ACCULTURATION IN THE GUAJIRA—CRIST 491 
comparable to the Bedouins who come in off the desert of North 
Africa or Arabia and camp near the villages or cities while they de- 
cide whether to cast in their lot with the city dwellers or return to 
the desert to live under the black tents again. The houses of the 
man with two wives, located about 100 yards apart, are typical of 
the area around the lagoon of Sinamaica where the houses have walls 
made of rush mats and roofs of palm-leaf thatch. Those who are 
well accultured and have enough money will build a house with a 
cement floor, adobe walls, and thatch roof. The more sophisticated 
will plaster the adobe walls with a layer of cement, and many even 
have a roof of eternit or of galvanized iron. 
THE CARVAJAL FAMILY: ACCULTURATIONAL LEAVEN 
A kind of nucleus for this loosely knit settlement is formed by 
the stockadelike home of Manuel Carvajal (pl. 3, fig. 1) who first 
settled in La Gloria 27 years ago. This is rather an agglomeration 
of one-room units, built with the passage of the years to take care of 
the family as it gradually increased in size. The central 
cement-floored structure is used as a dining room, and a living- 
reception room. At night it accommodates a number of ham- 
mocks for guests or for family. Around this are other one-room 
houses, in which the family lives its private life, and in which the 
cooking is done and servants and hangers-on sleep. Mr. Carvajal 
has long been in the business of buying, transporting, and selling 
livestock. To one side of the cluster of rooms it is possible to drive 
trucks and jeeps into the fenced-in enclosure. Here animals can be 
unloaded from the trucks, sorted out and reloaded. Animals not 
to be reshipped immediately or those arriving on foot can be driven 
through the corridor between the dining-living room and the structure 
in which the cooking is done to the large, sturdily built corral on the 
other side of the agglomeration. Mr. Carvajal is also the only one 
in this locality who keeps a store, where produce from the interior 
may be sold or exchanged and where such necessities as yuca, corn, 
beer, yard goods, and now gasoline and oil may be bought. Thus 
the increased number of functions made expansion of the original 
dwelling imperative. The entire compound, surrounded by a high, 
well-built fence, is a self-contained unit which looks like a frontier 
stockade. 
Mr. Carvajal is ideally equipped to act as an agent of what might 
be called cultural penetration; born and brought up in Sinamaica, 
he is a typical product of Latin American culture; energetic and 
adventurous, he began trading with the Guajiros as a young man, and 
went all over the Peninsula selling yard goods, tobacco, and other 
necessities, buying or taking in exchange produce of the countryside, 
such as goatskins, divi divi pods, and soon. During the early years 
