Growth status of non-agrarian, semi-urban living Indians in Guatemala.

Growth status data for a new sample of semi-urban, non-agrarian Indian children living in Guatemala are presented. These children are from the Cakchiquel language group. The sample includes 753 children between the ages of 5 and 14 years of age. All were attending the public primary school in their village. The variables measured include height, weight, arm circumference, and triceps and subscapular skinfold. Arm muscle area and arm fat area were also estimated. The growth status of this sample is compared to that of three other groups: low SES non-Indian children living in Guatemala City, rural-agrarian Cakchiquel children from Guatemala, and rural-agrarian Zapotec Indian children from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. The Cakchiquel and Zapotec children are shorter and lighter than the urban non-Indian children, but the differences are not statistically significant. Body composition measures do significantly differ between samples. The largest differences are for arm fat area; the low SES urban children have more arm fat than each of the Indian samples. Other comparisions find that subscapular fat is less labile to sample differences than arm fat, and that there is no evidence for secular changes in the growth status of Cakchiquel Indian children living in Guatemala during the past two decades. During the past decade several papers have been published describing the results of the longitudinal study of child development conducted by the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (Johnston et al. 1973; 1975; 1976; Bogin and MacVean, 1978; 1981a; 1981b; 1982; 1983; Sabogal et al. 1979). Data collection for these studies began in 1963 and included samples of children of high, middle and low socioeconomic status (SES) living in Guatemala City. All of the Guatemalan children and youth in these samples were native speakers of Spanish, had Spanish surnames, and were ethnically identified as Ladino (defined here as Spanish-speaking Guatemalans with a generally "Westerns-oriented life-style and set of values). The design of the longitudinal study focuses upon children living in an urban environment and the effects of that environment on growth and department of Behavioral Sciences, University of MichiganDearborn, Dearborn, Michigan 48128 2Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Apartado Postal No. 82, Guatemala City, Guatemala Human Biology, September 1984, Vol. 56, No. 3, pp. 527-538. © Wayne State University Press, 1984 This content downloaded from 207.46. 13.102 on Sun, 31 Jul 2016 05:06:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms 528 Barry Bogin and Robert B. MacVean development. For some time we had wanted to include urban living Indians in the study. About 50% of Guatemala's total population is ethnically Indian. It seemed desirable to compare growth status and growth rates between urban Indian and Ladino ethnic groups. Also we wished to compare data for urban-living Indians with existing data for rural-living Indians so as to characterize the effects of urbanization on Indian ethnic groups. It was not feasible, however, to identify a sample of Indian children living in Guatemala City who would be appropriate for a longitudinal study. A sample of children living in a village near Guatemala City was identified that possessed many of the economic and demographic characteristics of our urban samples. In 1979 this new semi-urban Indian sample was added to the longitudinal study. The purpose of this report is to describe this sample and compare the growth status of these children with other children in our study and to the growth status of Indian samples reported in the literature. Materials and Methods