Chortí

Chortí, Mayan Indians of eastern Guatemala and Honduras and formerly of adjoining parts of El Salvador. The Chortí are linguistically related to the Chol and Chontal (qq.v.) of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Tabasco in southeastern Mexico. Culturally, however, the Chortí are more similar to their neighbours on the west, the Pocomam. They live in an uneven terrain varying from lowlands to mountains; climate is warm and wet in the lowlands, cool to cold in the highlands.

The Chortí are agriculturalists and small-scale merchants. Individual Chortí villages specialize in a crop or craft product, which they trade or sell to other Chortí villages to provide necessities. Corn (maize), fruits and vegetables, sugarcane, coffee and tobacco, and beans are among village agricultural specializations. Baskets, hats, woven mats, tanned leather, wood products and carpentry, pottery, charcoal, leather goods, soap, indigo dye, and processed sugarcane are among the goods and skills traded. Tortillas and beans are dietary staples.

Several sleeping houses, a kitchen, and outbuildings make up the typical household among the Chortí. Their buildings are constructed of leaves, poles, or thatch on a pole framework. Weaving and pottery making are practiced at the household level as well as at the village industrial level. Their clothing is semitraditional; women wear handwoven skirts and blouses and men wear white cotton shirts and pants.

Households made up of eight or nine related families are the rule among the Chortí; the father of the family group acts as head of household. Ritual kinship bonds are made at the baptism of children. Their religion is basically Roman Catholic, and is centred on the veneration of patron saints. The Catholic laymen’s society (cofradía) arranges fiestas and has care of the village’s patron saint. Various native gods and spirits are acknowledged and propitiated.