Water in the Chinantla region, Mexico. Comparative study of a Chinantec worldview based on their oral tradition

Abstract

In this article, eight stories from the Chinantec oral tradition are mentioned and compared. Half of them correspond to a compilation by anthropologist Robert J. Weitlaner, from the middle of the 20th century, and the other half was obtained between 2015 and 2016 in the municipalities of Santa María Jacatepec and San José Chiltepec, located in the same region, known as the Chinantla. The only requirement for the study was that the topic of water was present in the texts. This exercise allowed observing the importance of water resources in the Chinantec worldview, its recurrence and persistence in tradition, despite the changes caused by the social development policies promoted by the Mexican government, which impacted on natural resources. However, the comparison will serve to demonstrate that, from the similarities arise the possible differences between both corpuses. These are related to the historical context in which the stories were compiled.