INDIAN CHILDREN OF GUATEMALA

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 282, 26 August 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

INDIAN CHILDREN OF GUATEMALA

They Are Grown-Ups From The Day They Walk

The Indians of Guatemala are short and compact, and so tightly encased in their embroidered costumes that to strangers they suggest images—terracotta images stiffly draped and bound —an impression emphasized by _ their erectness. The women, in particular, from constantly balancing and carrying jars, baskets, and burdens upon their heads, seem to be in one solid piece, writes Agnes Rothery, in ‘•lmages of Earth: Guatemala.” As if they themselves recognized the resemblance, they are continually fashioning tiny efligies of clay; threeinch women of brown glazed earth, pigmy men with blouses and broadbrimmed hats painted in bright stripes. Sometimes they adapt these grotesques so that they can be used as candlesticks or whistles or vessels of some kind. But many, perhaps most of them, are apparently made for the mere fun of the making. ... But it is not the men and women, it is not their mimic statues, but a manikin size between which is most unforgettable: those Indian children, who, from the time they wear any clothes at all, are dressed identically like adults, and whose very gestures and facial expressions precisely duplicate those of their parents. The softest toddler is wrapped in the same heavily woven stuffs as clothe his elders. The skirt of a two-year-old girl is pulled tight about her tiny hips and held securely in place by a close sash. It is long or short, striped or solid in colour, according to the local feminine fashion. Her blouse is embroidered in the pattern and colours traditional to her birthplace. She caries a rebosp precisely like her mother’s, only of doll-like dimensions. She is, in brief, a thirty-inch replica of a woman.

As soon as ,'i little girl can walk she begins to balance objects on her head, and it is a proud day when she is first given a diminutive water jug to carry to the pila. As soon as a little

boy can grasp it, he acquires a machete —no mimic toy but a bona tide weapon. Outside a schoolroom door are piled the ferocious knives and daggers belonging to the infants within, quite as, with us, mittens are left in the kindergarten cloakroom. Suckling babies are carried in a shawl slung upon the mother’s back .... This shawl is their sole vehicular experience. As soon as they wriggle out of it, they walk. There are no perambulators or go-carts, no conveyances of any kind. The rare beasts of burden are carriers of freight. Eew Indian children, outside a town, have ever seen a wagon, fewer an automobile. Practically none have ever been farther than their bare feet have carried them. Possibly this is why there is such quietness in their faces, such repose in their movements ami postures. Neither are they subjected . to emotional agitation, for demonstrativeness is barred. Children who are old enough to stand do not climb into the maternal lap or sit upon the paternal knee. One sometimes sees them standing, their little heads resting against a parent’s shoulder or thigh, perfectly upright, fast asleep. But though they are not encouraged in babyish dependence, they are trained in politeness. If his elder speaks to a well-brought-up Indian boy, the urchin immediately steps forward, fold_s both arms across his breast and bows his bared bead, holding it thus till the grown person touches it with his hand. There is something so affecting in this reciprocal attitude that many a stranger, seeing it for the first time, feels tears rising in his heart and gathering in his eyes as he looks upon the two bright figures, so similar in their restraint, so dissimilar in size. They seem like archaic images symbolizing a spiritual salutation —a blessing from the stronger, received in meekness by the weaker.