FUNCTIONS OF WEALTH 



189 



great-grand-parents and their siblings, etc., etc., 

 in ever widening circles until they no longer know 

 anything. About each relative one discovers 

 various things in passing (and for many purposes 

 other than the problem under discussion). When 

 one gets enough of these "ego" genealogies they 

 are combined to show how all the people in the 

 community are related. Again, it takes years to 

 straighten this out, and perfection is never 

 achieved; in 1941 I discovered (to me) amazing 

 errors in notations on the families that had been 

 closest to us since 1935! With this information 

 added to that on the map, the community is 

 defined: every individual accounted for and known 

 in spatial, temporal, and biological (social) inter- 

 relation. 



(4) Learning enough about the social participa- 

 tion (among other matters) of every individual 

 and family to know whether and how they fit into 

 the local community; decisions (often somewhat 

 arbitrary) are then made as to inclusions and 

 exclusions from the Panajacheleiio community. 

 Thus a limited community at a point in time is 

 fixed for study, a community with respect to 

 which the problem now is as foUovrs. 



ESTABLISHING WEALTH DIFFERENCES 



It is not difficult to make a decision as to the 

 social unit to be used. Although it is quickly 

 enough evident that individuals own property, 

 talk about rich and poor individitals breaks down 

 with the first question about whether a wife is 

 richer or poorer than her husband, or whether a 

 son in the family is rich. Those who form a house- 

 hold together are a single unit; wealth differences 

 may be discussed usefully as between households, 

 not individuals, the household defined as the 

 family group sharing a single kitchen, and hence 

 having at least partially a common budget. 



Nor is it difficult to find a first approximate 

 measure of wealth, for with farmers the obvious 

 one of land owned suggests itself; since those who 

 are said to be rich are also those who are said to 

 own much land, and vice versa, one adopts the 

 suggestion as a hypothesis with hardly a question. 

 Then the first major task becomes to apply this 

 measure: 



What are the lands involved ? The map which 

 was made includes in addition to natural features 

 and houses the boundaries of land ownership and 

 the details of land use, since different lands prob- 



ably have different value. What was done for 

 the people is now done for the land. The object 

 is to account for every bit of land, regardless of 

 whether owned by Indians, Ladinos, or anybody 

 else, and to understand its use. The areal limit 

 to the community is easy to find because all the 

 land owned by Panajachelenos is in the area im- 

 mediately visible, on the delta and on the hills 

 overlooking the delta, or said specifically to be in 

 Santa Catarina or elsewhere. It is academic that 

 the boundaries of the municipio of Panajachel 

 extend far beyond the part mapped, since the 

 community neither owns nor uses the remainder. 



The problem now is to determine the land hold- 

 ings of each Indian household. Wherever possible 

 this was done, in course of making the map, by 

 simple pacing. The map should have been ac- 

 curate enough to enable measurements on it; even- 

 tually, it had to be redrawn to be made that 

 accurate, and only after 5 years (the end of the 

 study) could any measurable piece of land be 

 compared with the map without too great shock. 

 As with the people, it was necessary to keep for 

 the map a base time, and through all vicissitudes 

 keep track of who owned what land, and how it 

 was used in May of 1936. 



Independent of the map, which accounted for 

 all the land, an inventory was made of lands 

 owned by every family in Panajachel. Having 

 made a 4 by 6 slip for each household, I simply ran 

 through them with knowing friends who told me 

 what lands were owned by each. This not only 

 checked information taken the other way, but 

 brought into the picture properties outside the area 

 of the map. Land was the subject of many items 

 of casual information, and again there came the 

 time when most doubts and discrepancies were 

 ironed out. In all hearsay information on lands 

 owTied, the vagueness of measures of land (cuerdas 

 of different sizes) added to the usual difficulties. 



The data on land ownership were never sepa- 

 rated from those on land use, since it was evident 

 that different kinds of land were differently 

 valued. But the question of these differences of 

 value required thorough understanding of: 



(1) Agricultural practices, the technology and 

 beliefs and practices concerning all aspects of 

 agriculture and husbandry. Systematic inquiry, 

 supplemented by observation, was required, and in 

 addition we had the experience of managing the 

 planting, care, and harvest of an experimental plot. 



