There are some books on the Maya that every anthropologist interested in Central America will want to read. This is one of them. Hill and Monaghan describe the history and functioning of the system of socioterritorial units (chinimitales) that divide up communal responsibility and power in the Guatemalan town of Sacapulas. These are the same units that governed much of Mesoamerica throughout its history. What makes this volume so valuable is the authors’ use of colonial land dispute documents to show the functioning of these units over time. I wish that similar attention were also paid to other classes of documents.
There are, for example, census documents in the Archivo General de Centro América for all of the surrounding communities (Sajcabaja, Nebaj, Uspantán, Chajul, Cotzal, Cunen, Aguacatán) of an epoch (mideighteenth century) when the origins of alien spouses were normally recorded by the scribe. It would have been interesting to learn the degree of interaction between these communities and the various divisions of Sacapulas.
In another era, that of 1813, there are again census documents for most of the same towns and also for Sacapulas (AGCA A 1. 44-3019-29076). We are not told, however, how Sacapulas compares in terms of age, sex, and family size (the data recorded in these documents) with the adjacent communities, and therefore we cannot judge how typical, or atypical, is the demographic background out of which arose the conflicts so carefully described by Hill and Monaghan.
Rather than quibble over petty facts, such as whether Sacapulteco had already been recognized as the separate “Puche” language in the eighteenth century (see Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, 9-20-7, num. 92), I hope that this excellent diachronic study will inspire new works on the past functioning of these same units in a regional setting and in interaction with other aspects of culture.
