SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE IN LATIN AMERICA — CRIST 505 



A cotton shrub or so grows near the house from which tufts or bolls 

 of the raw fiber are gathered, then seeded or ginned by hand, to be sold 

 as raw cotton or spun by hand by the womenfolk into coarse thread. 

 Some coarse cloth may be woven by an old woman on a primitive 

 handmade loom, or the simple cotton clothing of the adults may be 

 purchased ; children wear no clothing until they are 6 or 8 years old. 



The family all sleep in hammocks, often made at home of palm 

 fibers. If they can afford it and are accultured to that extent, they 

 sleep under mosquito netting, but more often they do not, the smoke 

 of the kitchen fire helping to keep insects at bay. It can get coolish 

 and damp at night, especially noticeable if one sleeps in soiled, sweat- 

 soaked clothing. The first thing the woman of the house does as she 

 crawls out of her hammock in the morning is to put firewood on the 

 embers that have smoldered all night to get the fire going for heating 

 the water to make coffee, which she pours into cups made of a half 

 shell of a coconut. Both she and her husband put in more brown 

 sugar than the beverage will dissolve, but the coffee-flavored sugar in 

 the bottom of the cup is carefully licked out ; sugar gives them quick 

 energy. If coffee is unavailable, they will probably have hot water 

 sweetened with brown sugar — agua de panela. The woman continues 

 with her household chores as her husband follows the path to his 

 clearing (roza, conuco, milpa). The heavy drops of dew seem cold 

 to his legs as they brush against the plants along the path; he is 

 carrying his long, well-sharpened machete, and, if in the process of 

 clearing land, he may be carrying his most prized, most costly tool, 

 his axe. After working a few hours his wife or children will bring 

 him his breakfast — a bowl of black beans, or cooking bananas 

 (plantains) or yuca, boiled, baked, roasted or fried ; or he may have 

 corn cooked in various ways, or rice — the type of food will depend on 

 the season and on how well off or on how lucky he has been. At all 

 events, it will be relieved of its monotony only by occasional fruits, 

 game or fish, and herbs. 



Over millennia this primitive farmer has evolved a sure-fire crop 

 complex : Corn, yuca, beans, and pumpkins or squash. To this list has 

 been added, since the Spanish Conquest, the cooking banana. The 

 techniques of this kind of primitive farming look simpler than they 

 are. The great toe of the farmer's bare foot is used — or a dibble stick 

 if one is fancy — to make a hole in the soft earth of the burnt-over 

 plot, preferably after the first rain ; two or three grains of corn and a 

 few beans and squash or pumpkin seeds are put in, and the hole is 

 covered up by a swipe of the foot and the earth is tamped down by 

 being stepped on. The corn comes up rapidly and shoots up fast, its 

 green stalk forming a living pole for the beans to climb up on ; it will 

 be harvested in about 90 days, the beans a month or so later. The 



