Man's Best Alarm System turned Public Health Problem: Human-Dog Interactions in Santa Catarina Palopό

Daniel Jordan

University of Georgia

The investigation of human and animal interaction may well

be one of the most fruitful endeavors of anthropology.

—E. Shanklin, 1985

You can tell a lot about the soul of a man by the way he treats his dog.

—American Folk Saying

Abstract

The residents of Santa Catarina Palopó treat dogs in the street with hostility, although many of them

keep dogs as pets in order to guard their homes. This study, undertaken during the researcher's six-week stay

in Santa Catarina under North Carolina State University's 2008 Summer Ethnographic Field School, examines

human-dog interactions in Santa Catarina and the attitude that these interactions indicate, as well as

detailing a possible future attitude. Key words: Atitlán, Santa Catarina, dogs, pets, animals, cultural

materialism.

Los residentes de Santa Catarina Palopó tratan los perros callejeros hostilemente, pero muchos de los

residentes tienen perros para cuidar las casas. Este estudio, realizado durante de una estadía en Santa

Catarina Palopó de seis semanas del autor con North Carolina State University's 2008 Summer Ethnographic

Field School, examina las inter-relaciones entre los residentes y sus perros y el actitud que indica estas

inter-relaciones. También describe un actitud posible para el futuro. Palabras principales: Palabras claves:

Atitlán, Santa Catarina, perros, mascotas, animales, materialismo cultural.

Introduction: Because There's Ricky

“How much does your watch cost?” he asks me.

“I'm not selling it.”

“Sure, but how much does it cost?”

“Um, I don't know, maybe...” I think to myself: what, fifty dollars? 7.5 quetzales to the dollar, so

that's... wait, why? “I don't know. Why?”

“Maybe later you will sell it?”

“Mmm, no.”

“When do you leave?” That was it, the red flag question.

“Huh?”

“When do you go back to the United States?”

Remember this guy, I think to myself. A first-class sketchball. I eye him: slick hair, black shirt, jeans,

maybe fifteen years old, straddling a bike almost too big for him. I had gotten out of the lake to dry off

when he rode up and all-too-amicably said, “Hola, como estás?” His quick eyes dodge mine when I look back

at him. He would come across as insecure, but he talks too confidently. When do I go back? “I don't know,” I

tell him.

“Okay, well, see you later.”

“And what's your name?”

“Alberto.”

“I'm Daniel.”

“Mucho gusto!” he says.

“Mucho gusto!” I reply. A lie.

He rides off, followed by a friend (or crony) whom I had barely noticed. I finish drying off my legs. I

look lakeward and see that Thomas and Miguel, brothers in the host family I'm staying with, are heading

towards the shore, wading by trash at their shins. Their friend, Manuel, has climbed back up onto the dock

for one more jump into the water that glows green with the sun. Behind him I admire the deep blue lake and

the Volcanoes Tolimán and Atitlán on the other side, faded green because of the haze. How nice, I think, the

first sunny day since I've been here is a Saturday when the boys and I can swim. I know I will have some

wicked sunburn later.

Thomas approaches me and scrubs his hair with his towel. He's the older of the two, only eleven, but

due to some combination of his maturity and my Spanish, I already trust him as a peer. “That, Alberto!,” I

ask, pointing to where he continues to ride down the shore, “how is he? Is he nice?”

“No. He's a robacosas.”

A thing-robber. A thief. I ask Thomas if Alberto knows the way to our house. “Yes,” he says, “but he

won't enter, because there's Ricky.” Ricky is the dog.

A few weeks later, a neighbor told us that while we were away from the house during the day, she had

heard Ricky barking and looked to see a boy heading away from our house. From then on, I hid my laptop in

between the bed and the wall before I left. Whether or not it was Alberto I don't know.

The boys and I walk into the shade. I am glad to have Thomas, glad to have Ricky. It makes a little more

sense why my family has a dog in the first place, why they toss him a few tortillas and table scraps after

dinner, especially given my host-dad's apparent disdain for him.

As I turn it over in my head, the idea germinates: a potential research topic? The dogs of the

Guatemalan highlands have caught my eye since day one. In my journal, I have written: [the dogs] trot

around alone looking paranoid, dodgy, sketchy, on-edge, like they are all guilty of something, trotting

quickly, heads low, never panting. Most of them are a similar kind: short hair, upright ears, in between big

dog and small dog size (by U.S. standards), just a little bigger than foxes, about the size of coyotes. In

addition, anyone who spends the night in Santa Catarina will hear dogs barking and howling all through the

night, spreading from one side of town to the other. They take turns with the roosters.

But I'm not here to study animals, I think to myself. Nor am I an animal rights buff. Sure, I like dogs; I

have two weimeraners at home. But I don't want to write about dogs. This is my first attempt at fieldwork;

wouldn't it be better to do something more up my alley? Shouldn't I study something that has to do with

people?

As I began, I rationalized it only half-heartedly. My first idea was more or less shot down by my

instructor, Dr Wallace (and rightfully so), and I was running out of time. Besides, I knew it wouldn't be

contrived: the human-dog relationship is something that struck me about the culture here as opposed to

being some love-child between theory and my imagination. What's more, I thought, it shouldn't be difficult:

dogs don't speak Kaqchikel either, so dogs and people speak to each other in languages that I understand,

namely body language and intonation.

As it turns out, this study has been more rewarding than I initially expected it to be. My first dive into

background literature revealed a tradition of the study of humans' relationships with animals for researchers

“whose primary aim has been the better understanding of humans' relationships with other humans” (Mullin

1999:201). The study fit well with my research site, as most residents of Santa Catarina engage in some kind

of behavior with a dog each day, behavior that ranges from striking a dog to ignoring it. After observing

trends in the behavior, I decided that this behavior stems from an “attitude,” a kind of singular mental

structure shared by Catarinecos. My study posits that by isolating and analyzing certain aspects of this

behavior which act as indicators of the attitude, I can portray that attitude accurately.

For the purposes of this paper, I take an attitude towards something to be simply a manner of

perceiving or thinking about said thing. An attitude can be shared by a group of individuals and is capable of

generating similar behavior among individuals in this group. This generated behavior yields actions or

patterns of actions which I take to be “indicators” of the attitude. Undoubtedly, individuals' attitudes

towards dogs are shaped by personal experiences (e.g., I saw a dog bite a local boy one day), but I aim to

portray and analyze a popular, shared attitude that I found to be prevalent among Catarinecos.

To find such indicators, I used methods including direct observation, formal and informal interviews, a

pile-sort activity, and a questionnaire. Throughout my paper, I make references to these methods, and the

questionnaire can be found in full at the end of this paper. Most of these methods were given as assignments

in the field school in which I was enrolled while undertaking this study: North Carolina State University's

2008 Summer Ethnographic Field School.

Foremost, my search for indicators involved observing behavior between Santa Catarina's human

residents and its dogs. The dog population of Santa Catarina comprises dogs both with and without owners,

almost all of whom spend their days roaming the streets, alleys, and beaches of Santa Catarina. To sort

these dogs into categories presented a challenge. For one, I had little way of knowing whether a dog I saw

had an owner or didn't, although according to my survey responses, one can assume that the majority of

dogs in the street do in fact have owners. Secondly, the difference between a dog with an owner and a dog

without one is oftentimes only that a dog with an owner gets table scraps at night. And even then, Selaine

(founder of the Panajachel-based organization Healthy Pets) tells me that some “stray” dogs in Panajachel

consistently receive table scraps from the same families at night. Selaine herself even has a few favorite

street dogs who manage to find her around Panajachel; one of them whom she has named Smiley looks so

cared-for that you would never imagine her to be a stray. Another challenge lied in dividing dog populations

geographically: Ezzie (Healthy Pets's other frontrunner) tells me that some backpackers will travel through

the Atitlán region, adopt a dog for a few days, and then leave the dog in the last town they visit.

Additionally, Selaine and Ezzie have shared stories with me of dogs traveling by lancha (public boat) and

dogs swimming across the bay by Santiago, a nearby town. In Ezzie's words, “Not only tourism travels dogs,

but dogs travel themselves!”

Thus, selecting a criterion (geographic or otherwise) by which to differentiate between types of dogs

becomes a slippery issue. For my study, I decided to divide my observations into how Catarinecos treat dogs

in the street (domestic and feral (“stray”) both) and how they treat dogs in the home (domestic). I did not

concern myself with whether or not an observed dog had an owner; considering that the common name used

for stray dog is perro callejero, which literally means “alley dog,” my emphasis on where the dog is instead

of whether or not it belongs to somebody seems appropriate. I did find some difference in the way locals

treat dogs with owners versus dogs without, but nothing far from the obvious: if a Catarineco knows a dog's

name, he'll call the dog by its name (perhaps a more effective way to get its attention) instead of using only

Kaqchikel or a kind of dog language which I describe later.

When I began this study, discovering the attitude was the first of my two aims. My second initial aim

was to study the role of dogs in Santa Catarina's society from a symbiotic perspective, or to isolate and

assess those properties of dogs which benefit their owners and those of owners which benefit their dogs. I

aimed to find both an emic perspective (which views the local attitude towards dogs) and an etic one (which

views the symbiotic role of dogs). What I have found is that in Santa Catarina, these two perspectives are

very similar.

Mythology, History, and Theory: Compre Algo

Thomas and Miguel and I make our way from the beach up School Street (a term used by last year's

student in Santa Catarina, Thomas Kiely (Kiely 2007)). My wet sandals flop on the dark round stones of the

street. Before me, the street continues until it ends on Calle Principal, the one road through Santa Catarina.

To the right it continues and dead ends in San Antonio, a somewhat larger town about five kilometers away,

and to the left it runs to Panajachel, one of the biggest towns around the lake, a little over three kilometers

away. Behind this intersection, the houses of Santa Catarina's 3300 urban residents (according to the

Jefatura de Salud's 2007 study) spread up the sides of the half-bowl ridge in which the pueblo sits, and the

houses appear from this distance to be piled on top of one another. At the top of the ridge, clouds just begin

to collect and to form a ceiling, and I know that we will have rain later in the afternoon.

“Compre algo,” [“Buy something,”] The street vendor girls say to me, displaying baskets of woven

dolls, bead necklaces, bracelets, key chains, and other tiny things that I'm not interested in buying. They

position themselves on School Street as it is the only way to get to the main stretch of Santa Catarina from

the docks. “No, no me interesa, gracias,” I say. But they persist in their declarative tones of voice: “Look,

look, only two Quetzales. Only two, or you can buy three for five. Look. Look,” and when I do look, one of

them takes my hand and holds a bracelet up to it. “Look, it's very nice,” she says.

The street vendors eventually learned that I was not really a tourist but a student living there, not

interested in buying things. As a first-timer in Santa Catarina, one way I quickly identified myself was in my

selections and refusals. No, I don't want a shirt, or a huipil, or a cloth; no thanks, I don't want any farmer's

cheese or any white cream for my beans; no, I don't need a taxi; no, I'm sorry, I don't have money to donate

to your orphanage. In a place with new options, one must draw new boundaries.

I applied this same maxim to finding a theoretical basis for my project. Throughout my research, I

heard from both helpful classmates and non-native interviewees much about the Mayan belief that after

death it is the dog who guides one into the afterlife. I have read about this as well: in an ethnography done

in 2002 on the Teenek of Mexico (who speak Huastec, a Mayan dialect), Anath Ariel de Vidas uses this belief

to anchor one of two positions of the observed “contradiction” that dogs are revered in the cosmology yet

scorned in the society of the Teenek. He calls the spirit guide-dog belief “prevalent in Teenek daily life,”

recounting how his informants discuss this with him readily.

Although this notion may be written in books on the mythology and cosmology of the larger people

group with whom 95% of the residents of Santa Catarina identify—that is, Indígena, and therefore

presumably Maya—I am not aware of any practice that would render it relevant to present-day Catarinecos'

attitudes towards dogs. Had I found this belief to be prevalent in Catarineco daily life, I would have been

thrilled to pursue it. In regards to the afterlife, what I have found to be prevalent (indeed, impossible to

ignore given the volume of the music) are cultas, Christian church services. Santa Catarina's Evangelical and

Catholic factions seem to dominate the town's religious scene. What is left of Mayan religion is unpopular at

best and certainly not part of the “mainstream.” More important is that given all my informants in Santa

Catarina, not one mentioned this belief to me unsolicited. Regrettably, I did not refer to the spirit guide-dog

on my questionnaire, although I did ask a few locals in person. This usually ended up awkwardly: I'd be trying

to explain a rather bizarre scenario, waiting for any sign of recognition on the face of my informant. I submit

that one criterion of a “belief” of a community (especially one as tightly-knit as Santa Catarina) is that most

people will at least have heard of it. Therefore, I will not call the myth of the spirit guide-dog a belief of

Santa Catarina.

An additional and perhaps more immediately relevant Mayan belief of which I caught wind is that if a

female dog gives birth to her puppies in the house of a family with small children, the children could go

blind or get sick and die. Intrigued upon hearing this from a non-native informant, I included the following

(in Spanish) in my questionnaire: “Is it bad if a female gives birth to puppies in the house?” Of all my

surveys, only one answered yes, a boy who told me that it was bad because the puppies “make poopoo.” I

conclude that this belief is not part of mainstream Catarineco attitude either. As a basic approach for my

study, I eschew mythology altogether.

Finding a theoretical basis for this project proved difficult as well. In a paper that surveys socio-cultural

studies on animals in the past century, Molly Mullin points out that “[i]ncreasingly, animals serve all at once

as commodities, family members, food, and the embodiment of 'nature',” (1999:215). With such a variety of

possible roles for animals that depend directly on a society's needs, one way to begin my search for

applicable theory would have been to find “what kind” of society Santa Catarina constitutes, given the

different roles of dogs in different types of societies: pets for consumer-oriented societies, herders for

pastoral societies, sled-pullers for Eskimos, mascots for high-performance college football teams, etc.

However, I got no further than this initial question: what kind of society is this anyway, where for dinner I

ate a chicken that grew up next door but put into my coffee powdered milk from Australia, where I live in a

house with a wood-fire stove and a six-speaker stereo system, where extravagant and spacious chalets sit

across the street from a crammed block of tin-roof houses, where residents revere both Jesus and Maximon,

a drinking, smoking, Judas-Iscariot-representing idol? It was difficult enough to deal with this society's

effects on my mentality (“culture shock”), let alone on the theoretical basis of my paper.

Moving on, I took to Ariel de Vidas's piece, thinking that the society of the Teenek might be similar to

the Kaqchikel Maya of Santa Catarina. Ariel de Vidas draws on structuralist and post-structuralist theory to

explain that to the Teenek, animals carry symbolic significance. Due to the history of abuse by Spanish

colonizers and power structure in relationships with wealthier Ladinos, actions taken by the Teenek on their

dogs serve as means to establish cultural selfness and otherness. He puts it succinctly: “By means of a dog,

ethnic and social distinctions are made” (2002:544).

After further study of human-dog interactions in Santa Catarina, I found that our subject materials vary

widely, so that his theoretical basis bears little to no significance on my study. Most notable among our

differences is the way people treat dogs: Ariel de Vidas observes the Teenek “beating their dogs, naming

them with words from a different culture, and speaking to them in a language that represents otherness,” as

well as verbally abusing them and “lashing out” at them for “no apparent reason” (2002:535-536). As I will

relate later, I observed none of this in Santa Catarina.

Back at the drawing board, I thought back to my anthropology theory class of the past semester at

college and decided to take another look at a controversial and quite popular work by Marvin Harris, “The

Cultural Ecology of India's Sacred Cattle” (1966). Comparing my theoretical approaches with his (both in

“Sacred Cattle” and another work, “Cultural Ecology”) proved useful to me because of both the similarities

and the differences that the comparison highlights.

Harris says that he undertakes his study of the cattle of India because researchers have long over-

privileged religious or “exotic” explanations of the “cattle complex,” which is that there is an abundance of

malnourished cattle which the Hindu population refuses to eat. He calls the intent of his study “to urge that

explanation of taboos, customs, and rituals associated with management of Indian cattle be sought in

'positive-functioned' and probably 'adaptive' processes of the ecological system of which they are a part,

rather than in the influence of Hindu theology.” In a footnote, he says that “positive-functioned” means

“useful” and that traits that are “adaptive” are those biological or cultural traits that have been determined

by natural selection (Harris 1992:261). Similarly, although I'm neither addressing the problem of the

overpopulation of dogs nor “urging” anybody, I will seek explanation for attitudes and behavior towards dogs

in processes of an ecological (symbiotic) system, rather than in the influence of Mayan mythology.

While I do follow Harris's tradition in some ways, I do not take a cultural materialist approach to this

study. Because I see human behavior towards dogs to be an indicator of the local attitude towards dogs, my

approach makes the assumption that human behavior towards dogs is a product of the local attitude towards

dogs. In distinguishing between attitude and behavior, I distinguish between what Harris would call a mental

superstructure and what he might call part of material infrastructure, respectively. A key facet of Harris's

cultural materialism is his “principle of infrastructural determinism,” which postulates that the etic material

infrastructure of a culture eventually “probabilistically” determines its mental superstructure (Westen

1984:640). If treatment of dogs can be said to be part of the material infrastructure of Catarineco society,

then Harris's principle would have that human-dog behavior in Santa Catarina determines Catarinecos'

attitudes towards dogs. My study approaches from the opposite theoretical angle: by looking at types of

human-dog behavior as indicators of an attitude (as opposed to, say, influences on an attitude), I assume

that attitude determines behavior.

My decision to take this approach was determined by notions that I gathered before I even began to

think about theory, namely that the street dog population is a product of Catarineco culture rather than a

product of the natural environment. Had I seen the street dog population to be a product of the

environment, then I may have seen human-dog interactions as reactions to the environment (as human-corn

interactions might be), reactions that generate mental superstructure, and I may have used Harris's

principle. I mention all this to highlight the fact that the theoretical framework for this study is pliable and

tailored for my study, while it also plays a strong role in determining its conclusions.

At times, it appears to me that my study has perhaps failed to reach the fully emic perspective and that

perhaps I settled on only external characteristics of the local attitude towards dogs. But as I hope to show,

the case is that Catarinecos simply don't attach symbolic significance to their dogs. There is no “thick

description” to be applied here. Indeed, taking what I saw and heard at face value proves to make sense of

the attitude adequately.

As I make my way up School Street, I glance in passing at all the vendors while trying not to show too

much interest. I make my clothing selections carefully. An article must fit, or I will not buy it.

Animals are Good to Dress With

An attitude is more than just “how someone treats something.” Someone's attitude towards something

should make itself evident in the person's thoughts about the thing, or when the person “regards” the idea of

the thing. In my observations, I was happy to find an area where Catarinecos regard the idea of a dog

without regarding a dog proper: clothing.

As with most Lake Atitlán communities, Santa Catarina has its own distinct traditional dress, or traje,

but Santa Catarina stands apart from the other Atitlán communities in the proportion of the population that

still wear the traje around town: almost all the women and many of the grown men wear their traje each

day. At markets or festivals in other towns, you can tell a Catarineca by her huipil (blouse), which at a

distance appears turquoise swathed with other shades of blue and speckled with red. Upon closer inspection,

most of these huipiles have rows of animals stitched into them. The only piece of traje that men typically

wear is the pantalon: mid-calf length pants tied around the waist with a faja (sash). Though the colors range

from turquoise to blue to maroon to white, most of these pants also bear rows of animals.

Figure 1: detail of pantalon. Visible animals are deer, dos-cabezas, cats, and sparrows.

Women tejedores make clothes for themselves and their families, and some who can make clothes

particularly quickly or whose work is particularly good sell them to tourists. My informants tell me that the

articles of traje they sell to tourists are practically the same as those they make for themselves. Walking

down School Street or passing by an open window of someone's house, you'll see the long fibers attached on

one end to a hook in the far upper corner of the ceiling (or to a telephone pole or fence on School Street)

and on the other end to a seated woman with a kind of belt around her that attaches the fibers to her waist.

Above her lap is what she has completed so far. She works upwards: she counts each fiber, pulls up a

selection, shoves a rod in between the selected and the rest to keep them apart, and then sends colored

thread through. Suspended a few feet up the fibers is an impossible parallel arrangement of wooden rods,

bars, sticks, and even pencils that keep certain elements separate from others. After she passes the thread

through, she grabs one of the bars and yanks it down in order to lock what she has done so far. At this rate,

one pair of pants takes about six months for a woman to make.

Among the tejedores there are different designs for the any given animal, sometimes with different

versions of the same animal on one piece of clothing. When I asked tejedores how they decided which

animals to include in their designs, the most common reply was something like, “Just whichever one I want

to do next.” (Can an artist give a reason for each aspect of her work?) In the weaving process, each tejedor

makes a series of choices in which she must choose one animal over the other. Presuming that these choices

indicate a kind of preference hierarchy, I examined the frequency of different types of animals in 97 pieces

of traje with the intention to see where the dog stands in this hierarchy. I looked at traditional traje pieces

in two of Santa Catarina's tiendas, those being sold by some vendors on School Street, and those worn by

locals who would let me examine their clothes or hold still long enough for me to count. I studied only

huipiles, fajas, pantalones, and decorative cloths, recording how many rows of a given animal their were in

each. Usually, there are two or three types animals to one row; in this case, each animal got counted, and if

one animal occurred in two separate rows, I counted it twice, the exception being duplicate rows, which

occur often in huipiles given that their sleeve sections are duplicates of one another and usually have

different animal patterns than their middle sections. I also accounted for the animal patterns that occur on

the front and back sides of huipiles, given that they are separate rows but duplicates of one another.

The results are in Figure 2. They indicate that that the dog appears on traje at a frequency that is

surprisingly low in comparison to other animals, especially considering its prevalence in Santa Catarina.

Other domesticated or semi-domesticated animals, such as cats and chickens, occur with four and three

times the frequency, respectively.

Figure 2: the frequency of different types of animals in 97 pieces of traje

*Other animals include isolated occurrences of swans, doves, and “garza con alas,” a type of bird with its wings spread. Note that these animals may have appeared elsewhere under the category birds or ducks.

**Although abeja means bee, what I was told was an abeja resembled a kind of long-tailed bird. ***I use the term “sparrow” to refer to the pajarrito, or “little bird.”

Granted, it's next to impossible to isolate all the variables that determine which animals have more

esteem than others, but one factor I'd like to highlight is the symbolic significance of some animals. For

example, the resplendent quetzal has special esteem as Guatemala's national bird. Also popular is the dos-

cabezas, a kind of two-headed bird, a likeness of which appears on a mask each November 26 in Santa

Catarina's festival. The dos-cabezas is perhaps the only non-real creature in the traje, although some

Catarinecos say that it lives up in the mountains. Also among these rows of animals are plants such as

flowers or milpa, the plant which yields the staple of the Catarineco diet, corn.

I assume that the hierarchy is determined by some combination of factors which include symbolism,

importance to Catarineco way of life, and simple aesthetics. That said, the dog must lack some of these

traits or possess bad ones, given it's unpopularity on the traje.

The dog's low frequency on the traje in comparison to other animals at least introduces one to a dog's

“low” status in Catarineco society. As my survey respondents told me, street dogs are problems because

they dirty the streets with excrement. It makes sense to me that an animal with such an unhealthy and

annoying habit would be considered dirty and unpopular to put on clothes. One of my informants told me,

“Look, there are three things that don't sit well with me: flies, trash in the street, and dogs.” (Neither flies

nor trash occur on the traje). I observed patterns in discourse about a dog's dirtiness as well: when I asked

what dogs did in the streets, the most popular answers were “buscan comida” [“they look for food”] or

“comen basura” [“they eat trash”]. Assuming that most food in the streets is trash, street dogs link

themselves to trash by eating it. And when a dog dies in the street (I only saw one dead dog during my time

in Santa Catarina), it is eaten by flies, as one of my informants pointed out, although this link is perhaps

more tenuous than the first.

It is worth mentioning that there are animals that live in Santa Catarina which I did not see on the traje

at all, such as squirrels, mice, most bugs, and aquatic animals. I will not attempt to rationalize why animals

such as these make no appearance on the traje, but I will say that none of these animals (except perhaps

flies) interact with Catarinecos to the extent that dogs do. Neither do the other animals which do appear on

the traje interact with Catarinecos as much as dogs do.

I am not prepared to make conclusions about a dog's status based solely on its frequency on the traje,

only to introduce the reader to the dog's status. Having pointed to an area where Catarinecos interact with

the idea of a dog, I will now address Catarineco interactions with actual dogs.

Street Dog Behavior: Animal Mirrors

During my first interview with Selaine and Ezzie, I submitted to them that most of the dogs I had seen

on the street had been of a very similar breed: small, upright whisky tail, tight ears... and before I could

finish explaining, Ezzie was nodding with recognition and told me that they have a name for this dog: the

Guatemalan Terrier. I'm no biologist, but it seems that there must be an adaptive reason for this specific

dog's prevalence in many Guatemalan localities, or “environments.” If you see the environment in which

these dogs live to human-made, then you can see Guatemalan Terrier as a human-made breed, not so much

naturally selected as culturally selected. Perhaps the only difference between the Guatemalan Terrier and

the Schnauzer is that humans have bred Schnauzers to look like they do intentionally. I would find this

interesting to study; what traits make a dog breed more likely to survive in a society of humans, and what

can this tell us about the humans of this society?

I have taken photos of what appear to me to be archetypal Guatemalan terriers (see Figure 3). The

process of my taking one of these photos (bottom right) is telling in itself: after tracking the dog up the road

a little ways out of Santa Catarina, I beckoned it to look at me by making a clicking noise with my mouth. As

I knelt to take a picture, the dog scampered off, frightened. This happened once more. I eventually had to

sit down on an embankment where he had no choice but to pass in front of me, and he did so very warily: in

3 out of the 8 photos I took in a span of 5 seconds, the dog is looking at the camera.

Figure 3: Guatemalan Terriers

Dog behavior in itself is important to my study because of the simple fact that dogs are impressionable.

Street dogs have been conditioned to learn that when a human bends down, he is probably picking up a rock

to throw at you. By squatting down, I was making a gesture that is known throughout Central America as an

effective way to get a dog to scram. (This section might be more aptly-titled Street [Dog-Researcher]

Behavior.)

On multiple occasions I sat at Santa Catarina's beach to read and to observe dogs searching for food on

the shoreline. Typically, there are a few people walking in the distance or someone passes by, but I am

mostly alone. I sit down by a tree to read and in due time a dog comes trotting in between the water and

me, appearing to pay me no attention. It stops only to nuzzle against some trash (of which there is plenty on

this beach), maybe to tear into a plastic bag and lick for some crumbs, and then continues to trot along the

length of the shoreline. A few minutes later, it returns with the same silent trot, although this time it walks

behind me. Though I do not look at it because of the frightened reactions that long human stares tend to

elicit, I am paying close attention. I notice that it has taken too long to reappear in my peripheral vision,

and then I turn my head to see it paused, watching me at an angle, well out of arm's reach. Upon meeting

my gaze, it continues at the same pace as before. It was probably sizing me up, looking for a sign of food. It

seems that street dogs have learned to wait to observe a human until they are out of his sight and his arms'

reach.

The size, shape, and behavioral and bio-physical characteristics of the Guatemalan Terrier should serve

as kinds of biological indicators of the ecosystem in which it plays a role and of which it is a product. In the

same way, the reactions of dogs to my presence serve as indicators of how they are treated. The behavior of

street dogs indicates how these dogs have been treated by humans in their pasts, which in turn should

indicate the humans' attitudes towards dogs. For my study, then, street dog behavior is an indicator of

behavior, or an indicator of an indicator of an attitude.

“We polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves” says Haraway (1991:21). When I first read this quote

in Mullin's paper (1999:211), I passed over it as some kind of fancy, overly-scholasticized jargon, but now I

see what it means. I look at a dog and see reflections of human behavior.

Street [Dog-Catarineco] Behavior

Through a small crowd of people on Santa Catarina's main road trots a small dog, stray or domestic who

knows. Snout down, tail up, breasts sagging, the dog slows her trot to a walk, makes a slightly curvier path

and then begins to sit down except that she stops about halfway, back hunched, and it soon becomes

apparent what she's about to do. A stone comes flying out of a nearby store: the dog somehow hears the

stone released or sees it coming out of the corner of her eye and dodges it just in time to scamper away. She

casts one glance back over her shoulder and in a few moments finds a more private spot to do her business.

Such is the plight of the perros callejeros. The rule is as clear as gravity: do something to upset the

humans and expect a projectile. But as long as you're just hanging out, minding your own business, you'll

have no problems. Humans and dogs do coexist peacefully; in my observations, only a conflict of interests

brought forth confrontation. In general, Catarinecos ignore dogs in the street as much as they can. Dogs at

least pretend ignore humans, probably because undue interest in just about anything can warrant a

projectile. Weapons I have seen thrown or wielded first-hand include water, a tinaja (Figure 4), a

broomstick (Figure 5), stones, firewood, and even a hammer (thrown).

If you're a dog, then there are a handful of ways to earn a projectile. Number one on this list, as I have

illustrated, is “dirtying the street.” This was by far the most popular answer my informants gave when I

asked them why street dogs were problems. Given contemporary connotations of the word “street,” I'd like

to emphasize here that the street to a Catarineco is a place of livelihood. During the day, practically all

able-bodied Catarinecos walk from their houses down the hill and onto the one road to go to school, to catch

a pickup to Panajachel, to open their tiendas or restaurants, to set up their looms and textiles to sell to

tourists, to approach tourists with souvenirs, to wash clothes, or to engage in some other manner of

livelihood. In the afternoons, the school pours the children onto the street, the campeo is busy with

basketball or soccer, the mills are busy with women grinding corn, and the street is busy with everyone

traveling in between, street vendors, playing children, and dogs. It stands to reason that the Catarinecos

would be more sensitive to what happens in their street. The street is like everyone's back yard. For this

reason, digging in trash or leaving excrement on the street is especially despicable.

The women vendors on School Street are some of the best at deterring dog excrement, sometimes

delegating their eager children for the task of throwing a rock at a dog about to do its business. For these

women, the street is the doorstep of their shops. In this respect, street dogs are bad for business. Even

though my street vendor informants tell me that some tourists like dogs and some don't, I assume that no

one likes dog excrement.

Figure 4

Figure 5

A second way to earn a projectile is to fight, especially too closely to humans. One dog fight I saw

involved seven dogs and stopped a car in the middle of the road. There were so many dogs that stones

seemed not to phase them, so one man took it upon himself to run over and kick the dogs away (see Figures

6 and 7). This process seems to represent a consistent pattern: a dog fight breaks out, and once it intrudes

on an individual's or a group's personal space, someone disperses the fight with a projectile or another

weapon.

Figure 6

Figure 7

During my stay in Santa Catarina, there came a six-day period when a female dog was in heat. I

watched the poor dame put up with packs of eager suitors for days on end, crawling underneath benches or

parked cars to avoid their advances. The intercourse itself, when it happened, didn't appear to upset

Catarinecos as much as the more peripheral effects, such as the fights that spawned between rival males or

in the female's attempts to ward off advancing males.

Barking too obnoxiously is another way to earn a projectile, although this didn't occur as frequently as

the others.

Finally, loitering for too long outside a tienda or a restaurant will earn a projectile. Loitering and

showing too much interest are the first steps to stealing food, be it scraps in a garbage bucket or a stash of

tortillas that the host-family of a visiting anthropology student is saving for lunch. For restaurants especially,

loitering dogs present a problem. One informant from Guatemala City living in Santa Catarina tells me that

she was eating at a small street-side restaurant in Santa Catarina with a friend of hers from Panajachel when

her friend noticed a hungry-looking street dog and extended a chicken bone to it. As the dog approached, it

was met with a flying piece of firewood from one of the restaurant staff. Restaurant owners can't afford to

have dogs returning to their restaurants to pester customers for food.

Although most projectiles are sent in silence, some are accompanied, preceded, or replaced by

verbiage. Catarinecos do seem to have a specific language for street dogs. To get a dog to scram, a

Catarineco usually speaks vowel-lessly. I have heard wh-ksh, ksh-k-shk, wsh-k-shk, and some variations of

these. When locals are acting less aggressively, or on the rare occasion that they wish for an animal to

approach, I hear wsh-wsh-wsh-wsh or ksh-ksh-ksh-ksh.

To summarize, Catarinecos “put up with” dogs in the street. A dog that brings attention to itself is not

well-met. To a Catarineco, dogs are best ignored, but there are a few things dogs do that warrant violence

because they pose problems to the Catarineco way of life.

Domestic [Dog-Catarineco] Behavior

All the data I have presented so far seem to beg the question: if Catarinecos seem to hate dogs so

much, why do they keep them as pets? Besides asking them directly, the best way to answer this question is

to observe human-dog interactions in the home. Unfortunately, I was not able to make any valid, direct

firsthand observations on human-dog interactions in any home except one, that of my host family. To gather

data for this section, I relied more heavily on my questionnaires and on the words of my informants.

One of my questions asked for “the most important reason to have a dog,” giving informants the option

to choose “to be like a friend,” “to guard the house,” and “other” (with a blank for their responses). The

first two options were based on responses I had already received from interviews. I found that for residents

of Santa Catarina, about 85% said that the most important reason was to guard the house. Also, every

informant whose most important reason to have a dog was to guard the house preferred male dogs to

females as pets, the most popular reason being that males guard the house better. This is the easy answer as

to why Catarinecos keep dogs as pets, but to further understand their treatment of dogs, I asked more

questions.

Of all my informants who professed to have pets, I found not one who had given his dog a Kaqchikel

name. Dog names I ran across were mostly Hispanic (Oso, Chispa, Paco, Perú), and sometimes English (Boby,

Ricky). This appears to be only a slight deviation from the Catarinecos themselves, most of whom have

Hispanic names (Petrona, Estela, Juan), with English names (Wilson, Lucy) being rarer but still prevalent.

Many residents have both Hispanic names and Kaqchikel names which are said to be translations, like the

town itself (Santa Katoche in Kaqchikel). Although my data are not strong enough to support this claim, I

would guess that there are some names which are either more popular for dogs (as Max or Buddy might be in

the U.S.) or used exclusively for dogs (as Lucky or Shadow might be in the U.S.). For example, Rocky seems

to be a very popular name for German Shepherds throughout all of Central America, possibly because of a

certain TV show (author's conversation with Quetzil Castañeda, July 26, 2008).

In observing human-dog interactions among my host family, I paid special attention to how the family

members addressed their dog. By and large, the most popular addresses were expressions along the lines of

scram. For this, I heard such Kaqchikel words as ka-tixl (“quit it” or “cut it out” or “go away”), wa-jaixl

(“out of the house”), and tsu-wa-jaixl. I sometimes heard feura (“outside” in Spanish). I also heard these

expressions used by other owners to their dogs, followed by the dog's name. It's noteworthy that I also heard

such words as ka-tixl used by older Catarinecos towards children when they wanted them to cease doing

something. I have also heard ksh-ksh-ksh-ksh or wsh-wsh-wsh-wsh used domestically towards pets before

feeding.

On my questionnaire, I asked informants what they feed their pets. Some feed them store-bought dog

food, some feed them table scraps, some feed them both. It is easier to feed your dog table scraps, which in

my home-stay consisted of a handful of scraps (bones and such, if any) and a few tortillas, the staple food

for every meal. At mere centavos a piece, tortillas are a more cost-effective option than dog food, which is

about 10 Quetzales (about $1.30) per pound and available in Panajachel at the closest, 3.5 km away.

My analysis of the data, presented in this and the previous sections, supports the claim that to a

Catarineco, owning and interacting with a dog is not about addressing mythology or establishing cultural

identity. Nor would I say that actions are taken on dogs in order to put them “in their place.” In the data

from my questionnaires, I have found no answers that seem to essentialize dogs (i.e., “because it's a dog.”)

Even when I asked a few informants, “Why don't you eat dogs?” — expecting a response along the lines of

“because it's a dog” — most answers were that the people were scared that the dogs would have diseases so

that eating dogs would make them sick. In addition, my data show that there are little in the way of

boundaries that separate dogs from humans in cultural domains: it is perfectly acceptable for dogs and

humans to bear the same types of names, to live in the same areas of town, and to eat the same kind of

food. A human talks to a dog differently than he would talk to another human, but this isn't very strange

considering that dogs cannot talk back.

The boundary between human and dog lies in the dog's role. A dog's function is to guard the house. The

dog is part of a distinct system which, simplified, is this: you put into your domestic dog chicken bones,

tortillas, maybe some Purina if you can afford it, and a space at your house at night. The desired outcome is

that you have a kind of alarm system for your house and maybe, for about 15% of my informants, a kind of

friend. Undesirable outcomes include a contribution to the street dog population and potentially (if your dog

gets pregnant or impregnates another, or you one day kick it out of the house) to the stray dog population.

Street dogs are prevalent problems that you address when you need to and ignore when you don't.

This description summarizes what I saw to be the popular attitude towards dogs in Santa Catarina. As I

said at the end of the introduction, the emic and etic perspectives of this attitude proved to be similar.

What I mean is that because Catarinecos treat dogs as parts of a system with a distinct utility, they have the

costs and benefits of dogs in mind. Thus, Catarinecos are aware of the symbiotic relationship that they have

with their dogs, which is part of the etic perspective.

The popular attitude may be utilitarian or objectifying, but it is certainly not static. There are factors

on hand which appear to be changing the way Catarinecos perceive dogs.

Turning Chuches into Pooches

At first I think the noise is only a typical case of a dog having a fit because of its muzzle: the sound of

desperate claws on the linoleum floor, a lady shouting at her dog in Kaqchikel, Selaine's stern “Woah!

Woah!” rising above the din. Then I look up from the registration paper I'm helping someone fill out to see

two dogs wrangling around, a muzzled one flailing like a fish against its leash and a smaller black mutt

without leash or collar lashing at the former, not biting but pestering it enough to make it panic. The

struggle quickly becomes too much for the small reception room packed with other pets and their owners. As

the muzzled one lunges more forcefully, a paw catches the laptop cord at the registration table and rips out

the plug just as Ezzie snags the computer so it won't fall. “Close the door! Close the door!” someone yells in

Spanish, then someone else yells, “The black one!” Three people are now restraining the muzzled one. I

grab the black one, warily at first, but when I see that he's not biting I hoist him up, my arms under his

forelegs and his hind legs dangling at my shins. “No don't close the door, throw him back out in the street!”

someone yells.

I defer to Selaine, feeling the surprisingly cooperative dogs' armpits hot on my wrists and his small heart

pounding against my folded fingers. Selaine looks at him disapprovingly, “Him? Take him to the back!”

I move through the door marked No Pasa with a red stop sign. Selaine is later to explain to me that the

one I'm carrying ran into the clinic off the street upon seeing the muzzled female dog in heat. A vet student

helps me put him in one of the cages in the back where other dogs wait with melancholy to be anesthetized

and spayed or neutered.

The free monthly spay/neuter/vaccination clinic in Panajachel is one of the four projects under Healthy

Pets, a Panajachel-based organization that consists of Selaine, Ezzie, and whatever this power-duo can put

together, which at present includes awareness-raising concerts, food clinics, humane education programs in

local schools, and emergency services for animals. The spay/neuter clinics began in 2007 after the group

teamed up with Dr Miguel de Leon Regil, who is presently the only licensed and practicing veterinarian in the

entire Lake Atitlán region. In September 2007, Healthy Pets sent Dr Regil down to San Jose, Costa Rica to

learn a somewhat controversial small-incision technique for spaying and neutering cats and dogs. McKee, the

organization who trained Dr Regil in this technique, is a U.S.-based organization started eight years ago, one

of whose missions is to teach Latin American veterinarians the small-incision technique. Selaine calls sending

Dr Regil to Costa Rica “the best two-hundred dollars we ever spent.” This quicker technique cuts the price

of an operation down more than half, making it possible for the nonprofit to have these clinics in the first

place.

In San Jose, McKee works to change the methods and attitudes of veterinarians like Dr Regil. McKee is a

501(c)(3) non-profit whose aim is to “build sustainable community solutions by teaching local veterinarians,

governmental veterinarians & university veterinarians in advanced spay neuter techniques (safer for the

animals and faster for high volume campaigns), and... also trains the respective community to be pro-active

using spay neuter....” (McKee a). According to their website, McKee has already trained 136 Costa Rican

veterinarians in addition to those from other countries, such as Dr Regil (McKee b).

But Dr Regil returned from Costa Rica last year with more than just the knowledge of a new surgery

technique. Selaine says that he came back with a “completely changed attitude... he came back and he said

I get it, I understand what you're doing, I want to do a clinic now every month.” Dr Regil tells me that before

going to San Jose, “I didn't understand the problem of street dogs and cats... lamentably, we of the private

practice don't focus our efforts here... it is for this I changed my mind, understanding the problem in our

country and to contribute to the cause” (email to author, July 11, 2008).

It appears to me that veterinary medicine in the Lake Atitlán region is currently undergoing a profound

shift. Although McKee has been around for seven years, Dr Regil returned to join forces with Healthy Pets

not even a year ago. Now, Dr Regil has coordinated with the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City to

have students from the vet school there spend a weekend in Panajachel to observe and assist him in his

small-incision operations during Healthy Pets's clinic. The “new attitude” defined by awareness and focus on

public service appears to be popular among the students who attend the clinics. Juan Marcos, an outgoing

thirty-year-old student, tells me that most of his classmates' interests in veterinary medicine stem from a

desire to make money instead of a desire, in Dr Regil's words, to contribute to the cause, although the

popular attitude is shifting. Selaine, who spends at least a full day each month with a different group of

these students, says, “I think they're realizing that they can still make money, they can still have a good

career, and that they can also help their community, they can give back.” Selaine also tells me that a few

months ago the dean of U San Carlos's vet school came to observe a clinic, where his initial skepticism

towards the small-incision technique was dispelled.

As students of this new attitude graduate and open practices of their own, one imagines that they will

continue in the tradition already championed by McKee, Dr Regil, and Healthy Pets. And as veterinarians of

this tradition give their clients more affordable options, their clientèle grows. Thus the new attitude spreads

to the populace.

Juan Marcos currently sees a shift in attitude in “the way [Guatemalans] see the dogs.” He describes to

me that people have begun to treat their dogs less like farm animals or chuchos and more like pets. As to

agents of this change, Juan Marcos holds the TV Network Animal Planet largely responsible, saying that since

Animal Planet came to Guatemala, people have been looking at all animals differently. Juan Marcos points

out that much of Guatemala attempts to copy the United States in many areas, and this is “a good thing to

copy.”

Perhaps the most poignant spread of the new attitude is seen in Healthy Pets' humane education

program. Watching videos taken by Ezzie of schoolteachers screaming “Who's going to get their pets fixed?”

followed by a chorus of “Me!”s and a flurry of raised hands, I had the impression that the spread of the new

attitude is taking on the fervor of a political campaign or a religious revival. Ezzie and Selaine themselves

visit the local schools to talk to children about treatment of animals, vaccination, and spaying/neutering.

They say that it's exciting to have children approach them and declare that they want to be vets when they

grow up.

Three and a half kilometers away, where does Santa Catarina stand in all this? I approached the

municipality and inquired about any actions they were taking on the perros callejeros problem. In the small,

ground-floor room with four people on computers, one twenty-year-old worker showed me that the Comisiόn

de Salud (Health Commission) took charge of controlling the street dog population. It's common knowledge

that in many Lake Atitlán communities, Panajachel and Santa Catarina included, the traditional way for the

municipalities to reduce the stray dog population has been to notify the town to lock up the owned dogs and

then to leave meat laced with venom in the streets so as to mass-poison the dogs without owners. The

Municipalidad of Santa Catarina appears to be moving on, however: the official with whom I talked printed a

time line for me subtitled “to improve the streets hygienically (to have them clean and without animal

excrement) and to make a Plan to control the Population of Street Dogs and not to have health risk.” This

plan includes four parts, the first of which took effect in June of this year and includes free rabies

vaccinations. The other three parts describe different stages of “internal regulations for the reduction and

possession of street dogs.” The municipality worker told me that spaying/neutering could be a part of this

plan, the final execution of which is scheduled for August. At the time of this paper, this plan was still in its

development stage and apparently ahead of schedule. One friend I made who works with the municipality

called me on the night before I was to give my presentation to say that Mayor Mimacaché of Santa Catarina

had discussed the street dog issue that night at the comude, a kind of meeting of town officials. Options he

discussed included veneno (the poison-laced meat), buying a rifle with the municipality's money to shoot

stray dogs, and capturing the dogs to relocate them elsewhere.

While meeting with the municipality worker, I asked him if he had ever heard of Healthy Pets in

Panajachel; he said he had not. I have given copies of Santa Catarina's Municipality's plan and contact

information to Dr Regil and to Selaine, both of whom showed much interest. At last word, Selaine and Dr

Regil had contacted the municipality.1

Among Santa Catarina's citizens, it's doubtful that the new attitude has garnered much popularity. I

asked on my survey, “Have you heard of the vaccination and sterilization (spay/neuter) clinics in

Panajachel?” Out of fourteen informants, five had and nine had not. This ratio is higher than what I feel to

be an accurate representation, especially considering that out of the more than one thousand pet owners

registered in Healthy Pets's database as having treated their pets to either vaccination or sterilization, about

ninety percent of whom are from Panajachel, not one is from Santa Catarina, the closest pueblo to

Panajachel. Granted, knowing about free spay/neuter clinics and having the desire to get your pet spayed or

neutered are two different things. Although the clinics in Panajachel are free, money is not the only

potential problem: it is doubtful how well-received a dog would be among crowded commuters in the back

of a pickup truck, the most popular form of transportation from Santa Catarina to Panajachel.

Indeed, the attitude I hope to have portrayed in the previous sections represents the popular attitude

towards dogs in Santa Catarina. In my time there, I saw only one local with a dog on a leash. He told me he

lived in Santa Catarina. His dog was a yellow lab, he wore jeans shorts and a t-shirt, and he spoke to his

children in Spanish. This Catarineco is in the minority in more ways than one.

To me, there exists a clear dichotomy between the new attitude and what might be called the “old

attitude,” which may be called old only in that it has been around for longer than the new attitude has. The

new attitude appears to be replacing the old attitude, while vice versa is rarely the case. The rate of the

spread of the new attitude depends mostly on a few agents through different media: Healthy Pets, Dr Regil,

and even Animal Planet.

Figure 8: diagram of the spreads of the new attitude and the small-incision technique

Conclusion

To conclude this paper, I offer an exhortation to Catarinecos from the Popul Vuh, a compilation of

Mayan creation texts. In this story, the gods' second attempt to create intelligent beings is the “manikins,

woodcarvings” who are said to be ancestors of the monkeys. The manikins forgot their creator, the Heart of

Sky, and were lacking in blood and lymph: “they talked, but their faces were dry.” As such, the gods

destroyed them in many different ways, one of which was to let their dogs avenge themselves:

And this is what their dogs said, when they spoke in their turn:

“Why is it you can't seem to give us our food? We just watch and you just keep us down, and

you throw us around. You keep a stick ready when you eat, just so you can hit us. We don't

talk, so we've received nothing from you. How could you not have known? You did know that

we were wasting away there, behind you.

“So, this very day you will taste the teeth in our mouths. We shall eat you,” their

dogs told them, and their faces were crushed. (The Popul Vuh: 136)

Although the threats that dogs pose to Catarinecos today are somewhat less severe than impending

apocalypse, it may be in the best interests of their health and their businesses to solve the problem of the

street dogs. I should mention that the problems posed by street dogs appear to be public in consequence

(dirty streets, rabies threat, public annoyance), while the benefits appear to be private (house guardian). As

owning a dog in Santa Catarina creates a private benefit at a mostly public cost, dog-ownership poses a

classic collective action problem.

I am now personally interested to see how these attitudes shift in the coming years. With such recent

developments as Healthy Pets's programs and Santa Catarina's new street dog policies (scheduled to take

place on the day this paper is due), it appears to me that the growth of the new attitude is imminent,

powerful, and fragile. I would be interested to read a future study or perhaps to return myself in a few

years. I wonder which I would find: dogs with leashes or humans with crushed faces?

Endnotes

1 If you want news of Dr Regil's and Healthy Pets's progress, email me at wdanieljordan@gmail.com. For

videos of some of Healthy Pets's work, see youtube.com and search the following: healthy pets panajachel.

Acknowledgements

First, I thank The University of Georgia's Honors Program, Jessica Hunt, and UGA's Honors International

Scholars Program for their generous grant. I also thank Jessica Hunt, Mardi Schmeichel, and Jenna Andrews

for their advice and guidance. I thank Carla Pezzia and Tim Wallace for their tremendous help, guidance,

encouragement, accessibility, doctor recommendations, and wealth of knowledge. I thank my classmates

for, among other things, helping me keep my sanity, especially Zach and Derek. I thank the readers of my

blog for their interest and for their helpful comments. I thank Selaine and Ezzie for their eagerness to work

with me and for the popcorn and pizza. For their help at various stages of my research, I thank Katie

Wharton, “Thomas,” Ramiro, and especially my Catarineco host family. Finally, I thank my parents for their

love and for supporting my “endeavors,” even if it means that I spend my summers thousands of miles away.

Figure 9: questionnaire

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