A Model of Changing Group Relations in the Mayan Highlands of Guatemala

Abstract

This paper proposes a model to describe and account for the changing character of ethnic and race relations in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala. The model is based primarily on ethnographic and ethnohistorical information gathered in the community of Aguacatan, a town and its surrounding territory in the northwestern highlands. The model distinguishes between "ethnic relations" among different Indian groups and "race relations" between Indians and Ladinos. It suggests that ethnic relations have passed from a centripetal to a centrifugal phase, while race relations have moved from a paternalistic to a competitive stage. This transformation in ethnic and race relations is seen as a single historical process, the causes of which are rooted in a confluence of demographic, economic, political, and religious changes, some local and some national. The model is then contrasted with a plural-theory model of group relations in the same region.