* Address correspondence to rmccaa@tc.umn.edu or: Robert McCaa, Dept. of History Soc. Sci. 614, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455-0406. The authors thank the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) of the University of Minnesota for financial support.
1 This testimony as well as those of some fifty women from Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Mame and other Chiapanecan indigenous communities was collected and transcribed at a workshop entitled "Los derechos de las mujeres en nuestras costumbres y tradiciones" in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, May 19-20, 1994 and published by Rosa Rojas (1994).
2 For a discussion of the demography of Indian groups elsewhere in Mexico see Manrique Castañeda (1995).
3 We linked children to parents resident in the same household by means of the relationship to head of household variable. For offspring of the head, the procedure is straight-forward. In complex households inferences might be ambiguous for dependent kin. Fortunately these cases were relatively few. The censuses do not distinguish between biological, adoptive, step, or fictive offspring but given our interest in the social and linguistic environment within the household these distinctions are also of little consequence for our research.
4 Although the census does not take into account levels of proficiency in Spanish or native languages (see criticisms by King 1994), the fact that individuals declare their own linguistic abilities is meaningful. Even if bilinguals are not equally proficient in both languages, declaring themselves so gives a clear indication of those actually moving in the direction of bilingualism.
5 In her study on literacy among indigenous people of Mexico, King warns, "Unfortunately, although the census is the only information available on numbers of bilingual and monolingual Indians, it is not entirely reliable. The number of 'not specified' cases can be high" (King 1994:96). We did not find this to be true for Chiapas. In the 1990 census sample, only 1.0% of the cases for parents and their children aged 6-14 years were unspecified regarding indigenous language spoken. The percentage was actually smaller in 1970.
6 To some this might seem an obvious finding, but scholars have long questioned whether education did indeed promote bilingualism in Mexico (Paulín de Siade 1974).
7 Rus (1995:86) argues that the origin of the political violence which erupted with the killing of some 250 people on January 1, 1994 is precisely the disappearance of traditional communities.
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