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The town of Jocotán is situated in the north-eastern region[1] of Guatemala and is the capital of Jocotán, one of the five municipios (Jocotán, Camotán, Olopa, La Union and San Juan Ermita) that make up the ‘Ch’orti area’ (Figure, published with the permission of Brent Metz and the journal Human Organization). Most indigenous groups inhabit the western and the northern highlands of the country whereas the ‘Ch’ortis’ are located in the east and surrounded by a ladino population. The whole Ch’orti area covers a population of approximately 100,000 people of which 75,000 are considered indigenous Ch’orti (Metz, 2001). The Ch’ortis are mainly concentrated in the aldeas (indigenous villages) of the municipio of Jocotán, close to the Honduran border in the county of Chiquimula with a population of approximately 40,000 (Census 2002).

Jocotán town has a weekly market that attracts the indigenous people from the surrounding aldeas and there are many shops, a church, a bank, a post office, a radio station and several schools. Modern health care services in Jocotán town consist of the governmental health centre (GHC), the dispensary ‘Bethania’ and several private doctors’ clinics and pharmacies. One medical director, one doctor, one professional nurse and several auxiliary nurses staff the GHC which has in-patient facilities. The dispensary ‘Bethania’ is a non-governmental organization established by Belgian nuns in 1958 that has been incorporated as one of the health providers (Prestadores de Salud) in the System of Integrated Health Care (SIAS). It is staffed by a medical director, two medical students, one professional nurse and several auxiliary nurses and equally has in-patient facilities. In order to access a (private or governmental) hospital, one has to go to Chiquimula, where the governmental hospital operated by the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security (IGSS) is located, or Zacapa, both at one hour by car. Two aldeas (Tunuco Arriba and Guareruche) in Jocotán municipio have a health post staffed by an auxiliary nurse. People from the surrounding aldeas have access to these health posts which offer very limited services. The GHC and ‘Bethania’ in Jocotán send out their doctors on monthly visits but many aldea patients are forced to walk several hours to Jocotán in case of emergency. For local health care services, the people from the aldeas rely on household remedies or consult the trained health worker (promotor de salud), the health guardian (guardian de salud), the traditional healer (curandero) or the traditional birth attendant (comadrona).

Catholicism is the predominant religion in Jocotán municipio; however, increasing numbers of people have joined the Evangelical Churches. In the more traditional and remote aldeas, the women are still wearing their colourful traditional dresses and the people are speaking the Ch’orti language. Like their ancestors, the Ch’orti’s diet mainly consists of black beans and tortillas[2]. Malnutrition among infants and mothers is very common in the aldeas and child mortality is believed to be very high.

Jocotán municipio is characterised by a high concentration of indigenous people. The figure (constructed by Michael Kraft and Sofie De Broe) below shows the percentage of indigenous people in each of the municipios in Guatemala. There is a historic reason for the very high concentrations of indigenous people in the northern highlands of Guatemala. In those areas, the land is particularly infertile and the climate is colder than in the rest of the country. The Spanish conquerors considered them of little economic value and unattractive. Many of the indigenous communities fled the repression of the Spanish colonisers and settled in those areas (Lutz and Lovell, 1990).

In 1991, Jocotán had an irregular water and electricity supply. Most roads were unpaved and access to the nearest large city Chiquimula was via an earth road. Most aldeas around Jocotán were only accessible via narrow walking paths. The majority of the aldeas around Jocotán had neither water nor electricity supply. In 2001, the year of the sixth visit to the area, those conditions had changed in Jocotán municipio. Access to Jocotán had substantially improved with the construction of the highway to Honduras and hourly public transport was available to Chiquimula or Guatemala City. Most roads in Jocotán were paved, most households had a television and telephone and an increasing number of families owned a car. Several internet cafés had opened by 2004, the year of the second field trip. Even though access to the aldeas had also improved dramatically with the construction of roads and bridges and many aldeas have now water and electricity supply; access to health care services remains difficult for a large part of the Ch’orti population. Living conditions remain harsh in the aldeas where most people live in huts, with an earth floor and corrugated iron or palm roof. In September 2001 famine had struck the Ch’orti area because of persistent drought and plummeting international coffee prices. Most people who live in the aldeas are subsistence farmers or landless labourers. Their family incomes vary monthly depending on the harvest or available labour on the ‘fincas’ and often do not exceed 500 quetzals (65 US dollars). Many people from the aldeas have opted for a life in the town so that Jocotán has grown from just over 1700 people in 1991 to nearly 5000 inhabitants in 2004.

In 2004, Jocotán town had grown into five districts of which two had been added over the past ten years along with several small pockets of households. Through the influx of migrants from the aldeas, even greater socio-economic and cultural divisions than before now mark Jocotán-town. The immigrants from the aldeas do not have any external characteristics that distinguish them from the people from the town (nobody wears a traditional dress or openly speaks Ch’orti); however, they retain some of their customs and beliefs and are categorised by people from the town by their place of origin (‘from the aldeas’). Whilst a large part of the Jocotán residents are now able to afford a much higher standard of living often thanks to the salaries of family members working in the United States; immigrants from the aldeas live on the outskirts of town in equal or worse living conditions than in their aldea but with geographical access to public services.

[1] Guatemala is divided into eight regions (Northeastern, Northwestern, South, Central, Metropolitan, Petén, Southwestern and Southeastern); 22 departments and 331 municipios, the smallest administrative unit

[2] Corn pancakes and together with black beans the traditional and main diet of the indigenous Mayas in Mexico and Guatemala. The Mayas who, according to their holly transcript Popol Vuh, called themselves ‘hombres de maíz’ or ‘men of corn’ considered corn the subsistence and creation material.

Lutz C.H. and Lovell G.W. (1990). Core and periphery in colonial Guatemala. In Smith C.A. (Ed.), Guatemalan Indians and the state, 1540-1988 (pp. 35-51). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Metz B. (2001). Politics, population and family planning in Guatemala: Ch'orti Maya experiences. Human Organization 60(3), 259-271.