In 2015 my friend had a baby.
Many of my friends have made a hobby out of birthing babies. It’s like my version of crafting.
She told me that her mother-in-law, who is from Central America, called a child “malcriado” in front of her. She said that she didn’t like the term and wouldn’t use it with her own child. The word malcriado stuck in my memory. I found it interesting how differently cultures treat babies, talk to babies and believe babies should be raised.
When I moved to Guatemala last year I kept an ear out for the phrase malcriado. When I learned “criar” means “to raise” (as in, a child) and criar can also refer to breastfeeding, it helped me understand the term for it’s parts. The literal translation would be “badly raised” and the cultural translation in the States would be ‘spoiled brat.’
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I joke around with my host family all of the time, we’ve lived together now for 9 months today (I could’ve grown my own baby, really!). We joke about all sorts of silly to shuka (dirty) things when it’s just the four of us ladies. Abuelita can’t hear anymore so it’s truly just us three: my host mom, host sister and me. (What’s more: we’re usually talking in Spanish, and Abuelita speaks K’iche’). When I joke around or act a fool, my host mom will call me mañosa and we laugh.
In March of this year I heard about Mayan punishment for the first time. My friend, another volunteer, lives in rural Quiché in a town where they occasionally practice this form of punishment. This is a traditional Mayan practice but is not practiced in most parts of Guatemala. The Mayan tradition is still strongly upheld in parts of rural Quiché, especially where the Mayan traditions remain strong. She told me they publicly whipped a boy in the public square, someone who’d committed a crime, and that as a volunteer she chose not to go to the event. She did not want to show any form of support by quietly attending.
Just last month, I was in the library and one of the muni (town hall) coworkers was on facebook. He played a video of a woman being whipped in the public square that appeared on his mini-feed. It looked like a long, old school broom was being swiped across this young woman’s back. The woman in charge of the “whip” would strike her several times, then stop to roll up her woven güipil (her woven, Mayan blouse) and strike her again.
I’d never witnessed a public whipping. I mean, I thought of The Passion of the Christ when I saw this, that’s how unfamiliar I am with it personally. There was no blood that I could see. I asked: “Qué hizo la mujer?” and he said: “Creo que robó una vaca” (she stole a cow).
What shocked me about the video was the crowd, not the punished woman or the woman whipping her. They all had smart phones in hand, tablets, cameras, maybe every third person in the gathered mass of people, pointed at the young woman on her knees. That clutched at my heart. Did these people have no respect? Wasn’t being whipped in public enough? But this woman earned the punishment and lost the community’s trust so she didn’t deserve respect. She deserved disrespect. (I am describing what I understand the mindset to be, this is not my personal opinion).
And it struck me as she was being physically struck and recorded, this is a strange conflagration of ancient tradition with a disruptive technology (cell phones are still a fairly new technology for rural Guatemala). When Mayan punishment became a practice, cell phones obviously weren’t around.
I told my host sister about the video during lunch. “Does that happen here?” I asked. And she told me no. “No, aquí no. Pero es seguro que este pase por otros lados” (It is certain that it happens in other parts of the country). She asked where the video had been taken, I told her Quiché. And she said: “Yes, definitely Quiché. It’s that there’s no recourse from the government to control crime. So the people of the community do it, to quita la maña.”
And I was struck again by this new phrase: quita la maña. Quitar: to take away or get rid of something. I knew mañosa because my host mom jokingly called me mañosa in one of our laughing fits, but maña I didn’t know. If a woman is being whipped to quita la maña, I assume that the noun “maña” refers to some form of evil.
I thought of malcriado otra vez: spoiled brat.
And it fascinates me how cultures conceptualize, categorize and respond to bad things: clearly this approach employs pain, shame and a bad name.
After I saw the video, I tried to look it up on google and youtube to see if I could find this video. Naturally I searched it in English but couldn’t find anything. Just now I googled it in Spanish, Castiga Maya, and a host of videos and articles surgieron. I watched a few other young women being whipped and realized how mild the video was that I originally watched. I don’t want to watch anymore. The young woman I just watched cried out with every lash, her shirt off all the way down to her bra. The whipping lasted more than a minute, but she stood for 5 minutes before that as a man delivered an exposition about what was to take place. I felt uncomfortable watching it, like I was supporting or agreeing with the punishment.
In the video I saw over my friend’s shoulder, the young girl being whipped did not cry out. She maintained a straight, void expression throughout. I wonder if she wasn’t hurt or if she was trying to appear invincible, so the people would not feel they exacted their revenge.
From a linguistic perspective, The term “maña” works perfectly as an example of how differently we interpret things as a society. When I googled “maña” I found so many different definitions.
- Destreza/habilidad: skill, ability. 2. Astucia: cunning. 3: Vicio o mala costumbre: Vice or bad habit.
But mañosa turned punitive, maybe sexual, when I googled it: “naughty little girl” on urban dictionary. Whereas mañoso, the male version, refers to be being handy or dexterous (which makes sense because la mano means hand). This interpretation can change from Guatemala to Perú to Spain (see the slang interpretations here), and so does how we approach the concept of crime and how it should be addressed.
Más que todo, I’m a visitor here. I know how it feels to watch the video, the girl having to pass through the town square walking on her knees, caminar de rodillas, as part of her verguenza, her shame. But ultimately I’m not here to pass judgment on this ancient practice. I just want to recognize the tradition and explain it to those who are curious, and to note how unfamiliar I am with it. But it seems that Guatemala, por lo menos, finds it noteworthy enough to report on national news. To me that says that this culture is not in complete agreement or perhaps simply recognizes the extremity of the treatment.
And on a simpler note, it’s difficult to understand a multi-national language in one culture. Namely coger is the “F” word in Guatemala, apparently, but in Mexico you can coger el bus without saying a vulgar thing. Obviously, this cuesta for second language learners. My boss uses the phrase “a good relation” or “to have a good relation” when she gives trainings in English. English is not her first language, and she prefers that we correct her if she says something wrong (I ask my jóvenes to do the same). So yesterday I told her it’s much better to use the term “relationship” than relation. Relation in the States usually reminds people of the phrase “sexual relations.” You can say “in relation to” without it turning sexual, but “have a relation” just falls a bit funny on the ears, no?
Recently one of my middle school students asked me: “Is it true that people just hit kids in your country?” I’ve been asked a lot about the States since living here almost a year, but that was a new one. Also, I wondered where she got that impression, Lifetime movies? Most kids don’t have access to many channels here in the campo but they do watch a lot of movies dubbed over in Spanish. Hmm… I responded and said: some parents punish their children with spankings (trying to translate that was not easy, by the way, saaaber how I said it). And then I pointed to the map of the US and noted it’s size in comparison with Guatemala. Essentially I explained that our culture is wide-sweeping and there are a host of cultures represented in the term “Estadounidense.” I mean, if they have ever watched TLC then they might think we’re polygamists or only buy wedding dresses that cost $5,000. Maybe she has seen tourists spank their kids? But really I have no idea.
As a German woman once said to me: “If you watch US tv, it’s look like US American women are “wirgins and bitches.” I had a really, really good laugh.
So I mention that to say, remember that Guatemala has many cultures represented here: Xinca, Maya, Ladina and Garífuna. Don’t apply the stories I tell to an entire culture and certainly don’t believe everything you read on the news or maybe we’re all a bunch of wirgins and bitches.