486 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
children carry their father’s name, and the father’s side of the house 
thus becomes more important than the mother’s. At the same time 
the avunculate, the authority and the dominant role of the maternal 
uncle in the life of the family and clan, is destroyed by the pre- 
dominance of the father, whose responsibilities to his children are also 
increased. Since the church forbids plural marriages, and the father 
has a feeling of greater responsibility toward his children, the tend- 
ency to be limited to one wife likewise increases—this in spite of the 
fact that Guajiro law can be invoked and a number of wives purchased 
outside the church. 
The Carvajal family in La Gloria (pl. 1, fig. 1) has been affected 
by these various cultural cross currents. The parents themselves were 
formally married in the church only a few years ago after 25 years 
of common-law marriage and when the eldest of their 11 children was 
already grown. The eldest daughter (pl. 1, fig. 2), married in the 
church, lives in Maracaibo with her Latin husband and five children, 
who speak only Spanish and who will have only vague memories of 
the part-Guajiro household of their grandparents. The eldest boy, 
Jestis, was also married in the church, but, in spite of several years 
at school in Maracaibo, to a pure-blooded Guajira (pl. 2, fig. 1), whose 
whole background is Guajiro, who speaks no Spanish, and by whom 
he now has a daughter andason. They will be brought up to school 
age speaking only the Guajiro language, after which they will also 
learn Spanish and thus in time will sit astride the two cultures. 
According to Guajiro law, a man acquires a wife through purchase 
from her family, by paying a certain sum in cattle, horses, goats, 
sheep, and perhaps in some costly jewelry. A girl child accordingly 
represents a certain amount of wealth that will come to her family 
with the bride price, whereas the boy child will be an economic drain 
upon his family when he marries, since they must get together the 
bride price, which will leave the family. For this reason the Guajiro 
takes better care of his female children and watches over them with 
greater solicitude than he does over his male children. This situation 
is reflected in the few statistics that are available, which show a much 
higher death rate for male than for female children.* When the 
Guajiro begins to appreciate certain values of the culture of the 
civilizados, the attitude toward male children undergoes a change: the 
boy can help his father at an early age, and particularly if his father 
is engaged in trade with the Guajiros, he can be an economic asset 
rather than a lability. 
M. E. S. Hartland, in “Primitive Society,” * observes that “Patri- 
archal rule and patrilineal kinship have made perpetual inroads upon 
mother-right all over the world; consequently matrilineal institutions 
? Roberto Pineda Giraldo, Informe preliminar sobre aspectos sociales y econdémicos de 
la Guajira, Bol. Arqueol., December 1947, p. 565. 
41921, p. 34. 
