Lacandón

Lacandón, Mayan Indians living primarily near the Mexico-Guatemala border in the Mexican state of Chiapas, though some Lacandón may live in Belize, across the eastern border of Guatemala. The Lacandón are divisible into two major groups, the Northern Lacandón (who live in the villages of Najá and Mensabäk) and the Southern Lacandón (who live in the village of Lacanhá Chan Sayab, near the near the ancient Mayan ruins of Bonampak). Estimates of the Lacandón population in the early 21st century varied from 300 to 1,000, though the number of Lacandón-language speakers was often cited as about 600. They inhabit a rich tropical rain forest, well supplied with water, fish, game, and fertile soil. The Lacandón have preserved until recently a quite isolated and primitive way of life. They are farmers, growing corn, beans, squash, and tomatoes together in mixed plots. Other vegetables and fruits may also be grown in separate gardens. They also gather wild fruit, hunt game, and fish.

Lacandón settlements traditionally consist of single households or clusters of several households, known as caribales. Traditional houses are thatched huts that may or may not have walls, supported on pole frameworks, but contemporary houses in Lacandón villages are more likely to have concrete floors and walls, with either tin or thatched roofs. Possessions were traditionally stored in the thatch and food hung from the roof in baskets. Crafts include the construction of dugout canoes, the spinning and weaving of cloth, leather tanning, and the making of bark cloth, nets, hammocks, pottery, flutes, bows, and stone-tipped arrows. Although young people increasingly wear Western clothing, Northern Lacandón men usually were knee-length tunics and Northern women wear colourful skirts under their tunics, whereas both men and women of the Southern Lacandón wear ankle-length tunics. The hair is customarily worn long and loose by both sexes. There is still little trade or contact with the outside world.

Historically the Lacandón were among the few Middle American Indian groups that successfully resisted the introduction of Roman Catholicism and preserved their traditional beliefs; however, by the 21st century, Protestantism had won many converts among the Lacandón, and the practice of traditional religion had virtually disappeared.