TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



25 



and as it happens, people never sell corn on the 

 ear, but only in the grain. 



One could then argue that the whole system 

 might be changed. But if we do that, we only 

 see what is involved in the question of why mules 

 are not today important in Indian culture. Much 

 of the whole technological sj'stem, and the eco- 

 nomic system, that at first sight does not seem 

 to have anything to do with mules, would have 

 to be altered to accommodate them. The mule 

 comes as part of one culture with which it grew 

 up, so to speak; it is not immediately adaptable 

 to another culture with a long history that did 

 not take account of mules. From the point of 

 view of an individual Indian, the mule is not 

 efficient. And the only way mules can become 

 part of Indian culture is for Indians to take to 

 using them. 



There are reverse cases, too, that could be cited 

 to the same point. For example, many of the 

 Indians of Panajachel laiow that it does no^t pay 

 to raise chickens, and yet some of them do it. 

 The chickens are their bank account, a way of 

 saving in their peculiar situation. Also, for an- 

 other example, they raise beans when they could 

 buy them cheaper than it costs them to grow 

 them; that is because they want the beans when 

 beans cannot be surely obtained in the market. 

 Sentiment enters into the matter, too, but the 

 peculiar circumstances of the case are the main 

 key to an apparent anomaly. 



But questions of efficiency — even as broadly 

 interpreted as I have been using that word — are 

 not the only guiding factors in explaining why more 

 European elements are not part of these Indian 

 cultures. 



Take the case of the potter's wheel. Here 

 surely it ought to be evident that this Old World 

 invention was a great technical advance. Pottery 

 can be turned out quickly and well on the wheel. 

 Let us see what has happened in Guatemala. 



It is the women, not the men, who make pottery 

 by hand. It is strictly a household art. The 

 woman of the house, and her children, gather the 

 clay and grind and knead and mold it in the kitchen 

 and courtyard between kitchen chores. The men 

 usually help to fire it, and they take it to market.'' 



Pottery in Europe is made on the wheel pri- 

 marily by men, specialized artisans who work in 



I' I am writing particularly of the Indian community of Chimcnte, a rural 

 district of TotonicapSn in which considerable pottery is made. 



their shops in the towns. When the Spanish 

 colonists came to Guatemala, it may be assumed 

 that potters were among them, and that they set 

 up shops in the towns. Wliat may we expect to 

 have happened? Should the Indian women have 

 taken to the wheel simply because the wheel had 

 come to Guatemala? But cultural diffusion is not 

 a process of osmosis; the Indian women would 

 have had to learn to use the wheel. Perhaps 

 they would have had to apprentice themselves to 

 the Spanish potter. This was outside the culture 

 of the Indian women, clearly; also, typically the 

 women speak no Spanish and are shy of strangers; 

 also the Spanish potter would doubtless never 

 have thought to take a female apprentice — and 

 an unlikely one, too. Besides, even were those 

 olistacles overcome, what chance was there that 

 the woman would have gone back to her com- 

 munity to ply and teach her new trade? She 

 would have become Ladinoized and still the 

 potter's wheel would have remained outside of 

 Indian culture. 



The alternative was for Indian men rather than 

 women to learn the trade. This was much easier 

 from all points of view. Of course, it happened, 

 too, and there are Indian male potters using the 

 wheel; at least, in the town of Totonicapan there 

 are many of them. But they are partly Ladinoized 

 and definitely town dwellers, outside of normal 

 Indian communities. 



With many people — the Ladino descendants of 

 the Spaniards and of the Indians who learned the 

 trade, plus the Indians only partly Ladinoized — 

 making pottery on the wheel, what should have 

 happened to the Indian women potters in com- 

 petition with the more efficient professionals with 

 their wheels? One might expect the women to 

 give up their art as a losing battle against superior 

 economic efficiency. They should long ago have 

 stopped coiling pots, and then Guatemala pottery 

 today would be like that of Europe, all made on 

 the wheel, exemplifying the triumph of a superior 

 technique. 



But no. As it happens, the tune of the women 

 who make the pots has no economic value. They 

 live in an area in which the ordinary field crops are 

 dominant; in the agricultural division of labor, the 

 women play small part. The culture grew up 

 with men working in the fields and marketing 

 pottery and with women doing the domestic work 

 and molding pots. If a woman stopped making 



