60 



LAND OWNERSHIP AND PRACTICES 



WEST 



Absentee Indiim 



I 1 Resident 



Indian 



A'',entei J.adllKj 



Hi-'siderU Ladmo 



Chart G. — Distribiition of inivately owned land. 



for Iinliiins own ;i <^r(':)ter sli:n( of liie iiKire val- 

 uvAAv delta lands. Tlioy own didy is. 7 pei-cciil 

 of all land, tnit :i7.'2 jxTcent of deltn land. For 

 resident Indians; tlie fi2;iires are 1(1.2 and 30.') 

 percent. The Ladino advanlai;-e is far greater in 

 the least valuable lands than in the most valuable, 

 and the rtile continues to hold as one analyzes 

 the delta lands alone: the Ladinos have progres- 

 sively larger jiroporlions of coffee, niilpa, and pas- 

 ttire land, and a smaller proportion of the inten- 

 sively cultivated high-income-jirodiicing truck 

 lands. 



Aljseixtee Ladino holdings are not nearly as val- 

 uable as the gross acreage figures would indicate. 

 Not only are they primarily (89 percent) on the 

 hillsides as opposed to the delta but three-fifths 

 of the total (actually one large piece) is located on 

 tlie nearly sterile west liill. In the delta as well, 

 the absentee Ladinos make less productive use of 

 tlieir land, agriculturally, than do the resident 

 Ladinos, or, for that matter, than any other class 

 (chart 7). Almost one-fourth of their land (as 

 compared with 12 percent of that of resident 

 Ladinos) is itUe or occupied by buildings, includ- 

 ing the chapel cpiarters of the American mission- 

 aries and the hotises and gardens of otitsiders who 

 maintain vacation homes here. On the other 

 hand, absentee Ladinos devote a larger proportion 

 of their tilled land to truck and coffee than do the 

 resident Ladinos, chiefly because they own con- 

 siderable lake-shore land especially suited to truck 

 farming, including a large experimental farm and 

 orchard owned by a foreigner. 



With their high proportion of coffee to truck 

 crops, with their truck land rented to Indians, 

 and the remainder disproportionately planted to 

 corn, it has been shown that Ladinos cultivate their 

 land less intensively than do the Indians, probably 

 because (1) they have more land to cultivate; 

 (2) they have other sources of income, hence less 

 need to make the most out of their soil; and (3) 

 since they rerpiire more hired labor than do the 

 Indians, they find intensive cultivation both more 

 difficult aiid less profitable than do the Indians. 



Land owned by Indians, as compared with that 

 of Ladinos, exists in very small parcels. Hill lots 

 are much larger than delta lots, but in hill and delta 

 alike Ladino parcels are fewer and larger than 

 Indian " (chart S). Likewise delta lots of the 

 west side are consistently larger than those of the 

 east. This is so despite the fact that 111 of 

 157 Ladino delta lots (71 percent) and 192 of 

 325 Indian (59 percent) are on the west side. 

 Nevertlieless, one reason is that the cast side is 

 where most resident Indians live and own land, 

 and it has long been cut and recut by inheritance. 

 The Ladino land of the east delta is in relatively 



*' Fifteen of the Intal of Si\'c luni'ireii and .seventeen lots extend from tfie 

 delta onto the liill and for pur[)oscs of this cliart are called two. one a delta 

 lot anii the other a liill lot. The ease of an absentee Ladino hill lot of 215 

 acres hides the fact that most parcels of land owneil by resident Ladinos are 

 larger than those of the absentee owners. The number of Ladino hill lots 

 (21) is too small for statistical treatment. Tlie fact remains despite some 

 exceptions, however, that Ladino lots are much larjrer than Indian lots and 

 that hill lots arc very much larger than delta lots. 



