossed in front of them or their legs tucked neatly under their corte[4]. I began to see the differences between their lives, their futures, and my own. How do these women feel about weaving, about their home in one of many communities surrounding Lake Atitlan, and about their lives? I sought to understand an indigenous woman’s life. I began with a simple question which swelled into a complex study: who are the Catarinecas?

I was looking for something. I wanted the women to be in a struggle to break from their traditional lives. I wanted to find that women were outraged that their fathers forbade them to go to school. The fiery emotions I began to feel about these women’s pasts and futures indicated that I resolutely care about the women of Santa Catarina, their lives, and essentially, sus voces femeninas, their feminine voices. My flame grew into a fire as I discovered that the passion to relate a Catarineca voice to an outside world was going to be a struggle. “These women are not used to having a voice of their own. They are experts at guessing what it is their husbands want,” one of my informants expressed. “You can try to represent one voice but it is just like in the US,” she stated, “you are going to get a different opinion from everyone you talk to on how an individual perceives their life to be. It will vary just as much with the women of Sta. Catarina.”

But again, who are the Catarinecas? Are they women unaccustomed to speaking for and about themselves? I began with the mind set that each woman is unique, individual, and carries her own story. Describing the feminine voice of all Catarinecas is, of course, not possible. With six weeks to conduct interviews, participant observation, and develop a response to my initial question, I struggled to find a way into these women’s lives and trust. I will talk about this struggle as well as the daily lives of women, their role in the work force, education, and the problems which women face. Fundamentally, it is my intent in this ethnography to attempt to give a voice to some of the women of Santa Catarina. In all reality, these are strong women. They may not be accustomed to speaking out about themselves, but none the less, they are individual, beautiful women.

The community in which these women make a life is 8 km wide with a population of around 2,000; a small village nestled between Lake Atitlan and the mountain side and the large tourist town Panajachel (Pana) and the municipal San Antonio. The most dominant and outstanding feature of Sta. Catarina is how it is constructed on the side of the mountain. While standing on the main street of Sta. Catarina you look in one direction at the cinder block houses with dashes of pastel colors climbing up the vibrant green mountainside. In the other direction lies the pristine lake and glorious Volcanoes of Toliman, Santiago Atitlan, and San Pedro. In Sta. Catarina there is one road which runs from Pana to San Antonio. Off of this road there are the smaller streets which climb up the mountain in curvy twists and turns. There is another main road which leads to the hotel in the village and eventually ends at the shore of the clear lake. On this road women and girls are seen daily. They are weaving and attempting to sell their goods to tourists. The blue of their tipico is symbolic of the deep waters of Lake Atitlan. This is the community in which the Catarinecas live, work, raise children, and grow old.

There are parts of the town in which you can feel your lungs fill with air cleansed with rapidly falling rain. There are dogs barking here and there. Young girls tighten their fajas[5] with both hands to keep from losing their cortes as they run up and down the streets, playing tag, or skipping from the one school in the center of town to the lake. Women and their children are carrying goods wrapped up in rainbow colored linens filled with their belongings like pouches coming off the back of their heads. The women of Sta. Catarina stand out against the back drop of the tranquil lake town.

There is certainly a draw for tourists here. It is remote, small, with an amazing view, and seems to represent a bit more of local identity than the overcrowded streets of Pana (one of the large towns acting as the main draw for tourists to the lake). The blue tipico the women wear as they sit on the ground weaving, appeals to tourists; the sentiment is that of the ‘real’ lifestyle of indigenous people at Lake Atitlan. The tipico of women in Santa Catarina is different than all other towns around the lake. The heavenly blue huipiles, hand woven by the women here, are adorned with pink, green, purple, yellow, and red shiny thread woven into the piece. There are decorated with zigzag patterned geometric waves and small, intricate animals. First the women weave a large section in the shape of a rectangle with a square in the center out of which a neck hole can be cut. Then, two smaller parts must be woven to act as sleeves which are attached to the larger part. The designs flow from one color to the next. The huipiles woven by the most expert Catarinecas are detailed with precisely placed animalitos[6]- birds, dogs, cats, butterflies and roosters. They shine on the blue background of the huipil, appearing to dance around as the women who wear them walk around in their daily activities. It takes around three months to complete the most difficult huipil. The quality is excellent and the work, a piece of art.

How do you get to know the indigenous women wearing the color of their tranquil lake? The method I began with was participant observation. I began observing the women in the home of my host family. I watched their interactions and what they did on a daily basis. Walking up and down the streets of Sta. Catarina gave me impressions of what the women were doing, where they were going, and how they carried themselves in the community. I also began to observe the women and girls weaving in their houses, the street, and their stores. Due to communication barriers and the nature of the women of my study, I found that merely observing them and their interactions indicated a lot of information about their lives; who they are as a group of women and as individuals.

The women of my host family played a key role in introducing me to other women in the community. It was these women that I began to speak with. These were the first interviews I conducted. Between convenience and snowball sampling, I came to have a general perception of what the daily life of a Catarineca is like. As I would walk around town I began to be recognized and would eventually approach women and begin a conversation with them. The first weeks of my research were dedicated to getting general information about the women. I would ask them general questions about their lives. I asked about their age? What was their marriage status? How many children do they have? How many hours a day they spent weaving? Do they prefer to weave, vend, or seek other work? Life histories and intimate conversations gave me the details of the lives of Catarinecas.

The women that I came into contact with out of convenience sampling were all women that deal with foreigners. They are weavers, vendors of tipico, and store owners. Some have other jobs which deal with outsiders. Their location close to or in the center of town made them convenient participants in my sample. These women are the most accessible women to get to know. When I made attempts to walk up the steep mountain side on the narrow streets and past the private homes of the women living higher and further away from the center of town, I met a lot of resistance. In contrast to the women closer to the center of town, the women on the outskirts met me with suspicious stares. Although I wanted to define my population to include all of the women of Sta. Catarina, I realized that it would be difficult to obtain a reliable sample of these women in the short amount of time that I had to conduct my research. All of my conversations with the women were a struggle. As I mentioned, it is possible that many of these women are uncomfortable talking about themselves. Some were entirely unsure of why I would speak to them about them. “What t do you want to know,” they would ask me when they had heard I was studying the lives of Catarinecas. There were few women who would open up to me and who wanted to express their voice. After weeks of walking away from conversations in which I strained to move past talking about the weather, I decided that I needed to immerse myself in the women that shared a connection with me. After the initial first weeks of interviewing and participant observation, I decided to focus my project on several key informants. In the beginning of my research I focused on gaining as much knowledge as I could from thirty women. In the second half of my research I focused on getting to know ten women on a more personal and occasionally intense level.

Las mujeres no estan acostumbradas a reveler su intimidad y si lo hacen solo es porque se sienten en confianza y se logra establecer un dialogo con ellas. De todas maneras, los detalles se omiten, episodios de la vida se olvidan o callan deliberamente. (Petrich 11)

The women are not accustomed to revealing their intimacies and if they do so it is only because they feel a sense of trust and one succeeds in establishing a dialogue with them. In all manners, the details they omit, episodes of their lives they forget or deliberately keep silent.

I did not anticipate that it would be so hard to converse with women. I felt that because I am also a woman we would share a bond and trust would come fairly effortlessly. The lines from Vidas de las Mujeres del Lago de Atitlan, raise the issue in my mind that perhaps these indigenous women were unaccustomed to speaking about themselves. In the case of some Catarinecas, this is absolutely true and I never came to get to know anything about them. In the case of others, I found that time led our relationship on a path. At the end of the road the details of their lives became treasured reminiscences.

The sentiments, drives, and thoughts of Catarinecas are difficult to obtain for several reasons. Language is one issue. Sta. Catarina is a Maya village and almost all of the community members speak Kaqchikel[7]. Many of the older community members speak only Kaqchikel whereas all of the youth that I have come into contact with speak Spanish as well. Children learn to read and write in Spanish when they are in school and have the opportunity to hone their skills by interacting in their daily lives with foreigners. The average women I spoke to insisted that she only knew a little Spanish although we could have clear conversations. I found that I could communicate with most women up to the age of forty-five and the older generation of women required a translator. Due to the necessity to relate to the women on a personal level, I chose not to use translators. The knowledge gained through the accounts of their daughters became valuable to my research.

The younger generation of my study also proved to be difficult to communicate with. At the beginning of my research teenage girls seemed like an accessible group however, I found that in most cases, these girls were shy, with the least capability to share with me their hopes. Of two girls (fourteen and fifteen) that I spent several afternoons trying to maintain a relationship or even just a conversation with, I found out little about them. Perhaps as one thirty year old woman explained, “these are merely girls with thoughts of boys and laughing in their hearts.” To understand this period in a woman’s life, the explanations and memories given in hindsight were the most fulfilling. These women were better able to explain what their dreams as children were. When the fourteen year-old revealed to me in one conversation that she wanted to buy a house one day, her friends ridiculed her with laughter and mocking tones. Her dark skin blushed and she called them stupid while she tried to laugh along with them.

Therefore, although I will discuss some of the details of the lives of women fourteen to seventeen, the women eighteen to forty-five were of the ages I came to understand and communicate with on a deeper level. These women, it is important to reveal, the Catarinecas who I mostly communicated with, were women that have had some or a lot of contact with outsiders, either tourists, business associates, or have been outside of Guatemala. These are the women that would communicate with me and after fighting with frustration I felt again the fire and focused on a number of Catarinecas in order to ascertain some aspect of las voces femeninas de Sta. Catarina.

WESTERN QUESTIONS POSED TO INDIGENOUS WOMEN

When I would ask a question such as, “what is important in your life and, in general, the lives of the Catarinecas,” I would often be met with blank stares. It wasn’t my Spanish, it is, as my professor put it, “a western question asked to an indigenous woman.” After weeks of rephrasing this question a correlation in the answers formed in my mind. All of the women succinctly identified their lives with one word: work. The areas from which they brought in income and the responsibilities in their daily lives constituted the definition of work in their minds. In the following sections I will try to convey what I gathered is of most importance to the women of Santa Catarina. The foundation of these following paragraphs constitutes what they spoke freely to me about in regards to their lives and themselves.

“Cuesta mucha la vida de la mujer,” one Catarineca told me. “Cuesta mucha la vida de la tejedora,” she resounded. “The life of a woman costs a lot. The life of a weaver costs a lot. It takes many hours out of the day. And also women have husbands and children, a house to take care of, laundry, food to prepare, and tortillas to make. They do all of this in one day and get up the next day to do it all again,” she explained to me. “A woman’s work is never finished,” another informant echoed.

The setting of Santa Catarina is unique to Guatemala, much less the world. It is as distinctive as the women who grow up in the bright sun of the day and black nights. Most women rise around six and a long day of work commences. It is interlaced with chats with friends. It is a time with children, a busy day with sights sounds; life. Most women rise with the sun, begin to make breakfast and, if they are mothers, get their children off to school. Then, the average woman spends a few hours doing chores in the morning. At this time it is cool and the sun begins to break through the clouds that inevitably around the mouths of the volcanoes. Activities such as washing dishes and laundry by hand in outdoor sinks fill up their mornings. Some without running water walk down to the lake with large plastic tubs full of laundry balanced on their heads. Daily chores such as sweeping and general cleaning chase the sun across the sky.

Weaving takes up a large portion of a woman’s day depending on the how many young children she has and how great her need for money. Some weave for several hours in the late morning out side of their homes in the shade. Others weave in their house sitting at an open doorway just out of the reach of the sun’s feverish rays. The women who own stores kneel on a mat on the floor with their legs tucked under them rapidly coaxing color after color and design after design into their loom. With an assortment of colors of fine, silky thread strewn just within their reach wrapped around dried out corn husks to keep the colors from becoming tangled.

Around noon it is time to prepare lunch for the family. This can include a son home from work, children on a break from school, or brothers and fathers living in the house. The women are the cooks, servers, and cleaners during any meal of the day. Most women will get in a few hours of weaving in the afternoon. For some, the children are home from school and for others there is other work to be done in the afternoons. For most of the families I have come into contact with nine or ten o’clock are reasonable bed times.

At six the next morning the Catarinecas are up again, rising with the sun and beginning another day. Perhaps today they have errands to run, will be weaving with friends, or will go to Panajachel to vend. In general, a woman, especially one with her own family is confined to the house and most women do not travel beyond Panajachel.

In an aesthetically pleasing spot under the shade of a lime tree, amongst the flowers, vibrant grass, and peaceful surrounding of the lake and volcanoes in the distance the two young women sit weaving. A loom, harnessed to the tree with rope, is narrow at the top nearest to the tree. Gradually it becomes wider with smooth rounded pieces of wood that support the frame, creating various sections. Around the hips of the women are leather woven cords which aid to stretch their loom out. In each woman’s lap is an array of colorful strings all stemming from her work. Each woman threads one piece of string through a space between the vertically stretched thread, essentially the canvas of the work.

One of the girls pulls on a wooden tool with both hands towards her abdomen. She tightens the completed part of her weaving; the most forceful part of an art that seems to sort of flow from one color to the next. She sits there on the ground with her legs stretched out under the loom, her ankles crossed. Flies walk over her feet which are mostly exposed through her green plastic woven sandals. She doesn’t move her legs though despite the tickling of the flies. She concentrates on moving her fingers quickly in and out of loom weaving different colors and patterns. The loom moves from side to side gently as she works. It is like one of those rope ladders you must try to reach the top of at the fair to win a grand prize. The loom sways like the rope ladder does when a person attempts to master it. These women are certainly masters of their looms.

This is a typical description of one aspect of women’s lives in Santa Catarina. You will often hear, “all women here weave,” when you ask about the work of women in the community. The women will tell you this, the children will tell you, the men and even outsiders all have a resounding answer to the work of Catarinecas. Yes, one aspect of women’s lives is weaving. Although all women do not weave, weaving is the principle economic aspect of most Catarinecas’ lives. Out of the women of my sample I learned that the youngest a woman learned to weave was five up to the age of thirteen. Most of the women were around the age of eight when their mothers taught them to weave.

Most of the women of my sample weave two to seven hours a day. The majority weave for an average of six days a week. These statistics are based on what the women could decipher from an average day in their lives. The women are unaccustomed to thinking about how much time each activity takes in their day. They would wind up counting on their fingers the hours of the day that they thought they spent weaving. In some cases, the friends of children told me that they were lying when they said they knew how to weave. In other cases, I viewed first hand that a woman can weave for seven hours a day. In some instances, women with young children weave far less than women with older children or no children. Often girls who are under the age of nineteen and over the age of thirty-five weave fewer hours a day. All the women have individual preferences and personalities; it is obvious that some will weave more than others, some will prefer to weave, and others sell to tourists.

It is the general consensus here that women have been weavers as long as anyone can remember. The women of the past wove primarily for themselves and their families. The daughter of the oldest living woman in Sta. Catarina, who is eighty-eight, recounted that her mother used to have to pick the wool from the lamb. Then she worked with it by hand until it was fine enough to use as thread to weave her huipil. There was also the process of dying the wool, in shades of red, orange, and yellow. These are all colors found naturally and often times the thread was left beige. Older women in the community can still be seen wearing these traditional huipiles of the red variety.

Around fifteen years ago new colors of yarn and silky threads were becoming available to women. Brilliant blue tones slowly began to replace the red shades of the past. The blues are said to be chosen for their symbiotic nature with water. It is a romantic idea. It invites the reflection that the Catarinecas are closely tied to the lake on the banks of which their small village rests. The designs woven into the thread base of the huipiles have evolved as much as the color. Within a few years the new style has become to entwine shiny color on top to color in a sequence to create animal figures. There are today a select number of women who know how to do these detailed weavings. However, the popularity of this technique is on the rise. The Catarinecas want to adorn themselves in the latest fashion and the tourists create a demand for these designs.

Most of the galleries and stores that sell tipico have been open for around ten years, at a time when tourism was increasingly growing in town. Around thirty years ago women were weaving to clothe themselves and their families and selling to neighboring towns. Sometimes they weave to sell to other women in the town or to outside vendors. Today women weave primarily to sell to tourists. Vending has consequently also become more popular.

At the usually empty pier in the port of Santa Catarina there was a large boat docked. Three tourists found themselves surrounded at the water’s edge by locals attempting to sell their goods. The three girls were actually surrounded on all sides by about six young Catarinecas, of around ten years of age. They were forcing woven goods and necklaces in the tourists’ faces. The tourists were sort of laughing and talking to themselves even though they were surrounded by a noisy group vigorously urging, “compra algo,” “buy something.” It was a lively commotion as one of the girls fought to break free from the circle in which she was surrounded. As she began to walk away from the dock one of the young saleswomen followed her. The girl in the blue tipico held up necklaces to show the girl and rapidly making her sales pitch. The tourist looked like she was trying to avoid an annoying car salesman by staring directly ahead of her. She walked as briskly as she could with out breaking into a sprint. Her face showed that she was more than slightly irritated. She appeared weary of trying to say no to someone who would not hear no for an answer. However, it didn’t seem to daunt her that this was not an adult but a young girl. The Catarineca would have to return to her parents and tell them that yet again, she did not sell anything today.

On another day a woman in her thirties was weaving on the road past the hotel to the lake. This is a spot where many women have set up their looms and goods to sell. As two men walking up from the beach towards her, she murmured something with a smile and jumped up to show the men some of her work. One of the men said that he wanted to watch her work. Quickly she sat down again and rapidly began to weave. This lasted for a few seconds. She looked up nervous that they might leave and then jumped up and told them to buy something. The man looked at her and she began handing him some of her work. She pulled a tejido off of the thin wire line that hung from a fence and forced him to hold it. She stretched it out for him to see. She looked at it. She looked at him again. She gave him a price. He said he did not have money. But she persisted with a lower price. Finally he bought it. Then he asked if it was ok for him to take a picture of her weaving and she sat down and re-hooked the belt around her hips with speed. She looked up at him, her fingers interlocked in her loom in colors of the lake, with no smile. He took his picture and walked away. Finally, her shoulders sank and a calm, relieved smile played on her lips maybe she was thinking about her nine children at home.

These are two rather dramatic accounts of fierce marketing strategies which the girls and women use to persuade tourists to buy their goods. On the one hand, tourists are frustrated when they say no and are still chased to buy. On the other hand, the Catarinecas are merely trying to make a sale. They need the money for necessity not luxury. Making a sale allows a young girl to bring home some money and allows a mother to buy groceries. The problem with selling to tourists is the same as it was in the thirties as described by an anthropologist studying Lake Atitlan:

People from Santa Catarina have been bringing us huipiles, knowing that we would probably buy them. We bargained and were finally buying them for $2.50, then $2.25, then $2.00 (as the supply overran the demand)…The Catarinas are apparently weaving especially for us and weaving very coarsely; although we have cut the price a lot, it probably still is exorbitant for what we get. (Tax 204)

In this brief description, Tax explained all of the problems that women face when trying to sell to tourists: there are more women and more goods than tourists who are searching to get a better price. On the other hand, selling to tourists gives women some way to earn money that they would not otherwise have.

The perception that all women weave invokes the image that all women are similar. Again, these women need to be perceived as individual and consequently as women with many different jobs. There are a range of activities women partake in to earn an income. There are women that work in Panajachel cleaning houses, taking care of children, and cooking for families. Washing laundry for others or selling grass cultivated in the mountains are ways a very poor woman might earn some money. The sister of one of my informants makes corn alcohol to feed the demand for liquor in Santa Catarina[8]. Midwife and housewife are also considered the work of women.

These are some of the jobs of women who do not use weaving to supplement their income. Most did learn how to weave as children, however. The work of women in Santa Catarina is traditional work which the women’s mothers and grandmothers also practiced. These are activities which have given women some financial independence from men. There has been a shift in what is defined as women’s work through these generations due to tourism. Today, most women sustain themselves through weaving and vending to tourists. The role of women’s work could also be evolving in light of the changing practices in education. It is possible that education will create a new job market for Catarinecas as teachers, doctors, or secretaries. Today, there are two women that have gotten an education beyond the 6^th grade. They were helped by their parents and older siblings to recognize that taking morning or night classes in Panajachel would allow them to find different types of work. Both of these women have obtained a higher education and work as secretaries in a hotel in Sta. Catarina. The role of education is a possible indication of the future of financial independence for Catarinecas.

The memory of one woman’s childhood evokes pain. As a thirty year old woman she struggles in the morning with her first teacher, learning how to read and write. She rubs her hands together which are not soar from threading her loom year after year but are weak from trying to form letters and words on the page. When her father died her mother would not allow her to go to school. Instead of a childhood she worked in order to contribute to the family income give feed herself and her brothers and sisters. Instead of learning the alphabet she was forced to hide under the bed by her mother so that the school teachers would not find her when they came by. “Without knowing how to read,” she said pointedly, “a woman is lost.”

This is a story which is similar of many women that I have spoken with. “I never learned how to read or write,” they would tell me, “I learned to weave and work when I was very young.” It was often the case that women were not allowed to go to school by their parents but had to stay at home and help with their mother’s work. Essentially these girls got an education in weaving, making bracelets and necklaces, and selling to tourists.

This is seen as a problem for women in all of the communities of the lake. The book Vidas de las Mujeres del Lago de Atitlan, states that the problem is that:

La participacion feminina, no solo en la fabricacion sino tambien en la venta de productos artesanales, su pone elabandono escolar antes de que la mujer logre alfabetizarse. (9)

Feminine participation, not only in the making but also in the sale of artisan products, results in scholarly abandonment before a woman succeeds in learning how to read and write.

The editor confirms young women do not gain an education due to the expectation of earning a living as children. Commenting on youth, work, and lack of education, Vidas de las Mujeres del Lago de Atitlan describes that instead of sitting in the classroom of a school, the young girls pass the day in the house weaving (9). One of the directors at the school in present day confirms that there are few girls in the higher level classes. He feels that the lack of female students in indigenous communities is due to the role of tradition. “Lives are run on custom,” he emphasizes. It is because of custom that girls do not go to school do not complete the 6^th grade[9] or attend school at all. He believes that only four out of ten people in the community are able to look past custom long enough to be able to see that change is possible; that change is good for the future and the future of their children.

There is a “modela maquina de la mujer,” he alluded, or a machine model of a women in this community in which a woman must learn to help out at home, cook, make tortillas, and wash the clothing. “All of this is in preparation for marriage,” the school director asserts. “This prevents a girl from being encouraged to go to school. Most women do not marry beyond the age of twenty here,” he explains, “and begin to prepare for marriage around the age of eighteen.” He feels woman in Sta. Catarina is merely a machine for producing babies. “This is the picture of a woman to the indigenous people of Sta. Catarina,” he clarified. “Asi es la vida” declare the Catarinecos of both a younger generation and of an older; “this is the way of life.” In some cases, a girl wants to go to school and is not allowed to go by her father. It is equally true that some fathers push their daughters to go to school but the girls do not want to. The fathers who do not allow their daughters an education are interested in money. “Many fathers have more children than they can support,” the director explained, “and consequently the older siblings must help out the family by earning money.” “This is the way of life here,” he reiterated.

“This was the way of life for my grandmother and this was the way of life for my mother and thus for me,” explains the director on the thinking of girls who do not want to go to school. In the afternoon there are no older female students at this time only male children. He describe that it is a way of thinking of the people that does not allow change. For example if a girl wants to do something other than her father commands, which is to work and earn money, then, she is thought to be disobedient. She does not respect her father, she is bad. Therefore, girls do not pursue an education. “It is because of custom,” he again asserts, “as well as because of this,” he says holding up his hand and rubbing his fingers together as if there were bills in his hand; “A women’s life is one of obligation.”

The older women in the community that I had the opportunity to speak with pointedly remarked that they wish they would have learned how to read and write in their youth. The generation of girls in their teenage years seem to have a different opinion. At this point in their lives they do not want to go to school. The ones who have not completed the 6^th grade articulate that it is because they would prefer to weave and make some money rather than spend the day in a classroom. I have heard several theories on why these girls make the rationalization that they do not need to go to school. One informant said that the girls were often scolded and hit by teachers and therefore avoided being embarrassed by dropping out. Another informant claimed that the girls placed a greater priority in making money than getting an education. Yet another informant alleged that as the girls get older they believe that boys are the ones who get an education not girls. There are many different voices on the matter of education and divergence in rationality among women and teenagers. Will these young girls one day wish that they had continued in school as their mothers and grandmothers now think?

It is possible that the future of education could be changed with a few government laws. However, at this point in time there is no law that forces these girls to go to school. There is no law that prevents parents from keeping their daughters out of school. Women above thirty told me that they stressed education in their children’s lives principally because they did not know how to read and write themselves. Several informants told me that education is becoming increasingly important and that more girls under the age of fifteen are obtaining a 6^th grade education. It is the consensus that things are changing in this community. The director of the school feels that change will occur as the older generations pass on and the children of this generation grow up. He feels that with the death of the older generation, in which education for girls was not expected or imperative, there will be a symbolic death of this way of thinking as well. Perhaps one indication that education is taking precedence over working by children is that the younger women I interviewed learned to weave later in life in comparison to their mother’s generations. However, questions still remain as to the connection of women and education in Sta. Catarina. Perhaps the younger generations of females will see that there is a connection between education and weaving. As one informant described, “if a woman can’t read, write and count, which means at least having a 6^th grade education, then how will she be able to calculate the hours she weaves and the costs of her labor and get a fair price for a huipil?”

CONCLUSION

Who are the Catarinecas? I have only scratched the surface of what it is like for a woman to grow up and grow old in Santa Catarina Palopo. Perhaps as Vidas de las Mujeres del Lago de Atitlan alludes, it is only when trust is gained that one can succeed in establishing a dialogue with these women. It is certain in my mind at the conclusion of my research in Santa Catarina that being able to share more time together would open new doors into their lives and themselves. Six weeks ago I read and agreed with Vidas de las Mujeres: women deliberately omit the details of their lives. The women here do not have their own voice, I was lead to believe. They are characterized as all being weavers. They do not want to speak much about their own lives or do not know how. But slowly, as I talked with the women I discovered the things that they would talk about. I found what they would share with an outsider. Although I posed western questions to indigenous women, they certainly found a voice, a way to express themselves.

The women revealed details about their daily lives and taking care of their families. They disclosed information about weaving and working. And the women expressed strong sentiments. One took joy and pride in weaving. Another looked disgruntled as she complained about the aches in her knees and stomach from weaving everyday for thirty years. The women exposed the wounded part of their pasts in which they lost a childhood and an education by working. Some expressed the problems of a Catarineca. One woman described that a woman was lucky to find a husband that doesn’t drink. Another expressed that women with fatherless babies haunted the lives of their friends and sisters. Perhaps the women omitted details or felt a discomfort in communicating to an outsider the treasures of their life. Fundamentally, I feel that I have discovered the beginnings to answering the initial question: what is important in your life, in the life of a Catarineca.

The perspectives of a book written on women of Lake Atitlan, the perspectives of anyone who is not a Catarineca, these are all outside opinions, as are my own. Perhaps women are empowered through vending; although you will probably never hear even the most ostentatious Catarineca put that thought into words. Perhaps weaving is a traditional practice of women which sustains a culture; although you will most likely not hear this spoken by a Catarineca. Perhaps the future of education for girls is changing in a community in which the wearing of tipico is an indication of the strength of custom.

In my opinion, and as I have tried to express in this paper, the Catarinecas are individual, hard working women. Some of who may be unaccustomed to speaking about themselves and others who have revealed a strong feminine voice. I have tried to represent both an overview of what a Catarineca’s life is like and I have attempted to also embody some of the individual stories of the women of one indigenous town of Lake Atitlan. One of the more tedious questions for me to address is the level of satisfaction women feel in their own lives.

In a discussion with one of my informants of her life history, I found sadness in her past and uncertainty in her future. She had married at age eighteen, a mere child she described herself as and at nineteen. She felt like a child having her first baby when she moved with her husband to Guatemala City where he would work. She was forced away from her mother and sisters to a life that was lonely. Like many men she knows, like her own father, her husband drank late into the night and whether he was abusive she left unclear. Trapped in a life she could no longer cope with, she broke free, moved back to Sta. Catarina, and fought her husband’s pleads for her to return to him with their children.

Today she owns two stores, has six beautiful children, a husband who does not drink, her mother and sisters close by, she is an excellent weaver. Yet there is a melancholy look in her eyes as she finishes her story which seems to the listener to have a happy ending. She faintly smiled at me and as she said that she “guessed life was good now.” Her dark eyes were cloudy as she looked down at her huipil.

Perhaps she was sad remembering her past. Perhaps she is still unsatisfied for any number of reasons. Perhaps it is because she cannot read or write very well because she had to help her mother out when she was young, due to her father’s intoxication, was not allowed to go to school. Perhaps she wanted more out of life. Do women ever admit to their own hearts these answers much less a best friend? The ease at which she told me all about her life did show me that she wanted to release her story. It might not have told me her deepest sentiments but at the same time we connected and I experienced a portion of what it meant to be her.

In a contrasting conversation, I saw and heard how another woman perceives her life. With children running around, with a four month old on her lap, a two year old always whining, another boy a few years older crying, and yet another boy no older than six hanging around as well, she seems to take her life in stride. She gets up at six, rouses her five children, feeds them and gets them off to school, a luxury she was not afforded as a child. The rest of her morning is spent doing laundry, cleaning, and juggling her baby and her youngest son. But she “really enjoys most the time with her children,” she says. Her husband is gone all day and he only sees the children for a little while at night. “My life is tranquil,” she says. ‘We are tranquil’ she resonates as one of the boys tries to play with the four month old who is feeding from her breast. The children around her don’t seem to distract her a bit as she wipes the younger one’s dirty face and continuously rocks the baby in her arms. “We are tranquil,” she repeats.

In six weeks I have gained a vast image of the unique lives of the women of Sta. Catarina. With only six weeks my research is far from reaching the goal of representing the majority of Catarinecas. Las voces femeninas of these women, in my opinion, should continue to be explored and regarded as individual to Guatemala, the indigenous lives of women of Lake Atitlan, and further more distinctive of the Catarinecas. Although there are many words left unsaid on my behalf as well as on behalf of the women, I agree that there is “la necesidad de relacionar todas las voces de estas mujeres para acercarnos al mundo femenino del lago” (Petrich 11); “a necessity to relate all of the voices of these women so that we can relate to the feminine world of the lake.”

Petrich, Perla, Ed. 1996. Vidas de Las Mujeres del Lago de Atitlan. IRIPAZ: Guatemala,

Tax, Sol. 1946. The Towns of Lake Atitlan: Microfilm collection of Manuscripts

[1] Hand woven shirts

[2] Hand made weavings

[3] Traditional clothing

[4] Woven skirt

[5] Woven belts

[6] Small animals

[7] Kaqchikel – Indigenous Maya group and language

[8] Alcoholism is recognized as a problem in the community

[9] Sixth grade is the highest level of education offered at the school in Santa Catarina