The forty-two stories presented in this book were told to Robert Laughlin in Tzotzil by Francisca Hernandez Hernandez, an elderly woman known as Dona Pancha, the only speaker of Tzotzil left in the village of San Felipe Ecatepec in Chiapas, Mexico. Laughlin and Dona Pancha’s running conversation is the source for the stories, which means they are told in much the same way that stories are told in traditional native settings.

Dona Pancha is bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish, and the stories are presented here in English, Tzotzil, and Spanish. They range from mythological sacred stories to quasi-historical legends to historical accounts of life in the twentieth century.