TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



27 



its entirety, except that many of the designs are 

 typically Indian. This complex was not called 

 upon to replace anything in the culture. Wool was 

 something new. Not only new but obviously, in 

 that cold mountainous country, something very 

 desirable. The men and the women both took 

 something that gave them a source of income; the 

 women do the washing and carding and the men 

 the spinning — wheel spinning, learned from Ladino 

 artisans — and the foot-loom weaving. 



The lesson to be learned is that where other 

 things are equal, an advantageous, or more 

 efficient, trait of technology %vill impose itself upon 

 an alien culture; but that other things are not of 

 course equal, and the particular circumstances, 

 economic and social, override the element of 

 abstract or objective differential in efficiency. 

 The further lesson to be learned, I think, is that 

 the phenomena of diffusion and culture contact are 

 to be understood only in the very intimate terms 

 that are afforded by intimate contact with the 

 situations in which the actual people are involved. 



It need not surprise, therefore, that history and 

 circumstance have supplied the Indians of Pana- 

 jachel with its o\vn peculiar roster of technological 

 traits. This roster is amply inventoried in the 

 course of this monograph. Here need be made 

 only a general statement to show the sense in 

 which Panajachel has a "primitive" (even though 

 not pre-Columbian) technology. 



Panajachel is outside the highland sheep-raising 

 area; therefore, nothing of the entire wool complex 

 (except the wearing of woolen garments woven 

 elsewhere) is present. Like^vise, pasture could 

 hardly be scarcer than in Panajachel; and there is 

 a shortage of corn even for human consumption. 

 So horses and mules are little used; no domestic 

 animals except fowl are fully part of local tech- 

 nology, although pigs are fattened, a few head of 

 cattle are kept and the cows are milked, and there 

 are a few sheep. 



On the other hand, the culture of vegetables of 

 European origin is the chief commercial enterprise. 

 The fruit and vegetables grown in the Lake region 

 were introduced soon after the Conquest; whether 

 the irrigation technique that makes possible the 

 year-round gardening characteristic of Panajachel 

 was introduced from abroad, or was adapted from 

 old Indian ideas to the new crops, is impossible to 

 say. The technology involved (given the idea of 

 taking water off the river by means of a network of 



ditches) is simple and nonspecific and could have 

 been an invention suggested by local geography, 

 here or elsewhere in western Guatemala. 



It would be reckless to say that European tech- 

 nology is entirely absent in Panajachel; but it is 

 clear, at the same time, that the technology of 

 Panajachel is on the whole "primitive" or pre- 

 Columbian. Panajachelenos use the products 

 of animal husbandry (leather, soap, candles, 

 lard, meat) but do not make them. A few metal- 

 tool types (hoes, axes, machetes, etc.) are used, but 

 none are manufactured; carpentry and masonry, 

 with their specialized tools are not specialties 

 typical of Panajachel. I doubt if there is a screw- 

 driver, even, in any Indian's tool chest. There 

 are no smiths. Plows are not used; the wheel is 

 not used (not one Indian famOy has a cart or 

 wheelbarrow or anything of the sort — even a 

 pulley). Pottery is not made at all, so there is no 

 question of the potter's wheel. Spinning (what 

 httle there is) and weaving are done in old Indian 

 fashion; and only sewing and embroidering (with 

 the needle — there are no machines) are perhaps 

 European additions to textUe arts. 



Except that the relatively recent coffee culture 

 has been taken over as a complex which happens 

 to include a hand-turned rotary cylinder to remove 

 the pulp from the bean, agriculture is accomplished 

 by means of hand techniques entirely. Skill is 

 important, but is confined to skill in the use 

 primarilj' of the hands, aided only by simple tools 

 lilce the hoe and the tin pan used in sprinkling the 

 gardens. The Indians are skillful in preparing 

 and fertilizing neat gardens, in planting, trans- 

 planting, watering, and obtaining the seed. 

 Garden culture is careful and very intensive; but 

 it is strictly "hand" work. 



If the Indian technology of the region as a whole 

 is "primitive," that of Panajachel happens to be 

 particidarly so. 



TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMY 



As we all know, it has been a popular theory 

 that the free functioning of the system of economy 

 that permits each individual to pursue his own 

 interest in competition with other individuals is 

 the system that in the long run produces the 

 greatest wealth in the community.^' Mercan- 



'< Adam Sniith (1937, pp. 11-15) argues that self-interest lies behind the 

 division of labor wbieh is mainly responsible for the wealth. It is not 

 clear to me how he relates division of labor to technological progress. His 



