The woman and the hawk
La mujer y el gavilán
Object Details
Subject Language | Zoque, Francisco León |
Language PID(s) | ailla:119541 |
Title [Indigenous] | |
Language of Indigenous Title | |
Title | The woman and the hawk |
Language Community | |
Country(ies) | Mexico |
Place Created | Rayón, Chiapas |
Date Created | 1994-08-22 |
Description [Indigenous] | |
Language of Indigenous Description | |
Description | The variety of Zoque used here is not that of the municipio (municipal district) of Rayón, Chiapas. Rather is comes from the municipio of Chapultenango, Chiapas, located several hours to the north. The residents of Colonia Nuevo-Esquipulas Guayabal were forcibly relocated to the outskirts of Rayón after the 1982 eruption of the Volcán Chichonal destroyed their village. Conditions in the Guayabal were poor, but improving. The homes, including the home where this recording was made, were constructed by the government of cement block and all had tin roofs (the white noise on the recording is the sound of rain pounding on the roof, not machine noise.) The community of Guayabaleños were also given a small federal land grant, but it was not sufficient to feed the entire group and employment was scarce. I first visited Guayabal in the summer of 1991, and spent another few months there in 1992 and again in 1994. I was there doing research for an undergraduate thesis on Spanish borrowing in Chiapas Zoques and on code-switching. While there, I lived in the home shared by the storyteller, his wife and child and his parents. This folktale is an example of what is locally known as a 'kwentu' (from the Spanish term cuento) or 'chame' (a possessed, nominalized form of the verb root tzame, meaning ‘to talk’). According to the storyteller, such tales were told in many contexts, but he heard most of them, including a performance of this tale, after supper, sitting around the hearth with his siblings, uncles and other family members. The story is a familiar one, and versions are told throughout this part of Mesoamerica in other Zoque- and Mayan-speaking communities. |
Genres | Narrative |
Source Note | |
References | |
Contributor(s) Individual / Role | Díaz Castro, Flavio (Speaker) Suslak, Daniel F. (Researcher) |
Contributor(s) Corporate / Role |
Media Files
There are 3 objects in this resourceObject | File Types | Access Level |
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ZOS001R001I001.mp3 | audio/mp3 | 1 |
ZOS001R001I001.wav | 1 | |
ZOS001R001I001.pdf | application/pdf | 1 |