Triqui - Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage within three degrees of consanguinity between cousins is forbidden, no differentiation being made between cross and parallel cousins. There are other guidelines: Ego may not marry a woman who belongs to his lineage or that of his mother's father. When a pair that is courting realize that they belong to the same lineage territory, they scrutinize the degree of kinship that exists between them. If they discover that they both live on their ancestor's lands, they abstain from marrying. Said in another way, knowing up to four or five degrees of ascendant consanguinity in the father's and the mother's father's line, these two patrilineal ascendancies are used to determine rules governing marriage, prohibiting it in cases where the territory of the father's and mother's father's lineage coincides. This has resulted in a kinship category of "land brothers."

Domestic Unit. There are different phases in family development. Initially, a family is nuclear; it becomes an extended family when the children grow up and procreate; later, the family splits into nuclear units which, in their turn, initiate a new cycle. A married daughter abandons the extended family milieu and moves to her new home in the house of the groom's parents or the house he built next to that of his parents.

Inheritance. Commoners inherit land patrilineally; those belonging to the nobility inherit bilaterally land belonging to their father and their mother's father. Women of the noble group inherit lands patrilineally, but the women of the common folk do not inherit land.

Socialization. Boys and girls learn how to perform various tasks from an early age: girls wash their own clothes and help in the kitchen. At the age of 6, boys help with farmwork and, when there are cattle, in tending them. No puberty rites are held. Inculcated values agree with Triqui perception of a world in which life is austere and frugal, with a lack of opportunity produced by the harsh agricultural milieu in which they subsist.