Highland Guatemala Research Articles

Aflatoxin Exposure Among Mothers and Their Infants from the Western Highlands of Guatemala.

We examined breast milk of mothers and urine of infants before and after introduction of supplementary foods for aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) and the association between AFM1 with maternal and infant diet. A prospective cohort study was conducted among mothers and infants ages 0-6months and 7-12months from June-October 2014. Sociodemographic, dietary, birth, and health data were collected. A breast milk sample was collected from each mother and a urine sample from each infant at baseline (time point 1) and monthly for 2 time points thereafter; samples collected at baseline and time point 3 were tested for AFM1. Almost 5% of breast milk and 15.7% of urine samples tested AFM1-positive. The median AFM1 in breast milk was 0.020ng/mL and in urine 0.077ng/mg creatinine. At time point 3, infants of 5 of the 6 mothers in each group who were AFM1-positive in breast milk were also AFM1-positive in urine. Mothers' consumption of cooked maize/maize dough ≥ 3days per week (OR 2.96, 95% CI = 1.19-7.34) and mothers' consumption of tamales made from maize ≥ 3days per week (OR 0.28, 95% CI = 0.10-0.73) were significantly associated with AFM1 in infant urine. This is the first study in Guatemala documenting aflatoxin exposure in both breastmilk of lactating mothers and infants´ urine during the first year of life. This may have important implications in understanding the multicausality of the high rates of stunting among children < 5years old in Guatemala.

Guatemalan Migration to Los Angeles:

The Guatemalan migration to Los Angeles hides behind a violent thirty-year Civil War that lasted from 1960 to 1996; the violent events started after the USA supported a coup against the Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. The coup marked the beginning of political instability in Guatemala. The instability led to the formation of guerrilla groups seeking to overthrow the military regime; the confrontation by both groups occurred in the highlands of Guatemala, where many of the indigenous villages were decimated, and its populations almost eradicated. As a result, an increased number of indigenous populations started escaping the political violence they faced by guerrilla and military groups and began migrating to Los Angeles. The number of indigenous people arriving in Los Angeles increased dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s; however, these communities continued to face adversities upon arrival in Los Angeles. The indigenous communities had to find ways to maintain their culture alive and settle in Los Angeles. This paper will seek to explore how the civil war in Guatemala led to an increased number of Guatemalans arriving in Los Angeles, focusing on the Mayan Kanjobal community. The paper will also focus on the settlement of the Kanjobales in the West-Lake and Pico-Union region of Southern Los Angeles and the ways their culture was challenged upon arriving at Los Angeles.

Recovering the Maya Constellations in the Highlands of Guatemala

Abstract For many generations, the Maya people of the highlands of Guatemala have been engaged in continual knowledge creation emerging from a deep and sustained relationship with the Earth and the sky. Maya elders and youth who are Calendar Keepers, or Ajq’ijab’ in the K’iche’ Mayan language, curate calendars with roots in pre-colonial times. The pressures of colonial invasion, civil war, and globalization have eroded the oral tradition and ancestral memory in the community, causing the loss of invaluable cultural information. Today, certain sectors of Maya youth are engaged in cultural revitalization and the recovery of ancestral astronomical knowledge. Our elders are extremely important for strengthening the oral tradition and the historical, scientific, and cultural understandings of the night sky. I describe a project of recovery of the Maya constellations, ancestral observation sites, and measurement techniques in the Guatemala highlands.

Distinct Changes Occur in the Human Breast Milk Microbiome Between Early and Established Lactation in Breastfeeding Guatemalan Mothers.

Human breast milk contains a diverse community of bacteria, but as breast milk microbiome studies have largely focused on mothers from high income countries where few women breastfeed to 6 months, the temporal changes in the breast milk microbiome that occur during later lactation stages have not been explored. For this cross-sectional study, microbiota from breast milk samples of Mam-Mayan mothers living in eight remote rural communities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala were analyzed. All mothers delivered vaginally and breastfed their infants for 6 months. Breast milk from 76 unrelated mothers was used to compare two lactation stages, either “early” (6–46 days post-partum, n = 33) or “late” (109–184 days post-partum, n = 43). Breast milk microbial communities were assessed using 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing and lactation stages were compared using DESeq2 differential abundance analysis. A total of 1,505 OTUs were identified, including 287 which could be annotated as putative species. Among several maternal factors, lactation stage explained microbiome variance and inertia in ordination with the most significance (p < 0.001). Differential abundance analysis identified 137 OTUs as significantly higher in either early or late lactation. These included a general shift from Staphylococcus and Streptococcus species in early lactation to Sphingobium and Pseudomonas species in late lactation. Species enriched in early lactation included putative commensal bacteria known to colonize the infant oral and intestinal tracts whereas species enriched in late lactation had a uniform functional trait associated with aromatic compound degradation. Differentially abundant species also included several species which have not previously been reported within breast milk, such as Janthinobacterium agaricidamnosum, Novosphingobium clariflavum, Ottowia beijingensis, and Flavobacterium cucumis. These discoveries describe temporal changes to the breast milk microbiome of healthy Guatemalan mothers from early to late lactation. Collectively, these findings illustrate how studying under-represented human populations might advance our understanding of factors that modulate the human milk microbiome in low and middle income countries (LMIC).

Maize intercropping in the milpa system. Diversity, extent and importance for nutritional security in the Western Highlands of Guatemala

We present an assessment of the extent, diversity, and nutritional contribution of the milpa through a quantitative analysis of data from a survey conducted in 989 small scale farm households in the Western Highlands of Guatemala (WHG). The milpa is a traditional agricultural system in which maize is intercropped with other species, such as common beans, faba beans, squashes or potatoes. Our study shows that more than two-thirds of the 1,205 plots recorded were under the milpa system, with a great diversity of crop combinations. As shown with the 357 plots for which specific yields were available, milpa systems present higher total productivity than monocropped maize, expressed as total energy yield of the harvested crops in the respective system, and were also better at providing the recommended daily allowances of fourteen essential nutrients, based on a Potential Nutrient Adequacy (PNA) indicator. Maize-bean-potato, maize-potato, and maize-bean-faba intercrops had the highest PNAs, and monocropped maize, the lowest. These results support the implementation of milpa systems tailored to different agro-ecologies in order to improve nutrition in the WHG and a variety of similar regions.

Writing Ajawarem: Establishing Authority over People and Territory in Three Sixteenth-Century Texts in the Highlands of Guatemala

This essay analyses Indigenous language expressions of authority in the highlands of Guatemala during the early colonial period. It centers on the concept of ajawarem (lordship, señorío) and what I argue are two of its main components: military and political might and legitimacy for leadership and the ability to collect tribute. I explore these two aspects via analysis of the couplets pus nawal and q'aq'al tepewal, as well as the concept of patan or tribute. In studying their use in three important ethnohistorical documents from the region, I trace the notion of ajawarem during the Postclassic period in the highlands and argue that it is wielded in the face of colonial imposition. After discussing the relationship between alphabetic writing and the evangelization process in the highlands, I provide analyses of these concepts as they appear in the Memorial de Sololá (Kaqchikel), the Popol Wuj (K'iche'), and the Título de Totonicapán (K'iche). Each text reveals both general and specific ways in which ajawarem was wielded and represented in alphabetic texts in the highlands.

“Destroying Generation after Generation”: Outbreaks of Smallpox in the Cuchumatán Highlands of Guatemala (1780-1810)

“Destroying Generation after Generation”: Outbreaks of Smallpox in the Cuchumatán Highlands of Guatemala (1780-1810)

Disruptive Bricolage

For many indigenous communities in the western highlands of Guatemala, transnational migration is considered critical to community survival. This paper analyzes how extreme migration enables new strategies of social formation and community governance for those who remain. My work builds on the scholarship of “afterlives” that calls for an examination of how historical trajectories embed themselves in contemporary social, cultural, and institutional configurations. Migration can productively be considered in terms of its afterlives. Through this frame, I illustrate how indigenous community members navigate conflicting ideologies of work, progress, and development as they collaborate with non-governmental organizations to support migration prevention initiatives. I argue that community members strategically draw on the Mayan cosmovision to contest western knowledge paradigms of development while simultaneously attending to the demands of external institutional legibility, and in so doing create novel formations of collective governance.

Applied Anthropology, Activism, and Loss: Experiences from highland Guatemala

AbstractIn this essay, I contemplate the ethics of community engagement based on my work as an applied medical anthropologist in Guatemala. During my dissertation fieldwork in a highland community, I lived with a local Mayan family, and our lives together centered on discussing their goals, community organizing, and strategies for improving indigenous rights. I describe how the relationships I built with this family and the social justice work happening in the community gave me a sense of purpose as an applied anthropologist. At the time, it seemed like participatory and collaborative research at its best. A year later, an adult son of the local family was murdered for his community work, calling into question the notions of progress and advocacy. Here, I discuss my struggle with the moral imperative of applied anthropologists to support the human rights of local communities in counterbalance to our ethical obligation to protect research collaborators.

Prevalence of clinically-evident congenital anomalies in the Western highlands of Guatemala

BackgroundCongenital anomalies are a significant cause of death and disability for infants, especially in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), where 95% of all deaths due to anomalies occur. Limited data on the prevalence and survival of infants with congenital anomalies are available from Central America. Estimates have indicated that 53 of every 10,000 live births in Guatemala are associated with a congenital anomaly. We aim to report on the incidence and survival of infants with congenital anomalies from a population-based registry and classify the anomalies according to the International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision (ICD-10).MethodsWe conducted a planned secondary analysis of data from the Maternal Newborn Health Registry (MNHR), a prospective, population-based study carried out by the Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research in seven research sites. We included all deliveries between 2014 and 2018 in urban and rural settings in Chimaltenango, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. These cases of clinically evident anomalies were reported by field staff and reviewed by medically trained staff, who classified them according to ICD – 10 categories. The incidence of congenital anomalies and associated stillbirth, neonatal mortality, and survival rates were determined for up to 42 days.ResultsOut of 60,142 births, 384 infants were found to have a clinically evident congenital anomaly (63.8 per 10,000 births). The most common were anomalies of the nervous system (28.8 per 10,000), malformations and deformations of the musculoskeletal system (10.8 per 10,000), and cleft lip and palate (10.0 per 10,000). Infants born with nervous system anomalies had the highest stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates (14.6 and 9.0 per 10,000, respectively).ConclusionsThis is the first population-based report on congenital anomalies in Guatemala. The rates we found of overall anomalies are higher than previously reported estimates. These data will be useful to increase the focus on congenital anomalies and hopefully increase the use of interventions of proven benefit.Trial registrationClinalTrial.gov ID: NCT01073475.

Antihero Care: On Fieldwork and Anthropology

Summary“Antihero care” offers an approach to anthropology that emphasizes the importance of fallibility over mastery and social connections over individually acquired knowledge. I draw together Le Guin’sCarrier Bag Theory of Fictionand Mol, Pols, and Moser’sCare in Practiceto analyze the challenge of carrying out fieldwork with my children in highland Guatemala. I describe how an everyday accident led me to refuse the “killer story” of the hero and to instead embrace a script that emphasized dependency and incompletion. In my case, antihero care has changed the way I engage with holism and biomedicine in my research and writing. More broadly, reframing limitations on knowledge as a strength—not a drawback—of the discipline usefully unsettles the boundaries between fieldwork and care work.

Towards more sustainable agricultural landscapes: Lessons from Northwestern Mexico and the Western Highlands of Guatemala

A systematic process for assessing progress toward landscape sustainability goals is developed and tested. Application of the approach builds capacity and promotes continual improvements in management practices, thus enabling timely action to address changing conditions while progressing toward locally defined goals. We consider how the approach applies to agricultural landscapes, that is farm ecosystem interactions with the environment and human well-being. We present lessons learned from applying the assessment approach in two contrasting situations: large, high-input, commercial agriculture in northwestern Mexico and small, low-input family farms in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Applying the approach reveals five attributes required for success and the means to achieve those conditions. (1) Having a capable local champion for the project is critical. (2) Implementation of the approach must be in concert with local people and organizations as well as with regional and national policies and programs. (3) Identification and engagement of key stakeholders is essential. (4) Application of the approach is not meant to be a one-time effort but rather an ongoing and systematic process. (5) Engagement and buy-in from stakeholders including multiple agency levels is essential for allocation of necessary resources and logistic support in the continuing implementation of the approach.

Short-Term Study Trips in the Americas: Pedagogy and Logistical Best Practices

ABSTRACT Using a case study, this paper explores the pedagogy and logistical best practices of leading short-term study trips to the indigenous highlands of Guatemala. The goals of community-engagement are to have students: 1) interact with people of different cultural, linguistic, political, and economic world views, expanding their range of diversity-training; and 2) think critically about poverty and human agency in a global context. Logistical considerations are a key component of the learning experience when markets suffer from asymmetric information and moral hazard. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting the ways that planning, programming, and logistics need to be woven into sustainable approaches to community engagement. For this to be an ethical endeavor, local peoples should be involved with the development and execution of the program. A barrier to learning can be a perception by students that, given their comparative economic privilege, they are there to “help” poor families. Students learn from host families about a different and holistic worldview, and gain insights into business development and its barriers. After the trip, students have a new way of thinking about diversity, agency, and workable approaches to ethical and sustainable self-help business developments.

Imperialist Irony

Imperialist Irony

Disentangling the effects of local resources, landscape heterogeneity and climatic seasonality on bee diversity and plant-pollinator networks in tropical highlands.

Land-use alteration and climate seasonality have profound effects on bee species diversity by influencing the availability of nesting and floral resources. Here, using twelve sites embedded in an agriculture-forest mosaic in the tropical highlands of Guatemala, we investigated the relative effects of climate seasonality and landscape heterogeneity on bee and floral-resource community structure and on their mutualistic network architecture. We found that climate seasonality affected bee diversity, which was higher in the wet season and associated positively with the availability of floral resources across both seasons. Bee community composition also differed between seasons and it was mainly driven by floral-resource richness and the proportion of agricultural, semi-natural and forest cover. In addition to the effects on bee diversity, climate seasonality also affected flower-bee visitation networks. We documented higher relative (null model corrected) nestedness in the dry season compared to the wet season. Niche partitioning as a result of competition for scarce resources in the dry season could be the process driving the differences in the network structure between seasons. Furthermore, relative nestedness was consistently smaller than zero, and relative modularity and specialization were consistently larger than zero in both seasons, suggesting the existence of isolated groups of interacting partners in all our flower-bee visitation networks. Our results highlight the effect of climatic seasonality and the importance of preserving local floral resources and natural heterogeneous habitats for the conservation of bee communities and their pollination services in tropical highlands.

The Indigenous Peoples of Mesoamerica and Central America: Their Societies, Cultures, and Histories

One of the inaugural recipients of our Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award, anthropologist Robert M. Carmack continues to enrich the field of Mesoamerican studies, the book under review one of several publications to appear since his retirement, a prodigiously fruitful one, after more than three decades of distinguished service at SUNY Albany. Compact yet wide ranging, The Indigenous Peoples of Mesoamerica and Central America is a synthesis of sorts, distilling the findings of Carmack’s sustained, assiduous labors since he filed his doctoral dissertation over half a century ago (Carmack 1965). That he draws still on data first unearthed in the archives or generated in the field when he was a graduate student at UCLA under the supervision of the inimitable H. B. Nicholson (1925—2007) says much about research forays undertaken not only to acquire a PhD but also to ensure outcomes that endure and continue to be relevant, a source of knowledge for generations to come.In an introduction that spells out what lies ahead for the reader—these days not always the case in many such endeavors—Carmack states succinctly that his goal is to “elaborate on the overarching history of the Central American native peoples, with references also to Mesoamerican influence on them through time.” He opts to “describe these little-known native peoples in highly humanistic terms,” doing so by placing “considerable emphasis on the nature of their indigenous societies, cultures, and countless internal and external struggles over many centuries” (ix).Carmack begins his honed narration with a discussion of the advanced, sophisticated character of the peoples under study. His first three chapters steer us, in turn, through (1) Spanish exploratory voyages and Central American geography, delineating the region’s teeming resources; (2) the state of cultural development in the three broad units that constitute his spatial embrace, which he identifies as northern (including the Yucatán peninsula and highland Guatemala), central (western Honduras, El Salvador, and the Pacific coast of Nicaragua), and southern (Costa Rica and Panama); and (3) contact scenarios between invading Spanish forces and the indigenous groups to which their imperial ventures exposed them. Chapter 4 relays how Mesoamerican influences emanating from Mexico shaped Central American mores. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 offer case studies over the longue durée from the three units identified as northern, central, and southern, set (respectively) among the K’iche’ Maya of Guatemala; the Chorotegas of Masaya, in Nicaragua; and the Chibchans of Buenos Aires, Costa Rica. Carmack concludes proceedings adroitly in chapter 8, viewing the experiences of the native groups examined “as the result of both external and internal sociocultural forces that prevailed in the Central American regions during their pre-Hispanic, colonial, and modern historical time periods” (xi). His exposition, beginning to end, is effectively a summing up of his life’s work.Carmack levels with readers at the outset, stating plainly that he has “drawn freely from a previous book in Spanish which deals exclusively with the Central American region” (xi), a volume that he edited and to which he contributed two substantive chapters (Carmack 1994). This is important to note, because a good number of the sources cited in The Indigenous Peoples of Mesoamerica and Central America do not appear in its bibliography but in that of the volume Carmack edited a quarter-century ago. The decision not to include them is a pity, indeed a curious editorial choice given Carmack’s acumen, prowess, and precision in that regard in other undertakings, best exemplified by Quichean Civilization, his magnum opus (Carmack 1973). Perhaps this might be borne in mind when a future edition of the book is contemplated. So, too, might other infelicities be attended to, among them locating Tikal in “Yucatan, Mexico” (34) (it is in Guatemala’s Petén region); denoting encomiendas as “royal land grants” (117) (they were awards of Indian tribute, not territory); and misspelling Colombia on figure 1.1 (2) as “Columbia.” These are minor snafus easily fixed, and they in no way detract from a stellar offering from, as Allen Christenson conveys on his back-cover endorsement, “one of the great scholars of our time.”Carmack closes with some trenchant thoughts on indigenous legacy. “The fact that descendants of former Central American native peoples have remained almost equal in numbers (around 5 million) to the total aboriginal population encountered in the region at the time of Spanish contact,” he observes, “is truly an extraordinary human survival achievement.” This is emphatically the case “in the context of the continued repression to which they have been subjected through the centuries” (119), nowhere more tragically so than in Guatemala in the early 1980s and the past two years in Nicaragua. Despite the iniquities inflicted on them, the indigenous peoples of Central America endure.

VASIJAS NO CONQUISTADAS. PATRONES DE CONTINUIDAD DE LA CERÁMICA MAYA

Contact with the Spanish resulted in marked changes in the way of life of the populations of the New World. The production of objects also had to respond to the new system, including new technologies. Ceramics constitute a good example, as a durable and indispensable material for carrying out various tasks, whose production was adapted and merged with the new colonial tradition. However, in several cases the elaboration techniques and other features were maintained. In this contribution, focus is placed on examples of Maya ceramics from the Western Highlands of Guatemala and of the Lacandones from Chiapas, Mexico. Taking into account some important factors such as decorations, forms and manufacturing techniques, as observed, for example, among the Chuj of western Huehuetenango and other communities of the highlands, as well as their spiritual content, as for the Lacandon censers of Chiapas. With regards to colonial ceramics, types exhibiting features of the prehispanic tradition have been identified, as for example, the Late Postclassic Chinautla polychrome type, which was used for funeral urns, a ceramic type that continues to be manufactured in the municipality of Chinautla, Guatemala to this day. This paper identifies the patterns of continuity, their circumstances, conditions, as well as possible generalizations.

Permanencia y uso contemporáneo del calendario Cholq’ij/Tachb’al Amaq’ en tierras altas de Guatemala

In the highlands of Guatemala, the knowledge and use of the Cholq’ij, 260-day ritual calendar, has persisted among contemporary Maya groups. Although it has not remained unchanged since pre-Columbian times, its characteristics do not show significant modifications and its constituent elements have subsisted through time. Its transformations have obeyed social, political and historical processes; this demonstrate the capacity of adaptation of the Maya people of Guatemala. At present the Cholq'ij is the axis of references and endogenous cultural proposals. This paper describes some of its main characteristics and constituent elements. In adition, we explain the way that this calendar is understood, transmitted, systematized and used among the Mayan people from the highlands of Guatemala. Likewise, we discuss on its scope and contemporary applications.

Reworking the Social Determinants of Health: Responding to Material-Semiotic Indeterminacy in Public Health Interventions.

Both public health experts and medical anthropologists are concerned with how health is shaped by environmental forces. This creates an important cross‐disciplinary alliance, yet crucial differences in how the two disciplines tend to evaluate health remain. In this article, I compare public health's “social determinants of health” framework with anthropological interest in the sociality of health and illness. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala's highlands, to unpack (1) “the social,” (2) “determinants,” and (3) “of health.” Ultimately, I show how the social determinants framework is deployed in ways that risk undermining its stated health justice goals, and highlight the benefits of an approach that does not know what health is ahead of doing research and which works closely with communities to respond to the effects of its own intervention. The article argues for the need to rework the emphasis on social determinants to make space for health's material‐semiotic indeterminacy

Non-linear Interactions Driving Food Security of Smallholder Farm Households in the Western Highlands of Guatemala

In the western highlands of Guatemala, the indigenous population is one of the most marginalized communities. The food security of subsistence and infra-subsistence smallholders within this population still relies on domestic agricultural production as the principal livelihood activity and the main source of food. Smallholder production systems in the region are complex, with multiple interacting subsystems functioning at different integration levels and with different temporal dynamics. Previous results, based on a data set of nearly 5,000 farm households using a robust food availability indicator (that quantifies agricultural production, consumption, transformation and commercialization of produce), have shown large differences in food security between farmers in the western highlands of Guatemala. Another important finding was that more than half of the farm households do not have the means to produce enough energy for home consumption from their agricultural activities. Identifying the constraints, patterns and underlying processes driving food security could give rise to a set of easy-to-measure variables that quickly and reliably assess household food security status; such a tool would be helpful for decision and policy makers trying to focus on actions more likely to succeed in improving food security in the region. In this study, we developed a predictive model of food security, through the application of machine learning techniques, to identify the most important factors, and their interactions, that account for variability in food security. The resulting “artificial neural network” model performed well, explaining nearly 85 % of the variance in food security status. By applying different sensitivity analysis methods, we were able to detect highly non-linear interactions between the different factors driving food security. Land availability per person is detected as the main constraint for attaining food security. The median value of land availability per person in the region is 0.085 ha, explaining why 52% of the farm household population does not produce enough food energy from agriculture. Many other interactions were found between crop land allocation, diversity, yields and food security, that can help to target interventions to improve the food security status in the region.