ABSTRACT
Traveling west toward Tecpan from Guatemala City on the Pan-American Highway, one climbs almost 2,000 feet in little more than 50 kilometers. For most Tecpanecos, the home symbolically represents and physically embodies the comfort and security of a refuge from the wider world. In traditional Kaqchikel marriages, negotiations between the two families take place in a series of pedidas, ritualized nighttime meetings at the home of the woman's family. Mealtime interactions are very important in Kaqchikel families and society. The kitchen in most Kaqchikel houses is at once dark and smoky and warm and inviting. In anthropological terms, contemporary Kaqchikel kinship is cognatic with a patrilateral bias. This is to say, that, like own kinship system, Kaqchikeles consider themselves to be related to both their mother's relatives and their father's relatives. Where kinship is most complexly and regularly played out is in the home. The number of family members residing in the same compound can be large.
