Camilo JiménezApril 15

Parents never leave an unmarried daughter alone. When she goes to carry wood, or anything outside of the house, a sister or a brother in the family accompanies her.

Francisco Mendoza

Unmarried boys do not drink, because if the get a reputation as drinkers, they will not be accepted by a girl’s parents. They lose the possibility of a good marriage.

RMLApril 19

Parents rarely hit their children in public. Children cry very little, and usually only when they are breast-feeding. Women do not refuse to breast-feed their children. I saw a woman who apparently detested her child—in place of offering her breast she gave the child a ticundul (?) that had the form of a breast.

In the evening the children gather gardenias to cut off their buds, which they take home to put in a glass of water.

Modesto Diego

A father counsels his son about ways of women, etc. His mother may listen but she does not instruct her son. While relaxing at work parties, wakes, or weddings, the elders [presumably the older men] frequently talk about life and how one ought to live. There are some young girls who don’t pay attention to their parents.

Otitlán; Woman rocking her baby

RML

Women carry their children in a cloth tied with three knots. When they go to a dance, they hang these cloth slings from the cross beams with a rope. At home they tie them to a wooden hook (for this purpose). When a woman wants her child to be put in the cloth sling-- if it’s too far to walk-- first she puts the corner of the cloth on the child’s head in the form of a turban. The child is lifted, and the legs are placed in the opposite corner. With a single movement she brings the cloth up and around so that it stays on the baby’s shoulder, with the third knot in front. To calm her child she can spin or turn the cloth by grabbing it with her hand, or she can hang (the cloth sling) from her shoulder and rock it – back and forth or behind her back. If the child cries, she can pat gently on the bottom of the sling (the back of the child).

Women nursed their children by raising their huipiles or, more commonly, by lowering it.

Melchor GarcíaApril 20

It used to be that people expressed a great deal of respect towards elders. If a young person met an elder on the road, he would remove his hat, offer a hug [un abrazo], and yield the right of way on the road.

Juan FlorentinoApril 21

When a father returns from the field his children greet him, and later, when he enters the house, he greets them.

Silvestre CuevasApril 26

There are few girls in San Martín who “like men.” One might ask for money, while others receive gifts from men. A man asks what she would like to have—a kerchief, etc.

A story: A young man married, and the day after the first night the mother-in-law asked her daughter if she had eaten her husband’s brown sugar loaf (panela--- also translated as ‘hat’ in some parts of México). The young woman replied that she had eaten the brown sugar the night before. But her mother realized that the girl did not understand. The mother-in-law told her husband that the boy had not slept with his wife. The father-in-law spoke to his son-in-law, telling him, “What a brute you are!” He commanded the boy to tie up a cock all day without giving him food. At the end of the day the father-in-law stuck a grain of corn in the boy’s ass, at the same time setting free the cock. The cock voraciously pecked the boy’s ass, and the boy, greatly agitated, shouted to his father-in-law to put in another little grain of corn. The father-in-law laughed mockingly and said to him, “Corn? What corn?” At that point the boy realized how one pursues the matrimonial life. Fathers and mothers equally chide their children.

Silvestre CuevasApril 26

Children begin working at seven to eight years of age, carrying wood, water, etc. At nine or ten a boy starts working in the field, and a girl begins making tortillas.

Boys learn about sexual matters from older friends, not from their father. Girls learn for the first time when they marry.

Silvestre learned the mechanics of the [sexual] act from a girl who had been abandoned by her husband. He asked the girl, “What do I do?” and she taught him right away.

RMLMay 7

The main diversion for boys is playing with a slingshot, though I never saw that they had killed any birds. Little boys also played with a small, triangular platform made of sticks. At the front end they would tie a vine and pull it like a cart. Sometimes two sticks below functioned as wheels. They also use the leaf that covers a bunch of bananas. This leaf hardens and forms a little boat that they pull across the ground.

Little boys playing together

Boys also make knives and machetes out of wood.

When they go to a wake in the evenings, little boys amuse themselves with fireflies. They attract them with a firebrand and then hit them with a hat. They don’t kill them. They like throwing fireflies onto the roof of a house, where they are dramatically visible in the palm leaf thatch. Young men have fun seated on the ground with cigarettes and a deck of cards on an open kerchief. They wager cigarettes, and sometimes nickels (five cent coins).

Little boys climb trees to pick fruit— jiniquile [Inga edulis—ice-cream-bean], zapote, etc.

RMLApril 15

Little boys fly on a spinning pole—a pointed stick that forms the base for a wooden cross bar that has a hole where the pointed end enters. There is either a notch or a handle lashed on in order to hold on to it.

Little boys and a spinning pole

~April 17

On the side of the road I saw a paper lashed to a bush with hibiscus [fiber]. It had a face and some scribbles. Its eyes were paper cutouts. The rest was in pencil. According to Leonardo Ronquillo, it’s a toy.