40 



THE LAND 



the 38 acres of land used only for grazing is there- 

 fore required. It is not far to seek. About 4 acres 

 are unsuitable for agriculture, or marginal: 2 acres 

 near the lake shore are niarshy, another acre was 

 affected Ijy the wash of a few years before, and two 

 other small pieces are stony. One of the latter 

 might be tilled, but the owner happens to have 

 sufficient better land for his needs. The remaining 

 thirty-four-od<l acres of pasture that could have 

 been tilled in 1936 belong almost entirely to 

 Ladinos who own a few cattle, who thus need the 

 pasture, and who are wealthy enough to be able to 

 divert part of their land to this use. One large 

 piece was in family litigation in 1936 and could not 

 therefore be rented to Indians for vegetable grow- 

 ing as it has been since. Disregarding such an 

 exceptional circumstance, it appears to be true 

 that only when a man owns considerable land, and 

 happens to need pasture, will he sacrifice some of it 

 to the purpose. That Indians are rarely in such a 

 position explains why only five Indians had pasture 

 land in 1936. Two of them owned the stony mar- 

 ginal plots alluded to above. The third, a land- 

 rich Indian, had a small piece on which to keep 

 his mule. The fourtli, a dairying Indian with 

 sufficient land, had a small pasture for his cattle. 

 I do not have data on the fifth case, involving less 

 than one-fifth acre. The exceptional cases help 

 make it clear that the Indians tend to use all their 

 land as intensively as possible. Statements by 

 Indians suggest that such use is explicitl}' valued. 

 The smallness of the percentage (3.6) of delta 

 land confined to the cultivation of corn also con- 

 firms the tendency, especially among Indians, to 

 more intensive cultivation. Most "cornfield only" 

 lands are at the foot of the hillsides, chiefiy the 

 west hill north of town (map 4). This land is often 

 irregular, stony, and not irrigable and thus not 

 suited to vegetables. The plot at the base of the 

 east hill was rendered unsuitable for gardening by 

 the wash a few years before. The two pieces of 

 land in the delta interior happen also to be too 

 irregular and stony for the easy cultivation of 

 vegetables. Some of the "cornfield only" land, 

 however, appears to be suitable at least for coft'ee, 

 and by my argument sliould not be left for corn. 

 The largest single piece ("K acres) is owned by a 

 relatively poor Ladino family, and I do not know 

 why they do nothing more profitable with it. 

 Another piece is owmed by a Ladino who actually 

 has coffee planted in all but this corner of a large 



parcel of land. The remaining hill-base cornfields 

 are owned by three Indian families, and two Indian 

 families share with a Ladino the two parcels in the 

 center of the delta. The five Indian families are 

 all well above the average in the amount of land 

 they own and control and so can, perhaps, afford 

 to make less intensive use of these marginal lots. 

 Perhaps the ultimate explanation is that sacrifices 

 arc frequently made for the sake of corn growing, 

 since corn is of such great importance in the 

 kitchen. 



The statement that land is usually devoted 

 exclusively to corn only when it is unsuitable for 

 more intensive use also explains the cornfields in 

 the hills, most of which are good only for rainy- 

 season rnilpn. It is significant that parts of the 

 hills suitable for coffee or vegetables are being 

 more and more converted to such crops. This 

 fact suggests another point about the delta. It 

 seems likely that in years past more land was less 

 intensively used than was the case in 1936 and 

 that the continuing tendency has been to culti- 

 vate more and more coffee and vegetables, and 

 to leave less and less land idle or planted only 

 with corn. Informants talk about "new land"; 

 i. e., land with no recent history of vegetable 

 growing; and, as do the other facts available, they 

 indicate that such new land is disappearing. 

 Some of the new land of course is now in coffee, 

 but a good part of what there evidently was, 

 especially on the west side of the delta, is now 

 devoted to truck gardening. 



COFFEE OR TRUCK 



The reason why lands are alternatively devoted 

 to coffee or to truck demonstrates contrasts 

 between the economies of Indians and Ladinos. 

 Some land may be more suited to coffee than to 

 truck (probably never the reverse); however, the 

 land of the delta is sufficiently homogeneous to 

 make it unlikely that this limiting factor is 

 important. Certainly it is negligible compared 

 to the easily demonstrable fact that the Ladinos 

 tend to grow coffee and the Indians truck. The 

 large blocks of coffee lands shown on map 4 are 

 seen by a comparison with map 6 to be also blocks 

 of land owned by Ladinos; and those where 

 vegetables are grown are predominantly Indian- 

 owned. Chart 3, a, a comparison of the two 

 sides of the delta, shows that there is no great 

 difference in the distribution of crops geographi- 



