Word: zinacanteco
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Dates: during 1961-1961
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Zinacantan is the physical center of the universe. Or so the Zinacantecos believe people, eight thousand strong, scattered over a mountainous section state of Chiapas, Mexico, near the Guatamalian border--an area that seems quite insignificant on any map of the world. But Zinacantecos do not care how they appear to the rest of the world. They do not even think of themselves primarily as Indians, despite the fact (unrecognized by them) that descendants of the great Mayan race. What a Zinacanteco? He speaks a language known as "Tzotzil." He has developed over centuries a way of life strongly resistant...
Just to make sure he always knows who he is, the Zinacanteco dresses in his own distinctive, unique, and (to Western eyes) out-fashion. All the men wear short pants, even in the coldest weather. They all wear the red and white striped shirts and pink tasseled scarves their wives weave for them. And to top it off, they all wear flat- brimmed straw sombreros dangling hosts of long multi-colored ribbons behind them...
...before dawn. By the time I was Zinacanteco would already have the fire heating an earthenware pot of dark beans which had been simmering all night, while we slept under our open, cane-thatched shelter. For breakfast we ate the beans, all of us sitting around the same pot, each scooping out his beans with a toasted tortilla...
...group would eventually stop work at mid-morning for a custom as necessary as the coffee break or English four-o'clock tea: Zinacanteco nine-o'clock pozol. Sitting at the edge of the cornfield under the shade of an oak, the Indians wash their hands meticulously and rinse out their mouths with water. The men would then take out their pozol, a yellow ball of corn mash the shape of a pineapple, wrapped in green cornhusks. Each of us took a handful of the cold pozol and put it in our bowls, adding water and stirring it with...
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