SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE EST LATEST AMERICA — CRIST 507 



often lacking in their daily diet, and in general participate in the social 

 life around them, that is by no means a passive form of entertainment. 

 Any listlessness they may show may be due more to the ravages of 

 intestinal parasites than to the erosion of the spirit so common in our 

 society, where millions of people try to "get through the day" by re- 

 sorting to the use of tranquilizers or stimulants. 



INSECURITY OF TENURE: INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL CONTROL 



A basic factor in the development of any country or area is who owns 

 or controls how much and what kind of land, for the use made of it is 

 so often determined by those who control it. One naturally wonders 

 who owns this land in forest fallow, and the answer is that it may 

 belong to the Government, to individuals, or to large corporations, 

 foreign or domestic — but almost never to the slash-and-burn farmer. 

 Even those who claim it often have only the vaguest notion of where 

 the actual boundary lines of their holdings are. Most of the less- 

 developed areas of the world are innocent of land surveys ; properties 

 and national boundaries are marked by a system of metes and bounds ; 

 even national boundaries are in dispute, wide zones between nations 

 being a kind of no-man's land, claimed by both nations — Guatemala 

 and British Honduras, Peru and Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia 

 are cases in point. If even international boundaries are vague and 

 often unmarked, it is small wonder that the property of persons and 

 corporations within the several countries themselves should be poorly 

 delimited, if at all. The result is that de facto landholding may be 

 even more important than de jure landholding : i.e., powerful persons 

 or groups own or control vast areas and are in a position to put the 

 squeeze on anyone squatting on their land; hence anyone who does 

 squat on and work obviously unused land gets far away from those 

 in the seats of the mighty and produces just enough for subsistence, 

 for if his activities are called to the attention of those who own or 

 claim the land he can the more easily slip away, higher up the moun- 

 tain side or deeper into the forest. The words "own" or "control" 

 or "claim" are used because a powerful person can do about as he 

 pleases in setting the boundary to his property, for he almost in- 

 variably has on his side the police force and the army, as well as the 

 religious authorities. 



Thus the primitive farmer is, so to speak, between the devil and 

 the dark green forest. But the forest is his home, as it has usually 

 been for all of his ancestors. It has no terrors for him because he 

 and his ancestors have wrested their living from it ; he is really terri- 

 fied, and with good reason, of the landlord, or local cacique, or boss, 

 with his bespectacled lawyer whose briefcase is full of lengthy docu- 

 ments that are backed up by the police. He knows all too well that 



