Kristyn M. Roser, Dr. John P. Hawkins, Anthropology

“Me levanto temprano, punts mi fuego, lavo mixtamal, voy al molino, y regreso para preparar los alimentos para mis hijos y mi esposo.” So begins a typical day for a woman in Ixtahuacan. It is a day focused on caring for family and preparation of food—tasks that renew themselves each time the sun rises. Hands that slap tortillas, envelope tamales in corn leaves, scrub clothes in the pila, lift children into rainbow colored baby wraps, weave symbols into huipiles, light fires—hands that work to develop the community.

The research for my project was conducted in the Maya K’iche village of Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan located in the north western highlands of Guatemala. My study focused on women’s participation in community development and specifically how religion influences their participation. During my stay I was able to become familiar with development organizations in the town and attend several meetings. Women’s development groups offered cooking classes, nutritional lectures, literacy classes, and skills workshops in areas such as sewing, gardening, and child care. I interviewed both Protestant and Catholic women to discover their reasons for participation or non-participation within these community development groups.

Ixtahuacan has undergone a great religious upheaval in recent years. Once completely Catholic, many people in the town are now participating in a collage of Protestant or Evangelico religions. The arrival of these religions entails the arrival of different ways of thinking, acting, working—different ways of relating to the community. According to anthropologist Sheldon Annis, “there is a Protestant ethic- and the draw of the new creed at the village level is closely related to the fact that it encourages personal rather than collective uses of wealth.” In other words, the Protestant religions are moving their congregations away from community integration. This results in an increasing lack of involvement in development organizations within the community.

I explored the reasons why Protestant women are less likely to participate than the Catholic women. One Protestant woman commented, “The majority of women involved in development groups are Catholic because they like to participate, and they have more liberty because the majority of the groups and institutions are Catholic based.” This point rings true, the majority of the development groups in the town do have a Catholic origin. One of them, Pan de Vida, is actually directed by the Mother Superior nun. Familia a Familia is a privately funded development organization, yet its origins are with the Catholic priest. Yet, there are several non-religiously affiliated groups such as DIGESA, a government organization, that are still overwhelmingly Catholic in membership. Most projects are not actually funded only from Catholic sources, but most project leaders and workers are Catholic. Thus, many Protestants perceive the connection of religious affiliation to development even though all projects are open to people of any faith.

Another explanation derives from the fact that many Protestant pastors proclaim that it is a sin to participate in such groups. Women repeatedly told me that Protestants were forbidden to receive cosas regalados or hand-outs. Many indicated that people should profit by their own labor and not become dependent on charity. Several women quoted Bible passages to me such as “By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” One woman told me that the reason Evangelical women are less likely to participate is because they say it is of the devil or anti-Christ that women should receive such aid. One of the development projects distributes food stuffs such as corn, oil, flour, and fish to women who are members. There is the idea that in the last days the anti-Christ will come offering things and then trap people through such aid.

So indeed, the Catholics do have more liberty to participate. Not only do the institutions and groups tend to have a Catholic identity, but this supports the Catholic emphasis on seeking to improve the present world, while the Protestants seem to be going to the other extreme by steadfastly focusing on the spiritual world to come. Many Protestants feel that with the second coming of Christ being so close, there is no point in focusing on temporal needs met by development: “nosotros los evangelicos—as Protestants we have to nurture carefully our spiritual life because we don’t know what is going to happen in these last days and the second coming of Christ is nearing.” I found that as a replacement for participating in women’s development groups within the community, Evangelical women are involved in prayer groups. While many Catholic women find sisterhood, support, and companionship in these development organizations, the Protestant women satisfy this need by attending their church’s more spiritually oriented prayer groups.

Yet, the equation is not so simple. It would be easy to say that the Protestant women do not attend development groups because their religion forbids it or they just do not care to, but I discovered that there was more to the story. One Evangelical convert told me how her daughters were participating in a Catholic development program through the clinica paroquial. However, one morning a Catholic catchiest chastised her daughters for coming to receive medicine and vitamins saying, “you no longer have the right to come here because you have otro religion aparte—your own separate religion.” The woman continued by saying she went to the clinica and told the man there to remove the names of her grandchildren from the receiving list. Other Protestant women confessed that they would participate in development organizations but they do not want to be the subject of Catholic women’s chastisement or gossip.