412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



making a living in frontier zones, but the great majority were men 

 whose only baggage consisted of their capacity for hard work. The 

 settlers were a heterogeneous lot, poverty-stricken day laborers, share- 

 croppers, or renters from the large estates in the hot lowlands or 

 temperate highlands; half-starved peasant proprietors of tiny, frag- 

 mented plots in the cold country. Here was a vast fertile country 

 awaiting settlement, where land could be had for the taking, for no 

 one owned it. All the settler had to do was to build a thatch hut, clear 

 a piece of forest with his faithful machete, and plant corn, yuca, and 

 plantains. But this was not enough to cope with the new environment. 

 Weakened by a poor diet the settler became a ready prey to malaria, 

 and to other diseases that still further undermined him. With no 

 capital it was impossible to buy drugs, even if they had been available. 

 Many of the early settlers died ; in many settlements all the children 

 died year after year. Once sick and ailing, a worker is no longer able 

 to keep up the unequal struggle against the forest, to be sure, but there 

 would be much less sickness if public health measures were systemati- 

 cally undertaken to kill the vectors of tropical fevers and to decrease 

 the incidence of water-borne diseases. Further, cheap and easy credit 

 should be available to the settler, without his having to go through 

 endless red tape ; thus he could bring his agricultural equipment and 

 techniques up to date and take care of his seasonal needs without re- 

 course to the usurer. Finally, improved roads would tie the settler 

 more securely to his local market and thereby to the national economy. 



The Pasto-Sibundoy-Mocoa-Urcusique-Puerto Umbria road 

 should at the earliest moment possible be extended as far as Puerto 

 Asis in order to tie in with navigation on the Putumayo. 



The construction of this highway was especially pushed during the 

 war with Peru, itself probably due in part to the neglect of this fron- 

 tier zone. When the treaty of peace was signed, work on the road was 

 abandoned ; the last 25 miles of the Pasto- Puerto Asis road was not 

 finished. Thus an extremely fertile area, the alluvial land along the 

 Putumayo, does not have an outlet for its produce. Rice is reported 

 to give prodigious yields here, but it cannot reach its market. At the 

 same time there is a great demand for it in the mountains, and in 

 Narifio a brisk contraband trade in Ecuadorean rice has grown up. 



The mountainous area around Ipiales, near the border with Ecuador 

 is also seeking a safety valve to the east, in the form of one road via 

 La Victoria to connect with the San Miguel River, and another via 

 Puerres, which crosses a pass in the cordillera and will connect with 

 the Guamues River, which drains the Languna de la Cocha. 



The state of Cauca has completed the road from El Bordo to 

 Bolivar and every effort should be made to continue this on to San 

 Sebastian and thence, crossing the divide, to Santa Rosa on the 



