who are perceived to have violated them, are susceptible to the discipline of both family and

community. A father whose five daughters all had husbands in the United States explained a

typical situation:

 My daughter suffers under her mother-in-law. She misses us (her family) and spends a lot
 of time at our house. Though she is only visiting (us), her mother-in-law complains that
 she is andariega (a woman who goes out all the time). When she talks to her son on the
 phone, she says she doesn't know where his wife is and who knows who she is out with.
 Even if my daughter is only going out to fetch water with her sister, her mother-in-law is
 suspicious.

 A young wife is expected to be at the home of the husband so she may be properly

supervised by the husband's family. Even if-as in the case cited above-the wife is merely

passing time with her own family, the in-laws frequently distrust the daughter-in-law's family,

and thus believe that they may be covering for her. Adding to this suspicion is the financial

formulation that equates time spent with the natal family into money and labor spent outside the

husband's home, so families worry that when a daughter-in-law isn't at home, she may be

spending her husband's (their) money on her birth family. While the prospect of infidelity might

appear to be the major concern for the husband's family, in fact, the main issue is the battle over

the husband's resources. Thus, the gossip that arises over the whereabouts of married women

whose husbands are abroad may become a powerful weapon in this ongoing struggle.

 Though transnational migration by men is increasingly common, both women and men are

frequently warned of the potential consequences of this separation. A pervasive anecdote

involves a young wife who is left behind by her Maya husband. As the story goes, while her

husband is away, she becomes pregnant. She hides the pregnancy to full term, and after she

delivers the baby in secrecy, leaves the child to die in the bush. In one version, this agony is

protracted, as a passing woman hears the baby crying and saves it, only for it to die later. Since

the young woman in the story is Maya, many claim that the father was a local Ladino landowner