Cultura Acateca

Páginas: 5 (1102 palabras) Publicado: 13 de noviembre de 2012
The acatecos is an ethnic group that has Mayan origins.
They are located in San Miguel Acatan, a department owned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala, but the territory of the acatecos also covers part of Chiapas, Mexico, specifically “La Trinidad” town.
The relation with other cultures, like the Chuj, Kanjobal or Mam is very close, because they share the same territory.

The productive activitiesare a lot, but the majority of the people work with the iron and the copper. Also, they make a lot of crafts with the maguey fiber. In San Miguel Acatán, iron forging is transmitted from the father to his sons, because this is the activity that has been practiced for years and it’s a tradition.

They have a social distribution in which the oldest people of the community are the sector who takesthe most important decisions in the community, because they are known as the “sages” of the group. But this doesn´t mean that the young people have no choice on the community’s decisions; the youngest ones advice the old men in order to have tranquility in the town. Also for the young men is a goal that they can serve to the old men, because in a future, they will be older and would be the mostimportant people in the community.

There are only a few stereotypes associated to the acatecos, because they’re not so popular and not all the people know them. But the stereotypes that can be associated are the ones that the people from Guatemala have, like they would be ignorant, aggressive, dangerous or poor people.

In the acatecos culture, as it was mentioned before, have an ideology tobe a collective society, where each member of a family has a job and a mission in the community. Nowadays, the acatecos are known as helpful people and that they don’t only care about their community, they care about all the communities around them, and demand for their rights.
In the acatecos community, the majority of the people are included in extended families. This is because all themembers of the family need to help in order to pay expenses or simply sustain the economy in the family. Also the families are extended because they have a philosophic idea which says that the oldest people are the sagest people in the community, so it is a blessing that in a family could be at least one ancient. Comparing the stereotypes of families between Mexico and Guatemala, we can say that in theacatecos community the young and the oldest ones have many preferences when they go to the supermarket, for example; because they were known as “the present and the future”. Here in Mexico we don’t have that type of culture taken, because there are many people that think that the oldest people are like an “obstacle” or a “hindrance”, or that “they can’t perform for nothing”. And that aspect is athing that we can take from this culture.
Gender Roles. Women and Men are kind of equilibrated basing us in other cultures where the women are always discriminated. It’s true that the women can’t do some jobs, because the community says that only the men can work and the women need to take care of the family and feed them. But nowadays, the women in the acatecos culture are the ones that demandfor their rights, like the health rights for all the community. Also they are responsible of maintain the calm in the community.
The religion that the Acatecos have is a mixture between the Catholicism and the customs and rituals that the acatecos have since their ancestors. This kind of particular Catholicism was created accidentally because when the Spanish conquerors arrived to Guatemala, theSpanish priests tried to inculcate the Catholicism to the Indians, but this was a complete failure because only few people from the town could be converted; the rest of the acatecos were kind of confused and began practicing some catholic rituals but mixing them with their own rituals.
HISTORY. There were two events in Guatemala that influenced the acatecos: the internal and the external...
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