Isolation in Socialization
While the isolation by some of my friends was imposed on me, the period of isolation by work for young teenage Olinaltecans in the 1960s and earlier was due to patterns of interaction which inhibited socialization among young people.
First, work isolated both young men and women in distinct domains of labor. For the young women, housework was a tedious, uncompromising and nondismissal job. One of the most difficult chores was grinding corn for tortillas. Most households averaged four to six hours of grinding corn per day to feed the family. Cleaning the dirt floor was a daily duty. Frijoles or beans demanded three to four cooking hours over a stove whose flame was constantly fed by wood. Of course, clothes washing was by hand and included dirt-filled clothes due to either the children playing on dirt floors, the arduous work of the women around the house, or the men and young boys working in the fields.The male domain for six months of the year was in the mountain areas growing corn and beans. For many, these fields were several hours' walk from their homes. Even though no crops were grown for the other six months due to the drought conditions, men and young boys still needed to go to the mountains for their daily water supply. The heavy workload along with the geographical distance of the male and female work places isolated young adults from socializing with each other.
Then the miracle of water pipes transformed the patterns of social interaction. In the 1950s, fresh spring water was piped into the community, but only to the corners of each block. Water is continuously needed in a home with the extensive demands of daily cleaning and cooking. Young lovers were ardent suppliers of buckets of water for the home: their good deeds hid their multiple rendezvous. These new faucets were outlets to socializing. Some days, a household needed a lot of buckets of water, and young adults arranged their bucket errands to meet simultaneously at the corner faucet.
Many arranged mountain marriages occurred over a bucket of water.In the late 1950s and 1960s, electrically run corn grinders further increased the number of rendezvous by young people. While the corn grinding stores were few in number, by the late 1970s there were seven located around the town and quite busy throughout the day. A meeting along the way to the mill or back was always a possibility. A common trick was to leave the bucket at the mill and meet at the prearranged place to converse. For those days when two meetings were desired, a person would drop the bucket off and rendezvous with the friend. An hour or two later, s/he would return to the mill, but coincidentally, pass the meeting place. Electricity decreased the time for work and increased the time for amour.
Emphasis on education also had a dramatic impact on patterns of interaction of young people. Most children attended second or at the most fourth grade in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the number of grade schools increased to four with a junior high opening up in the 1970s and by 1982 the first class graduated from high school. The majority of the children graduated from the sixth grade and a great majority completed junior high by the 1970s. Regular daily interaction for nine months each term could have a profound impact on socialization. The isolation of Olinaltecans began to dissipate and an openness settled into the community.