EASTERN COLOMBIA — CRIST AND GUHL 407 



old trees near the house that were bearing while I was there. For 

 months it was impossible to get protein, except by hunting. There was 

 no neighbor near enough from whom he might have obtained pork or 

 beef. It was then that he became most keenly aware of the importance 

 of an adequate diet to fortify the human body against the onslaught of 

 disease. Everyone became infected with malaria when the mosquitoes 

 got bad in the dry season, but he was able to send for plasmoquin 

 through a friend and thus cure the sick. 



The first year he cleared IV2 hectares of land during off time from 

 his job on the road where he earned 1.80 pesos a day. With that money 

 he could buy the barest essentials in Boqueron. By the end of the 

 second year he had cleared 8 hectares of land, had bought a milk cow 

 for 65 pesos, and had several pigs and 40 chickens. The cow had a 

 calf in two months' time. By 1949 he had built a house and had 

 acquired 6 cows and 8 calves, 3 hogs, and a sizable flock of chickens. 

 Then came civil war, which rapidly created a social and political 

 climate infinitely more difficult to cope with than the natural 

 environment. 



The scourge of the subsistence farmer or the pioneer in so many 

 parts of Latin America has been the recurrent revolution or actual 

 civil war. Colombia had been spared this curse for over two genera- 

 tions, but the hatred between conservatives and liberals had merely 

 been smoldering, and in 1948 it was to burst into flame and destroy 

 many thriving villages and properous farmsteads. Almost the entire 

 valley on the eastern side of the Andes, with Pajarito as its center, 

 was devastated as the bands of conservatives, the government forces, 

 hunted down and destroyed the liberals, giving no quarter. Many 

 people hid out in the forest with little shelter, almost no food, and in 

 constant danger of being ambushed and destroyed. Their tales of 

 living like hunted animals were heart-rending in the extreme. Others 

 returned to the cities, where life and limb were more secure than in 

 the villages or in the open countryside. It became unsafe in this 

 sector even for a conservative Antioqueno, because as the fighting 

 continued and the lust for blood increased in intensity government 

 forces were apt to shoot first and inquire into political affiliations 

 afterward. 



So Tiberio was forced to sell the land that he had with such loving 

 care cleared and made productive. He received 2,400 pesos for the 

 cleared land and another 300 for the hogs, chickens, and corn. The 

 fact that, starting with nothing at all, he had been able with 5 years' 

 hard work, to accumulate 2,700 pesos was a great stimulus to him. But 

 unfortunately he was caught again in the same urban treadmill. His 

 earnings as a carpenter were not enough to keep up with inflation, and 

 his savings dwindled rapidly. By the time the civil war was over he 



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