LABOR 



THE USE OF TIME 



Besides the land, nature gives to the Indians of 

 Panajachel, as it does to others, 24 hours a day 

 for 365 days a year. How are thej' used? To 

 answer the question would require a complete 

 description of the round of life of the society. 

 In a hook on the economy alone it may better be 

 asked how time is used in relation to production. 

 In dointr so it may appear that a position is taken 

 that the more time spent ad(lin<,' to wealth, the 

 more "efRcient" is the use of time. This i? 

 nonsense (since presumably in most contexts 

 wealth has ends other than itself) as is the position 

 apparently taken in the section on land (pp. ;j4~47) 

 that land ought to be in production, the more 

 intensively the better. I do not mean to take 

 either. In the case of the land, the site where 

 the house stands is not wasted, nor only a necessi- 

 ty; nor are the yard and its fiowers luxuries. In the 

 case of time, likewise, the hours spent sleeping and 

 eating are not wasted, or merely necessary; nor 

 is the time spent in church or in a drinking bout a 

 luxury stolen from work. Nevertheless, with 

 this underetood, it is still useful to consider how 

 efficiently from the point of view of production the 

 community of Panajachelenos utilizes both its 

 main resources — land and labor. 



Table 15 classifies the way the entu'e community 

 spent the year 1936. Whether the percentage 

 for economic or strictly productive activities is 

 high or low compared with other people, or the 

 differences in this respect between men, women, 

 and children one cannot say without comparative 

 data. My suspicion is that Panajachelenos work 

 more than is typical either of primitive tribesmen 

 or of urbanitcs. Where they fall within the range 

 of peasant and rural peoples — in comparison with 

 Chinese or Roumanian villagers, or Bantu or Iowa 

 farmers (or for that matter the Indians of neigh- 

 boring Solola) remains a question. Panajachel is 

 probably more hard-working than its neighbors 

 who depend chiefly on the growing of corn, in 

 which work is seasonal. How it compares with 

 neighboring communities which have industrial 

 specialties I do not know. In comparison with 

 North American farmers, it seems probable that 

 the difference is that here the farmers work 

 longer (and much harder) during some seasons 



than in Panajachel, but that in general more 

 time is taken with recreation, visiting, school, and 

 study. The Panajachelenos "waste" time by 

 bits, American farmers in large doses. But such 

 a comparison is better made by those v.-ith closer 

 acquaintance; with American farm communities. 

 I have no data enabling me to handle quantita- 

 tively the question of intensit\^ of work; however, 

 the Indians of this study would surely be de- 

 scribed as slow, easy-going workers whose pace is 

 not comparable to that of industrious northern 

 workers. 



A description of how Panajachelenos use their 

 economically devoted time is the main subject of 

 this section. Full documentation of the time not 

 devoted to economic activity would require de- 

 scription of the social, political, and religious prac- 

 tices and institutions of the society. What is 

 given here is less than a brief summary. 



The total amount of time available to the 

 Panajachel Indians in 193G was simply the popu- 

 lation multiplied by the number of hours m the 

 year. In working over the data, however, it 

 was found expedient to subdivide the population 

 by sex and age, and to reduce the hours to units of 

 9-hour "days." The 9-hour day was standard- 

 ized because the usual work day in Panajachel is 

 9 hours. The data (e. g., table 15) arc reported 

 in these units. Insofar as in this description the 

 c|uantities are reduced to proportions the unit is 

 immaterial. 



Little more than a third of the total time is 

 potentially usable for productive purposes because, 

 first, none of that of infants can be included and, 

 second, everybody must eat and sleep. Although 

 such information may seem to presuppose consider- 

 able private knowledge I am confideut that little 

 error is involved in the estimate of eating-sleeping 

 time. Adults and children alike normally retire 

 at about the same time, from 8 to 9 in the evening, 

 and rise at from 5 to 6 in the morning. Doubtless 

 everybody sleeps a little less in the season of short 

 nights, which happens to fall in the dry months 

 when there is also moie agricultural work and 

 more vending in the markets; but the average 

 throughout the year is ahnost surely close to 9 

 hours. The three meals a day tak(! .something 

 less than 3 hours, but additional time is usually 

 taken, especially after the evening meal, with rest. 



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