CRUZ DAS almas: a BRAZILIAN VILLAGE' — -PIERSON 



217 



SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 



Evidences of social disorganization scarcely 

 xist in the community. The population is rel- 

 .tively homogeneous and stable. Mobility is 

 ainimal and limited largely to movement out of 

 he community rather than into it, so that the 

 ocal organization sutlers little disturbance from 

 vithout. The society is based lai'gely on i-elations 

 )f kinship and compadrio "' and is tenacious and 

 •esistant. The mores are relatively uniform and 

 ire crystallized into patterns generally known and 

 iccepted, so that they direct almost automatically 

 he habits of the individual. There is little move- 

 nent from one status or role to another. Con- 

 acts are almost exclusively primary and in- 

 lividuals encounter each other at virtually all 

 joints in their lives. To a considerable extent, 

 sxperiences are common and shared, so that atti- 

 ;udes, ideas, and sentiments, and the mental worlds 

 nto which they enter, vary little throughout the 

 immunity. Institutions are homogeneous and 

 lence support and reenforce each other. Under 

 ;hese circumstances, a minimum of social dis- 

 organization is to be expected. 



Since the individual and society, as Charles H. 

 [^ooley pointed out many years ago, are like the 

 two sides of the same coin, each an integral and 

 indispensable part of the other, it is axiomatic 

 bhat social disorganization is always accompanied, 

 as both a product and a condition, by personal dis- 

 organization. Among the indices of both of these 

 phenomena are crime, juvenile delinquency, di- 

 vorce, desertion, destitution, insanity (insofar as 

 it is due to social, rather than biological, circum- 

 stances), and suicide. In the local community, 

 these indications of disintegration are virtually 

 absent. 



Juvenile delinquency is unknown. Such 

 phenomena as vagrancy, theft, robbery, the de- 

 facement, looting or destruction of property, pros- 

 titution and gang behavior, on the part of children 

 or adolescents, do not exist in any form. In the 

 last two decades, crime has been limited to two 

 incidents. One was the attempted rape, about 

 2 years ago, of a feeble-minded girl on the part of 

 a young man who was immediately taken in hand 

 by his father and other members of the family in 

 such a way that relations between the two families 



'" See Compadrio, p. 142. 



involved were strengthened, rather than strained 

 or broken, by the incident. Twelve years ago, two 

 men were shot and killed in a drunken brawl in a 

 village store, the culmination of a heated argument 

 in which the killer believed his personal worth to 

 be impugned. The killing was unpremeditated. 

 Although the man was sentenced to 28 years in the 

 State penitentiary, and the act of killing was uni- 

 versally condemned, the fact that he defended his 

 personal worth was in accordance with, rather 

 than in contradiction to, the local mores, and con- 

 sequently it in no way evidences social disorgani- 

 zation. 



No one locks the doors when he leaves the house 

 unless all the members of the family are to be 

 away for a considerable period of time, when the 

 house, especially if it be on a farm, will be closed 

 tightly against the possibility that some vagrant 

 from outside the community, who may be passing 

 through, will enter and pilfer. Tools and other 

 property are left with safety from one year to the 

 next in sheds without doors or scattered about the 

 farm or village yard. Chickens, ducks, goats and 

 other domestic animals wander about the village 

 at will, without danger of theft. "No one around 

 here steals anything," remarked a villager. "My 

 neighbor has a granary right there facing the 

 stieet where he leaves onions, maize, and other 

 things. Anyone could go there at night with a 

 sack and help himself. But nobody takes any- 

 thing. On the farms around here, people leave 

 their beans, potatoes, maize, onions and other 

 things piled up in the field and no one bothers 

 them." "If a person does something he shouldn't 

 do," said the sub-delegado, "I usually just talk to 

 him a little ; but if he were a thief, and I had my 

 way about it, I'd kill him. We can't have thieves 

 around." Inhabitants have no memory of any 

 robbery, either with or without a gun, having been 

 committed in the community. 



A small room in the building where village offi- 

 cials discharge their obligations is reserved for 

 the sub-delegado to talk to infractors of the law, 

 and two other small rooms, with wooden bars at 

 the doors and windows, are used as the village jail. 

 The latter has been occupied, however, within the 

 memory of villagers, only by an occasional man 

 who has partaken too freely of pinga, or other alco- 

 holic drink, become disorderly, and been lodged 

 in a cell until again sober. "Sometimes," says 



