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204 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY NUMBER 23
good. I would keep going. I would go for half a
year. I would go for four months or three months. I
would go like that. Then I would come back [home].
I would go, then I would come back. Where I
thought the pay was good, where I was paid well, I
would go there. That Old Jose Ruis was so kind to
me, so I worked there a long time. If the girls went
to the movies, me, I stayed with my old mistress.
"Eat some bread! Drink some cocoa! Don't go!
Never mind, daughter, we'll stay here," she told me.
I would stay with the old women.
[They were nicer.] They were nicer. If my mother
came she was given oranges, sweet lemons, squashed
bananas to take. She was given them to take along to
eat. My mother was loved.
The thing is, why wouldn't I like my master since
my master was good? That's why I stayed a long
time there. So I was there a long time.
Tonik's estimate of the time the airplane first appeared over
Zinacantan is off by only two years. It was fifty-two years
before her reminiscences, in 1920. Romin Teratol's mother
remembers that, when the first airplane appeared in the sky over
Zinacantan Center, the people ran into their houses and slammed
the doors tight, believing that the end of the world was upon
them. The second plane must have passed over San Cristobal in
1924. I am unable to trace the identity of the Pineda leader
whose wife was in hiding. The name Villalobos is not familiar to
the historian Moscoso Pastrana.
In Zinacantan sheep are raised for wool, but never for their
meat. Tonik is almost unique among Zinacantecs in eating
mutton, on which there is a strong taboo. This is a measure of
her close relations with the Ladino world. Tonik and other
Zinacantecs, who worked for the Instituto Nacional Indigenista,
were often obliged at INI banquets to eat the mutton that this
institute of applied anthropology unaccountably served to
Indian officials.
Some measure of the nature of past Ladino-Indian relations is
hinted at by Tonik's gratitude to her employers for presenting
her mother with squashed bananas, no longer deemed fit for
Ladino consumption. Recalling the seduction, or perhaps rape,
Once there was an orphan.
The orphan sufffered greatly. Whatever the master's
children ate, they ate first. They drank first. The
poor girl was given the leftovers. Of the things that
they ate she was only given the leftovers. She wasn't
given anything good.
"Why am I suffering, My Lord?" she said. Her
master was a pig killer.
"Mary, come!" said [her mistress]. [Mary] went.
"Go wash the tripe!" she said. [Mary] picked up her
little old shawl. The child wrapped it around her and
went to wash the tripe.
Cinderella
T84
7o ta kriaraile, chibat batel 7un, 7o xibat 7o71ol jabil
7o xibat chanib 7u 7o 7oxib 7u ja7 yech chibat ja7 7o
chital, chibat ja7 7o chital, ja7 ti bu lek kanal ta xkil
bu lek xtojvan 7une ja7 te chibat, ja7 toj lek k'ux
xiya7i taj mol Jose Ruis 7une ja7 jal te ni7abtej te
yo7e, mi xbat ta sine li ninyaetike chikom vo7one ta
jchi7in i jme7el 7ajvale. "Chave7 7akaxlan vaj
chavuch' 7achukul7at mu xabat yiyil,«7ijita,
komikotik," xiyut 7un. Chikom jchi7uk ti me7eletik
7une.
Mas lek yo7on, mi xtal jme7e ch7ak'bat ech'el li
naranja lima, batz'i Io7bol t'usemike cbJak'bat ech'el
slo7, k'anbil ti jme7e.
Va7i 7un, k'usi xi mu jk'an kajval 7un ti lek i kajval
chava7i 7un, yech'o xal ti ja7 jal nijalij te yo7 7une,
ja7 jal teon te yo7e.
of Tonik's mother by her employer's sons, and the desperate
circumstances of her stepfather, who returned from his rented
lowland cornfield with only a neckerchief to cover his nakedness
(T149), it is interesting to hear the priest of Zinacantan in
1819, after he had been accused of negligence for letting his
flock stray. In that year the town of Acala, in the heart of the
lowland area farmed then and now by Zinacantecs, tried to force
the Zinacantec farmers to settle in Acala. But they refused,
objecting that their homes were in the highlands. The curate
explained that they were forced to look elsewhere for farming
land because their own land was either so reduced in area or so
sterile as to be quite useless. He then lashed out at the lowland
ranchers who, he claimed, maintained the Indians in perpetual
serfdom, by paying them such low wages for their work, and by
loaning them the great sums of money that they required for the
food and drink, which they were.obliged to provide at the
constant round of fiestas in Zinacantan center. They were
"forced to cheat and often to steal and they are always poor." So
great was their indebtedness that they sent their women to San
Cristobal to work as maids, only to have them "return home
ravished and pregnant" (Reyes Garcia, 1962:45-46). See also
T14, T112, T148, T154, and their notes.
7A ti vo7ne 7oy la jun me7on.
Va7i 7un, 7abol la sba ta j-mek ti me7on, mi 7a la ti
k'u slajes ti xch'amaltak ti 7ajvalile, ja7 la ba7yi
chve7, ba7yi chuch'ik vo7, 7a ti prove tzebe, sovra la
ch7ak'bat, 7a la ti k'u tzlajese, naka la sovra
ch7ak'bat, mu la bu x7ak'bat k'usuk lek.
Va7i 7un, "K'u no van yu7un ti 7abol jbae,
kajval?" xi la. Jmil-chitom la ti yajval 7une.
7A li "Maria Ia7!" xi la. 7A li chbat la 7un, 7i
"Chba sap i bikile!" xi la. Stam la, 7oy la yunen
k'a7-revoso 7un, ja7 la smochin ech'el chbat la ssap ti
bikil ti 7olol 7une.