204 



FUNCTIONS OF WEALTH 



From study of the genealogies, and the data on 

 inheritance, it is evident that family wealth has a 

 natural history that may be described as follows: 

 A man attains wealth, partly through inheritance 

 and/or marriage and partly through his own ef- 

 forts. Unless he dissipates this wealth in his life- 

 time, it eventually comes to his children. The 

 rich, probably because they are able to care for 

 them better, tend to have more surviving children 

 than do the poor. The original wealth, now di- 

 vided, gives each child something of a start, and he 

 probably gets a little — but less than his own — 

 additional land through marriage. He may with 

 industry and luck increase his fortune, or the con- 

 trary may occur. If he increases it, he becomes 

 wealthy and the process is repeated. Frequently 

 one son of a rich family increases his wealth and 

 the others do not, and even become poorer; there 

 is some tendency for the sons of the rich to become 

 wastrels. If the son of a rich man becomes poor, 

 his son may marry a wealthy girl and may get a 

 start toward wealth; or, if residence in his case is 

 matrilocal, his subsequent history parallels that of 

 a son of a rich man. The daughter of a poor man, 

 meanwhile, is apt to marry a richer man, and one or 

 more of her children are given a start toward 

 wealth. And of course any poor man — son or 

 grandson of rich or poor — may himself have what 

 it takes, including luck (for sickness and deaths in 

 the family are important causes of disaster) and 

 with the help of his children become rich. 



So any family in Panajachel, in the course of 

 two or three generations, has its important ups 

 and downs, and the rich and poor are soon scram- 

 bled genealogically. 



There is a special element in the society that 

 tends to make the rich poor in Panajachel: the 

 system of civil and religious services to the com- 

 munity. Every man (with his wife) is expected 

 to climb the ladder of offices, but there are two 

 factors that make the process absolutely more 

 expensive for the rich than for the poor: (1) Where 

 there is a choice, the more expensive positions are 

 taken by rich men, and (2) the poor people, not 

 being able to afford the offices, climb the ladder 

 very slowly and occasionally skip a position alto- 

 gether, and often never go through all of them 

 before they die; while the rich cannot refuse and 

 so make the ascent more quickly, becoming 

 principales while still middle-aged. The result is 

 that the rich not only spend more money and time 



while young, but become habitual drinkers at an 

 early age and spend even more money and time 

 on liquor 



Mobility in the economic scale is often very 

 rapid. Given a little land and a few years of good 

 fortune, a careful Indian has money with w^hich to 

 buy land, and if he continues industrious and his 

 luck holds, he becomes richer almost by geometric 

 progression. The No. 1 man in 1936 became rich 

 in 20 j^ears or less, and was rapidly increasing his 

 fortune. He worked hard, had lost only two 

 infants, and had five sons and two daughters 

 grown to maturity. He taught them industry and 

 the family lived conservatively. Money earned 

 went to buy, or obtain on pawn, more land, and 

 the greater earnings this produced brought stiU 

 more land. On the other hand, it has been seen 

 what happened to the Rosales family fortune — dis- 

 sipated by most of those who inherited it, rapidly 

 increased by one man, and then lost entirely in a 

 few short j-ears. The case of the man standing 

 16th despite the small amount of land he owned in 

 1936, is also instructive: he is not only industrious, 

 but has four grown and industrious sons. The 

 family was doing so well that in spite of its land 

 shortage, informants placed them almost at the 

 top in wealth. Since 1936, the family has ac- 

 quired much more land and has ironed out some of 

 the discrepancy between its land holdings and its 

 presumed wealth. 



MOTIVATIONS 



It is frequently said of Indians in Guatemala, 

 sometimes as a reason for not improving their work 

 conditions and wages, that if they earn enough 

 money for the week in 3 days, they will not work 

 the rest of the week. I doubt if this is true on an 

 important scale anywhere in the country, but as 

 applied to Panajachel, nothing seems further from 

 the truth than this dictum which implies that the 

 Indians work for bare necessities alone and have 

 no desire to improve their way of life, or attain the 

 security that wealth (especially in land) gives, or 

 accumulate something for then- children. I think 

 that enough evidence has been presented to make 

 mj^ assertion credible. The Indians already live 

 above a subsistence level (by their standards); 

 the}^ are certainly working for the luxury of meat 

 as w'ell as for corn, for their church as well as for 

 their food. I have never heard of a poor Indian 

 ever refusing to work for another (when sober and 



