Olinaltecan Parental Protection and Distrust
Likewise, Olinaltecans' negative environment for victims was part of their past history. Parents distrusted young people to select a mate for life. One of the reasons was due to the history of land redistribution earlier this century, which precipitated much homicide and fear.
As a result, parents in the 1950s and 1960s wanted to be sure that their children did not form unions with the children whose parents had participated in those killings.A second reason that parents had little trust for their children's ability to decide was due to the community's understanding of elsusto or trauma. Olinaltecans believe that no child should be traumatized. The community members all keep the secrets of the parental crimes from the children. A child should never be told that his or her parents were murderers: that is a cultural crime—with horrendous implications—in Olinala. The deeds of the parents are not the fault of the children. Therefore, to protect the children of criminal parents, all children remain unaware of criminal acts by any parent. Adults do discuss in front of the children favorable and disfavorable deeds, but do not alert children to the specific people. One child could easily tell another child, and the truth would then reach the child of the guilty parents and that child could be traumatized: such an act is culturally almost defined as crime. For children to become socially healthy and responsible adults, the community protects all children until adulthood that begins around the age of fifteen.
The parents' protection of the children—while quite admirable and crucial in a child's development—also resulted sometimes in unfavorable mountain marriages for some women. Parents would show their deference, while unexplained, toward their children marrying children of criminals. Instead, the parents would arrange parties for their children to meet potential partners from acceptable parents. In cases when two young people became interested in each other and knew their union was against one or both sets of parents, they then arranged a kidnapping for a mountain marriage.
One woman noted that, after she joyously returned from her mountain honeymoon, she discovered that her husband had murdered people. Unsuspectingly, she agreed to wed a man who would always be a criminal in the eyes of the townspeople.A third form of indirect protection centered around care for the elderly. Family members took care of each other until death. In order to ensure later nursing care for themselves, the parents would raise the eldest daughter not to marry but instead to serve her aging parents. Therefore, the eldest daughter in a family was either convinced against or prevented from marrying. This position of the parents could encourage either a daughter to participate in a kidnapping or a kidnapper to take action to rescue his loved one.
The fourth reason is for the protection of girls. While Olinala is a community with multiple cultural backgrounds, unlike the indigenous, Nahuatl villages in the surrounding mountains, the use of Spanish and the two hundred fifty year documentation of selling lacquer art work in non-Nahuatl shapes indicate a strong Euro-influence. With evidence of the Euro-influence then, it is not surprising to find social patterns similar to Europe in this supposedly isolated, mountain town. In this regard, the parents raised the young women in a protective manner. The idea that young women cannot be trusted to make a sound judgment was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. While a decision made by a young woman such as her participation in a kidnapping was upheld, the parents disapproved of her method and her decision.