Smithsonian Report, 1963. — Crist 



PLATE 4 



1. The subsistence larmer changes very Httle from decade to decade and from country to 

 country. Pictures on this and the facing page are of Mr. Sanchez, a subsistence squatter 

 (called pardsito in Costa Rica), and his home and plot, taken near San Vito, in south- 

 western Costa Rica, February 18, 1964. 



'Mr. Sanchez stands beside his house. From the huge trees he fells he saws up by 

 hand the planks seen in the foreground, which he sells to market-oriented coffee growers 

 in the vicinity. 



He had planted bushes of chile peppers and other herbs as well as a few stalks of tobacco 

 for his own use; unhulled beans and unshucked corn were drying on the roof of the house, 

 made entirely, roof and walls, of the trunks of slender palms split in half. 



2. Mr. Sanchez looks out over a landscape of fallen logs; the soil is fairly intensively used: 

 stalks of mature corn are seen to the right, while the patch of land to the left, this side 

 of the lean-to, is just being planted to corn. Beans are planted with the corn, whose 

 stalks grow up just in time to act as poles for the climbing beans. To the right of the 

 lean-to is a patch of yuca, a staple root crop that hardly ever fails. In the background 

 to the right the cutting edge of the cultural frontier meets the uncut virgin forest. 



