488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
in crude presses, bottled, and shipped to the Maracaibo market. 
The residue remaining after the oil has been extracted is used for the 
fattening of hogs, which are kept in pens provided with a floor to 
keep them off the ground. This measure prevents disease, and in the 
small pens the pigs cannot run off their fat. 
Although the basic economy of the Guajira is grazing, and has 
been for centuries, the Guajiros are not afraid of strenuous physical 
toil. ‘They have been inured to the hard work of clearing plots for 
growing their yuca or millets, digging wells, and dipping water. The 
reply of a cocal owner in La Gloria, who had just planted 400 new 
trees, to the statement that he could surely live well, being the owner 
of such a fine coconut grove, was that “by dint of hard work one can 
live well here, as elsewhere.” Those who own cocales have a more 
or less steady income; they can sell green coconuts occasionally in 
the local market; they also have the meats of the ripe fruit to eat 
themselves or to grind and feed to hogs and chickens for use in the 
home. The relatively steady income also makes it possible for them 
to buy and consume more of the protective foods than can those who 
have only the meager wages of menfolk working on the distant 
ranches in the foothills of the Perijé Mountains. 
One might hazard the guess that at the present rate of planting 
coconut trees, within another 20 years most of the available sand- 
dune area between Paraguaipoa and Cojoro may be planted in that 
crop. The Guajiro or mestizo who establishes a coconut grove is 
himself the active agent of change of his own physical environment— 
and he so sees himself. He is already well along in the process of 
acculturation, for it is then an easy step to acceptance of certain 
of the nonmaterial elements of Latin culture, in which he has already 
achieved economic security, or anchorage. In La Gloria, too, on 
the strip of sand dunes inland from the Gulf, groves are being estab- 
lished by forward-looking settlers. 
Although long months of drought had completely dried up the 
fresh-water lagoon that lies in the midst of the dunes east of the main 
area of La Gloria, the water table beneath the dunes was still only 
a few yards deep and could be easily reached by digging a shallow 
well (pl. 7, fig. 1). In time of drought water from shallow wells 
is dipped up by hand to water the young coconut trees whose roots 
have not yet reached the ground-water table. (Trees are planted 
in August and September, before the annual rains are scheduled to 
arrive in October, November, and December.) This water is also 
used for irrigating by hand the small kitchen gardens, called barba- 
coas, a kind of cold-frame structure on legs 3 feet high (pl. 7, fig. 2), 
in which is put a mixture of loam, sand, and animal manure 8 or 
10 inches in depth to form a bed of good soil, and in which a few 
onions and peppers are grown for home use. It might be mentioned 
