SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE IN LATIN AMERICA — CRIST 513 



are not only illiterate, they know next to nothing about balanced diets, 

 soil science, seed selection, technology, mechanics, and so on. It is little 

 short of a miracle that these milperos^ conuqueros, rozeros, or what- 

 ever the local words for self-sufficient farmers, living largely apart 

 from other human beings, are still the carriers, albeit to be sure only 

 in the most simpliiEied forms, of elements of nonmaterial culture, such 

 as language, religion, and social organization. Time and again these 

 people, living what seems marginal, obscure lives, will be found to 

 have the manners and the savoir faire of people who have had cultural 

 advantages. They are by no means examples of Homo ferus, the 

 abandoned forest children of the Middle Ages ; they do not perhaps 

 have the sense of fulfillment that comes from the intimate participa- 

 tion in the creative activities of a group, but they have not become 

 dulled by automation and dial watching ; they are not bored ; their lives 

 may seem monotonous to the casual observer, but they are a challenge 

 compared to those of the ordinary factory workers of today; life is 

 hard and uncertain but their will to live is great ; suicides are unknown ; 

 they are so intent on keeping body and soul together that they have 

 no time for brooding over the difficult lives they are leading. 



Self-sufficiency at the family level means lack of interest in innova- 

 tions, such as the introduction of new techniques, new crops, and so on. 

 The head of the household at present depends on the outside world 

 practically not at all ; hence why should he effect changes suggested by 

 those from outside? A change in the age-old routine has in the past 

 often meant disaster. It took centuries for the European peasant to 

 adopt corn and potatoes, the great food crops brought from the New 

 World. The first to accept such innovations are usually those who have 

 enough food supplies from other crops to keep them from being de- 

 pendent upon the new crop for survival. A farmer naturally will fol- 

 low the routine that has meant survival for his forefathers as well as 

 for himself. But this routine, this self-sufficient agricultural system, 

 means that practically everyone must engage in the same kind of 

 activity to produce sufficient food — there is no chance for a large sur- 

 plus, for capital accumulation. As the population increases, the 

 cropping phase must be lengthened and the period of forest fallow 

 is decreased, with a consequent drop in production ; then the people 

 must reduce their numbers or migrate, as must have happened often 

 throughout history. 



Those who begin as subsistence farmers, but who ultimately pro- 

 duce a surplus may even be able to support advanced civilizations. The 

 pre-Columbian Mayans lived almost exclusively on corn, grown on 

 small plots, the soils of which were neither worked, nor fertilized, nor 

 irrigated. The surplus they produced was used to support an urban 

 elite. As the population increased, the period of time a given plot 

 could be in second-growth brush or forest was shortened as the pres- 



