ACCULTURATION IN THE GUAJIRA—CRIST 489 
that south of Maracaibo, barbacoa agriculture is carried on on a large 
commercial scale. 
At the edge of the La Gloria lagoon grows a row of banana trees 
that supply plantains, or cooking bananas, an important item in 
the local diet. As the lagoon gradually dries up, grass grows in its 
moist bed (pl. 3, fig. 2). This is eagerly harvested and doled out 
parsimoniously to the livestock that is most valuable and at the 
same time most in need. 
The Guajira is a land of hammocks. Girls brought up in the 
Guajiro tradition learn to weave at an early age while helping their 
mothers (pl. 2, fig. 2). When a girl arrives at adolescence and 
undergoes the ritual of purification, the blangueo or “blanching,” she 
is secluded in a room or special hut for a period of many months. 
During this time of enforced seclusion she learns the domestic virtues 
of cooking, weaving in intricate patterns and designs, and how to 
please her husband. She may weave belts and moneybags for her 
future husband, and she usually weaves an enormous hammock which 
is put away for her own use at marriage. The weaving of ham- 
mocks has been carried to a high degree of perfection. In a majority 
of the houses in La Gloria women are engaged in this activity. It is 
an operation that can be carried on alone or together with one or two 
companions, and that can be performed at odd moments between 
other more pressing chores. A good hammock requires several 
months to complete, but since hammocks sell for from a hundred to 
two hundred bolivars or more apiece, a tidy sum may be realized. 
The opportunity of working together makes the occupation of ham- 
mock making particularly attractive to many of the women of 
La Gloria, whose menfolk are absent for long periods of time work- 
ing in Maracaibo or in Perija. 
The centuries-old pattern of polygamy has conditioned Guajiro 
women to adjusting themselves to long absences of their menfolk; 
they have become used, in accordance with immemorial custom, to 
carrying on for months or even years at a time their daily routine 
of living and working without the man of the house. Matrilineal 
ties are still so strongly structured that the wife can continue to 
build a satisfying family life which takes such long absences without 
disruption; she has her weaving to keep her busy and her thoughts 
occupied, and she can turn for help or advice to her brothers or to 
a maternal uncle or some other man of her blood who is available 
in an emergency. Furthermore, where one of the features of the 
cultural background has been a nomadic or seminomadic way of life, 
migration of itself is not a disruptive or even a disturbing factor, 
for the individual capacity of readjustment to change is hardly 
strained at all. To be sure, many of those living in La Gloria ex- 
perience periods of food scarcity, if not actual want. To the question. 
