Urban vs. rural maya

 Adams and Bastos discuss the social divisions among Maya who live in the cabeceras

municipales (municipal seats) and those who live in the rural villages and hamlets. The town is

generally regarded as the site of Ladino power, and the preponderance of educational and

economic opportunities in the urban center bears out this claim (2003), as urban Maya fill certain

economic niches confined to the town, such as liquor sales, tailoring services, small store

ownership, and local artisan work. Urban Maya also consider themselves more modem, worldly,

and sophisticated than their rural counterparts. The differences are also based on ancestry and

local lineages as many Maya in the town can trace some Ladino ancestor or claim descent from

the original Pokomam inhabitants. Adams and Bastos posit that the villages closer to the pueblo

are considered more modern or urban (2003). These concepts are true for San Pedro Pinula and

explain local ethnic divides among the Maya of the town and the Maya of the mountain or rural

villages.

Maya Occupations

 Maya in San Pedro Pinula tend to work in traditional milpa agriculture. Milpa agriculture

is the basis for Maya civilization, made up of a variety of complementary crops, mainly corn,

beans, and squash. While some of San Pedro Pinula's indigenous people own small plots, the

majority are landless and forced to rent or sharecrop to grow crops for their basic subsistence.

The indigenous population did once own large tracts of land communally but Ladinos and the

municipality expropriated this land in the liberal land rush of the 1800s and during the Ubico

dictatorship of the 1930s (Dary 2003).

 San Pedro Pinula's indigenous population is involved in artisanal production. There was

once a thriving hat making industry but that has slowly been disappearing. Now there are only a

handful of Maya families who continue to make hats out of palm: "Palm does not grow in Pinula