ABSTRACT
Modem Mesoamerican ethnography began with a paradigm that tended to describe institutions in rural communities considered to be static, bounded and closed entities. The move toward recognizing conflict, urbanization, and change during the late 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent emphasis on political and economic factors, tended to relegate culture to a secondary position in the analyses of customs and behavior patterns. The other body of anthropological literature which helps to explain the context of Maya refugees in the United States is that which analyzes Mesoamerican popular religious traditions. The Mayan Diaspora is the name some have given to the forced dispersal of the Maya population from their ancestral homes in Western Guatemala. The highland Mayas spend more time and energy resources on the rituals and practices of modem Catholicism than they do on traditional costumbre, the Maya-Christian syncretic practices.
