128 



THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE 



On all long trips, food is taken from home to 

 warm and eat on the way. To keep dowoi expenses, 

 merchants often take food for as long as a week,'"* 

 young men (who prefer to buy along the way or 

 eat in restaurants) less than their elders. Gener- 

 ally even for a day's trip, as to Solola, at least 

 some food is taken along, perhaps supplemented 

 by purchase. Only on a half-day trip no lunch is 

 taken. Nights on the road are generally spent in 

 the porticos of public buildings in towns on the 

 way, or in private houses where lodging (i. e., a 

 place under a roof to sleep) can be purchased for a 

 penny or a half-cent or a gift of a fruit or the like. 

 Traveling Indians do not usually sleep in the 

 open. To prepare food, they usually build a fire 

 unless they are in a place where they can use 

 someone else's fire. 



A particular convenience to merchants is the 

 custom by which they can leave property reco- 

 mendado in the houses and stores of the towns that 

 they visit. This means that a merchant who is 

 unable to sell his goods one day can, without 

 charge, leave it with some acquaintance and return 

 for it the next day or, if nonperishable, the next 

 week. There is generally no charge for such stor- 

 age. It is also the general custom in the market 

 place to leave purchases recom,endado with another 

 merchant while shopping for more or doing busi- 

 ness in other parts of the market, or town. 



Panajachelenos take their produce to be sold, 

 and return either empty-handed or with consumer 

 purchases. They do not buy products to bring 

 back for resale. To this rule there were in 1936 

 and 1937, a half-dozen exceptions. One man 

 brought fruit from Guatemala City to sell in Pana- 

 jachel and frequently in other towns; another 

 (with his wife) brought from the capital a variety 

 of merchandise to sell in Panajachel and elsewhere 

 and also fruit from San Lucas to sell elsewhere. A 

 third bought tomatoes in San Lucas to sell in Pana- 

 jachel and elsewhere and a fourth (with his son) 

 cheese in coast markets for local sale. The fifth 

 was a Panajachel Atiteco whose business I do not 

 know, and the sixth a woman who bought in the 

 Solola market, for resale in San Andres, oranges 

 and limas originally of Santa Cruz and San Marcos. 

 These were the only people who may be said to be 

 "merchants." Their net earnings, probably nei- 



108 Toasted tortiUat in the form of totoposte will keep many days; ground 

 coffee and a tin pot in which to boU it are part of the merchant's equipment. 



ther far above nor below a hundred dollars a year 

 altogether were additions to the income of the 

 local Indian community. 



FAEM BUSINESS 



The general question of how well the Indians 

 know their business must take into consideration 

 not only land resources and technology, but the 

 use of time in families of differing land resources. 

 It would appear, for example, that the Indians 

 would make fuller use of their land if they grew 

 vegetables where they grow coffee; but the fact is 

 that they would not have time to put all their 

 lands to the intensive cultivation they employ on 

 vegetables. Similarly, while a family with very 

 little land can most profitably put it all in vegeta- 

 bles, one with a great deal of land would find itself 

 limited by the impossibility or inconvenience of 

 hiring the necessary labor. The following para- 

 graphs examine the question crop by crop. 



More and better fertilizer and far better — even 

 hybrid — seed would increase the yield of corn. 

 But better fertilizer would mean either more 

 domestic animals for which grazing facilities are 

 inadequate, or chemical fertilizer, produced out- 

 side the culture. Likewise, the Indians, like most 

 farmers, are not capable of making radical improve- 

 ments in the seed. It is invalid to suggest that the 

 scientific knowledge of the civilized world brought 

 to bear on the local milpas would increase the 

 yield of corn. The Indians may well be getting 

 from their soil everything possible with the aids 

 that their culture, or reasonable extensions of it, 

 afford. Certainly their knowledge of the tech- 

 nology involved is very detailed matter-of-fact. 

 For example, an Indian reahzed fuUy that the 

 reason he could plant his milpa year after year 

 indefinitely is that it is nearly level. 



The kinds of questions that seem to me legiti- 

 mate are whether they might get larger yields if 

 they planted closer together, or in deeper or 

 shallower holes, or if they did not let the land lie 

 fallow so long, or if they changed the seed every 

 year, or if more beans were planted. Or one might 

 ask if time could not be saved by changes in tech- 

 nique — for example, if the hillocks about the base 

 of the cornstalks are worth the effort. I lack the 

 special knowledge needed to answer such a series 

 of questions. The experiment conducted in 1936 

 proved little, particularly since it extended over 



