Land and the Indians
Facts summarized from Collier
The Indians live in the central mountainous region of Chiapas, a state
in the southeastern part of Mexico. They farm the highlands, growing
corn and beans, the staple of their diet. They make their houses,
clothes, and tools from the resources of their land. Land is the most
important asset to the Indians; it is their sole means of livelihood.
Indians who own much land are considered wealthy in the community.
Their religion places them subservient to nature, and their lands have
sacred significance.
The Indian religion is based upon Mayan cosmetology, and is very much
based upon the land, or the 'Holy Earth'. Deities in the earth give
rain for the crops, wind, lightning, and agents of evil which cause
death. Man is powerless before nature, and struggles to keep the
delicate balance that keeps the wrath of the deities from tumbling
down upon him.
Agricultural rituals are performed to exhorcise evil spirits, eg. the
milpa ritual, to keep the wind from the corn, which both physically
flattens it and steals its soul in passing.
The land is sacred. The Indians believe that their land is 'ancestral
private property' passed down to them by sacred ancestral generations,
and that man has two souls, one which wanders, the other which is kept
by a familiar in the earth under the tallest mountain in the township.
Because their lands are sacred, the Indians cannot simply go somewhere
else, abandoning their and their ancestors' souls. They can't simply
begin a new profession, either; their entire idealogy is based on
their working the land.