February 12, 2000 1:30 pm University Museum Room 329
Speaker: Nancy Forand NForand@aol.com
Title: "Finishing the Road: Breaching Conflict via Courtship Dialogues"
Summary: This presentation reported on a field study in the Mayan
villages of Saban and Huaymax in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.
According to local customs, parents are responsible for negotiating marital
alliances on behalf of their children. Marriage is called "finishing
one's road" in the Yucatec language. It refers to the gendered social
roles that each of the partners plays as they walk the road of life together.
A woman's life is centered on the three stones of the hearth while a man's
life is centered on the milpa. A "proper"
marriage is arranged during a series of formalized meetings in which
the boy's father presents traditional brideprice offerings to the girl's
father, including gold jewelry and clothing for the girl, and chocolate,
rum, and soft drinks for her parents. Brideservice, the practice by which
the groom works for a period of time for the bride's father, is in decline,
partly due to the fact that many of the young men leave the village to
work in Cancun during the week.
The courtship rituals are social dramas in which the parents
work out the particulars of the marital transaction and establish an ongoing
alliance between the two families. The interactions play out the
unequal relations between the two families and the dependence of children
and their elders. No amount of brideprice can ever compensate the
girl's family for her loss, and so the groom's family remains forever indebted
to them. Elders often
give a ritualized speech to the couple about their marital duties.
The bride and groom must listen intently to the speech, and they are not
allowed to respond. After the brideprice has been accepted, the couple
is typically joined in a civil ceremony. The negotiation process
concludes as soon as a church wedding can be arranged and carried out.
Despite the conflict and tension that has resulted from the
introduction of Protestantism in the Mexican countryside, many small villages
today are religiously plural. The growth of the
evangelical Protestant population in the village (presently 30%) s
responsible for the emergence of a new form of the ritual dialogues, which
is clothed in Protestant symbolism. The presence of "True God" in
the transaction is signaled by reading the Bible, and not by the statues
and crosses that are found at folk Catholic services. Protestant
forms of prayer
are used. Also, because drinking of any kind violates their fundamentalist
code of ethics, Protestants do not present gifts of rum.
One of the greatest challenges to an individual's sense of
tolerance arises when his or her child wishes to marry a person belonging
to a competing religious community. While some parents simply reject
the idea (often with the result that the boy and the girl run off and live
together), others have participated in the courtship process as a necessary
step in negotiating a proper marital alliance. This pattern of courtship
represented the sole context of joint religious participation that was
observed between parties who subscribe to
different religious ideologies and moral codes. As it is customary
to honor the girl's family, the general form of the ceremony (Protestant
or Catholic version) and composition of brideprice is dictated by the religious
affiliation of the bride and her family. Negotiation of
mixed marriages indicates that the emerging religious tolerance is
founded on the creativity of individuals who have re-interpreted the Mayan
notion of harmony. After the wedding, the couple is expected to choose
one religion. The participation of the parents in the marriage negotiation
signals their willingness to accept their choice in the interest of preserving
relations with them, establishing the proper relations of respect with
the in-laws,
and accomplishing a marriage that is blessed by True God.
The talk was richly illustrated with slides, and stimulated considerable
questions and discussion afterwards.
Biography: Nancy Forand earned a masters degree at the University
of Illinois in
archaeology. She is presently a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology
at the University at Albany, State University of New York. For two years
Nancy lived in a Mayan village in Quintana Roo, Mexico, where she conducted
doctoral research on religious pluralism.