ABSTRACT
People live in dispersed hamlets collectively known by the name of the largest settlement or village which houses the local administrative and economic centre. Emol consists of a village with some three hundred families plus five scattered hamlets—Kotoh, Raxa, Malah, Chi Te, and Pachaq, which are up to an hour’s walk away from each other—with an average of eighty families each: approximately 3,000 people in all. The army capitalized on diese traditional hostilities, actively setting one village, or even hamlets within a village against each other. Inter-village celebrations, where they exist, are banded by interest group: in Emol, costumbristas and some ‘new’ Catholics from other communities visit on the annual festival of a village’s patron saint; patrols across communities were led to celebrate the anniversary of their foundation. Through catechism classes, villagers learnt about the ‘new’ Catholicism and discussed community problems. A few villagers live without religion.
