Abstract
Tepeojuma is a Spanish colonial village (municipio) in the Estado de Puebla, about 180krn southeast of Mexico City. This village nestles in a basin surrounded by hills (cerros) and is in the tierra templada. This village has a typical plaza with shade trees (sombra). Around the plaza are concentrated the public office, school and church. On the market day a variety of goods are sold in the plaza. Marketing is held on Thursdays here but in Atlixco and Ma-tamoros near this village it is held twice a week (Tab. 1).
The population of Tepeojuma, like most other Mexican villages, has shown a rapid increase in recent years, but mortality rate has shown both sharp rise and sharp decline alternately (Tab. 5). Most women have many children, thence the average family size is over eight (Tab. 6). Monoculture prevails and very few croplands are irrigated (Tab. 4). Thus the life of this village is unstable. Children of this village have their “substitute papa (padrino) and mama (madrina)” in the nearby town called compadre and compadre respectively. This system (compadrazgo) is characterized by the two sets of formal relation between non-relatives. Rela-tionship between compadres is much more important than between padrinos and ahijados (children in compadrazgo). As the general purpose, padrinos are to provide their ahijados with security. Padrinos usually give their ahijados a few pesos when they come to see them or when they marry, enter or finish school and also in Semana Santa and Todos los Santos. In Tepeojuma, it is thought to be desirable to have a compadre from Matamoros situated very near. It is assumed that the family in the town can be of great help in emergency. This is an essential connection in the rurban community of the Mexican Highland.
