Wearing the Pants

As if being a 5'10" white woman with a swimmer's build (thanks to 15 years of freestyle and butterfly) in a town where the average height for women is probably 5'2", and for men about 5'5" didn't make me stick out enough, wearing pants make me stick out even more.

Or is it the opposite?

I have never been big on getting dressed up, never mind wearing a skirt or an actual dress - I can count on two fingers the number of times I wore either in 2009. Just simply not my wardrobe of choice.

But in my town, seated on a mountain top in an indigenous Maya-Mam region, it's the only thing almost all women wear, except for the odd gringa and ladina (non-indigenous Guatemalan woman).

Indigenous communities in Guatemala all have a traje, or suit, that is distinct to their town or village. The shirt is usually a sporadically designed blouse, bursting with flowers of any and all colors, or intricately weaved designs that usually cover the entire güipile.

The corte, or skirt, is actually a long piece of thick weaved cloth that is wrapped just under the breast bone, and then held up with a faja, or thick, but narrow, piece of cloth that is wrapped around like a security belt high at the waist.

As beautiful as some of these trajes are, the history behind them are less than impressive. When the Spanish came to what is now Guatemala, they wanted to control the movement of the indigenous population, so they made each town and village their own distinct traje (one for men, one for women). This way if someone were traveling from one town to another, they would be easily identified as from a different area or region.

A bit imperialistic, to say the least, but there are still a number of towns that proudly wear their traditional traje everyday- probably the best known town in Guatemala is Todos Santos Cuchumatantes in the department of Huehuetenango (where I also had a Huehue fun Christmas in 2008), because not only do women wear their traje, but men as well, and it's really quite beautiful.

Imagine never having to worry about what you're going to wear, but knowing that you'll be looking your very sharpest every single day- even though you are wearing the same thing as everyone else- men in their pants, women in their skirts.

But me? In a skirt? Or even a dress?

Instead, I am a woman of the pant.

And quite literally, too.

Although Spanish has its own terms for "white people," the most commonly known being gringo or gringa, Mam has a few different words that locals use to describe any gringos walking around town.

Despite my Mam being limited to a few useful phrases and words, I am still able to pick out when people are casually talking about me on the street, whip myself around at lightening speed and take them by surprise. It's kind of fun, because they're usually amazed that the gringa understands what they are saying, even though it's only a word or two I can pick out that makes me realize that I am being spoken about.

So what are these mythical words I speak about, you ask?

meisha - (Mam) depending on who you ask, this can either mean person with brown hair or whitey. Pretty much all indigenous people have jet black hair- and unfortunately due to the high rate of malnutrition in Guatemala, some indigenous people have a reddish/orange-ish tint to their hair, which is a prominent sign of chronic malnutrition)

ẍnula - (Mam) [rough pronunciation: shnoo-la] literally meaning woman of the pant

k'ẍtyan - (Mam) [rough pronunciation: ki-kshtian] literally meaning man of the woman of the pant

I don't take offense to these, as long as they're not used by complete strangers to try to talk behind my back in Mam without them realizing I in fact do understand they are speaking about me, in the very least. But even then I suppose it doesn't offend me as much as it gives me satisfaction in knowing that I can outsmart someone in their own language that I know close to nothing of.

But do I take offense to gringo?

Absolutely. It's gringA!

Unfortunately you cannot see, but I am holding true to my ẍnula label- complete with pants.

Kelly and me dressed in corte and a güipile with our good friend, Juanita, and her two children Brenda and Marcos.