TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



23 



until recently; obviously if some Indians had not 

 learned to butcher cattle, there would have been 

 no meat in the all-Indian communities. But 

 the tanning of leather is as far as I know a Ladino 

 monopoly; and although a few Indians make 

 tallow candles, this is not a common household 

 art. But a more important lack is the entire 

 dairying complex. An occasional Indian owns 

 and milks a cow, selling the milk to Ladinos; but 

 I do not know any who makes butter or cheese. 

 Furthermore, Indians do not normally drink 

 milk, even when they can afford to. They do 

 not like it. 



Animals, as I have indicated, are not used to 

 draw carts or plows. Plows arc used, with oxen, 

 by Ladinos in some parts of the country; and 

 there is the exceptional case of northwest Guate- 

 mala — near the Mexican border — where ox-drawn 

 plows are regularly used in Indian agriculture. 

 I am not acquainted with the circumstances of 

 this exception. Oxcarts are used on Ladino 

 plantations, of course driven frequently by 

 Indian laborers; but they are not found in the 

 Indian communities. 



In the sheep-growing regions the fields are 

 systematically fertilized by the sheep; the Indians 

 move their corrals periodicallj' from place to 

 place on the hillside. Otherwise manure is only 

 occasionally used by Indians; of course there 

 normally is not very much. The institutions of 

 the stable and the barn are completely lacking in 

 Indian cultm-e. 



Wheat is grown in some regions by Indians as 

 well as Ladinos. I do not know how they usually 

 thresh it — I have never lived in a wheat-growing 

 community — but in passing I have seen horses 

 used by Ladinos and not by Indians. Indians 

 usually sell the grain, however; the milling of 

 flour is a monopoly of wealthy Ladinos. In one 

 case where wheat is grown I was told that wheat 

 is mixed with com and prepared in the manner of 

 com in the Indian kitchen. 



The Indians like bread, and eat it when they 

 can afford it and when they can buy it. It is not 

 a part of the normal diet, but it is an important 

 part of Indian ritual and festival life. Baking is 

 not a domestic art, however, any more than 

 among the Ladinos. Except in some all-Indian 

 communities, the bakers, furthermore, are almost 

 always Ladinos. 



Very few Indians drink bottled beer from the 



city. The favorite beverage of both Ladinos and 

 Indians is the hard liquor made in licensed dis- 

 tilleries. The making of liquor is not confined to 

 the Ladinos and their distilleries, however. 

 Indian bootleggers are not uncommon. Further- 

 more, nobody can say that distilled liquor, a 

 European import, is not thoroughly integrated 

 into Indian culture. 



Metals have entered Indian culture in the form 

 chiefly of tools, particularly the steel hoe and 

 machete. In some other parts of Guatemala iron 

 tools are made by Ladino blacksmiths (I have 

 never heard of an Indian smith) but most of the 

 tools are imported from Germany, England, and 

 Connecticut. Carpenters and masons and such 

 also have their imported tools of metal. Enamel- 

 ware utensils are occasionally used. Tinware is 

 also common. Imported sheet tin is elaborated 

 into cups and kerosene lamps by Ladino tinsmiths 

 in the city and elsewhere; if there is an Indian 

 community somewhere that specializes in the 

 trade, I do not know it, and there are no tinsmiths 

 among the Indians of the region I write about. 

 Gasoline tins find many uses among Indians. 

 During Holy Week they buy canned fish. Metal 

 money is of course also used; I trust that no In- 

 dians make it! 



The footloom, with one major exception, is 

 distinctly part of Ladino, and not of Indian 

 culture. The Indian women use the backstrap 

 loom exclusively with the strange exception of one 

 Indian town in which there are shops of Indian 

 weavers, both men and women, using the footloom. 

 The major exception is in the wool processing that 

 I have mentioned. In a whole large region of 

 western Guatemala, the European techniques 

 of cardmg, spuming — on the wheel — and weaving 

 woolen cloth and blankets, is definitely part of 

 the culture of the Indian communities. Unlike 

 the Ladinoized Indians who weave cotton textiles 

 on footlooms, these wool weavers are clearly not 

 Ladinoized. Nor is the spirming wheel used by 

 other than the wool weavers. 



I shall return to this later. 



Tailoring, curiously, has also not entered Indian 

 culture except with woolen goods. In the same 

 areas where woolen cloth is made there are Indians 

 who are taOors to fashion the cloth into Indian 

 garments. 



On the other hand, there are no Indian shoe- 

 makers; nor have shoes ever become part of In- 



