ABSTRACT
Containment of the crisis of leadership within municipal boundaries took different forms in each community. While I was working in the township of Amatenango from 1963 to 1967 there was a marked increase in the rate of homicide: whereas six men were killed between 1938 to 1957, thirty were killed between 1958 and 1965.25 Every weekend night, when young men of the village returned from their work in the lumber mill, I would hear shots fired, and there was at least one homicide committed during each major fiesta. Sometimes the motives would be rivalry over a girl, or cattle theft, but most were attributed to suspicion of witchcraft and envy.
