mobile are more likely to engage in sexual behavior that is culturally inappropriate. Thus, Mayan

women who remain in their natal community may evince a belief in their duty to maintain

Mayan culture, as both symbols of Mayan tradition as well as reproductive vessels.

 Lastly, studies on gender in the 1990s and 2000s claim that Guatemala's civil war and

reconstruction since the signing of the peace accords have been instrumental to the cultural role

of Mayan women. Studies on Mayan widows (Zur 1998; Green 1999; Stanford 2000) show how

the lives of Mayan women have been constructed post-war and how-through religious

conversion and their reactions to the violence-women have found the strength to resist the

assignation of traditional gender roles. Yet despite this resistance, Mayan widows continue to

encounter widespread opposition to their attempts to assert themselves: such women can easily

become marginalized and thus isolated from the community. Moreover, a widow's access to

income is limited since Mayan tradition still restricts agriculture to men. Even so, some widows

have managed to become self-sufficient with the help of their children. Sanford's work (2000),

expands on the notion of the post-reconstruction woman as she follows the story of Mayan

women who resisted the violence. Sanford suggests that the testimony of such women helps to

reconstruct the "living memory" of Guatemala, thus giving voice to an alternative version of

Guatemalan history which is often in contradiction to "official" or patriarchal accounts. The

testimony of Rigoberta Menchu, (Menchu 1984), while centered on the life a Guatemalan

women and the war, is an example of such re-writing of history, since it discusses women's

contribution to armed resistance within the context of traditional Mayan gender roles.

 In conclusion, the review of research on Mayan and Ladina gender roles does not reveal a

cohesive construction of gender in Guatemala. Early work tended to restrict the role of women to

reproduction; later work, concerning "women only," removed Mayan women from the context of