As I’ve mentioned before, everyone is related to everyone else in this village. Our neighbor, Nas Palas, has been holding family meetings every couple of weeks since we moved in. They call the meetings via the Mayan Mind Link, so we never know when these conclaves are going to happen until the appointed time- when a score of random people suddenly appear in our yard to wait the required hour or so until everyone else shows up. At first this was disconcerting, but we are kindof used to it now.

“Are you related to Nas too?” I asked Lucas, who was standing in the crowd talking to Manuel and Don Palxun. He nodded sheepishly.  

I have asked Nas about the meetings a few different times, and never got a really clear answer as to what they’re all about. “Family business,” he says, and one time he mentioned something about land and his grandfather. Last week, however, we saw what I think was the last of the meetings. It was particularly large, and there were two men present who were obviously from out-of-town. I could tell by their clothes, and the fact that they brought a laptop and an old dot-matrix printer.

“Who are THOSE guys?” I asked Nas as he was running an extension cord out the window to the table set up in the yard.  

“Those are the lawyers!” he smiled jovially. Suddenly, several random conversations I’d had with him fell into place. Most people wouldn’t be pleased to have lawyers in their yard, but in this case they were here to arrange all the paperwork for a complicated land inheritance scheme. Since time immemorable, the Mayans have passed land down through family lines by verbal agreement, but a few years back the govenrment passed a law that all land inheritances have to be legalizado, or filed legally, by a certain cutoff date. This is causing a lot of families to scramble to get all the paperwork done.

This is made more complicated by cultural factors. Several generations back, mothers gave birth a dozen times, but most of the children didn’t survive to reach inheriting age. Nowadays, with improved healthcare (relatively speaking) and a continued lack of family planning, families might have 10 or more living offspring. A few generations of that, and Grandpa’s massive farm holding turns into sixty or seventy tiny farm plots scattered throughout the valley.

In the case of Nas Palas’s family, all these people had a claim. Some were here to get it written down on paper. Others had moved to the city, or weren’t farmers anymore, or were just looking for a quick buck… and were here to sell their shares to those who still farm the land. “Where is this land, anyway?” I asked Nas as he was watching all his distant relatives mill around in the yard.

“It’s up above Campana, where we walked that first week you were here,” he answered.

“Up past the miman ch’en?” I asked. (the big rock)

He smiled, happy that I remembered the landmark. How could I forget it? On the high road up the mountain, there is a really cool geologic feature, a massive granite spur maybe 40 feet high that butts right up against the road. “Yes!” he replied. “In fact, the miman ch’en is part of the property.”

That’s good; I always worry about people not taking care of their natural wonders, but Nas is a good steward of the land. The Miman Ch’en would be a sort of white elephant, though: a beautiful natural feature, but useless for farming on. “Which of you gets the actual rock?”

“My uncle and I; the line falls right down the middle of it,” he said, gesturing towards Don Palxun while answering two questions at once. I always knew those two were related somehow, but the specifics eluded me*. I guess I should update the Family Tree now.

Speaking of family tree, we went to the sixth grade graduation last night. This time it was a lot different than last year’s festivities. Not in format or in content, but more in how we perceived the entire thing. Sure, it was a big Mayan party with marimba, dancing, and the occasional drunkard. We got drafted to hand out diplomas, just like last year. But this year, we knew SO MANY PEOPLE. It was really moving to see a sixth-grade graduate take the stage, then realize that we know the nervous parents standing with them. Elias, Daniel, Bernabe, Pablo, Ewul, Nitto… friends and acquaintances we’ve made in the time we’ve lived here. These people are pillars of the community, but to see their kids graduate sixth grade? It’s a huge deal. Many of these adults can’t even read.

It’s great to get to know them so well, but awkward social things still happen. Outside of the community center, a group of girls were giggling and pointing at Emily. We assumed this was just because she showed up in her new traje (traditional costume) that she will be telling you about in her next post. When we got inside, though, some of the women pulled Emily aside to tell her that she’d not quite tied it correctly, and one of the inner layers was overlapping. From what I gather, it’s the Mayan equivalent of leaving your fly unzipped in public.

Which is ironic, because in Guatemala, guys are always walking around with their fly unzipped.

*Further questioning later revealed that they are actually cousins