EASTERN COLOMBIA — CRIST AND GUHL 403 



pesos' worth. However, it is impossible to get at the real economic 

 life of most storekeepers in terms of statistics. Books are simply not 

 kept. Further, urban and rural functions are so tightly interwoven 

 that it is next to impossible to unravel the individual strands. For 

 instance, Maria Vermeo has a plot of 10 hectares ("more or less") of 

 land 2 miles west of Florencia. She raises corn, plantains, yuca, rice, 

 and sugarcane, and grinds her cane and makes crude sugar in a primi- 

 tive trapiche, or mill. She also has 10 milk cows. Two of her sons 

 have a tiny store on the plaza where they buy, sell, and trade chickens, 

 hogs, eggs, plantains, or anything that comes along. They take one 

 meal a day at the Tolima Hotel, owned by a cousin, to which their 

 mother purveys firewood, milk, crude brown lump sugar, and cooking 

 bananas. Hogs on Dona Maria's farm are fattened on the slops from 

 the hotel. But statistics of any kind are lacking wherewith to analyze 

 the economic lives of these people, most of whose activities cannot be 

 tabulated by IBM machines. Some 80 to 90 percent of rural Latin 

 Americans live what are to them very satisfactory lives, completely 

 beyond the realm of statistics. Although from the point of view of 

 classical economic theory they do not exist at all — a fact that adds zest 

 to the study of man's incumbency on the earth in that whole vast cul- 

 tural area — Latin Americans are making increasingly efficient use of 

 their human and natural resources. 



FOREST SETTLEMENTS 



On the weekly flight from Florencia to the frontier military post 

 of Puerto Leguizamo, on the Putumayo Eiver, the only intervening 

 stop is at Tres Esquinas, where the Rio Orteguaza joins the Caqueta. 

 Colonists have penetrated the heavy forest on a wide front south and 

 east of Florencia as far as the point where the Rio Pescado empties into 

 the Orteguaza. From there on to the Putumayo one flies over con- 

 tinuous treescape with a totally unlived-in aspect. Tres Esquinas, 

 Puerto Leguizamo, and La Tagua on the Caqueta, are typical of settle- 

 ments made for strategic purposes along rivers. The river bank is 

 cleared for a half mile or so on either side of the settlement, but only 

 a few hundred yards behind the settlement the dense forest swallows 

 up a trail or a road and holds sway in all majesty. Such settlements 

 have no hinterland, and hence contrast sharply with the settlements 

 at the foot of the mountains, such as Florencia, Mocoa, or Villavicencio 

 that do have a hinterland, and are tied to it by a highway. For even 

 a poor road is better than no road at all. Landslides can and do block 

 passenger and truck traffic for days at a time. However, the caravans 

 of cars and trucks thus blocked do eventually get through, even in the 

 rainy season, and even if truck drivers have to help run bulldozers and 

 bus passengers, in relays, have to help push the bus or shovel earth 

 (pi. 3, fig. 2). 



