Atanasio

Abstract

In 1991 at the age of thirty-nine, Atanasio told his life story to Catherine Vigor, a French sociologist. From childhood in a mountain highlands village of El Quiché province to adulthood as a garment worker in Guatemala City, a single theme predominates: conflict between the Ladino (a Latin American subculture that does not identify itself as Indian) minority and his Mayan people.¹ As the eldest son with eight siblings, he took on heavy responsibilities for his family. At the age of eight he began to accompany his father to Guatemala City to help sell their weavings. At home he tended neighbors’ sheep and his family’s fields, limiting his attendance at school. At eighteen years of age, when his father died, he moved to the city to work in a garment factory in order to provide for his mother and siblings. He became self-educated in world literature that he found in Spanish translation. Having settled in the city, he later married a Mayan woman, also of Quiché ethnicity. In the garment industry, Atanasio encourages fellow Indian workers to follow his example, to stand up for their rights as prescribed under federal labor laws.