ABSTRACT
The road turns east; negotiates a stony gorge, then a long narrow valley offering certain agricultural hopes; and finally reaches the town of Uspantan. adinos and K’iche’s are both also, to different degrees, dominant ethnic groups. Ladinos have a monopoly of power at the national level, where they run the state, the army, the Catholic Church, and every other national institution. Mayan farmers are said to be rooted to their land, but the primordial imagery is almost a denial of how their relationship to it requires periodic uprooting. In Quiche Department the densely settled municipios of the south have sent landless peasants north, into the mountains of Uspantán and neighboring municipios. At first sight Uspantan looks like a ladino town, but this is partly the result of a 1985 earthquake that destroyed much of the old adobe construction.
