SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE IN LATIN AMERICA — CRIST 515 



A SELF-SUFFICIENT FARMER PRO TEM. 



Political upheavals and violence of any kind may bring about a 

 marked increase in the number of subsistence, or near-subsistence, 

 farmers. The violence — la violencia — in Colombia during the past 

 decade or more has had the effect of breaking up many formerly 

 settled communities, some of whose inhabitants migrated to the cities 

 in search of a livelihood and protection, while others fled to the un- 

 settled areas in the mountains or in the eastern plains of the country. 

 One such refugee, living some 10 miles up the Meta River from Puerto 

 Lopez, was from the mountains of Tolima, where he had been able 

 barely to scratch out a living from his tiny plot. Murders of farmers 

 in his vicinity became so common that he feared for his life and moved 

 to town, but he had no skills and could find no way of making a living. 

 He was finally able to get a ride in a cattle truck returning to Puerto 

 Lopez from Bogota. From there he went upriver in a dugout canoe 

 with his wife and children, and began to grow a crop of corn at the 

 edge of the river. Pie is at present a subsistence farmer, to be sure, 

 but one that might correctly be referred to as a subsistence farmer in 

 transition, because as soon as there is a market and he can produce a 

 surplus he will be interested in entering a money economy by supply- 

 ing that market with surplus corn, a fattened hog, a few chickens, 

 papayas, or a bunch of cooking bananas. M. Rodriguez had as helper 

 a Huitoto Indian girl, who was learning Spanish and in general taking 

 on the ways of the sedentary agriculturist. Thus this was a case of a 

 subsistence farmer in transition using the labor of an Indian girl in 

 process of acculturation. Her children will probably be better adapted 

 to hot country farming than either she or the Rodriguez family are 

 at present. 



BETTER RURAL LIVING CONDITIONS OR CITY SLUMS? 



At present the self-sufficient farmer operates in a kind of social, 

 economic, and political no-man's land that officially belongs to a na- 

 tion or political entity, yet the area under cultivation, or forest fallow, 

 is not an "effective" part of the nation. The Jesuits early saw the 

 necessity of having the seminomadic Indians of many parts of the 

 Americas assembled in villages, or Tnisiones, if they were to have effec- 

 tive control over their charges. Modern governments may perhaps 

 have to act in a similar manner, for it would seem that their leaders 

 can hardly afford to allow their unskilled farmers to swell the slum 

 sectors of cities where their labor cannot be utilized. It would seem 

 more rational to keep them on the land by having them engaged in 

 tasks they can perform, such as the building of roads and dams, drain- 

 age ditches and canals, and even crude schools, houses, and community 

 centers, and so on, rather than to be allowed to agglomerate into an 



