AGRTCULTUML DEVELOPMENT IN CLEAR CREEK:
ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES AND ECONOMIC

ROLES IN A dom;i:nican settlement

By
ROBERT WENDELL WSFIGE

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GPJ^JjUATE COUNCIL OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORrOA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
.197;)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OP' TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES
PREFACE
ABSTRACT
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II

INTRODUCTION

THE HOUSEHOLD AND UND: SOCIO-ECONOMIC
CHANGE IN CLEAR CREEK

CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI

SLASH AND BURN AGRICULTURE

COIvlMERCIA L A GRICU LTURE

ECONOMIC ROLES AND LINKAGES

THE PATTERN OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER VII ALTERNATIVE PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIOGR/vPHICAL SKETCH

111

iv

vi

xi

1

12
61
93
139
173
196
200
213

11

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 Age dis^tribution of the population in Clear Creek. 37

2 Household residence patterns in Clear Creek. 39

3 Household composition in Clear Creek: generations. 39

4 Household composition in Clear Creek: conjugal

pairs . 43

5 Food preparation in three households over a three

day period: Clear Creek. 50

6 Comparison of landholding of slash and burn farming

households with total population of Clear Creek. 6^

7 Energy budget for slash and burn agriculture. BB

S Relation betv^feen size of holding in llanos and

cattle ownership. 97

9 Energy budget for commercial agriculture. 133

10 Commercial farm income (based on Table ' 9) • 13^

11 Relation of household adaptive strategy to economic

roles in Clear Creek. 152

111

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page

1 Characteristics of modes of production in Clear

Creek. 7

2 Location of Clear Creek in the Dominican Republic. l6

3 Landuse in Clear Creek. 17

4 Monthly rainfall, 1973, weather station in River,

Constanza. 22

5 Average high and lovi monthly temperatures, 1970-

1974. Constanza, Dominican Republic. 23

6 Map o'f a Clear Creek neighborhood (keyed to Figure 7). 47

7 Geneology + household composition of a Clear Creek

neighborhood (keyed to Figure 6). 4^

S Folk taxonomy of soils. 73

9 List of crops and times of maturation in a typical
conuco .

&1

10 Energy flow diagram for slash and burn agriculture. S6

11 Symbol key for energy flov; diagram (adopted from

Odum 1971) . ^7

12 Energy flov/ diagram for commercial agriculture. 132

IV

ABBREVIATIONS USED THROUGHOUT THIS DISSERTATION

AID United States Agency for Inteimational Development

INCAP Institute de Nutricion en Centre America y Panama

OEA Organizacien de P^stados Americanos

ISA Institute Superior de Agricultura

PREFACE

I first, visited Clear Creek, where this study v/as under-
taken, in the summer of 1972 while v/orking as part of an
interdisciplinary research team headed by Dr. Gustavo Antonini
of the University of Florida. ' In order to arrive at the
settlement from the crossroads town of River where we stayed,
a colleague and I rode several hours on muleback through wind-
swept and denuded hills. From a ridge above the settlement,
the lush green valley floor of Clear Creek appeared in sharp
contrast to the distant mountain forest which was heavily
scarred by the clearings of swidden farmers. In spite of the
distracting, cold rain which was then falling^ I was struck by
the counterpoint of "primitive" and "modern" farming systems.
I remarked to my companion that this rural area ( campo) would
be an excellent location for an in-depth study.

My return to the settlemerit nearly a year later w^as made
possible by a grant from the Foreign Area Fellowship Program,
now a part of the Social Science Research Council. After somiC
negotiation, 1 was able to rent a small, abandoned house which,
with some renovation, became habitable once again.

The preliminary m.onths of my residence were spent slowly
learning to cope with a new language, mud, and unexpectedly cold

The nam.es of places have been changed and Anglicized
without, hopeful]. y, losing their true flavor. Likewise the
names of individuals have all been altered.

VI

weather as well as becoming integrated into the life of the
settlement. But I soon discovered that life in the settlement,
for most people, occurred in the context of a cluster of house-
holds, to one of which I v;as expected to affix myself. The
process of acquiring membership in such a cluster was speeded
by the addition to my household of several children belonging
to my neighbor and an American woman v;ho was considered my wife.
These additional members of the household allowed me to inter-
act equally with other households in the cluster.

The focus of my study gradually expanded as my life in
the settlement broadened but my main concern in retrospect
seems to have been symbolized by my own house garden, half of
which was planted in subsistence crops and half in the commer-
cial vegetables that some of my neighbors grew. Data on commer-
cial farming was easiest to collect since it was going on all
around my house. Measuring work input was done by observing
laborers; short questionnaires elicited production figures and
costs, though it was often difficult to obtain accurate res-
ponses for past years. This was due more to the fact that
farmers kept no records of cash or credit transactions; though
all of them knew, for example, if they were in debt to the
supplier and to the store o\^mer, they were not certain of the
amounts.

In January and February of 1974, I began to have extensive
contact with swidden farmers, some of whom I had known from
my first visit in 1972. The difficulty of getting to the remote
swidden clearings was partially mitigated with the help of
neighbors who loaned me their mules, but most fields could be

vii

reached only by narrow footpaths. The difficulty of figuring
yields in the clearings v/as partially met by mapping out plant
densities and combinations, then v;eighing samples from each
type of plant in the combination. In collecting data on work
input and field size, I worked more intensively v;ith a small
number of slash and burn farmers (about ten) and relied less on
short questionnaires. Since swidden farming v/as illegal, in-
formants with v/hom I had less acquaintance were suspicious that
I was in the employ of the government. This was expecially true
after Gerald Ford became President as 1 had told many people I
worked for the Ford Foundation.

Preliminary data, on dietary intake, household expendi-
tures, salaries, marketing patterns and other subjects reported
here were collected in informal conversations which gave me an
idea of what were some of the variables involved. For exam.ple,
it was in this way that the importance of the rifero (lottery
seller) came to my attention, an element v;hich is usually over-
looked in socio-economic studies because gambling is viewed as
a "game" rather than "economic" behavior. From such conversa-
tions I would make out a mental list of questions which I could
ask in a variety of situations; 1 constantly used my notebook,
so that residents, flattered by the attention, often reminded
me that I should WTr^ite down both the accurate and Inaccurate
infoi^mation they gave me, lest I forget. During my stay, I
conducted two household surveys, concerning population, labor,
agricultural practices, and land tenure.

Alternating between formal and infonnal situations allov/ed
me to constantly check and rechcck information for accur^acy and

vlii

reliability, which v/as particularly important in the case of
swidden activity. In addition, event analysis was carried out
in situations including diverse events such as bean harvests
and Christmas fiestas . Genealogies of each household and oral
histories were collected also.

Throughout my fieldv;ork and the period of study and v;riting
v;hich came before and after, I have received the support and
g\iidance of a large number of persons v;hose help must be acknow-
ledged. Among these are Dr. G. Alexander Moore, v/ho, as chair-
man of my committee and mentor, has given constant encourage-
ment. His visit to the Dominican Republic in the spring of
1974 gave me support and helped to clarify some of the issues
involved in my study. Dr. Solon T. Kimball, under whom 1 have
taken many courses, urged me to v/ork on the integration of
anthropological concepts and agriculture, while Dr. Hugh Popenoe
has always been generous with his financial help and time for
the same. In his study on swidden agriculture. Dr. William
Garter provided a fram.ework for examining slash and burn
farm.ing. Dr. Larry White was especially helpful with his
editorial suggestions in this manuscript. Dr. Gustavo Antonini,
as I mentioned above, introduced me to both the pleasures and
possibilities of work in the Dominican Republic. Frank Moya
Pons of the Universidad Catolia, Madre y Maestra in Santiago
and Cesar Garcia provided me with key contacts in Dominican
intellectual and academic life v.'hich helped me to fit my study
into the larger context of Dominican studies.

In addition, there are a number of individuals who helped
me over many periods of discouragement and impatience and who

shared many of my happiest times. Though this list of theix-
names is m.arkedly incomplete, it must include: Dona lima
P^spaillard de Blanco, Mark and Chia Feldraan, "Bias" Rosarip,
SaJly Lawson, Carlos Moreno, Richard Spaulding, Virginia Vega,
Charlotte Doria, Michel Buisson, Alison McClure, Bonnie Sharp,
Helmut Widinann, and, an excellent typist, Judy Johnson.

Also I must acknowledge the long support of my mother,
Mrs. Elna VJerge, and my brother. Dr. Thomas Werge v/ho, through
m.y various v/anderings, have always provided me with their love
and guidance.

But most of al] , 1 shall always remain in debt to the
people of Clear Creek whose lives form the substance of this
dissertation and who gave me more than I can ever hope to
return. It was they v/ho, through their humor and warmth,
helped me to ease ray loneliness and carry out my study. One
old woman who came to refer to me as her most blond son (el
hi jo mio, lo mas rubio) characterized their outlook with her
proverbial reply to the question, "How are you?" (Como esta
justed?). "Living," she would say with a shrug of the shoulders,
adding after a pause, "but to live is a great thing." (Vivo,
pero vivir es una gran cosa) .

It is to the people of Clear Creek that this dissertation
is dedicated.

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of

the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN CLEAR CREEK:
ADAPTIVE STPiATEGIES AND ECONOMIC
ROLES IN A DOMINICAN SETTLEMENT

By

Robert Wendell Werge

Chairman: G. Alexander Moore
Major Department: Anthropology

Clear Creek is a small settlement in the central mountain
range of the Dominican Republic which has, over the last de-
cade,, widely adopted modern farming methods, including use of
irrigation and agrochemicals to produce commercial vegetable
crops for urban markets. Nevertheless, traditional methods of
swidden farming coupled vjith the traditional household organi-
zation and division of labor continue to be utilized by part of
the population. These tv;o agricultural systems are contrasted
as._ adaptive strategies which convert different sets of natural
resources into articles of consumption. Contrasts betv;een
these strategies include their use of energy, spatial distinc-
tions, mode of production, and histori.cal development.

A major effect of agricultural development has been the
wide adoption of new non-agricultural economic roles which
form links in the flow of cash and goods between the settle-
ment and the outside. These roles include the store ovvTier,

lottery seller, government v/orker, and migrant. Another effect
of the development has been the grov/ing consolidation of land
by large growers and by outside interests.

This study finds that agricultural development is linked
to the inability of small farmers to remain in commercial pro-
duction while, at the same time, access to swidden farming, an
efficient strategy in terms of caloric return, is becoming
increasingly more limited by environmental and political con-
straints. Thus, a long term result of agricultural development
in Clear Creek is the relegation of much of its population to
marginal cash employment .

Xll

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

Vifhat is the effect of rapid agricultural development upon
rural populations in the Dominican Republic? This is the cen-
tral question posed by this study. This thesis attempts to
answer that question by examining the experience of Clear Creek,
a small, rural settlement near the town of Constanza in the
mountains of the Cordillera Central. A number of agricultural
innovations, including new crops, agrochemicals, and marketing
methods, vrere introduced into Clear Creek in I967. While some
households have continued to farm in the traditional slash and
burn manner, many others have begun to use new production tech-
niques over the past eight years. Still others have taken up
other specializations such as lottery sales or have migrated.

This study shows that such changes have resulted in the
benefits of development being spread unequally among the popu-
lation and that economic disparity within the population is
growing. It seems clear that the v;orld wide food and energy
crises v/ill make that inequality even more pronounced.

This study argues that it is not the new technology which
causes this growing disparity, but. rather a series of con-
straints, environmental, economic, and political, which limits
the ability of more than half the households to acquire and
utilize properly the agricultural innovations. Further it will
be shown that these same constraints are making it increasingly

difficult for fai^mers to utilize the traditional subsistence
methods. Caught by the limitations imposed on both systems,
much of the rural population must seek to make a living by
means other than agricultural production. At the same time,
the agricultural resources of the settlement are becoming
increasingly concentrated in t)ie hands of large farmers v/ho
are able to maintain access to the new technology in spite of
rising costs and shortages.

This first chapter introduces the theoretical framework
of this study v;hich is largely based upon the concept of
community proposed by Arensberg and Kimball in their seminal
work. Culture and Community (I965). This has already been
employed by Walker in a study of Constanza itself (1972).
As explained in the second chapter, Clear Creek is not a commu-
nity in the traditional sense, but is instead a rural settle-
m.ent tied to a number of urban centers. Nevertheless this
approach focuses upon the structure and process of human inter-
action as it occurs in natural groupings over time and space.
This natural history approach is a fruitful tool for under-
standing any form of social or economic change.

Within tliis general frame of reference, however, this
study is concerned v;ith a specific form of change, namely that
of agricultT.iral development. The concept of agricultural
development, along with two others in the title of this thesis,
adaptive strategy and economic role is central to this study.
Each of these concepts will now be discussed and related to
other concepts used in the ensuing chapter's.

The concept of adaptive strategy has proved to be useful

2

for the analysis of both traditional and modern economies.

Bennett's book Northern Plainsmen shov/s how cultural groups
have developed distinctive strategies for coping with a speci-
fic ecological setting. By adaptive strategy, he means the
organization of activities aiming at the conversion of the
natural environment into natural resources which are used for
subsistence and profit. In these terms a strategy is an
observable pattern of social, technological, and economic inter-
action adjusted to a particular physical environment by a par-
ticular culture or subculture.

Bennett claims that strategies arise out of both the
choices and limitations faced by men who are attempting to
cope with their environments and make choices between the
available options. He writes:

Often in environments with marginal resources,
the alternatives are few, decisions are diffi-
cult, and a general constraint is exercised over
human action. In these situations, one might
speak of ecological or economic determinism as
an explanation of particular social phenomena ....
But the process is not a simple one of automatic
controls over human behavior. Even in ecologi-
cally constrained situations . . . people are
confronted v/ith choices and need to make deci-
sions. In addition, human v;ants and concep-
tions of action may or may not conform to
reality, and certainly man always conceives of
possibilities other than the inevitable or most
probable (I969: 14-15).

2

The guiding discussion of this concept is found in
Bennett's Northern Plainsmen (1969) in chapter 1, "Adapta-
tion as a Frame of Reierence." Bennett amplifies on Thomas
Hardings' article "Adaptation and Stability" in Evolution and
Culture (i960). More materialistic treatments are found in
Rarvin Harris (I96O) and Yehudi A. Cohen (1963).

Adaptive strategies, then, are taken to be the result of
history and culture as well as the direct interaction of man
and environment.

At present, Clear Creek is a settlement which exhibits
two major and quite distinct adaptive strategies. Slash and
burn agriculture, the method of farming which first attracted
settlers some 60 years ago, continues to be practiced in the
hills. Vegetable production, utilizing irrigation, agrochemi-
cals, and modern marketing channels, has been practiced in the
narrow valleys for the past eight years.

. . . The differences between the two adaptive strategies have
several facets. Various dichotomies call attention to the
contrast betv.'een the two strategies in terms of cultural atti-
tudes, relationships to markets and forms of cultivation:
traditional vs. modern, subsistence vs. commercial, and exten-
sive vs. intensive. However, the findings of this study indi-
cate that the contrasts between the organization and flow of
energy in both of these adaptive strategies give a very clear
insight into why these two systems coexist for the time being
and why one of them is replacing the other as a predominant
economic factor.

The principle of energy (the capacity to do work) has
figured highly in theories of evolutionary change and' in the
analysis of biosocial system.s (Cottrell 1955, Odum 1971,
Rappaport 1971, Sahlins and Service I96O, White 1949). In
this thesis, the concern is to demonstrate how the source
and amount of energy utilized by farmers varies significantly

from one strategy to another. The measurement of the energy-
involved also provides a means, besides that of cash income,
for gauging the efficiency of each strategy.

In both sv;idden and commercial farming, the control over
energy is a crucial factor in the farmer's ability to manipulate
the environment. Under slash and burn agriculture, for example,
the farmer attempts to control energy by recruiting labor out
of his ovm household. Because this same household consumes v/hat
it produces, the flow of energy which this system represents is
relatively closed. In contrast, large scale commercial farming
represents an open energy flow, one in which great reliance is
placed on obtaining energy supplements from national and inter-
national markets .

The organization and flow of energy in an adaptive stra-
tegy results from the level and type of technology employed
along with the pattern of social and economic interaction geared
to production and distribution. Taking the cue from Chayanov
(1966) and Sahlins (1972), these patterns of interaction are
called modes of production. In both of the strategies discussed
here, these modes of production are quite distinct.

.In slash and burn agriculture, the household is the mode,
being the unit of both consumption and production. At the
other extreme in capitalist fai^ming, the mode of production is
a more complex system in which there is an occupational division
of labor between managers and workers, the latter being recruited
by the. pajTnent of cash.v;ages. The small scale commercial opera-
tion falls between these extremes, recruiting part of its labor

force from the household and part from hired workers (Figure 1).

A technology does not require any particular mode of pro-
duction in and of itself. Bennett's discussion of a Hutterite
community as a modern farming enterprise aptly makes this point,
as would a similar analysis of a Chinese commune or an Israeli
kibbutz. Capitalist farming in Clear Creek, it should be empha-
sized, is not the inevitable result of simple technological
change. Rather, it results from the combination of technologi-
cal change occurring in a particular cultural system under a
series of recognizable environmental, political, and economic
constraints.

Agricultural development, another phrase in the title of
this study, is usually used to mean the application of modern
technology to increase the production of crops. The term,
development, here should not be construed as implying that
modern technology or larger yields are innately beneficial to
the producers and consumers of agricultural production or to
the culture as a whole. It is used simply to designate change
from a low energy-using agricultural system to a high energy-
using one.

Modern agricultural technology is usually but not exclu-
sively based on fossil fuel subsidies. Composting is an exam-
ple of an innovation not using fossil fuels but already available
nutrients in a more efficient manner. However, in Clear Creek,
new techniques rely almost entirely upon fossil fuel inputs:
agrochemicals, motor transport, and a whole host of agricultural
goods which flow from modern industry. In this sense, the settle-

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merit is said to be developing agriculturally.

An. integral aspect of agricultural development as it un-
folds in the settlement is the emergence of economic roles
which are distinct from those involved in either of the two
modes of agricultural production. Economic role is used here
to mean occupation or job: that is, a set of behaviors,
forming an identifiable unit, which are functionally specific
to a particular position in the economy. In slash and burn
agriculture, economic roles are frequently prescribed by other
statuses including age, gender, marital status, and parenthood.
For example, the male head of household is the principal
farmer whose helpers are his unmarried sons. In adopting a
more open energy system, hov/ever, such economic roles are
taken out of the household context. In this new situation,
the functions of such roles, for example that of middleman,
rifero (lottery seller), government official, and the special
case of migrants become important behavioral units whose recruit-
ment is not prescribed by social statuses. For example, lottery
sellers in the settlement include men, v/oraen, and even a child,
a 14 year old boy.

Nev/ economic roles supply linkages in the new flov/ of
energy and cash through the settlement. They exist as alter-
natives for individuals who give up, sometimes temporarily,
traditional subsistence farming, but who become neither commer-
cial farmers nor daylaborers. It will be seen, however, that

these roles supply only a limited income, less than $400 per

3
year, v/hich is roughly equal to that earned by day laborers.-^

-^All monetary values expressed in this stiidy are given in

Thus many individuals find themselves relegated to a low income
level from which it is difficult to escape.

Hov/ever, if an individual or a household is able to diver-
sify economic roles, large economic benefits can result from
the ability to parlay losses in one endeavor against gains in
another. The adaptive strategy of commercial and capitalist
farmers involves an attempt to diversify their crops, economic
roles and investments so that when hard times fall resources
can be shifted from one activity to another. The farmer who
is the owner of a store, a truck driver, a backer for a lottery,
and a cattle owner is much better equipped than one who relies
solely upon growing two vegetable crops a year. This diversity
parallels that found in slash and burn farming where the farmer
attempts to diversify his crops and holdings to spread around
his risk.

The chapters which follow build a framework for the central
point of this thesis, namely, that the actual and potential
benefits of agricultural development in Clear Creek are being
spread unequally through the population. This results not
from the nature of the new technology itself but from the type
of cultural system into which it has been introduced. Among
the variables operating in that system are constraints imposed
on the population by the environment, economics, and politics.

terms of the Dominican peso, written by the $. Officially
$1.00 RD = $1.00 US, but in fact the values fluctuate. During
the period from August 1973 to February I975, the $1.00 RD
was exchanged on the black market at a low of $.S6 US to a
high of $.91 US.

10

The thesis is developed by describing and analyzing the
social and economic organization, adaptive strategies, economic
roles, and socio-ecological constraints present in the settle-
ment. Chapter two is concerned with the social and economic
organization of Clear Creek. It concentrates upon the inter-
action of environment and kinship in defining the system of
land tenure and household structure. Historical background is
drawn into the discussion to give a necessary time perspective
to the changes the settlement is undergoing in terms of land
use and the household.

The third and fourth chapters describe the two major
adaptive strategies whereby the Clear Creek population converts
its region's natural resources into usable produce and goods.
These strategies are slash and burn farming and irrigated
vegetable production, the latter also being referred to as
commercial farming. Within commercial farming, a division has
been made between large and small scale producers, as may be
noticed in Figure 1. Urban based outsiders v;ho have recently
bought land for flower and vegetable production are referred to
as capitalists. . Since they seldom visit the farms, their
holdings are run by managers. The line between small and large
scale producers is made at two hectares of irrigable land;
those holdings above two are referred to as large and those
holdings below two are referred to as small. At the same time,
it. is shown that the differences between large and small growers
are more complex than simply a matter of scale of production
(Figure 1) .

11

Chapter five discusses economic roles in the settlement
which exist outside of these modes of production. These roles
exist as important options for households as agricultural
development takes place. Essentially they act as alternatives
to daylabor for much of the population which does not have
sufficient land to enter small scale commercial farming. But
the low cash return from such economic roles disallows the
build-up of capital v;hich, not incidentally, reinforces reliance
upon the lottery as a means of obtaining a large amo\mt of mioney
at one time. V/hen combined with commercial farming, however,
these same roles lead to the better control of energy and cash
flow by large scale farmers.

Chapter six shows how participation in commercial agri-
culture is limited by factors of environment, economics, and
politics and how these limitations are becoming increasingly
stringent. These constraints, along with the tendencies des-
cribed in the previous chapters, will be shown to favor large-
scale enterprise. It will become clear that without some form
of control such enterprises promise to take an increasing share
of the settlement's resources. The last chapter draws some
conclusions about the futxire of Clear Creek and other settle-
ments in the Dominican Republic which are being affected by
agricultural development .

CHAPTER WO

THE HOUSEHOLD AND LAND: SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE
IN CLEAR CREEK

This chapter is concerned v;ith the socio-economic organi-
zation of Clear Creek and the manner in which this organization
is changing under the impact of agricultui^al development. The
household is the basic unit of socio-economic organization in
the campo; it forms the mode of production in slash and burn
farming and is the critical unit for the settling of new terri-
tory and the division of old land. Thus, the household links
changes which occur in the pattern of land use with alterations
in the pattern of human interaction. Thus a major focus of this
chapter is on the changing structure of the household itself.

The household is a group of persons residing in a parti-
cular physical setting, a house and a yard, which is related
to the natural environment in a particular manner. The first
part of this chapter, then, is a general discussion of the
environment in which Clear Creek's households are found. This
is followed by a description of the land tenure system which
first brought settlers to exploit this environment. Land
tenure is a crucial link to understanding the adaptive strategy
of slash and burn famdng. The following discussion shows

. . The definition of household used here is that of Gonzalez
(i960): a group of persons sharing common residence and res-
ponsibility for economic cooperation and the socialization of
children.

12

13

that a discrepancy existed betv/een the legal system of land-
holding, terrenes comuneros, and the actual practices of land
tenure which provided an extremely flexible basis for the type
of farming v;hich was customarily practiced by the settlers.
This flexibility has largely disappeared with an increase in
population and its concentration upon the valley floor where
each household has a mean holding of roughly one hectare but
where the mode is less than .5 hectare.

In the early days of the settlement, houses were widely
dispersed, but as pressure on the land has increased, house-
holds have developed a cluster form of settlement, like that
found elsev/here in the Republic. The manner in which these
clusters are created is examined in some detail to reveal the
nature of reciprocities and tensions within them. Tensions
arise from the need for each household to maintain itself as
a unit and the need to be connected to others in times of
difficulty.

Household clusters, however, are avoided in socio-economic
patterns of large farmers, those owning more than two hectares
of bottomland, v;ho are engaged in irrigated vegetable produc-
tion. Escaping the reciprocities of the cluster, these farmers
build their homes on land which they have purchased themselves.
While subject to redistributive pressures, large farmers use
such pressure to their ovm benefit without being trapped into
a cluster system. Most significantly, since these farmers do
not rely upon their own households for labor, they begin to
adopt attitudes which limit the size of their households by
practicing birth control or by educating their children out of

14

the settlement into urban employment.

These patterns of change reflect upon fundamental differ-
ences in the adaptive strategy of slash and burn farming vs.
the adaptive strategy of irrigated vegetable production. These
differences are reflected through the household onto the pat-
tern of human interaction and onto the physical landscape. But
change is effected unevenly by households since constraints
of environment, economics, and politics increasingly limit
access to new resources and technology to only a proportion of
the population, and especially to the five hoixseholds of the
large commercial farmers and the two large capitalist farms run,
not from a household, but from an office in Santo Domingo.

Clear Creek is an agricultural settlement high in the
central mountain range of the Dominican Republic (Figures 2, 3)»
It is composed of nearly 700 persons who live in 126 households
formed over the past 60 years in what was once heavily forested
wilderness. The official borders of Clear Creek define it as a
paraje of the section (seccion) of River, part of the munici-
pality (municipio) of Constanza in the province (provincia) of
La Vega. The boundaries of the paraje contain roughly some
5,000 hectares, though the recent addition of Deep Gorge to
its borders has enlarged this considerably. This was only one
of a series of boundary changes which occur periodically, making
for considerable confusion among researchers and residents alike.

5

■'^The unit of land area commonly used in the Dominican
Republic is the tarea which equals .0625 hectare. Throughout
this dissertation, all calculations are in terms of hectares.

15

In 1952, for example, Clear Creek was affixed to Constanza, a
redistricting against v;hich its inhabitants continue to complain.
Some ^255 of the settlers who came to this area from the outside
were from Jaravacoa and they feel that the Constanza connection
deprives them of the political advantages which kinship ties
brought them in their natal community.

The settlement's isolation is one born of difficult terrain
and, until the 1950' s, the distance from secondary roads. While
geography cut the settlement off from each commerce with other
regions, it also created divisions within the settlement (Figure
3). Four of the valleys of Clear Creek, Pretty Creek, Pines,
Goat, and Nuts, follow tributaries of the same river system and
each tributary is flanked by narrow strips of bottomland upon
which irrigation is possible. These valleys are linked to a
fifth. Black Stone, which lies outside Clear Creek's political
boundaries but which is tied to it by agricultural patterns,
historical development, and intermarriage.

In contrast. Deep Gorge is separated from these valleys
by a high and uninhabited watershed, crossed only by a steep,
dangerous mule path. Deep Gorge contains no irrigable bottom
land and its houses are often built along ridgelines, a pattern
not followed elsewhere. Little visiting takes place across
the watershed except for special events such as the annual cock-
fight held in Pretty Creek between the men of Deep Gorge and
those of the other valleys. Further, Deep Gorge is connected
closely by mule path to settlements which lie below it in the
province of Bonao. Much of its coffee and beans, the only cash
crops, is sent directly to Bonao, by-passing Clear Creek's

16

o

•H
0)

•H

•H
S
O

Q

0)

•H

(U

u
o

0)
H
O

Ch
O

d
o

•H
■P
03
o
O

17

TO 80NA0
BLACKSTONE

^■■-

FROM AN70NINI, 1972

FIGURE 3
Landuse in Clear Creek.

IB

marketing channels.

Political and geographical boundaries in Clear Creek,
thus,. .fail to coincide, a point made clearer when the external
relations of the settlement are examined. The settlement lies
six kilometers on a barely serviceable road from the main
Constanza highv;ay. At this juncture, the traveler is an hour
by public car from Bonao and forty-five minutes from Constanza

which lies in the opposite direction. Not only is Bonao a

7

much larger city, it is also a gateway to other regions of the

nation, v;hereas Constanza, since the road to San Jose de Ocoa
has fallen into ruin, is a dead end.

From Clear Creek, persons go to or past Bonao five times
as often as they go to Constanza. This is especially true in
regard to the marketing of produce, visiting doctors, and
recent permanent migration. Commercial, farmers may buy their
supplies in Constanza, but they market produce in the large
central markets of Santo Domingo. Individuals can attend to
some government related matters in Constanza, but dealing with

..Owing to this ecological and social division, my work
concentrated upon the 126 households in the four valleys of
Pretty Creek, Nuts, Goat, and Pines. Unless otherwise men-
tioned, data presented includes only these localities.

■ 7

'The three largest cities in the Dominican Republic in

1970 were: Santo Domingo 671,402, Santiago 155,151, and San

Francisco de Macoris 43,941. La Vega was seventh with 3l,OS5

and Bonao had 20,159- In contrast, Constanza, the town, has

a population of about 4,000.

Of a total Dominican population of 4,011,589 some 40^ is
considered to be urban. In the municipality of Constanza, only
12^ of the population is considered to be urban. (Orlando,
1972: 26, 2S, 52; Walker, 1972: 12)

19

institutions such as the courts or the agricultural bank often
means going directly to La Vega. Constanza operates as only
one pole of Clear Creek's external relations. Links of kinship,
economics, health services, and migration form functionally
distinct connections with a variety of urban centers.

Maintaining such ties is vitally necessary to contemporary
Clear Creek for, as a campo, it lacks the complement of insti-
tutions and roles vital for the creation of a community (Arens-
berg, .1965). The people of Clear Creek use the word campo to
describe the area in which they live and work, never community
(comunidad) . Only a limited number of institutions are repre-
sented. There is a rarely used church, a school, nine small
stores, a pool table housed in a shed; but there is no clinic,
no bar, no government offices, no brothel, no police station,
and no government services in terms of water, electricity, or
sewage. Also the list of cultural representatives is only par-
tially complete; there is a sheriff (alcalde) but no police, a
native curer (curandero) but no nurse, teachers but no priest,
retailers but no wholesalers. Furthermore, the existing insti-
tutions and roles are dispersed, like the settlement pattern
itself, isolating the major s^Tnbolic centers of life: the
store, the church, the schools, and the house and yard.

.Clear Creek exists, then, in dynamic and essential counter-
point to an urban center or centers. The interaction of campo,
hinterland, with pueblo, town, forms the traditional Dominican
community; . like the ying and yang of Chinese philosophy, they
form a complete whole only when taken together. Walker's
study in Constanza focused upon events within the town while

20

this study complements it by focusing upon events in the country-
side (Walker, 1970, 1971, 1972).

Clear Creek's relationship with urban areas has become
increasingly predicated over the last decade upon the distinc-
tiveness of its agricultural produce. The cabbages and other
vegetables raised here thrive in the moist, cool climate while
the autumnal bean production often hits the city markets at a
time when no other region is harvesting. The climate of the
municipio is famous throughout the country for being cool and
invigorating.

The first settlers who came to Clear Creek from Jaravacoa
arrived at a place which was colder, more rainy, more fertile,
and less hospitable than the one they had left. Those who
remember the Clear Creek of that era agree that it was a most
ugly place, filled with dark and forbidding forests through
which mule paths were only narrowly scratched. Only as the
forest has been cleared has it become, for then, a livable
environment .

The altitude of the settlement, about 1050 meters, puts it
500 meters above Jaravacoa. An even more dramatic contrast can
be. made with Bonao which, only 17 kilometers away, is at 157
meters. The change in altitude is very abrupt and is even more
so if one considers the mountain IS23 meters high which over-
looks the narrow valleys of Clear Creek. Heavy clouds blow
often along the scarred face of this steep slope, warning of
imminent rains. The clouds themselves are formed when pre-
vailing winds riding easily over the hot lowlands strike against

21

this portion of the central mountain range.

The altitude's effect upon rainfall and temperature gives
the Constanza region a climate unique in the Dominican Republic.
The annual average rainfall of some 1,071 mm. is more than any-
other area except the Samana peninsula. This is unevenly dis-
tributed throughout the year as data collected in River in 1973
shows (Figure 4) • While drier months are usually expected in
March through July, there is great fluctuation in rainfall from
year to year. In January 1973»for example, it rained 40.0 mm.,
whereas in the following year the monthly total stood at I36.4
mm. It is this variability which limits production in Clear
Creek rather than any water deficiency as such.

Temperature is less variable than rainfall and remains
throughout the year more in a temperate than tropical range
(Figure 5)« Combined with the rains of December, January, and
February, this makes, for an uncomfortable winter as numerous cases
of the common cold (el gripe) attest. During this cold season,
women are kept busy brewing home remedies from plants gathered
in their extensive herb gardens.

In other seasons, as elsewhere in the mountains, the cool-
ness, of the climate is viewed as a distinct advantage. The
climate is described as being cool rather than cold v;hen com-
paring this region v;ith others. By contrast, the heat and dust
of the lowland cities, especially Bonao and Santo Domingo, are
pointed out as reasons against migrating from the area. Con-
firming, this view is the increasing number of wealthy residents
of the capital who have built summer homes in Black Stone and

22

£20
200
l80

l60

lUO
KM 120

100

80
60

liO

TOTAL: U59.5 ™

r

^^^

U^-r

i

-H^ '•'*

■■■?
h

J

parsarfa

V

1

"*"* '

/,r'..,.,i-,K„-AifS<

^•J::.t

.'.Vlr'i.-

iiitai*^

„J

FIGURE 4
Monthly rainfall, 1973, weather station in River, Constanza,

23

86.0 30

80.6 £7

75.2 2"*

69. e 21

53.6 12

1.8.2 9

1*2.8 6

37.1* 3

32.0 0

Oj. C(,

JFMAMJJ ASOND

FIGURE 5

Average high and low monthly temperatures
I97O-I974. Constanza, Dominican Republic.

24

River where they vacation on weekends and in the warmer months.

Change in climate presented the early settlers with a new
set of farming variables. Tobacco, then an important cash crop
in Jaravacoa, could not be grovm successfully in Clear Creek nor
did planting seasons coincide vdth those in the old farming area,
Nevertheless, these factors were outv/eighted, at least for those
farmers who stayed, by the abundance and the fertility of the
land. Though exaggerating their first yields, the old settlers,
still v;arm quickly to the task of describing their early bean
harvests and the loads of root crops they took back to their
families in Jaravacoa. These harvests were certainly aided by
the thick ash left from burning the virgin woods, by the absence
of pests which came along later, and by the good valley bottom-
land.

Though, as shall be seen later, there is an intricate and
complex system of soil classification employed by farmers in
Clear Creek, they agree there are two main types: that of the
hills (loma) and of the valley (llanos) . Soil maps of the
region reveal the basic distinction between alluvial deposits
laid down by intermittent flooding in the valleys and soils of
volcanic, but principally metamorphic, origin in the hills
(OEA 1967) . This latter group reveals a thin layer of humus
beneath which lies either a hard red clay or a rocky substruc-
ture. While the valleys support permanent cultivation, the
hills are abandoned to grass and scrub after being farmed and
are given over to cattle production. This tendency is particu-
larly accentuated in Clear Creek where the steepness of hill-

25

sides inhibits their being used in the kind of dryland farming
practiced elsewhere in the municipio (V/alker 1972) .

This combination of soil, temperature, and rain creates
a natural vegetation cover listed by Holridge as being a wet
mountain forest. But in Clear Creek there are two distinct
forest complexes. An extensive pine forest, once more vast
than it is now, contains a large number of Pinus varieties,
including the indigenous occidentalis . These forests were
heavily logged during the Trujillo era. The other complex has
as. its, most distinctive component the manacla palm (Euterpe
globosa) and a v/ild variety of ferns, lichens, mosses, and epi-
phytic flowering plants. Clear Creek lies astride the dividing
line, as it were, between these two vegetative zones.

The land use zones of Clear Creek, then, are valley bottom-
land, forested hills, and hills converted from forest into
pasture (Figure 3)» Political lines being of little consequence,
the amount of land exploited which is either in pasture or forest
is much greater than that included in Clear Creek. The hills
beyond Goat and near Blue Mountain, for example, are regularly
farmed by slash and burn agriculturalists from Clear Creek as
are some regions of Deep Gorge.

The means by which these farmers and the original settlers
who came to Clear Creek got access to their lands is a complex
matter. Land tenure is, after all, as much a function of a
person's relations \-ri.th his fellows, defined by law and custom,
as it is a person's relationship to a piece of land. The
system of tenure involved in slash and burn farming evolved

26

out of the historic condition of an expanding population living
along a forest frontier. In the initial phase of settlement,
colonists cleared v/hat land they needed and acquired rights over
it by using it. In some cases colonists would purchase the
right of usufruct for some land over which someone else had
title. In all cases, the limitations on use of land were de-
fined more by household labor force and family need than by
formal property boundaries .

Clear Creek, 50 years ago, v;as a frontier; the sentiments
expressed concerning the forest, its dangers and darkness, are
common to folk who must subdue the woods in order to survive
(Turnbull 1962, Miller 1956: 1-15). Since colonial times,
the frontier v/as far from formal seats of government and was
scattered wherever vast strands of forest dmonated the land-
scape. Thus, the type of tenure that developed had only tangen-
tial relations to national law; in fact, national law must be
seen as an attempt to control and formalize a system which was
already well rooted in the conditions of rural life.

The form of tenure most characteristic of the history of
the Dominican Republic was that of terrenes comuneros, a system
operated through the acquisition by an individual of a govern-
ment grant which entitled him to the usufruct of a quantity of
land based upon the number of pesos paid (Clausner 1973: 121-
124) . These individuals could then sell part of the usufruct to
others and these shares were called acciones or titulos de peso.
Children inherited these shares on the death of their parents.

The exact location of boundaries for either the original

27

grant or subsequent subdivisions vias- never clearly spelled out.
Part of the reason is that the government had no clear idea of
the local geography. But a more fundamental reason was that
the lack of exact boundaries was quite in tune with an agricul- ^.'
tural system v;hich placed little value on fixed fields. In
slash and burn farming, clearings are made and utilized only for
a few plantings, though these may be stretched out over a long
period of years during which the land lies in fallow. New
fields are constantly created and old ones are abandoned.

In practice, the use of the land was never limited by the
number of acciones a person held, but rather by available man-
power within an individual's own household and the location and
prior claims of other farmers. Production and use were geared
to the needs and capacities of a household subsistence (Rodri-
quez Demonzi Igyi: X: 199, 4^5). Further, as long as new
forest was available, rights were given to newcomers as often
as they were sold. Often newcomers were kinsmen or from the
same locality as the first settlers; it has already been stated
that a large majority of the settlers in Clear Creek, for exam-
ple, came from the region of Jaravacoa. The newcomers were
simply expected to act according to customary practices of res-
pecting prior claims and entering into local reciprocities,
including labor exchange in the form of cooperative labor parties
(juntas) .

In one sense these settlers may be thought of as squatters
for while they enjoyed usufruct of the land, ownership was vested
elsewhere, originally in the Crown and later in the national
government. Mintz sees such a pattern as creating a fringe type

2B

of Caribbean peasantry and Horowitz shows that the system of ^
acciones also existed elsewhere in the V/est Indies (Mintz 1974:
147-14^; Horowitz 1967). But as with squatter's rights in
English lav/, formal title of ovmership in fee simple could be
granted after proof of a long and undisputed occupancy was
furnished even if no previous title such as acciones was ever
held. This occupancy has usually been thought of in terms of
thirty years, as it is in Clear Creek today.

The customary system of land tenure in the settlement, with
all.. of its flexibility and expansiveness, rests upon the assump-
tion of abundant forest and new land. As such resources come
into short supply, however, holdings and claims come to be more
rigidly fixed and individuals try to define more clearly the
limits of their occupancy. In Clear Creek, this process has been
hastened not only by an increasing population but also by the
intervention of the national government into the life of the
settlement. Three main events must be cited to clarify this
process .

The first event which entailed such intervention began with
the establishment of lumber mills in Clear Creek vrhich lasted
from 1947 to 1954. The mills used labor hired outside the
settlem.ent and were under the control of Trujillo's brother,
"Negro," who operated them from Bonao (Crassweller 1966). In
order to utilize virgin forests for the maximum efficiency of
the mills, acciones which were held by the local population
were declared invalid. Though the land in the valleys which had
long since been cleared of its original forest cover was left

29

alone, "Negro's" appointed official (el jefe de la loina)
greatly restricted the customary practice of clearing forest
for agricultural purposes. Thus, farmers found themselves more
confined than they had been before.

The second event was the declaration in the mid-1950's of
la zona in the settlement. La zona is a governmentally imposed
regulation which changes the nature of slash and burn farming
in areas like Clear Creek. Previous to this regulation, pigs,
which formed a critical part of the local subsistence diet,
were allov;ed to roam freely wherever they pleased. Clearings
in the hills and house gardens in the valley had to be enclosed
to prevent the pigs from rooting out the crops and much time
went into the construction of wooden palisades around these
fields. Because the pigs roamed at v-dll, it was customary to
regard only the enclosed fields as being truly a person's
property.

The establishment of 1^ zona, hov/ever, meant that animals,
not fields, had to be enclosed. If pigs did damage to crops,
the ov/ner of the animals would have to pay damages. lAs the
palisades came down, then, barbed wire which is singularly
ineffective against pigs was put up in its place. But instead
of merely fencing in the fields which were currently in use,
barbed wire enclosed all of the bottomland that a household
claimed as its own. Since barbed wire was costly, those who
were able to acquire it enclosed as much as they could, even
where this led to boundary disputes with neighbors. It seems
also to be true that at this time much selling of the land took

30

place by those individuals v;ho could not afford to enclose
their land.

The third event was tiie death oT Trujillo in 1961. Up
until that tine, "llei^xo" had continued the policy of restricting
access to the hills around Clear Creek. No one was allowed to
enclose land there, for he had claimed the land as his ov/n
domain even after the mills left. V/ithin a week of the assassi-
nation, hov/ever, tJie enclosure of hills around the settlement
had begun, principally that land wliich, having been cut over for
lumber, had gone into pasture. Areas in secondary growth were
also enclosed and some farmers were able to cover ten to twenty
hectares in barbed wire. This again led to boundary disputes,
and bitterness between certain households still stems from
this period.

In Clear Creek today then the boundaries of holdings in
the hills have become much more clearly defined; barbed v/ire
h.as replaced the right to alter one's fields from year to year.
As a result, large growers invest their profits in cattle which
graze on largo expanses of pasture. The continual burning over
of the pastures lov new grass prevents t r;e eventual regeneration
of the forest, preventing future use of the lai'd for agricul-
tural pur-poses. The expense oi' barbed Vvire limits the alter-
native of cattle production to large growers while keeping
large an:ounts of land perr:a:-cnt ' y out of agricultural use.

In the farther reaches of Peep Gorge the system of land
tenure coiitinucs to resemble that of t>ie tor re no:; comur.eros. J
If forest in tb.ese areas has nevei- been cleared, if it is not
enclosed, and if no o:.o has laid a previous claim, then any

31

individual rr^ay clear the woods to rr-.ako a slash and burn clearing.
But the national government still clainu:; title to all of this
land, v;hcther enclosed by barbed wire or not, and officially
all the settlers are reganied as squatters. The local resi-
dents are quite quick to acknowledge this. They claim to sell
and inherit only the right to ul-.c the land (J_a do re c ha) and the
ir.provenents they have made rather than actual ownership of t't;e
sanse. No one holds a clear title, though several persons have
had their land r.easured in aiiticipat ion of applying for a
title based upon occupancy. One neighbor of mine spent over
$250.00 in having his land measured and going through some pre-
liminary stages, but he eventually gave up because he had so
far dealt only with officials in La Vega and was nov;here near
having his claim presented in the land tribunal v/hich sits in
the capital. While there is a general consensus that the gov-
ernment v.-ould not bother the settlers, there is scant belief
th.at one could actually obtain a title and a little fear that
an application m.ig'nt only pique the government's interest in
tliis isolated valley.

The cumulative effect oV these tlu-eo events wh.en combin-r.i
v;ith a constantly increasing population and the advantages 01^
soil ar.d waver has been to co:-iCe:-;trate the population of C]ear
Crock iv. the valley bottc:"]a:id ( ] 1 'iMon) . The basic socio-
economic unit in which this population, lives is the household
v/'iich Jias its p!iysical manifestation in t::o house arid yard
complex. Cbiangos in land tenure, namely th.o enclosure of
lands previously ope!i for th.e m.aking of clearings a:ui tiie

32

rooting of pigs, has been felt in the household by encouraging
the clustering of households by related groups of kinsr.en.
This pattern of clusterir.g is one of the main changes in socio-
economic organization in the car.po resulting from increased
pressure on the land.

At the sarr.o time, the particular effects of agricultural
developn'ient on the household can be seen in the composition
of households as individual units. Here a direct link is shovm
to the mode of production for in the system of slash and burn
farrning, v/hich v.'as so geared to the flexibility of terrenos
cornuneros, the household supplied the needed energy requirement,
aside from that of sun and fire, and labor exchange provided
additional help when necessary. As long as land was abundant,
the limiting factor in production was labor and a large house-
hold, as large as possible, assured the exploitation of a large
and diverse area.

But in commercial farming only part of the labor force is
recruited from the household, and in capitalist farming hired
workers furnish the entire human energy input. Commercial
farniers are, therefore, beginning to adjust the size of their
households to fit the nev; requiremer.ts of the mode of produc-
tion. For them, a large liouseliold is a liability for, while
remainir.g th^o unit of consv;mpticn, it ceases to bo the unit of
production .

To grxiund tl;is discussion more solidly in the ongoing life
of tJie settlement, it is necessary to describe the households
in which the population of Clear Creek, aside from the large

33

conanercial fanners, live.

The symbolic center of rural life in the Doainican Republic,
as elsewhere in the Caribbean (Mints 1974) has traditionally
been the house and yard, though the pulperfa or srrall store has
increasingly inportant social and economic functions. The
house and yard is referred to as the bohio by Dominican farmers,
the word coming from the Arawak name for dwelling. The bohio
actually consists of two main buildings, the house and a sep-
arate kitchen, plus a well swept yard, several outlying sheds,
an outhouse, and the house garden where subsistence crops are
grown. Around this complex is usually a small coffee grove,
growing under the shade of taller trees, and bananas and plan-
tains which give the bohio an air of self sufficiency.

The house and kitchen are constructed of wood in most
cases, either the thin slats of manacla (Euterpe globosa) ,
cut from new clearings in the forests, or more substantial
pine boards. The house contains two or three rooms, a sitting
room which is rarely used, and one or two bedrooms. In the
main bedroom is always a small altar with several worn pictures
of saL'S^ and the Virgin and a few candles which are lit for
a short tine each night.

The kitchen walls are built with space between the slats
to allow Gn:oke frorr. the cooking and evening fires to escape.
The kitchen is the true center of household life and activity;
here all visitors are received, though they might be detained
a few minutes in the sitting room if they are total strangers.

3V

A large storage chest is found in the kitchen, in which com
(mainly used for chicken feed), beans, and rice may be kept.
The center of activity is the fogon, a large rectangular
table with an earth filled surface on which the cooking is ,/
done in recessed adobe fireholds.

The bohio was once found in more isolated circximstances
than it is today and this is related to increased pressure on
the land. As long as new forest land was abundant, settlers
and the sons of settlers built their houses at a distance from
one another so as to utilize a large and varied area. As the
land became more crowded, with the arrival of new households
as well as the natural increase of population, this tendency
to spread out was reduced. Concentration was further reduced
by the events of the Trujillo era and the steady enclosure of
land. Concentration In the valley was also abetted by the
natural advantages of nearby streams and a soil which per-
mitted the annual replanting of gardens which on the hillsides
would have to be abandoned after a single harvest.

This concentration, however, takes the form of clusters
which follow a typical Dominican spatial and social pattern
for relatively dense rural populations. Clusters consist of
three or four households of male siblings who have been given
part of their father's property. These clusters fill out the
natural environment of Clear Creek' by occuping small niches
in the contours of the valley floor, such as the wide bank at
a curve of a stream or a rise of high ground. . To understand
exactly how these household groups have come into being, how-

35

ever, it is necessary to look at a crucial point in a resi-
dent's life cycle, namely that point at which he or she begins
to live in free union.

Some 9^^ of the unions between men and women in the
settlement are created without benefit of law or clergy.
These are referred to in this study as free unions. Though
25^0 of these are eventually legalized by church or civil mar-
riage, this occurs after a number of years of the couple's
living together. The process by which a man and woman enter
into free union follows the stages for a rite of passage as
outlined by van Gennep (I960). "^

. , ..The first stage, separation, is accomplished by the
couple slipping away at night from their respective households,
This is done according to prior arrangement between the two,
though the initiative is always presumed to be that of the
male; it is said that he took her (Le llevo el _a ella) rather
than that they both went away. The ideal situation is one in
which the male has already constructed a house on his father's
property but at some distance from his parents' house. Permis-
sion to. build the house is in essence permission to enter into
such a union.. Only hOfo of the males, however, either have the
resources or the permission to build a house and the rest must
ask a relative or neighbor to give them protection and shelter,
Again this is a way in which tacit permission is given to the
union, for if a couple were unable to find someone to shelter
them, they would abandon their plan.

The second stage, liminality, occurs after both sets of

36

parents recognize that their children are gone and continues
until the time that they are allowed to visit their house-
holds of orientation as a couple. Having consummated the
relationship on the first night, the female has ceased to be /
a girl (muchacha) and has become a woman (mu.jer) . Thus altered
in word and deed, she cannot return to her house as before,
especially if her parents continue to express their expected
reaction of anger and shock. The pair confine themselves,
then, to their new quarters, seeing few people, until they are
allowed to visit their former homes.

. The. third stage, reincorporation, occurs as a gradual
process of being recognized as a couple by the rest of the
settlement. This hinges upon both the male and female making
certain changes in their previous behavior. The male, for
example, is expected to stop hanging around at the pulperia
at night and to become serious (serio) by devoting himself to
his work. The female, for her part, begins to cook meals
entirely on her own and to confine herself to her new kitchen,
attending to her few material possessions, and, as will be
explained. more fully later, sending cooked food to the home
of her matels parents and siblings.

The major element in the process of reincorporation,
however, is the piece of land which the father gives to the
son who has set up his household. In Clear Creek this is
land in the valley, often land upon which the son has worked
with the. father, growing subsistence or, more recently, commer-
cial crops. Thus the parcel which he receives is land over

37

TABLE 1
Age distribution of the population in Clear Creek.

AGS
61 sod over

1*9-5'*

37-1*2

31-36
25-30

19-2"*
13-18

7-12

1-6

yHHUBH OF
TOTAI, POPUIATION

3*

Ti^^i^lf^ffemfeSfe^iji^^ »iM.Aa^ja_.Krt>Ma3cg,^^

1.5*
1.5*

3*
5*
6*
8*
U*
13*
20*
28*

■total Percenta«e: lOOIt

3^

which he has slowly been taking control.

But land in the hills claimed by the father is handled
differently; it is never given as a gift, but is held intact,
until it is divided on the parents' death. If this land is
in pasture, any livestock which the new household possesses
may be grazed along with that of the father. If, on the other
hand, the land contains primary or secondary forest in which
it is still possible to make clearings, the new household is
free to claim a necessary portion for a slash and bum clearing.
But since there is no need for fixed fields using this form of
agriculture, there is no need to give the land in any formal
sense.

Thus it is on the valley floor that clusters of house-
holds are created by male siblings living on land given them
by their father. Women marry out of their own household of
orientation and away from their father's holding. Defining
virilocality here as being the establishment of a household
on the male's parents' holding (uxorilocal) or an entirely
new holding (neolocal), some 625S follow the virilocal pattern
(Table 2).

Actual household size and composition reflect the needs
of the mode of production and the necessity of achieving a
balance between relative autonomy as a unit and interdependence
in the cluster. There are two basic principles which guide
the internal composition of households in Clear Creek and they
may be stated succinctly as follows:

39

TABLE 2
Household residence patterns in Clear Creek*

Type Neolocal** Virilocal Uxorilocal

Percent 2Ufo 625^ Ihfo

N = 126

* Follows the classification and definitions used by
Pehrson (1954) •

** These are generally households of the older generation
of immigrants from Jaravacoa and elsewhere.

TABLE 3
Household composition in Clear Creek (generations)

N\imber of Generations

Percent 6.65S 67 .2fo Y] ,Ki°

N = 126

40

1. A full complement of biological and social
roles should be present. There are a minimum of five:
an adult male to carry out the work of agricultural
production, an adult female to prepare food and main-
tain the household, an older son to help his father
and an older daughter to help her mother and take care
of younger children, plus a young boy/girl to riin
errands. Westbrook shows how the absence of such a
balance is directly related to the economic viability ■
of farm units elsewhere in the Republic (1970).

2. While five is the minimum, a maximum is
established by the sentiment that a household can
never contain more than one conjugal pair. Mintz
points out that this is a common factor in Caribbean
household structure (1974: 234). While households
may contain more than one adult female, only under
special circumstances do they contain more than one
adult male. By adult male is meant a person who has

. or has had a mate and children.

These principles are acted upon in such a way as to produce
a model household which contains one conjugal pair and two
generations. Nearly 90^ of the households contain only one
cpnjugal pair and 76. 2?$ contain the two generations (Tables
3, 4). As can be seen from looking at the composition table,
households which lack children to meet their need for help in
the kitchen and in the fields recruit by taking in children
to.be raised. Frequently, when the children of a couple have
grown and. moved "out, they send one or two of their own child-
ren to live in the houses of the parents. What is masked in
these figures is the large amount of casual lending and bor-
rowing of children which occurs within the cluster as one
household has need of help at a particular time. This will

8
I found it impossible to run my household without having

two or three children lent to me. Going to the store, weeding

the garden, getting water, etc. were all tasks they performed

in exchange for food, change, and other goodies. I had to have

41

be discussed shortly when we examine reciprocal relations within
the cluster.

The need and desire for children to supply labor and
future security is related as much by the average size of the
household as by the rate of female fertility. The average
household size is only 5-5 persons, the range being from one
household of one person (a man whose wife was in New York and
whose children lived with her mother further up the valley) to
one of 15 (a man, a woman, and their 13 children).

While there were no comparative figures upon which to
devise a birth rate for the population of Clear Creek, the
rate of female fertility is extremely high (N = 100). The
average female of childbearing age, that is 15 to 49 years
of age, kas 9.^ live births during her lifetime. Of these,
1.7 die before the age of two. For every 1000 women in the
population of childbearing age, 2^0 give birth each year.
This figure, which is m.uch higher than that officially re-
ported for the Dominican Republic, is partly the result of
the basic demography of the campo which places many of the
women. in ^this category in the lower age bracket, i.e., below
the age of 30, which is the period of greatest fertility
(Table 1) . It is also higher than the official figure
because of the fact that many rural people do not report

more than one because children in Clear Creek, as elsewhere,
in the world, are notorious for being absent when they are
most needed. All this gave me much insight into the factors
affecting a desirable family size.

42

9

their children's births, due to costs and inconvenience.

A large number of children, preferably males, tradi-
tionally has ensured the prosperity of a household where the
system of agricultural production v;as limited only by labor,
not land. More laborers, that is, sons, meant that larger
clearings could be made, more pigs could be attended, and
more beans could be planted. These are all features of the
slash .and burn system discussed in the following chapter.
What is important to note here, however, is that an increase
in the number of children meant an increase in production
although there was a gap between the birth of the first child
and the appearance of the first helper in the field. Commer-
cial agriculture, however, by changing the mode of production
from sole reliance upon household labor encouraged limiting
the size of households, a factor which shall be considered
shortly.

As the population of Clear Creek has become increasingly
dependent upon the valley bottom for its resources, such
fecundity causes great pressure on the land, and each house-
hold, seeks first its own benefit. In such a situation the
cluster form of settlement has two very significant functions
in limiting competition of available space in the valley.
. The first function is that some of the offspring are
discriminated against in the size of the parcel they may

Q

^The national rate in 1970 was 1^4 live births per 1000
women in this category (Tupper, 1973)*

43

TABLE 4
Household composition in Clear Creek: conjugal pairs,

TYPE
I. One Conjugal Pair

a. 1 conjugal pair

b. 1 conjugal pair + xo/da

c. 1 conjugal pair + so/da de criaza

d. 1 conjugal pair + so/da + dada/daso

e. 1 conjugal pair + others

f . 1 conjugal pair + so/da + huimo

g. 1 conjugal pair + so/da + wimo
h. 1 conjugal pair + so/da + others

Total
II, Two Conjugal Pairs

a. hu + wi

b. hu + wi

c . hu + wi

Total

da + dahu + daso/dada
so/da + hubr + hubrwi
so/da + wibr + wibrwi

III. No Conjugal Pair

a. mo + so/da

b. mo + so/da + dada/daso
0. single males

Total

PERCENT

4.995

l.SjS
2,h.'fo
1.7fo
5.0/0

4.9/0

1.7fo
2.3/0

5.7/0
.^0

1.7/0

B,2!fo

N = 126

44

potentially receive. The creation of minifundia in the
Dominican Republic is encouraged by an inheritance system
which states that all legitimate or recognized children,
regardless of gender, inherit equal shares in their parents' "^
property. Under this system of land transfer to married male
children, however, female and unmarried male offspring do
not receive an equal share. On the death of a parent, only
that land which has not already been given away is divided
among the heirs, including those who have already been given
a parcel. This last division usually results in pieces of
bottomland so small that they are sold to those sons who al-
ready have a share and who reside close by the parents' house.
A second function of the cluster is the pattern of reci-
procities which exist between its various households which,
as elsewhere in similar conditions, is enforced by the morality
of kinship and residence (Bloch 1973; Firth 1951; Sahlins 1972).
Through such reciprocities whatever diverse resources are con-
tained within the cluster are shared. This may best be seen
in. the distribution of food which daily occurs between house-
holds.

One of my problems when I first came to live in this
valley was that I was involved in a number of these exchanges.
Each afternoon five lunches would arrive and I, of course, was
expected to reciprocate. My protestations that I could not eat
so much were in vain, though the steady appearance of children
at my house made it obvious that my surfeit should be their
gain as well. They were probably simply reclaiming what was
their own to begin with.

The problem of reciprocity was partly solved when I dis-
covered the local love of popcorn. Admired not only because
it was a nutritious food but because so much could come from so
little, I was able to return bowls of this for the food which

/f5

Such distribution, referred to as sending (mandar) food
by the residents, is secondary to the distribution of food
within the household. The sharing of food in the household
involves a crucial division of labor. Men are responsible
for bringing subsistence crops, manioc, sweet potato, bananas,
and the like in from the gardens and the clearings. They also
must lay in. siif fie lent firewood and, in this, they are helped
by their sons. Women, on the other hand, are in charge of
store bought foods, children being sent to make the necessary
purchases at the pulperia, picking spices from their herb
gardens, and drying the coffee beans and preparing them for
making that. black and delicious brew. Helped by their daugh-
ters, they prepare and cook the day's meals. When the meal
is cooked. .especially la comida (the "real meal" or noon meal),
the first plate is filled with food for the husband. The
following plates, the number depending upon the number of house-
holds with whom exchanges are made, are filled and set aside
to.be sent.. Then the woman fills her own plate and, afterwards,
those. of the children. A secondary stage of distribution within
the household also occurs as the husband and wife give choice
pieces of .food, from their own plates to the children, for exam-
ple, a choice flake of meat, a bone, or some beans.

The exchange of food between households may best be

came my way. In time, however, by reciprocating more con-
sistently with some than with others, I exchanged primarily
with I-II, III, IV. On the days when I measured caloric intake,
I did not give or receive food in any of these houses except
for a cup of coffee in each and a small piece of roast pork
which I bought. (It was delicious.)

46^

examined in an actual situation. The neighborhood (vecinidad)
in which my house was located, for example, was composed of a
group of clusters which regularly interact with one another
(Figure 6), There are three main clusters, (A), (B), and (C),
which can be identified by the pattern of land tenure and food
exchange. Each cluster includes (A) I-II + III + IV, (B) V +
VI + Vila + Vllb, and (C) VIII + IX (Figure 6).-^-'-

This map' is geared to the geneology chart for the same
neighborhood (Figure 7) • From comparing the two, it can be
seen that households III and IV in cluster (A) are living on
land given to them by their father in household II, while I is
occupied by a daughter and her children who share the kitchen
of household II. In cluster ( B) , the father in household VI
has given land to his sons who occupy households V, Vila, and
Vllb. Household VI still contains two unmarried sons who help
their father in his fields. In cluster (C) household IX
occupies land given to him by his father; his widowed mother
occupies household VIII with an unmarried man.
. . Each of the households exchanges food with others in its
own cluster. On special occasions, during the Christmas sea-
son (las pascuas), for example, this network of exchange is
enlarged further along the line of kinship. Using Figures 6
and 7, it can be noted that the wife in Vllb is the daughter
of the woman in III and that the wife in VI is the daughter

Households Vila and Vllb were occupying the same house
temporarily because I was renting the house which had been
occupied by household Vllb. Although they lived" together, they
tried to maintain separate household patterns: cooking, child-
care and agricultural labor.

47

o

48

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49

of the couple in household I, and, thus, sister to the men in
IV and III. Because of these relationships, these households
exchange food on special days.

The purpose of such food exchange, especially when it
occurs daily within the cluster, is to even out temporary or
even more permanent imbalances in the diet of the households.
Such imbalances do exist, either through the uneven distribu-
tion of resources or differences in household composition.
The amount and type of food consiimed by cluster (A) over a three
day period in February of 1974 is described in Table 5. The
food cooked in each household was weighed and measured, then
converted into calories using the scales provided by INCAP for
Central America.

The reason for the great disparity between the households
was that the older son in II had roasted a pig to sell the
meat and buy gifts for a woman with whom he had a visiting
relationship. To go with the sudden abundance of meat in
the household, for the son had to give some pork to his own
kitchen and to the other households in the cluster, the
women cooked up very large stews (sancocho). This was par-
ticularly true in II where his mother and grandmother had
helped with preparing the pig.

Large bowls of food went out from II to III and IV and
beyond to VI while very small bowls came in the other direc-
tion from III and IV and nothing from VI. This, in part,
repays III for the milk sent daily when household III milks
its cows. III has ten head of cattle while none of the other
households in (A) have any.

50

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51'

It is IV which suffers from chronic undernourishment.
The head of this household is a lottery seller who does no
agricultural work, though his two older sons do annually make
a small clearing in the slash and burn fashion on nearby hills
which are badly eroded. Of the nine members of the household,
two of the children exhibited stunted growth and a third is

mildly retarded, a condition his mother claims was caused by

12
a lack of food when the child was very young.

For this household, there is a second means by which food
is distributed throughout the cluster, namely they eat in more
than one household. Thus the children of IV invariably show
up at II and III and hang around the fogon waiting for some
boiled tubers or some rice and beans. They scrape the bowls
and lick the pots. There is a good deal of bantering and not
a little sarcasm directed at the children for this; their
laxity in performing chores is pointed out. The point is that
the children usually get the food along with the abuse. One
of their tasks, after all, is to carry the food between house-
holds and whether or not all the food that leaves III gets
to IV is open to argument.

Thus to an extent imbalance between households can be
evened out and the unevenness of the reciprocity is tolerated,
owing to the sentiments of kinship and residence, as well as
the exchange of children's services (Bloch, 1973). However,
morality is in limited supply and, as Firth and others imply.

"'"during that time, the head of this household practiced
slash and burn farming in a distant part of the campo.

52

there is a constant tension between a household's own needs
and demands on it to share. The extent to which one or the
other is satisfied depends largely upon the relative scarcity
or abundance of food (Sahlins 1972: 125-130).

Due to the inflow of cash from commercial farming into
the settlement, however, some farmers have been able to
purchase additional holdings besides the land which they have
been given or have inherited. Desiring to break out of the
cluster whose members no longer are able to reciprocate on the
same scale, such farmers build new houses on their purchased
holdings in a more substantial and comfortable style. It is
an important symbol of economic progress for large farmers to
leave their kinship clusters.

This move parallels the change in the mode of agricultural
production. Large commercial farms like capitalist firms rely
upon labor which is recruited through the payroent of cash wages.
This involves the differentiation of manager and worker func-
tions; human labor is simply another source of energy which
the manager thus acquires in somewhat the same way that he
might purchase fossil fuels. The movement out of the cluster
and its web of exchanges which, in slash and burn farming,
involves the exchange of labor between households as needed,
as well as the exchange of food, symbolizes the social as well
as economic separation of the large commercial farmer from the
household mode of production.

The new housetype itself symbolizes that process of
differentiation. In the past decade, six of these new houses

53

which are patterned on the contemporary urban style have been
built in Clear Creek, These are made from cement blocks and
contain four or five rooms. On the outside they are coated
with bright pastel shades of commercial paint in contrast to
the wooden houses of the conventional bohio which receive only
a periodic coat of whitewash. The kitchen is contained within
the. house because gas or charcoal, not firewood, supplies the
heat. for cooking. A porch in front of the house is used for
visiting and, while the sitting room is still seldom used, it
has important display functions for prestige furnishings such
as the formica-topped tables and upholstered chairs, a phono-
graph and the inevitable plastic flowers, all symbolic of this
household's ties to a new system of production and flow of
energy.

There are, however, more profound changes in the internal
structure of such households. The pattern of exchange between
this household and others resembles more redistributive pat-
terns than reciprocal ones. On a daily basis, food is not
exchanged with other households, though this has its exceptions,
but. rather is prepared and given to the workers as part of
their daily wage.

The redistributive feasts found close to the Haitian
border, for example, which involve the preparation of meals
for a hundred or more persons and the slaughtering of pigs '^
and goats, is absent from Clear Creek. The religious frame-
work in which such feasts occur, minus the spirit possession
and drums of the voodoo ritual, is present. In Clear Creek

54

like settlements close to the frontier, there are velas
(vigils) given in honor of the saints. But these ceremonies
seldom involve more than the distribution of coffee and, per-
haps, some bread or candy. Velas of this kind are, however,
almost never given by large farmers, but rather by the more
devout among the small farming population.

The large fiestas given by large farmers in the Christmas
season symbolize their redistributive roles. The preparation
of stews ( sancochos ) , the provision of music, either by a
small band playing the accordian, drum and gourd (guira) or
by a phonograph and popular records, and .the provision of
some rum are all part of this fiesta. In addition, the people
who come to such fiestas, the farmer's kinsmen, workers and
friends, also bring liquor to share. If the farmer owns a
store, the party guests usually purchase the liquor in his
store. Thus some farmers actually appear to make money on
their own apparently redistributive fiestas, a fact which no
one seems to acknowledge in the lively atmosphere generated by
the fiesta.

. A different form of redistribution began to take place in
September of 1974 when four of the largest farmers in Clear
Creek, along with the schoolteacher, a migrant temporarily back
from Brooklyn, New York, and a small farmer known for his
piety, began to collect funds for the construction of a new
church and school in the settlement. A new building had been
demanded by the priest who visited the campo on the average of
once a month and who was greatly annoyed at the deteriorating

55

structure in which he had to celebrate mass. He refused to
return until a new building was under construction.

This small group of individuals, talking informally,
agreed that the church and school should be combined which
meant consolidating the two older wooden schools then located
in the localities of Nuts and Pines. This move was naturally-
opposed by some of the residents of these localities who
refused to contribute to the new construction. Nevertheless
enough support was demonstrated and the building was begun in
November of 1974.

The structure had cost some $900 by. February of 1975 and
it was not yet completed. Some of the money was raised by a
lottery backed by the largest farmer in the settlement and
from small contributions which were collected in amounts of
$.50 to $2.00. More than half the money came from the four
farmers themselves aside from $250 raised elsewhere by the
local anthropologist. In addition, these farmers supplied
the transportation of the necessary materials and housed the
only paid worker, a professional carpenter from Black Stone.
Labor was . provided by some of the large farmers and by their
close kinsmen, and also by residents who often work for these
farmers who "donated" their labor. In addition a number of
small farmers worked "from time to time.

This type of. structured redistribution, supposedly done
for the benefit of all the children of the settlement, demon-
strates an important way in which commercial farming further

56

changes attitudes toward land and the household, since formal
education prepares students for non-agricultural occupations.
The formal educational system teaches no agronomic skills nor
is. any part of the curriculum directly applicable to the
experience of rural students. The condition of one's hands
is an important sjmibol of one's social and economic standing
in the Dominican Republic and the school presents a model
of behavior in which a person handles chalk and pencils rather
than hoes and machetes .

Education becomes a means whereby children are drawn off
the land, . leaving a holding more intact than if the sons needed
room. for their own households. A commercial farmer's anger at
his. son* 3 elopement must be seen not so much as due to the
loss of the son's labor, but as due to the necessary division
of his holding. For the large farmer, the effects are even
more debilitating for he does not rely so heavily upon his
sons for labor as smaller growers, yet the son is entitled to
a share by local custom.

The educational process itself encourages migration from
the settlement. If students continue past the third grade (in
the new school there are now five grades), they must leave to
study in River or Jaravacoa. The universities are, of course,
in the capital, Santo Domingo, and Santiago. Though no one
from Clear Creek has ever attended these, some boys from River
have and interestingly enough, this occurred only after that
family moved to Santo Domingo.

Urban employment requiring formal education would reduce
the division of land for, as has been seen, the division is

57

based upon the establishment of a household on the property
which is given. Any form of urban employment, of course,
would reduce fragmentation and this is an important factor
in migration out of the settlement. The location of the
school in the middle of commercial farming areas is symbolic
of the connection between commercial farming and education.
When the older schools were functioning in Nuts and Pines,
some children from households which practiced slash and burn
farming were able to attend classes due to proximity. But
the new school is located more deeply in the heart of the
valley bottomland, farther from those households which prac-
tice the old adaptive strategy. Whereas some children from
Deep Gorge once attended classes, none attend the new school.

Another influence of the new adaptive strategy of commer-
cial farming is the decision by commercial farmers to limit
the size of their families, in order to minimize the subdivision
of their land. The practice of birth control in the settle-
ment is a new phenomenon. The first two women who had tubal
ligations, which is the form of control utilized, were the
wives of the two largest commercial farmers. Since then 12
women have had the operation but not all of these are married
to. commercial farmers; they include two wives of lottery sales-
men and one v/oman who runs a small store. No women from house-
holds which practice slash and burn farming have had tubal
ligations.

Slash and burn farmers are simply not able to accumulate
the amount of cash ($So) required for the operation at a clinic

58

in Bonao. It is interesting to note that five of the women
who have had the operation are all married into the same group
of .male siblings which includes the two largest farmers who
together control more than six hectares of bottomland. This
relationship indicates that the decision to have the operation
is probably influenced by information flow among personal net-
works and perhaps by the force of peer-pressure and trend-
setting among the more influential families.

It is important to point out that the operation is under-
gone principally with an expressed concern for the health of
the woman rather than for the size of the family. The idea of
not having as many children as possible is still regarded by
the. people in the settlement with some askance and the posi-
tion that having more children would be detrimental to the
woman's health carries more weight. The women who have had
the operation state that as a secondary reason it is important
to have fewer children so they can be provided for and educated
better. But this is strictly a secondary factor and, indeed,
since the average number of live births for these women is S.O,
only a. little under the 9.^ average for all childbearing women,
this would seem to be the case.

The important factor, however, is that commercial farmers
and those engaged in the cash economy more than in subsistence
activities recognize that a large household can be an economic
liability. This change is not an easy one to make and the idea
of birth control is controversial in the settlement, not for

59

religious reasons but for reasons of health, for some claim
that the operation is dangerous to a woman's health. The
priests do ^ot disapprove and, even if they did, it would
not necessarily carry much weight for they disapprove of
many local practices.

Summary

This chapter has considered the social and economic
organization in Clear Creek in terms of two crucial factors,
the system of land tenure and the organization of the house-
hold. These factors are demonstrated to be intimately related,
since the household has been the traditional mode of production
and its formation marks a critical point in the devolution of
land from one generation to another. The formation of house-
hold clusters in the llanos represents a change from the more
dispersed settlement pattern which earlier characterized Clear
Creek. These clusters have resulted from the growing concentra-
tion of the population on the most valuable and productive land,
At the. same time, the enclosure of land on nearby hills and
its conversion into pasture has pushed the major areas for
swidden farming further away from the settlement and, thus,
made the use of slash and burn techniques an increasingly
less attractive strategy.

The population is undergoing further transformation as the
settlement becomes divided between large and small holders of
land. Large farmers have been shown to move out of the cluster
form of settlement in which exchange reciprocities figure so

60

prominently. Large growers also limit the pressure on their
ovm holdings by attempting to educate their children to move
away from the land and by limiting the size of their family.
Their productive capacity, therefore, is no longer contingent
upon. the size of their household, but rather on their ability
to accumulate resources for carrying out commercial production.
It is still necessary to examine in more detail the actual
working of the two adaptive strategies in the settlement:
slash and burn farming and irrigated crop production. Chapters
three and four look at these as technological systems and dis-
cxiss how the transition came to be made from one to another,
a transition whose effects we have already seen in the pattern
of land use and of the household.

CHAPTER THREE
SLASH AND BURN AGRICULTURE

The socio-economic changes discussed in the previous
chapter have resulted primarily from a shift in the adaptive
strategy of the Clear Creek settlement from a reliance by the
vast majority of residents upon slash and burn farming to a
growing economic dependence of the settlement upon commercial
crop production. This chapter on slash and burn farming and
the following one on commercial agriculture further juxtapose
these two strategies, elaborating on many of their contrasting
elements which have already been touched upon in terms of land
use, energy use, and the mode of production (Figure 1). Greater
detail in defining the social and technological bases of these
strategies is necessary not only for its ethnographic value
but also as a way of emphasizing the radical differences
between them, as well as some profound parallels. Once these
contrasts, have been drawn, the constraints which operate to give
socio-economic change in Clear Creek its most important direc-
tion, namely the gradual placing of the settlement's resources
into. the hands of a few large growers and outsider^ can be better
assessed.

. Three key aspects related to slash and burn agriculture are
discussed in this chapter. ^ The first is the distinctiveness

13

-^Slash and burn farming can be defined as a variant of

swidden agriculture, a system in which clearings are used for
short cropping periods which alternate with lengthy fallow

61

62

of households which practice slash and burn farming in Clear
Creek; the second is the productive process itself, the third
is an evaluation of the use and flow of energy. Before these
are explored, however, a word should be said about the history
of slash and burn agriculture in the Dominican Republic and in
Clear Creek.

Swidden farming in the Dominican Republic developed its
present form from the combination of indigenous techniques and
crops with the Old World crops and domestic stock. At the time
of the arrival of Columbus, the Indian population of Hispanola
had developed a highly sophisticated system of farming which
utilized permanent fields, mounding, and even irrigation in

periods. The agricultural system in Clear Creek is clearly a
case of swidden agriculture if one uses the ranking system
developed by Goosten, which derived an "R" index for determina-
tion of the degree of intensity of land use (Ruthenberg 1971:
3, 16). The symbol R stands for the number of years of cul-
tivation multiplied % 100 and divided by the length of the
cycle of land utilization (Ruthenberg 1971: 3, l6) . Since
the fallow period in Clear Creek's hills has traditionally
been ten years with a two year cropping time, then:

R = 2 X 100 ^ ^„

- ■ ■ 12

This is clearly a case of swidden agriculture as anything
smaller than an R of 30 falls into this category.

. . As far as I know this is the first time that this sys-
tem has been described in one of the contemporary Caribbean
nations, though Blaut (1959) has discussed aspects of it in /
Jamaica. Swidden agriculture is mentioned far back in the y
Dominican historical record (Hoetink 1971: 19-20, Loven
1935, Rodriquez Demorizi, IS9I: X, 197, Saint-Mery 1796: 49,
Schoenrich 1913: 149) • In addition, numerous case studies
have been done elsewhere, including those in Africa (Allan
1965, McNetting I968, Richards, 1951), Asia (Conklin 1957,
Freeman, 1955, Ne\rton i960, Rappaport 1971), and the Americas
(Caniero I96I, Carter I969, Harris 1971, Reina I967) .

63

combination with swidden techniques utilized on the hillsides
where principally maize was grown (Loven 1935). This bears a
striking resemblance to the balance between intensive and
extensive techniques used in Clear Creek today.

The population of the Spanish colony took over and added
to the Indian food complex, calling cultigens which were propo-
gated by stems or cuttings viveres, because they formed the
bulk of the diet and thereby sustained life. But they aban-
doned the intensive techniques for with the native population
exterminated, pressure on the land was less than before Colum-
bus. Lacking the development of a plantation system, the
colony had a great expanse of empty land to be filled. The
household was the social unit which expanded into the new
territory and the Indian swidden techniques gave a maximum
result for a minimum of effort (see Sahlins 1972: 4I-I48) .

Swidden farming was combined with the hunting of hogs and
some cattle which ran wild in the forest. The cycle of planting
and fallowing in the forest clearing was repeated usually
three times and then, with the soil depleted, the land was
converted into pasture. The large hatos, or cattle ranches
which existed in the 19th' century, were simply large areas
which had been abandoned by swidden farmers. The original
forest did not grov; back because the land was periodically
burnt over to allow new grass to come up. Cattle, then as now,
were the most highly valued form of livestock. During the iSth
century swidden and ranching were practiced in the Valley of
Constanza itself, though the region was subsequently abandoned

64

and repopulated only in the latter part of the last century

(Saint-Mer3LJ796: 236, Hazard IS73: 314). One can speculate

that the reason for this discontinuity was the exhaustion of
the landscape, but the literature makes no mention of the
matter.

It was the mixing of swidden agriculture with livestock
which literally brought people to Clear Creek in the early part
of this century. Farmers from Jaravacoa, hunting wild pigs,
stumbled upon the valley and, as the land seemed good, one or
two returned later in the year and made clearings, planting
beans and viveres. Those who returned did so in groups of
kinsmen, always a father with his unmarried sons. Working
together, they fenced in the fields and built small, temporary
shelters (ranches) where they stayed a few days at a time.
These male contingents from Jaravacoa, alternating their resi-
dence between Clear Creek and the natal settlement, were
joined by the rest of their household in Clear Creek duxing
the bean harvest when extra help was needed.

. Since the harvests were good, water abundant, and land
plentiful (with or without acciones) , the ranchos were made
more substantial. The first household settled permanently
in the valley in 1913 on a site close to where the new church-
school, now stands. Eventually two brothers of the head of
this household arrived with their wives and children, building
houses at opposite ends of the valley while other settlers,
non-relatives, also began to take up residence in Clear Creek.

65

Two impressions are always mentioned by older settlers in
connection with those early days: the abundant harvests and
the isolation of the households from each other. The situation
was not unlike that of Deep Gorge today where many houses are
located at least one hour's journey from the nearest neighbors.

The houses of these early settlers were built with upright
poles lashed together with vines since nails were too expen-
sive. Beds were made with hide stretched across frames, and
mattresses were stuffed with bean husks; the roofs were thatched
with stiff grasses. This bohfo, consisting of the house, the
kitchen, the garden, and several sheds, was enclosed by a stout
palisade, constructed in the same manner as the walls of
buildings. This palisade cut off the household as a clearly
defined group while serving as a practical defense against
roaming wild livestock.

This house type reflected the basic assumption about
land use which has been discussed above: that crops and
buildings should be fenced while animals roamed free. But,
as mentioned previously, increasing pressure on the land
affected some of these basic assumptions about land use.
Restrictions were placed upon access to virgin forest — la
zona ended the free foraging of livestock and encouraged the
enclosure of hillside land. The repeated burning of enclosed
pasture prevents regeneration of forest and the eventual reuse
of the hills for agricultural purposes.

Thus in the areas of Clear Creek where swidden agricul-
ture can be practiced, there appears to be a paring down of

66

the fallov; period. Whereas earlier the elapsed time for
transition of forest to unimproved pasture was about 36 years,
the time for three cropping periods (two years each) with three
fallow periods (ten years each), farmers now appear to be
limiting the fallow period to as little as six or seven years.

In spite of these factors, up until this past decade
virtually all the households in Clear Creek depended upon
swidden agriculture for the main part of their calories and
a little cash, the cash coming from the sale of beans which is
the crop sown first in new clearings. Beans command a high
price and, due to volume, weight, and storage qualities, they
are relatively easy to market. Crops such as sweet potato and
the other viveres, however, are characterized by bulkiness,
perishability, and high water content which, when coupled with
their low price, make their transport to urban markets from
Clear Creek unprofitable.

In the last decade, however, the number of households
engaged in swidden agriculture has dropped significantly.
With a new road into the settlement, it suddenly became
profitable for outside entrepreneurs, with capital to invest,
good credit and knowledge of certain technology allowing for
greater production, to come into Clear Creek and initiate
commercial farming. The cash-producing power of this adap-
tive strategy coupled with the ideology of its more "modern"
way of life attracted a number of swidden farmers away from
their old production techniques, at a time when laws against
cutting virgin forest were being more strictly enforced and

67

the frontier of new forest was becoming inconveniently distant
from the settlement .

In 1974, only 35% of the households in Clear Creek made
one or more clearings on the hills of the seccic5n or adjacent
territories. Though the household is no longer so clearly
bounded as a distinct socio-economic unit as when the palisades
were used, the households of swidden farmers still have cer-
tain characteristics which set them off from the average Clear
Creek household. These features are household size, land- /
holding pattern, and location.

Average household size among those which practice swidden
farming is larger (7*4 persons/household) than the settlement
average (5«5 persons/household) (Table ). This gives credence
to the statement that relatively large households are encour-
aged by swidden farmers since the limiting factor in produc-
tion has traditionally been labor, not land or capital. Thus,
offspring who, under other circumstances, might leave to form
a household of their own or migrate out of the settlement,
are encouraged to remain longer by the fact that their labor
is vitally important to their household of orientation.

. . The second difference noted in the chart is that swidden
households have far less than the average amount of bottomland
(llanos) . It is interesting to note that the amount of land
annually cleared in the hills (whether in secondary or primary
forest) usually compensates for this imbalance. Comparing
per capita holdings in llanos, households practicing swidden
agriculture have .06 hectare opposed to the settlement average

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69

of .15, but in the hills (loma) they have .12 hectares as

opposed to the average of .05 (Table 6).

This difference in holdings of llanos, however, is partly

a function of the location of households practicing slash and

burn farming for these are found quite naturally on the mar-

(
gins of the settlement, in the higher reaches of Goat, Pines,

and Nuts where the valleys are narrow and meager. Thus, these
houses are closer to the remaining forest since the distance
to one's fields is an important consideration in the practice
of swidden; travel is a major energy cost in the production
process. However, they are further from. the main road through
the settlement which is its main link commercially to the out-
side, a fact which increases marketing costs for their limited
cash crops.

Although swidden agriculture in Clear Creek provided the
original rationale for the settlement, it has become a less
frequent adaptive strategy in recent years. Households which
continue to practice it tend to have more members, occupy less
of the . commercially valuable land, and occupy a distinct envi-
ronmental niche. But the manner in which swidden agriculture
actually forms an adaptive strategy can best be seen from
examining the core of that strategy, namely the process of
production.

.. The production process will be presented as a series of
distinct stages which, in this case, are the categories used
by farmers in Clear Creek which, from interviews elsewhere in
the country, apparently hold true for any area of the country

70

where the strategy is practiced.

Site Selection

. A number of factors enter into the decision as to where
to place a new conuco, a planted clearing, not the last of
which is the government's contention that swidden is illegal. ^
Therefore, the location should be hidden from view of the occa-
sional outside forestry agent who might report and fine the
farmer or, more commonly, demand a bribe. Though two residents
of Clear Creek are forestry agents, they do not report swidden
activities, entering into a conspiracy of silence toward the
outside.

A second factor is that the field should be close enough
to the bohio that the heavy, cumbersome food crops can be
brought back without undue difficulty. Beyond a distance of
about 1.5 hours, it is necessary to erect substantial shel-
ters where the household lives during peak labor periods.
At smaller distances, the workers can return daily to their
permanent home .

. . A third factor is the necessity of making sure no prior
claims exist on the land. If it is in secondary growth
(botado), a farmer must make sure that the original farmer

15

The first law against swidden agriculture was passed

in IS76 but left without enforcement. Trujillo forbade the

cutting of pine or other valuable woods without a permit as

well as the felling of trees v/ithin the vicinity of running

streams. The latest law, passed in the 1960's forbids the

cutting of any tree within the entire country without written

permission. The arbitrary enforcement of this law gives rise

to great abuse; residents interpret it as meaningthe government

neither allows nor wants them to work (trabajarj, since swidden

has traditionally been the measure of a man's ability to do

labor.

71

does not want to reuse it. A farmer may sell his right
( la derecha) , that is, the improvements he made by first
clearing the land, but more often he simply makes it known
he has no further designs on the property. Conflict over
claims may lead to the intervention of local authorities which
is usually avoided by residents.

A fourth factor which swidden farmers consider is placing
conucos, planted clearings, in the same general area but each
occupying a particular slope or niche. This allows the selec-
tion of a. variety of microenvironraental conditions and the
staggering of the production cycle so that a farmer, coming
home from working one field, can stop off in an older clearing
to dig up some sweet potatoes and at still an older one to
get some plantains .

In this same line, a farmer must consider the environ-
mental factors: the slope, soils, and vegetation of a hillside
which give him a series of clues about a location's potential
productivity. The hillsides in and around Clear Creek slope
precipitously so farmers try to find gentler gradients which
would create the drafts necessary for a good burn but not let
a newly planted crop wash away in a heavy rain. Loss of top-

An example of this occurred during my stay in Clear
Creek. A man from Clear Creek had gone to make a conuco near
the. home of his wife's parents in Deep Gorge. An uncle of the
wife, however, had had his eye on a piece of land that the
younger man began to clear. The men argued over the land, but
the younger refused to look for a plot elsewhere. Bypassing the
alcalde who wanted to settle the dispute by discussion, the
uncle went to River where he reported his rival to the police.
A few days later, they came and, joined by the alcalde, they
found, beat, and arrested the niece's husband. He was taken to
Constanza, fined $25, and thereafter he left the settlement

72

soil during heavy rainstorms is also minimized on gentler

slopes.

The. classification of soils and vegetation show that

even if these farmers are not enraptured with their work,
they have built up a working body of knowledge about their

environment. Soils, for example, are examined by sight and
touch and they yield six basic categories: color, cohesion,
moisture content, structure, exposure, and slope (Figure S) .
Some categories have a number of divisions. Color, for example,
has six. major shades. Some categories such as exposure only
have two main divisions, right (derecha) .where the sun's rays
hit first during the day (west slopes) and left (izguierda)
where they hit later in the day (east slopes). In addition
to the main division in slope between hill (loma) and bottomland
(llanos) there are four minor subdivisions between types of
slopes in the hills: ridge ( cumbre ) , steep slope ( hayda
parada) , regular slope (hayda) , and hole (hoya) .

These soil qualities are, of course, dynamically inter-
related, each factor influencing the other to create a total
gestalt . In the Dominican folk taxonomy, combinations of
soil characteristics are reduced to two main polarities:
good and bad, cold and hot (Figure 8). Good and bad refer
to soil productivity, the actual yield a farmer may expect.
Temperature refers to drainage and exposure to sunlight; cold
refers to a poorly drained, shaded plot and hot refers to well

entirely, going v.dth his wife to live on the edge of Bonao,
and began to look for day labor.

73

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74

drained, exposed locations. When swidden farmers describe
the ideal soil for a conuco. they talk about the valley-
bottomland: deep, black soil vd.th a medium loose structure
and some stones (to retain the heat), well exposed and well
drained, but, in addition, having some cold spots for certain
crops. Any clearing in the hills, then, represents a compro-
mise with this ideal and reinforces the need to have a number
of clearings so that the deficiencies in one conuco can be
matched. by the benefits of another.

Besides soil conditions, the swidden farmer examines
vegetation; in this, he strongly prefers = virgin stands. He
believes that even though the layer of humus associated with
virgin forest is thin, it will nourish his crops and the
bxirning of the vegetation will produce a good, thick ash. He
looks for certain trees, such as the manacla (Euterpe globosa).
and grasses, such as segua (Maranta arundinacea) which signify
good land, especially for growing beans.

Despite this strong preference, only about one-fifth of
the. clearings made in 1974 were in virgin forest because land
which is botado, that is, in secondary growth, is often closer
at. hand, and quicker to clear and prepare. On such land, the
farmer looks for trees such as Colorado (Cyrilla racemiflora)
and chicharron (Guazuma ulmifolia) v;hich signify productive
soils. . He knows that palo prieto (Erythrina glauca) and
Palo santo (Dendropanax arboreus) are produced on thin and
poor soil. There is a time element involved here, however,
for palo prieto and palo santo are those trees which come

75

earlier in the regrowth cycle, after four or five years,
whereas a good growth of Colorado indicates that the land
has rested about ten years and is ready for recropping. Of
course, an added advantage is that cutting regrowth is not

considered illegal, a distinction made quite clear in the

17
last election. Once the site is selected, the actual job

of clearing begins.

Clearing (talar)

This stage involves cutting down the underbrush with a
long knife known as the colin, a name derived from the Collins
firm of Hartford, Connecticut, who first brought this type of
machete to the Dominican Republic. If he is working in virgin
forest, the farmer will first clear a part around his future
conuco, letting others who may come along later know that this
spot is already claimed.

In clearing the land and in the next two stages, the
farmer does not work alone since this is defined as difficult

17

. ^ The local Reformista (governmental party) candidate

for smdico in Constanza brought the forestry chief to a poli-
tical rally in Clear Creek during which the latter, in reply
to demands from the farmers, said they were still forbidden
to cut virgin forest, but secondary grov/th could be cleared.
He was met with a great deal of heckling. The forestry subchief ,
a man noted for his corruption, said during the meeting that
since the law had been passed, no one had ever filed for permis-
sion to cut a tree anywhere in the seccion. This implied that
officially no swidden agriculture was occurring here or else-
where in his district.

Like any economic activity, the v;hole question of cutting
forest is a highly political one in the Dominican Republic. In
another settlement near Haiti, two brothers had sought permis-
sion unofficially for many years to cut and burn about 12 hec-
tares of virgin forest. Shortly before the last election, a
local candidate told them that for their support he would see
that they got off without a jail sentence if he got their vote.

76

and frequently dangerous work. A farmer relies for help upon
older males in his ovm household, but when the conuco is large,
a cooperative work party (.junta) may be organized by the farmer.

The persons called to the junta are the farmer's siblings
and neighbors. When households were more scattered than to-
day, the junta had important social functions in bringing
together persons who rarely saw one another. Members partici-
pate with the understanding that their labor will be recipro-
cated by the others when it is needed.

With the growing compactness of the settlement as well as
the introduction of commercial farming, the junta is used much
less now in Clear Creek. It continues to be used in household
clusters on the margins of the settlement where swidden farmers
principally live. Because siblings are now neighbors, the
labor exchange has simply become one more aspect of the reci-
procities within the cluster, quite unlike the situation among
commercial farmers where labor exchange has ceased. Juntas
are, however, created informally in new clearings where a num-
ber of conucos may be made in close proximity to one another.

Felling (tumbar)

Felling the largest trees with an ax and smaller ones
with a colin is the next stage. This is a dangerous task be-

Hiring laborers, including Haitians, a large part of the land
was prepared. Their candidate was elected and a few days later
the huge field was burnt. While work in the forest could be
hidden, the smoke could not. Arrested and taken to court, the
brothers were each fined $9.00 and released. They returned to
plant as much of the land as possible in beans. The entire crop
was washed away in a heavy rain a week later.

77

cause an inexperienced or careless v;orker can cause a tree to
fall in the wrong direction. Stories of persons with limbs
or lives lost in such mishaps are common, but undoubtedly
more common than the actual occurrence.

Chopping Up ( picar)

This stage involves the breaking up of the larger trunks
and branches to permit a more rapid drying and an even burn.

Waiting (aguantar)

After this period of intense work, there begins a period
of waiting for a succession of dry weeks which will leave the
felled wood ready for burning. This necessitates usually six
or more weeks so that fields, prepared in January or February,
are burned in March or April if the weather permits. Conucos,
however, are made tv;ice a year, with a smaller field planted
in August or September. This second field mast be readied
in June or July, after the beans are harvested from the first
field.

Burning ( queinar)

Burning both cleai's the field and fertilizes the soil,
though much depends upon how v;ell the brush and timber burn.
If the wood burns evenly, a rich layer of ash will be depo-
sited over the field and a second burning v/ill not be re-
quired. The effect of burning upon tropical soils is a
complex one but a number of studies agree that it produces
a sligiit increase in pH, in nitrogen, and in carbon v:ith
increases also in magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and

75

calcium (Nye I964, Popenoe 1959, Watters i960, Zinke 1970). '
These immediate reactions are not, however, consistent through
the profile and there appears to be a decrease in the amount
of these elements after the harvest but before secondary grov/th
begins building the soil back through the deposition of leaves
and the decay of roots.

The problem in Clear Creek, as elsewhere in areas where
slash and burn is practiced, is that the period of regrowth
is not sufficient to allow the full rejuvenation of the soil.
This factor, coupled with the erosion of the soil due to
heavy rains, makes a second and third conuco on the same site
less and less fruitful. When the land is given over to pas-
ture, then, it is still periodically cut back and burned to
allow young grasses to grow. Thus even small trees are unable
to reestablish themselves and reclaim the land for forest.
Reclearin,g; (avistar)

If the burn has been uneven due to wind, dampness, or
the slope of the land, the reclearing takes considerable
time. The farmer must drag the unburned residue into large
piles and fire it, posing the risk that meanwhile a rain
will wash away the ash from the first burning before he has
a chance to plant in it.

Plant inf: and Harvest in?^ ( sembrar v cosechar)

Planting, like the selection of a site, requires the
farmer to consider a large number of factors. The first
concern is to ensure a successful bean crop since this

79

forms the major part of the farmer's cash income. The right
amounts and combinations of cultigens, rice, and corn must be
selected to give large and continual yields. As with site
selection, the emphasis is upon diversity and variety. Each
of these concerns is examined in more detail below.

Cultigens, that is, the viveres. are not planted from
seed, and the cuttings necessary for propagation are sought
from a wide network of kinsmen and neighbors. Manioc stems
and sweet .potato vines, like banana and plantain cuttings, are
readily obtained from others, but farmers may also use cuttings
from older fields or his own house garden. A swidden farmer
villi often travel some distance to get cuttings if he hears
that someone has a particularly good variety of one of the
viveres. such as sweet potato or yam. The farmers freely
share cuttings of the viveres with one another, and in this
way constant experimentation occurs and crops are tried out -^
in new microenvironraents .

Among swidden farmers, crops that are easily transported
and stored, beans, dryland rice, and maize, are not so easily
shared. Maize and rice are usually stored from one harvest
to the next planting, but if a farmer runs short, he may
borrow from another grower only if he agrees to return the
seed at the end of the season at the rate of 10 to 1 per
measure, usually the cajon (10 to 12 pounds). Only a small
portion of the bean harvest is kept, however, at the end of
the season and this is usually for consumption. The reason
is that the price of beans at harvest (May-June, October-

go

November) is usually higher than it is at the time of planting,

owing to the timing of harvests in the Constanza region which

is different from that elsewhere in the nation. While beans

have always been marketed out of the settlement, a higher

proportion seems to have been retained in the earlier decades.

The first concern for the swidden farmer is to ensure a

successful bean crop, this being the major part of his annual

income. Beans are the first crop planted; when the plants show

two leaves, viveres and the other crops are interspersed among

them. . The multicropping of viveres is viewed with janudiced

eye by the person unacquainted with tropical farming systems

for he sees in the plot only jungle and chaos. In addition,

there is great individual variation in plant combinations.

Yet a major element in the Dominican swidden is that each

farmer approaches his work with his own genius or foolishness.

This individuality is indicative of the latitude with which

swidden farmers interpret and manipulate their traditions.

The advantages of such latitude are stressed by Johnson who

quotes Campbell in making an analogy to biological evolution:

Heterozygosity, in particular the presence
of recessives, represents a latent poten-
tiality for rapid responses to a shift in
environmental selection. In a similar way,
dissident opinion, unexpressed with majority
opinion is successful, represents a latent
potentiality for change if group failure is
encountered (1972: 150).

While the seeming randomness of the conuco plantings opens

the possibility to new combinations being discovered, the

selection of crops takes place within the framework of a

81

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few basic principles. A list of crops commonly planted on
conucos is presented in Figure 9»

Farmers express their understanding of the different
soil requirements of various crops in terms of the familiar
folk dichotomy of hot and cold. They realize that crops must
be planted in soil conditions which favor their development.
For example, a plot which stretches on both sides of a narrow
valley may have bananas planted on the warmer, northwest face
and plantains with yaut la on the colder southeast side. Like-
wise yuca and sweet potatoes are planted in the upper reaches
of a plot where the soil is better drained while yautia is
planted where it responds to greater moisture and higher acidity
in the lower parts. Thus the farmers describe the crops as
favoring a certain type (hot /cold) soil. For example, yuca
is said to like "hot" soil while plantains and yautia are
said to like "cold" soil.

Some of the crops have inherent qualities of hot and
cold apart from the soils they favor. While the majority of
crops are believed to be neutral in their effect on one
another, certain combinations are harmful. Rice, for example,
is believed to be so hot that it will hurt rabano while chick
peas because of their coolness must be kept on the borders of
the conuco. Other mixtures are safe but spacing is crucial.
Care. is taken so the leaves and vines of sweet potatoes do
not coyer other crops planted with them.

In addition planting combinations aim at developing as
total a leaf cover as possible. Crops are chosen which

83

develop at different heights, a technique which makes the
swidden resemble the structure of the forest it has replaced
(Geertz I966). Thus, in a mature swidden, squash and sweet
potatoes grow on the ground level under medium height yuca
or r^bano which, in turn, may be slightly shaded by leaves
of the banana and plantain.

Besides diversity in size and height, a conuco should
have crops maturing at different times to produce a continual
source of food to the farmer and his dependents (Figure 9) •
After beans and maize are harvested, squash is the next crop
produced. Sweet potato follows and forms a major part of
the local diet. At approximately the same time, dryland rice
and rabano are harvested. After a year, yuca, both sweet and
bitter varieties, should be harvested along with yautia,
though, if the season is a poor one, they can be harvested
early. The great advantage of root and tuber crops is, of
course, that they can be left in the ground until they are
needed, although pests are still a major problem. Bananas
and plantains will produce for a number of years, depending
upon how well they compete with weeds which invade the field
after other crops have been harvested.

Combined with the farmer's use of a number of conucos
during the year, the system obviously aims at diversity.
The vicissitudes of weather and the onslaught of rats,
crows, and disease would make any monoculture, an unstable
vegetative system, extremely susceptible to upset. This can
be clearly seen in an examination of just one crop, beans, of

84'

which farmers keep very clear mental records because it is
their main source of cash.

Over a six year period, two households in Pines cleared
a total of 29 conucos whose first crop was always beans.
The average yield was four and a half cajones for every
cajon seeded, giving an average harvest of some 147 kg. per
hectare. This figure, however, is the result of wide varia-
tion in yields; seven harvests represented losses to the
farmer, that is, they got back less than they planted (or
nothing at all) while five returned more than 3^0 kg. per
hectare. The farmers explained this variation on the basis
of weather conditions and poor soil. Conucos likewise exhi-
bited great variation in size from 3*6 to .2 hectare with a
mean of 1.1 and a mode of ,S hectare. Bean loss, however,
did not represent the whole spectrum of crops planted and
the conucos were able to provide for the household's subsis-
tence in spite of the relative instability of one crop, albeit
the most important in terms of commercial transactions.

Planting and harvesting beans is a labor intensive
operation and, because this work is not defined as either
difficult or dangerous, women in the farmer's household work
in the fields. When distance does not necessitate the re-
moval of the entire household from the house and yard, older
males leave for the conuco in the morning while the females
attend to the kitchen, the house, and the small domestic
animals. The main meal is prepared and brought up to the
men in the early afternoon. From that time until the later

55

afternoon, the entire household works in the conuco except
for smaller children who are either attended by older female
offspring or play in the fields, mimicking the adult activi-
ties. In the evening, the whole group returns; the men carry
sacks of viveres from older clearings for the next few meals
while looking for firewood along the path.

As can be seen from the above description, the women
of the household contribute to the direct work of production
and, through their preparation of the produce, to the creation
of the closed loop energy cycle of the household. That cycle
is open to the outside only through the sale of beans and,
occasionally, some wood or charcoal. Income from these acti-
vities allows for the purchase of tools, food staples such as
cooking oil, salt, tobacco, and, ironically, beans as well as
clothing. Labor is contributed by the household, with labor
exchange providing a mechanism for the recruiting of additional
male help.

In terms of its use and sources of energy, then, swidden
agriculture in Clear Creek represents a relatively simple
system (Figure 10) .

The 'flow of energy in this adaptive strategy is relatively
closed. by being a self-contained system, relying upon the out-
side for a crucial but small portion of its energy needs. The
tools of the swidden farmer, usually bought with bean money,
are few and simple, a colm, an ax, a machete, though this last
has. not entirely replaced the coa, a wooden digging stick
still employed to plant rice and corn. An exceptionally high

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TABLE 7
Energy budget for slash and burn agriculture.

Work hours per hectare (two year period)

Activity Hours Required

Find and claim field 57

Clear underbrush 126

Cut trees 99

Break up brush and trees ,. 120

Burn 15

Clear and burn over 69

Plant beans 74

Plant other crops l64

Harvest beans 13^

Weed 2^1

Build "rancho" in the field 49

Harvest other crops 5^1

Travel to and from field 1492

Total 3270

Human energy inputs per hectare (two year period)

Input Amount • Kilocalories

Labor 3,270 hrs. 611,4^9

Tools 6 kg. 27,612

Total 639,101

Energy returns per hectare (two year period)

Kilocalories

609,500
3,661,680
1,806,120
2,327,160
1,696,000
2,058,100
1,296,450

436,800
17,605;730
Minus 30^ loss due to disease and pests 6,162,005

11,443,725

RATIO OF ENERGY INPUT TO OUTPUT 1: I8 kilocalories

Output

Amount (kg)

Beans

413

Manioc

2,774

Sweet potatoes

1,557

Yautia

1,763

Rabano

1,696

Bananas

2,906

Plantains

1,005

Rice

120

39

yield of beans (Table 7) would have brought a per hectare
income of roughly $317 in 1973, based on prices which were the
highest ever received in the settlement for this particular
crop. The average return to a swidden farmer per year, however,
is just over $120 for his bean crop.

The efficiency of swidden farming as an adaptive strategy
in Clear Creek can be computed by figuring the costs and
returns of the system in caloric terms (Table 7). The figures
expressed in the caloric tables are a composite of interviews
with ten swidden farmers and my observations and measurements
on the conucos of two of these with whom I worked over a yearly
cycle. The figures assume that the conuco is located 1.5 hours
from the household, that the plot is made in virgin forest, and
that it produces for a two year period. The conversion tables
for the tools, as well as for the agrochemicals in the following
chapter, are derived principally from Pimentel (1974). The
energy expenditure was figured at 220 per hour of hard labor
and iSO per hour of lighter work. The results, however, should
be approached with some caution and used primarily as a means
of contrast with commercial farming.

The rate of return in this system to h\iman inputs is
relatively high, l:lS, that is, for every one calorie of
energy expended in the productive process, iB are returned
to the worker. Almost all of this return comes from the
growing of a diverse and varied complex of viveres. The
figure is particularly high when it is compared with the 1:4
ratio for commercial agriculture discussed in the following

90

chapter.

It must be born in mind, however, that these ratios are
based only upon human inputs, made either directly through
household labor or by an industrial system. Essential inputs
supplied by rainfall and solar radiation are excluded and
their addition would significantly alter the ratio of return.
For example, assuming a cover of green plants, some 1,700,000,000
kcal. of solar energy per day per hectare are converted into
organic matter (Odum 1971: 50) . The ten year regeneration
period necessary in swidden farming to make a second clearing,
thus, requires some 6,205,000,000 kcal. per hectare. In sharp
contrast, a second three month crop grown after the first annual
harvest in commercial farming requires only the solar energy
needed to grow the crop itself, some 539,140 kcal. Thus the
ecological costs of swidden farming, apart from the human
inputs, are much higher than those of commercial farming.

The swidden system is costly in another sense, namely
in the deterioration of the local environment. The loss of
virgin forest is creating not only socio-economic problems
for swidden farmers but is also creating the danger of
permanent damage. In January, 1974, I visited some of the
remaining woods in a hidden gorge v;hich was located in a
nearly inaccessible part of Clear Creek. I found that approxi-
mately seven hectares had been leveled by men from only five
of the 43 households engaged in swidden agriculture that year..
Clearings of such an extent have an effect upon the runoff and
silting in the dam at Tavera in whose watershed Clear Creek is

91

located (Antonini. _et_al. 1975, Gonzales 1972). More impor-
tant for the settlement are the effects upon the local environ-
ment. Commercial farmers lay much of the blame for the
disastrous floods of August and September 1974 on the fact
that the hills surrounding the valley no longer restrain
heavy runoff due to the loss of forest cover.

The efficiency of slash and burn farming, therefore, must
be judged on the basis of its short and long term effects.

Summary

Slash and burn farming in Clear Creek is a distinct
adaptive strategy whose mode of production, the household,
has particular characteristics, whose process of production
is relatively efficient in the short run, and whose flow of
energy is simple and relatively closed. Its extensive use of
the landscape, however, is being deterred by the enforcement
of national laws and the enclosure of land for cattle produc-
tion. However, in Clear Creek, the recent development of
commercial farming as a viable alternative strategy has been
the most important factor influencing farmers to change produc-
tion, methods . This has resulted in a decrease in the number
and percentage of households engaged in swidden farming over
the past decade.

The rationale for swidden farming in Clear Creek stresses
the importance of diversity and individuality in the choice of
sites and crops. This factor gives the system its resiliency
in regions like the hills of Clear Creek whose resources do

92

not lend themselves to other kinds of agriculture. Slash and
burn farming,' at any rate, provides an historical and techno-
logical framework against which the characteristics of commer-
cial farming may be more clearly evaluated.

CHAPTER FOUR
COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE

The present chapter develops a discussion of commercial
agriculture in Clear Creek in order to contrast its mode of
production, its productive process and its energy flow with
that of swidden agriculture. The findings shown in this
chapter indicate that all three of these aspects respond
to the necessity of acquiring outside energy inputs, espe-
cially fossil fuels and products of industrial origin pro-
duced for agriculture, e.g., agrochemicals, steel plows, and
trucks for transporting farm produce to urban centers.
Dependence upon such inputs serves to create an imbalance
between large growers who are able to reinforce their economic
position by establishing favorable connections with outsiders
controlling credit and marketing channels and small growers
who are not .

Acquiring necessary inputs with cash has affected the
mode of production in the settlement v/here now wage labor has
come to partially or fully supplant household labor in the
production of commercial crops. Three distinctive sets of
labor relations have been developed which correspond to the
size of the producer's holdings. Large fanners hire all the

iS

It should be remembered that large growers are referred

to as those with over two hectares of llanos. V/hile intermediate
is a term used in describing one of the modes of production, a
small farmer generally means anyone v;ith less than two hectares
of llanos .

93

94

labor necessary for the productive process. Those with inter-
mediate sized holdings utilize substantial labor from their
ovm household, although a regularly hired man, described as
being "of the house," is usually retained. The smallest farmers
rely primarily upon household labor but occasionally utilize
hired help.

The economic advantages which accrue to large growers
can be clearly seen in the discussion of the productive process
of commercial farming. The study shows that large farmers
are able to obtain credit, agrochemicals, information, and
marketing contacts which the small farmer can neither establish
nor maintain. To compensate for this disadvantage, the small
farmer must approach the bigger growers to act as intermediaries
for him in marketing and obtaining credit. The influence of
the large growers in the settlement is greatly increased by
the dependence of small growers on them. As a result, for
example, the large growers could decide on their own, disre-
garding the desires of other residents, to have a new school
built .

From the analysis of the flow of energy in commercial
farming, the study shows the commercial system demonstrates
a less efficient use of human energy inputs than does swidden
farming. The long term comparative advantage of commercial
farming is only apparent when inputs from the environment and
the long term ecological results of each strategy are con-
sidered. The short-term competitive advantage of the commer-
cial strategy is its ability to produce cash which allows the

95

farmer access to a greater range of foods and consumer goods
than in the sv/idden strategy. This enables him to live in a
style more "modern" and "advanced" than that of his fellows.

The benefits of commercial farming are most clearly dis-
played in the manner in which large growers take advantage of
the work of sv/idden farmers. It has been stated that a result
of slash and burn farming is the conversion of forest into
pasture. Pasture is used for the grazing of cattle which
belong mainly to holders of large parcels of llanos; cash
generated from intensive agriculture buys cattle which serve '^
the large growers as a form of investment (Table S) .

The buying of cattle is concomitant with the enclosure
of land for pasture. The purchase of hillside tracts from
individuals who have prior rights, either by clearing or by
reference to earlier titulos de peso, has led to the concen-
tration of hillside in the hands of large growers which mirrors
their consolidation of land in the valley bottom. The forest
or secondary growth is of little value to the large grower
who will give the right of making conucos to swidden farmers
provided that the land is left to revert into pasture. Swidden
.farmers are willing to do this because these tracts are closer
to the settlement than forest elsewhere which may be without
any prior claims but which is at a greater distance. As a
result, commercial farming gains the advantage of allowing
the farmer to benefit from the swidden activities of others by
converting surpluses into cattle as well as apparently improving
the farmer's level of living and having the long term advantage

96

of relatively greater efficiency when compared with swidden
farming. These benefits come into clearer relief when examined
in thfe light of the mode of production, the productive process
and the energy flow of commercial agriculture.

Before proceeding to look at these three key aspects of
commercial farming as an adaptive strategy, the history of
the introduction of commercial agriculture into Clear Creek
must first be reviewed to explain the rapidity with which the
change from swidden to commercial agriculture has occurred.

Irrigated vegetable production was introduced to this
general region through the establishment of an agricultural
colony for foreigners in the Valley of Constanza (Walker 1972) .
In I956-I957, colonists with agricultural backgrounds were
brought by Trujillo principally from Spain and Japan to
settle there and at other sites in the Dominican Republic
(Anjelli 1962) . These settlements were designed to introduce
modern agricultural techniques to the Dominican population.

Previous to this time, the valley of Constanza had been
used for pasture and small holdings of viveres by settlers
who had been arriving since the late 19th century. Holdings
of these Dominican farmers were confiscated by Trujillo in
the 1950's and their titles of terrenes comuneros were voided.
Trujillo then built irrigation canals and roads and gave each
foreign colonist land, a house, and a weekly income. The
colonists, in the beginning, grew a range of vegetables for
the urban market in Santo Domingo, but later, increasingly
came to concentrate on onion and garlic production when a few

97

TABLE S
Relation between size of holding in llanos and cattle ovmership,

Size of holding
in hectares

Number of
holdings

Average number
of cattle

fo of total
niimber of
cattle

0.0 - 0.5

73

0.2

h.lfo

0.6 - 1.0

26

2.0

12.3f°

1.1 - 2.0

18

11.2

52,3fo ^

2.1 +

12

10.5

31.3/»

130*^

100.055

* Half of these cattle are ovmed by one household which has
just under 2.0 hectares.
** Includes four holdings held by outsiders.

9S

growers consolidated their holdings as others left the colony.
The land of the colony is now concentrated in the hands of
a few Spanish and Dominican growers who employ large numbers
of daylaborers or peones. These workers live in squalid con-
ditions in the town of Constanza itself; those times when
there is work, they must walk to the fields in the morning,
returning in the late afternoon. Most of these daylaborers
have migrated to town from outlying parts of the municipio.

Although this dramatic change in the Constanza Valley
was known in Clear Creek, it was not feasible to emulate the
new pattern there, since there was no good road connecting
Clear Creek with the main highway which ran between Constanza
and Bonao, a necessity for marketing commercial produce.
A road, which had been built in the 1940 's to aid in removing
lumber produced by the now defunct sawmills, had fallen into
disuse. In I967, however, as a result of Balaguer's election,
a road was constructed into Clear Creek. The principal moti-
vation for the building of the road was to give patronage to
a Constanza engineer who was a prime supporter of a local
candidate who ran on the presidential ticket. The engineer
received the contract to build the road and apparently made
a large profit from it. Thus, while the road was greatly
desired by the entire settlement, which had voted solidly
for the president, it was not built as a direct response to
their needs.

The next year, a number of outsiders, arriving separately,
came into the settlement to grow crops on enclosed bottomland

99

which was being used as pasture. These outsiders rented land
and began to cultivate it with the techniques of intensive
agriculture which were in use in Constanza: the application
of fertilizers and pesticides, the hiring of daylaborers,
irrigation by small pump, and the use of motor transport for
marketing produce.

These outsiders included an American, a Spaniard, and a
former resident of Clear Creek who lived in Jaravacoa where
he had learned intensive paddy rice farming from a colony of
Japanese nearby. The American rented two hectares of land
to grow flowers, selling his product in Santo Domingo and
abroad. ■'"^ The Spaniard grew several good crops of garlic
and the Dominican from Jaravacoa grew a paddy rice crop which
failed due to the cold temperatures but followed it with a
crop of tomatoes which was greatly successful. Except for the
rice, all these growers seem to have made substantial profits.
By 1969, these men had left the settlement, each for what
appear to be personal reasons.

At the same time these men came to Clear Creek, several

residents who had had previous experience outside the valley

.with irrigated farming returned to live in Clear Creek. One

%hen I went to live in Clear Creek, it was expected
that I, like the American who had since left, was there to
learn about farming so that I could then buy land and make
money on agriculture. This seemed to create little anxiety
and, in fact, the main concern of several individuals was that,
when I was ready to buy land, I v;ould buy it from them at a
"good" (i.e., high) price because, after all, we were friends.
It was only when I did try to grow several crops on land which
had been given to me for a season by a neighbor and had almost
total failure that they were certain this was not my purpose
in the campo.

100

of them, building on his experience working with middlemen,
had bought a small truck for transporting produce. Not sur-
prisingly, it was these men and their closest neighbors who
were the first of the local residents to begin to do commercial
farming in the settlement. The first crops which they grew
included beans which were also grown in Contanza using modern
methods. Using irrigation, improved seeds, fertilizers, and
pesticides, they grew beans and produced yields at least six
times as large as those produced by swidden farming. The
following year other crops were introduced: tomatoes, garlic,
onion, cabbage, and peppers, vegetables seldom grown by Domini-
can farmers. The system of farming spread to other persons
who held bottomland and by 1971-1972, commercial farming in the
llanos was well established in the settlement. By 1974, h5fo
of the farmers in the- llanos were practicing this form of
farming.

An important element to note here is that those persons
who were initially successful in commercial farming and who
went on to become large growers were persons with contacts
already established with commercial farmers outside the
settlement. They were able to parlay their initial success
into the continual accretion of land holdings. For example,
the manager of the flower farm in Goat which is the most
heavily capitalized holding in the settlement worked with
the American grower before the latter left for Puerto Rico
in 1969.

The rapidity with which this change in adaptive strategy
occurred is explained by a number of factors v;hich made commer-

101

cial farming a viable alternative to swidden agriculture.
Most important was the fact that vegetable production offered
a cash return on the small parcels of llanos -which the majority
of households in Clear Creek held. It has been shown how men
received land as a culmination of the process by which house-
holds vjere foniied. This land, until then, had been used inten-
sively only in terms of house gardening.

While cash was necessary to obtain the required inputs
for such farming, credit was available through Constanza sup-
pliers. In addition, information about commercial farming
had been circulating since 1956-1957. Now, the system was
given practical demonstration in Clear Creek's own llanos by
outsiders. With the road linking them to the main highway,
residents of Clear Creek were able to consider commercial
farming as a viable alternative strategy within their own
settlement. Furthermore, it was soon discovered that irriga-
tion systems could be built cheaply and easily by the con-
struction of flumes which could bring water from small side
streams in the hills onto the llanos. V/here possible, simple
ditches diverted the water. Thus, the settlement had no need
for governmental assistance to build large-scale systems like
that in the valley of Constanza. Because there was plenty of
v;ater available. Clear Creek did not need a centralized
authority to control water use.

But, by giving up swidden farming, the commercial farmer
did not have to give up the production of subsistence crops.
The coexistence of the house garden with the new vegetable

102

field made the transformation truly viable for smaller, less
capitalized operations, since these farmers therefore would
not have to depend entirely upon cash income to obtain food.

Almost all households in Clear Creek, a full ^9^, maintain
such gardens, where yuca, sweet potatoes, bananas and other
crops in the swidden complex, except beans, are grown. Because
the gardens are located on the good soil of the llanos, re-
ceiving only a short annual fallow period, and being rotated,
in some instances, with pastures every four or five years,
they continuously provide households with a high proportion
of daily caloric intake, although as farm size increases,
this percentage decreases due to greater reliance on store
bought foods. In the households of large farmers, however,
the gardens are pushed out of sight. These farmers claim that
bananas and plantains make the house too dark and cold when
planted closely, although kitchen refuse traditionally has
served as an inexpensive, organic fertilizer for these crops.

The reliance of commercial farmers on purchased food
is further increased by the fact that keeping chickens, ducks
and turkeys is not compatible with the nev/ adaptive strategy.
The pesticides which are sprayed on growing vegetables kill
insects upon which such animals feed, and by eating poisoned
insects, the animals are, in turn, poisoned. This is especially
true on small holdings where commercial fields run right up
to the kitchen around which these animals usually cluster.
The loss of these animals, an important source of protein, was
always cited to me by commercial farmers as a strong disadvan-

103

tage to their farming system and by noncommercial farmers as
a reason. for not engaging in modern agriculture.

To summarize at this point, we have seen that commercial
farming was introduced to Clear Creek by outsiders after a
road was built connecting the settlement with the main highway.
Knowledge of vegetable production was already present in the
settlement but outsiders had to demonstrate the practicality
of these methods in Clear Creek, Residents v;ho had greater
contact with this system outside of the settlement were the
first to practice the techniques, but the use of modern methods
spread so rapidly that by 1974, some kbio of holdings in the
valley were devoted to vegetables during at least part of the
year.

The explanation for the rapidity of the change in adap-
tive strategy lies principally in the ability of commercial
farming to offer a cash income to farmers who practice it.
Other factors, however, were essential preconditions to the
successful introduction of commercial farming: the availability
of credit, the low cost of irrigation, and the ability of
farmers to maintain subsistence crop production. These factors
made the new strategy viable at a time when the advantages of
the old v/ere steadily diminishing.

Mode of Production
From looking at the history and the process of change
in adaptive strategies, the stage is set for comparing some
of the structural differences between swidden and commercial

104

farming systems in terms of the mode of production, i.e., the
organization of labor. This will be followed by discussions
of the productive process and the use and flow of energy.

Unlike swidden agriculture where the mode of production
takes the form of the household, commercial farming presents
a continuum of types of labor organization in Clear Creek.
While the distinctions are not alv/ays clear cut, one extreme
of the continuum is represented by the small commercial farmer
who drav;s labor from his own household and hires additional
labor from neighboring households only on occasion while the
other extreme is represented by the corporation which grows
flowers in Goat totally using hired labor, both managerial
and manual. In between these extremes are farmers who use
household labor and hire neighbors, but who also hire, on a
more or less permanent basis, a daylaborer (peon) who is
referred to as being of the house (de la casa) . This inter-
mediary stage represents an attempt to have a labor relation-
ship which at once invokes the sanctions of kinship but which
also involves the separation of peon and farmer.

These three types of labor relations are roughly corre-
lated' with the size of the holding and the intensity of its
use in commercial farming. Below .5 hectare, the farmer gets
most labor from his own household, supplementing it by hiring
neighbors. As a holding approaches one hectare, the farmer
feels the need to take on more permanent workers. This need
may be, in fact, more "felt" than real for the peon often
does work which the farmer himself could do but chooses not to.

105

The hiring of such a worker, therefore, symbolizes a change in
the status of the farmer. Farmers with more than one hectare
and especially those with over two, attempt to hire workers
who are treated as clients by the farmer who becomes their
patron, but who are treated more impersonally than peones de
la casa.

A shortage of labor, per se, is not a problem for the
farmer who only has a very small holding. For example, a
farmer with .5 hectare works a little more than 100 eight hour
days per year, assuming that he grows two principal crops,
tomatoes and beans, during the twelve month period (Table .).
The problem is, of course, that intense labor demand occurs
at certain peaks, at planting and at harvest, and it is during
those periods that he must obtain outside labor.

In most cases, these peak demands can be met by the
unmarried males in the household, as one might expect from
the discussion of the swidden mode of production. But in
looking for additional help, the farmer does not call a junta
nor, with the exception of the bean harvest, will he ask the
females in his household for help. Rather he will hire unmar-
ried males from neighboring households who, as we have seen
from the discussion of the cluster settlement pattern, are
usually his nephews. Within the settlement, such a worker
would not.be referred to as a pe(^n, he would merely be working
for an occasional day (echando el dia_) . Because of his kin-
ship tie to the farmer, it would also be said that he was
merely helping (ayudando) his relative rather than directly

106

working for him. These distinctions are necessary because
the status of a peon is decidedly below that of a farmer.
Thus the relative v;ho is working for the day is protected
from any major loss of status, and he can claim that his labor
is a form of reciprocity rather than a strict market exchange
of cash for labor. But the disadvantage of a relative's being
a daylaborer is that, if the crop goes badly, the farmer may,
in fact, decide that the help has come out of a spirit of
family solidarity and, thus, not feel obliged to pay him.

Further, this work is sporadic, occurring only at peak
labor periods. This may suit an unmarried male, but if a man
must support a household with neither the land nor credit to
do commercial farming, nor the inclination to practice slash
and burn techniques, he must seek a more satisfactory and
regular position. This coincides with the needs of a farmer
who has a large enough holding to hire a worker for at least
several days a week.

The relationships of the daylaborers who are considered
"of the house" to the farmers are an interesting combination
of employee-employer roles with client-patron ties. On
holdings where there are one or two regular peones de la casa,
the worker, on the one hand, is expected to work on this farm
whenever he is needed, and the farmer, on the other hand, is
expected to hire this worker before any others. The worker
is often advanced money, putting him in the debt of the farmer.
He is expected not to v;ork for others unless another potential
employer gets permission from the farmer to borrow the worker

107

for a specified period of time. Thus, while these workers are
paid a bit more than the average pay of $1.25 per day plus a ,
noon meal, they are not free agents.

For his part, the farmer may frequently give a job to
the worker v/hich he could as easily do himself. This frees
the farmer for other types of activities, including visiting
or tending to cock fighting. The willingness of Dominican
farmers to pay for work which could be done by themselves
has sometimes been described as symbolizing a distain for
manual labor, which interferes with the efficient operation
of the. farm units. From the farmer's point of view, however,
such an interpretation is false for he is merely "giving work"
to individuals who are in need of it; commercial farmers with
a medium sized holding who do not "give" work to the poor

(los infelices) are roundly criticized by the residents of

20
Clear Creek.

The large scale capitalist farmer, with over two hectares,

tries to separate himself from daylaborers and their personal

concerns just as he builds his new house to separate himself

from his siblings. This is to avoid demands upon his resources

which he considers unjustified. At the same time the large

farmer must act sufficiently in the role of patron to assure

himself a steady labor force. An example of the kind of con-

20

By the same token, small parcels of land are often

"given" by farmers to neighbors with less land to enable them

to grow viveres or a small crop, with the understanding that

the land revert to the farmer at the end of the growing season.

Thus I was given a small plot to grow vegetables by a neighbor

because he saw my own garden not doing well because the ground

was too "cold."

lOS

flict which a large farmer fears is given in the following

account.

A large commercial farmer paid a nephew who was 1? years

old to spray pesticides on a tomato crop. The following day

LA
the nephev; who previously had had a cold (e_l gripe) fell

violently ill and it was assumed that this came from contact

with the poison he had been applying. He grew still worse

and was taken to a hospital in Bonao where, after exhibiting

signs of mental upset, he was taken by his mother, a sister of

the farmer, to a native curer (curandero) in Bonao under whose

care he gradually recovered his physical and mental strength.

The grower came under much overt criticism from his
siblings and mother for allowing a boy so young to do this
work. He was put under great pressure to pay the bills, both
from the doctors and from the curandero, vjhich cam.e to over
$300. The nephew's mental affliction v;as a clue that more
was at work in this matter than poisoning and it was sug-
gested tnat the boy had been a victim of witchcraft intended
for the farmer himself. Indeed the grower's daughter had
once been cured by the same curandero for an infection believed
to be tne result of a magical powder put on the grower's path
which leads from the main road to the grower's large cement
block house.

In this case, the farmer paid most of the nephew's bills,
though he did so grudgingly, claiming that the pesticide was
not at all dangerous. However, this contention seems to have
been compromised by the fact that a fev/ months before a peon

109

had died under similar circumstances at the farm of another
large grower; the worker had had a cold and, after spraying,
had been taken ill and expired. But since this worker was
an adult, a nonrelative, and a full time peon, no accusations
were leveled at the grower, though the death of the worker
was greatly mourned by the whole settlement.

The greatest social distance exists between the farmers
and the workers at the flower growing farm in Goat owned by
an association of eight individuals who live and work in the
capital where several have jobs with the Ministry of Finance.
The land was bought in 1974, and the association pays a per-
manent manager, a man from River who worked once with the
American grower in Clear Creek in the late 1960's. The asso-
ciation owns a series of florist shops in Santo Domingo and
also exports to the United States. Flowers are sent directly
from the campo to the capital daily or every other day in one
of the firm's three pickup trucks.

The flower growing farm has six peones, from households
which border on the seven hectare farm, who work among the
brilliant gladiolas, carnations, and roses. They are all
from, families which had once ovmed a part of the land though
it had been sold to other parties before the association
bought it. When labor needs are greatest, the manager brings
five Haitian workers to the farm from the capital where they
regularly work making decorative floral pieces in the back of
the corporation's shops. The Haitians are paid $.50 to $.75
per day, and as illegal residents, they could be dispatched

110

across the frontier if they should demand more. Speaking only
broken Spanish, they depend totally upon the manager for their
food, clothing, and shelter.

Before this discussion of the mode of produdtion in commer-
cial agriculture is ended, however, it would be good to look
at some of the characteristics of the peones in Clear Creek.
In 1974, 34fo of the households in the settlement had one or
more members who were engaged in daylabor. Of these 41 house-
holds, 16 did no farming at all, 14 had made swidden clearings
at some time during the year, and 11 were engaged in their
own commercial farming ventures (Table 11). This last group
was mostly engaged in working in sociedad which resembled a form
of sharecropping in which their partner supplied credit, land,
and equipment, and the worker supplied most but not all of
the labor, with profits being split 50-50.

Daylaborers almost always are members of households which
have less than .5 hectare of land. Households of peones are
usually those of siblings living in the same cluster tucked
into a. corner of the bottomland. In many cases these peones
are the sons or grandsons of original settlers who, after
the creation of ^la zona, sold their land to men who could
afford to. enclose it with barbed wire. Left with parcels of
land. scarcely big enough for a house and garden, these men
engaged in swidden farming until the advent of com.mercial
farming.

The highest paid peones in the settlement are those who
earn $35.00 per month working in the flower farm owned by the

Ill

association in Santo Domingo. If they work tv/elve months a
year, these daylaborers would receive a total of $/».20.00 per
annum, though they seldom work the whole year. Most peones
work between 150 and 200 days per year, most of it in the
nine month period of March through November. This gives them
an income of roughly $187.50 to $250.00.

Process of Production

tJince the mode of production in commercial farming is
now defined, the actual process of production in commercial
farming in Clear Creek can be outlined v;ith greater under-
standing. It should be emphasized that to farm successfully
in this fashion, a grower must first acquire the means of
production and, after his crop is grown, he must then assure
himself of the proper marketing connections, requiring a set
of difficult relations with outsiders. These relationships
often put him in a subordinate position to large growers
who are better able to m.anipulate such relations.

As in the previous chapter, the process of work will
be outlined in a series of steps which follow the same basic
pattern, despite slight variations, depending on the particu-
lar crop.

Acquisition of Necessary Inputs

The commercial farmer must obtain necessary and expensive

21

In 1969 per capita income in the Dominican Republic was

estimated to be $295.00 (AID 1974: 72). Figuring that each
peon has four dependents, the per capita income is only $37-50
to" "$"50.00. This income is usually supplemented, hov/ever, by
some farming (already mentioned), the making of charcoal, and
other occasional labor.

112

inputs (fertilizer, seed, pesticides, transport) from outside
the settlement while other factors may be obtained from within
Clear Creek (oxen, daylaborers) . For the small commercial
farmer, the largest cash expenditure in farming, excluding
marketing costs, is the purchase of fertilizer and pesticides.
Since large amounts of cash are on hand only when the farmers
win the l9ttery, sell land or livestock, or harvest a commer-
cial crop, money is seldom available at planting time. Thus,
purchases are not made with cash but on credit, what Ward
has called "the lubricant which keeps the machinery of pro-
duction going" (I967: 139).

With few exceptions, supplies for commercial farming
come from an agricultural supply store in Constanza. Because
Clear Creek is on a now badly eroded side road, trucks and
pickups enter it only on special occasion. As a result,
farmers must go to buy their supplies with two of the four
truck owners in Clear Creek who have taken on the role of
intermediary in transporting such goods. A third truck owner,
whose vehicle is more of a status symbol than a productive
capital investment, obtains only his own and his sons' supplies,
while a fourth is solely used by the manager of the flovrer
farm in. Goat.

Since the tv;o truck owners v;ho act as intermediaries
are themselves commercial farmers, they do more than transport
the bags of fertilizer for $1.00 per sack; they also are
instrumental in securing credit for the majority of small
farmers. One of the truck owners takes the small farmers who

113

need credit to Constanza, where, on his recommendation, the
store keeper extends credit to them. Even after a farmer has
several successful seasons, he always arrives at the store
with the truck owner because the truck is the only means of
getting to and from Clear Creek.

The interest rate for this credit is ^Qffo per annum
which Ramon, the truck owner, also pays on his own account.
He is assured, however, of always receiving the type and
quantity of supplies he personall needs. As a screening
device, Ramon's recommendation is imperfect, in that persons
are taken to Constanza for credit as much for their kinship
relationship as for their ability to repay the loan. The
store keeper compensates for bad debts in the high interest
rate. At the same time, Ramon can build up political and
social credit in a settlement which, while being relatively
open to the economic advancements of its members, still views
them as potentially subject to evils activated by envy.

The other major broker in Clear Creek is a woman who,
though her husband is engaged in commercial farming, relies
upon intermediary roles for making a living. This woman went
to New York, returning after several years with enough money
to buy a pickup and to hire a full time driver. She, or her
husband v;ho usually minds their small store, takes orders
for fertilizer or pesticide and, buying them on credit in
Constanza, resells at interest rates of 90^^ per annum plus
charges for transportation.

For the majority of farmers, tO^^ annual interest is the

114

cheapest rate with which credit can be obtained. But larger
fanners having over two hectares can. obtain loans from the
Agricultural Bank, a government agency, in La Vega, for which
the government charges only 12fo annual interest. Farmers use
this money to pay off privately contracted debts or to buy
cattle or, in some cases, to buy urban properties in Bonao,
allowing the rent to pay back the loan.

Loans for production are also available to smaller
farmers, especially during election years, but because these
loans can seldom be obtained at the beginning of a growing
season, they also pay off previous debts with the leftover
money going to meet daily living expenses, medical payments
or other such matters. Small farmers obtain such loans with
the hope that the government (that is, in their view, the
President himself) will forgive or forget the loan if they
default. The farmer views the loan as a gift, one which is
given in return for his political support. Such a belief is

not unfounded as, in the past, the government has forgiven

22

delinquent accounts.

Land Preparation

While he is trying to obtain the necessary credit and

agrochemicals, the farmer must also be preparing his fields.
Though the plow, which he uses, is taken as a sign of "tradi-
tional" farming methods, its use in the Dominican Republic is

22

Rates of 75^ delinquency are reported elsewhere in

the Dominican Republic, interestingly enough in government
sponsored Agrarian Reform projects (AID 1974: 40).

115

actually quite recent. Until the late 19th century, the land
in the Dominican Republic was recleared by fire, colin, and
the hoe because the plow was virtually unknown (Hoetink 1972:
20). The lack of the plow retarded the development of more
intensive farming systems and must be considered a factor in
the long association between agriculture and slash and burn
farming in the country. But once introduced, the use of oxen
and plow spread rapidly. In 1974, for the first time in the
settlement, tractors were used on two holdings both of which
were more than six hectares in size and belonged to outside
interests.

Plows were first used in Clear Creek several decades ago
to break up bottomland which had been used for pasture and v/as
to be planted as house gardens. Today plowing is done before
each planting on commercial holdings. Peak demand for the
five teams of oxen in the settlement is in February-March when
the ground begins to dry out from the winter rains, becoming
manageable for planting the tomatoes or cabbages which are
planted, and again in July-August when beans are sown. Plowing
is done by first turning over the border of a field and, then,
working one ' s way slowly ai-ound the edge until one finishes
in the middle of the field. The steepness of slopes around
the settlement generally precludes the use of plows in the
hills.

The cost of plowing in 1974 was roughly $32.00 per hectare
for the first pass and $24.00 for each subsequent pass; on
the average the field is plowed three times in preparation

117

for the spring crop and twice in July-August. The price of
plowing is somewhat negotiable depending upon the condition
of the soil but more intense negotiations center on figuring
the actual size of the field. Since the price is based on
size, growers insist their fields are smaller than they appear
to. the owner of the oxen team. This allows, however, for
considerations of friendship or kinship to enter into fixing
the price.

After plowing, the field is broken up by hoeing, utili-
zing the labor of hired neighbors, if the small farmers do
not have enough, sons mthin their own households. On larger
farms, peones are hired for this phase. After the clods of
earth have been sufficiently fractured, furrows are made by
hitching another type of plow to a horse, usually the grower's
own animal. These furrows which serve" as ditches when the
field is irrigated are gone over again with the hoe if they
need deepening.

Planting

The choice of which crop should be planted and at what
time, is determined by the possible profit margin, expected
weather conditions, and past experience. Thus, beans are
planted in July-August, because the harvest thereby coincides
with the peak of the annual price cycle. In 1973 > for exam-
ple, the price paid to farmers for a quintal (hundredweight)
of beans was $27.06 while in November it was $37.03. In
1972 the change was even more dramatic, from $12.72 in June

118

to $32.00 in November.

Tomato and cabbage prices, hov/ever, are much more vola-
tile and, in choosing between the two, a farmer tries to find
out what is being planted elsev/here to avoid having his crop
mature at a moment when the market is flooded. Exact timing,
however, is spoken of in terms of luck rather than skill. In
the spring of 1974, for example, a grower' sold one-fourth hec-
tare of salad tomatoes still in the field for $1,300, repre-
senting a net profit of $900. Three weeks later, hov/ever, the
price had fallen by 605^ and other growers made little if any
profit .

As in swidden farming, excessive reliance upon one crop
is avoided by diversifying the type and number of plants and
varieties gro\'m. In commercial farming, however, such diver-
sity is carried out only by the larger farmers who, because
of their greater contact with other farmers, store keepers,
and a few government agronomists in Constanza and elsewhere,
are able to learn and experiment with nev/ crops. Of a sample
of .29 of the 59 holdings in Clear Creek which grew commercial
crops in the spring of 1974, for example, there were 21 plots
of tomatoes, seven of cabbage, seven of potatoes, three each
of onion, garlic, and pepper, and one of beets. The five
largest holdings had a range of from two to six different
crops but the smallest farmers grev/ only one crop, tomatoes
or cabbages.

Another way in which some farmers diversify is that they
grow three crops a year. It is primarily larger growers who

119

can do triple cropping because growing a crop in the winter
season is considered very risky and only they could afford
a loss. The influence of swidden farming figures here, how-
ever, since it allowed traditionally only two crops to be
grown each year.

Spraying

The major fungicide used in Clear Ci-eek is Dithane M-45;
the main insecticides are Endrin and Parathon, all of which
are imported from the United States or Europe. These chemi-
cals are mixed with water in large barrels which stand by each
commercial farm; as bags of fungicide are utilized, they are
hung over posts or tomato poles to give casual evidence of
the grower's m.odernity.

It has been shown that spraying is viewed as a hard and ^
debilitating job, dangerous to the user's health and a cause
of death. Also, its use narrows the economic base of the
small farmer who cannot keep chickens or ducks due to poi-
soning. At the same time, farm.ers consider it impossible to
grov; any of the crops mentioned without help of insecticides
Worms, aphids, nematodes, caterpillars, and forms of fungus,
especially Cladosperium sp. and Phytophthora sp., are quite
common in the valley, particularly where the same fields are
used year after year.

The same crop is never grovm on the same plot twice
in succession, so crops are rotated to a limited extent, but
small farms particularly cannot allow land to go fallow for

120

more than a few months during the year. This constant use
leads inevitably to a great buildup of pests and disease in
the soil and in the immediate environs. Vegetables such as
tomatoes and cabbage which are particularly susceptible to
such pests must be aprayed at least once a week. In this
sense, the hesitation of small farmers to grow more than two
crops a year has definite ecological benefits.

Planting

Unlike crops in the subsistence complex, the vegetables
planted in commercial farming require transplanting. Seedbeds,
therefore, must be made, fertilized, planted and attended until
ready for transferral into the main field. Transplanting
occurs after the main field has been fertilized; 13-13-13 and
12-24-12 are the most heavily utilized types of fertilizer.
The rising cost of fertilizer which went from $6.25 per sack
(100 lbs.) in 1973 to at least $14.00 in the first months of
1975 is a main inflationary factor in commercial farming in
the settlement. Though it is above recommended rates of appli-
cation (ISA 1970), farmers apply roughly one sack of ferti-
lizer per tarea or roughly l6 sacks per hectare. Overappli-
cation appears to be a cause for crop loss in some cases, but
in general farmers believe that this is the minimum which
should be applied.

Transplanting is another labor intensive operation, for
the fields must be planted smoothly and quickly for the seed-
lings to survive. When this process is completed, frequently
there are seedlings left over in the seedbed. The farmer

121

always plants more seedlings than are necessary in order to
have a choice among the most vigorous. The remaining seedlings
are given on request to smaller more marginal farmers who want
to avoid the expense of a seedbed. Furthermore, a larger
farmer is able to call on the receiver of the seedlings for
help in a labor shortage during, for example, the bean harvest.

Weeding

All weeding in vegetable plots is done by hand labor;
herbicides are not utilized in the settlement. The tool used
in weeding is the machete, a small thick bladed knife, which
is wielded in short circular strokes just below the surface
of the soil in order to cut the weeds off at their roots.
This operation demands many hours of work and the circular
arm motion has generally in Dominican body language come to
symbolize all agricultural labor. In conversations about
farming, this motion describes what is felt to be the brutalizing
effects of agricultural work.

. . Weeds are also controlled partially by interplanting
crops v.'hich provide a thick enough shade to discourage some
of the unvianted plants. Interplanting also provides a way
by_ which small farmers can diversify their crops by applying
the swidden practice of multicropping with familiar plants.
Most commonly beans are planted between rows of tomatoes,
corn among beans,, and corn plus yuca among cabbage. These
crops are staggered in their planting so that the field
continues to produce after the main cash crop has been taken

122

off. Interplanting signif icantly i-aises the total harvest of
a field, particularly when measured in terms of calories
produced (Table S) . In addition, it spreads out the effects
of fertilizers and chemicals which give these plants some
protection. As in swidden it provides a means of protecting
the farmer by spreading his risk.

Harvesting and Marketing

In commercial farming, only a small fraction of produc-
tion enters into the kitchens of local households. With the
exception of beans and potatoes, commercial crops are not a
part of the regular diet. The strategy in commercial farming
is quite obviously to sell produce in order to buy staple
foods, to pay off debts, and to buy consumer items ranging
from radios to pistols.

The type of harvesting process used depends upon the
crop and its characteristics. On even the smallest holding,
some hired labor is used to harvest cabbage because a great
many heads must be cut, packed, and sent off to market with
a minimum of time or they will get soft, a particular danger
if they are being taken to market under a hot sun. Tomatoes,
on, the other hand, may be picked over a period of several
weeks, especially since they do not have to be harvested ripe.
The farmer is less pressured under these circumstances and
is better able to space his labor needs so as to rely less on
peones .

An elaborate division of labor is involved in the bean

123

harvest in response to the need to separate seeds from pods
for storage or marketing. After the women pick and dry the
beans, the men take large piles of pods to the threshing floor
where they beat the piles v;ith long sticks in rhythm, bursting
the pods open, allowing the beans to fly out. The women then
sift the beans on great wooden trays to separate the beans
from the pods. These women receive no wages but are allowed
to collect and keep those beans which fall outside the threshing
circle. Set to the rhythm of the threshing are songs, plenas,
which are sung with increasing gusto as the grower passes
around the omnipresent bottle of rum among the men. In this
harvest, the farmer, whether large or small, affirms his
relations to a large network of individuals .

The grower asks the help of those to whom he may have lent
some machinery or other aid during the year. Women from
neighboring households are willing to work because of the
share of the harvest they receive from gleening. Some day-
laborers are also hired. As many as fifteen or twenty people
may take part.. The bean harvest, like the fiestas at Christ-
mas, is a means for the large farmer to reaffirm his ties to
the settlement..

..Like harvesting, the pattern of marketing is different
depending upon the crop concerned. Beans are sold to middle-
men who come into Clear Creek in small pickups and trucks and
buy the harvest directly from the farmer, except for swidden
growers who, living far from the settlement's road, sell to
local store owners. Perishable crops are either sold in the

124

field or, more commonly, are taken by trvck ovmers along with
the farmer to the central wholesale markets in Santo Domingo.
In either case, the Dominican marketing pattern, described
elsewhere by Norvell and Billingsley, is characterized by the
presence of motorized intermediaries who link farmers and
wholesalers (I97I). -^ Wholesalers operate in urban market-
places where they break down shipments for sale in supermarkets,
in urban pulperias (small stores), or in the streets by vendors
v/hose morning cries ring through the middle class sections of
every Dominican city. Taxes are collected at these central
marketplaces on truckloads of produce and fees must also be
paid to the market administration by the wholesaler and the
few retailers who sell under its jurisdiction.

Beans, along with rice, are important staples in the
Dominican economy and, therefore, their. sale and distribution
are more tightly controlled. The government tries to regu-
late the annual price fluctuations by warehousing and selling
a large portion of the national harvest. Middlemen also
attempt. to store the beans in order to take advantage of
higher price peaks. Both middlemen and the government send
out .agents to buy harvests. During the fall of 1973 when bean
prices were higher than in anyone's memory, buyers entered
Clear. Creek in great numbers, each in a small truck or pickup,
making contracts for crops. Farmers knev; from past experience

on

'^'^In this sense, marketing patterns in the Dominican Repub-
lic bear little resemblance to the petty trading and cyclical
marketing schemes described eD.sewhere in the Caribbean (Katzin
i960, Legerman 1971, Mintz, ■ I964, 1974). Near the Haitian border,
hov/ever, such cyclical patterns are found and also in the Samana
Peninsula, both areas heavily influenced by Afro-American tradi-
tions.

125

that by. mid-November the price would begin to fall as beans
from San Jose de Ocoa, another mountainous region, entered
the harvest stage.

The numerous buyers who came from Jaravacoa, Bonao, San-
tiago, Santo Domingo, and as far away as San Francisco de
Macoris, bid against one another. V/hen a farmer was finally
made an offer he could not refuse, if only for fear the price
would begin to fall the next day, he would agree to deliver
Ms harvest at the set price. If his beans were ready to be
threshed, the buyer would give him the necessary sacks which,
in the absence of any written agreement, symbolized their
agreement. In general, the farmers sold under very favorable
circumstances; some 70S quintales (hundredweight) were produced
by the settlement's farmers, including swidden farmers, which
brought in a gross total of $27,796. More than one-fifth of
this production, however, came from only three large growers.

During the period in which the beans were being sold,
traveling salesmen in pickups and small trucks, equipped v/ith
loudspeakers, would arrive in great numbers, announcing bar-
gain specialis on clothing, furniture, wristwatches, and a
myriad of manufactured items. These pickups would stop in
front of the small stores in Clear Creek and v;ould soon be
surrounded by farmers, their wives and children looking over
and buying the wares. Polyester fabric and wristwatches were
particularly popular, the latter being highly prized especially
by the men. Many of these were sold, however, again in Janu-
ary and February to pay for debts incurred in the large fiestas

126

which take place during the Christmas season.

The harvest of vegetables like tomatoes and cabbage is
quite different because these items are highly perishable and
therefore their price fluctuates in shorter and more volatile
cycles. Because they cannot be stored, the commercial farmer
must sell at whatever price he can get when the crops are
ready for picking. Farmers must therefore contract for their
own transportation, since outside intermediaries cannot be
counted on to enter the settlement when the crop is ready to
be picked. Almost 90?5 of these vegetables are marketed in
Santo Domingo where the produce is broken down for consumption
in the capital itself or for shipment to other cities.

The farmer would much prefer to sell crops in the fields
to an intermediary rather than go to the city, paying the
transport costs equal to the whole cost of production to a
truck owner (Table 10), In addition, farmers who are illiterate
and unfamiliar with numerical calculations find the central
markets frightening and confusing, a scene of great noise and
competition, a dangerous place where tigres (liars and cheats)
can easily and often do take advantage of their inexperience.

Although farmers prefer to sell their crops in the field,
any offer they. receive is weighed against what limited infor-
mation they have about prices in the cities. Farmers seldom
believe the wholesale price quoted to them by intermediaries
with good reason. If there is too much of a discrepancy between
the quoted and the believed price, the farmer insists on selling
the produce himself. In this case the farmer must make a

X27

contract, based on a set fee, with the ovmer of a truck to
take, it to the city and sell it himself. The fees in the
spring of 1974 were $2.00 per crate of tomatoes (roughly SO
lbs.) and $22.50 per 1,000 head of cabbage which amounted to
roughly 20-40^ of the selling price.

Once a marketing contract has been made, the harvesting
of the vegetables can begin. Timing is crucial and, unless
a truck is ready to go, the crops will not be picked. Har-
vesting must be done with care as price is partly a function
of the quality of the produce; tomatoes are crated according
to two classes, good and fair, and farmers select out the
produce which a wholesaler would have cause to reject. The
selection process, however, is understandably more stringent
for vegetables v/hich are placed at the top of a pile or a crate
than for those which lie hidden closer to the bottom.

While the actual marketing confrontation can be traumatic
for a farmer, the trip to the capital is viewed as an aven-
ture. Produce-laden trucks leave Clear Creek in the afternoon
and,, after the four hour trip, arrive in darkness at Santo
Domingo. . There are three central markets which distribute
fresh produce and they are ringed by cheap hotels, brothels,
and bars; here the grower and truck owner spend the night,
allaying the farmer's anxiety about the morning sale with
the pleasures of the night. Since the farmer pays for the
truck owner's expenses, a good part of potential profits may
be spent..

In addition to expenses for room, board, and entertain-

125

ment, the farmer must pay police to "guard" the truck during
the night as well as. a "tax" to the highway patrol between
Bonao and Santo Domingo " and ' a fee to the market administration.
In the morning the men enter the market and are beseiged by a
number of buyers if demand for their produce is high or search
out a buyer if demand is low. The farmer's relations to the
truck owner are of critical importance in the market. The
small farmer who goes to market only once or twice a year is
not only ill at ease with the pricing system, he is bereft of
the ties of kinship and friendship which reassure him and
protect him wi.thin the settlement.

Hence a farmer is hesitant to make a trip to the capital
to sell unless he is accompanied by a truck owner whom he
knows and trusts. Because of the frequency with which they
market their own and other farmer's produce, these truck
owners have crosscutting ties, again lubricated vdth credit,
which link them to certain wholesalers who can be counted on
to give them a good price in a fair market or a fair price
in a bad market. These ties are the Dominican counterpart
to. the type of relations which exist between petty traders in
the marketing systems of Haiti and elsewhere (Mintz I96I) .
Because of the frequency of their economic interaction, the
wholesaler and the truck owner (especially since the truck
ovmer is usually a large farmer himself) even out fluctua-
tions in quality, quantity and cost to their mutual benefit.
The flexible dealing between trucker and v;holesaler acts as
an informal cushion against price fluctuations as well as an

129

extension of personal reciprocities into the otherwise imper-
sonal market exchange. The truck ovmer, as in the obtaining
of credit, extends this relationship to the farmer whom he has
brought to the market.

Once an agreement is struck and the crop is paid for,
the farmer pays the trudc owner his charges . The farmer then
purchases staples in the large stores which are found in the
market area. These staples include at least a sack of rice
and a gallon of cooking oil. He must also buy a few small
gifts for members of his household. For small farmers, the
marketing journey is the only time during the year that they
venture as far as the capital, but they seldom linger to see
the commercial downtown, the middle class residential areas
or even the ocean on whose shore the city is built.

The productive process of commercial farming in Clear
Creek, -in summary, is marked by differences in access to
productive inputs and marketing mechanisms for the large and
small growers. At both ends of the productive process, the
farmer is linked to middlemen, on the one hand the Constanza
storekeeper and on the other the urban wholesaler. To success-
fully grow a crop, the farmer must become involved in a set
of market, exchanges with these individuals in which he is at
a disadvantage due to his small scale, his product's perish-
ability, and his lack of economic savvy.

These exchanges, however, can be smoothed for smaller
farmers if they link themselves to large grov/ers, especially
those who have trucks, who act as intermediaries in securing

130

necessary credit and in selling produce. Though the struc-
ture of these relationships changes according to the crop
grown by the farmer, at each stage he must pay a price for
these . linkages, either through credit, transport costs, or
through a willingness to acknowledge the large farmer as a
leader in local affairs.

Within the productive process itself, even a small farmer
must at times hire other residents to work for him. Through
such hiring the farmer gains some prestige for "giving work,"
while the peon loses some for accepting a subordinate posi-
tion on someone else's holding. The difference between a
farmer and a peon, therefore, becomes an important fracture
line for social divisions within the settlement.

What the farmer makes in profit, especially if he is a
small grower, flows out of the settlement either through the
purchasing of food from middlemen in the urban market, the
paying of interest on outstanding debts or the purchase of
consumer goods. This last group of items comes to stand for
the farmer's modernity; the desire for wristwatches in a
place. _v/here time is still measured by day length and season is
a pov;erful symbol of this. Such items symbolize the fruits
of, a farming system which is, to him, advanced as opposed to
swidden which is viewed as backward.

.But the key to commercial farming, the need to acquire
outside energy subsidies, is the topic which must be further
explained in order to understand the rapid and sharp social
changes resulting from this adaptive strategy.

131

Energy Flovj and Evaluation
Figure 12 and Table 9 summarize some of the statements
which have been made so far concerning the relationship
between energy inputs and commercial farming in a visual and
quantitative manner. The level of manpower in vegetable produc-
tion is low compared to other types of energy being utilized,
though this varies according to the crop being grown (Table 9).
Human labor supplies less than one-sixth of the calories which
are expended in the growing of a commercial crop. The largest
inputs come from the fossil fuel industry with smaller amounts
being furnished by oxen. Without these inputs from the outside,
commercial farming in the settlement would collapse (Figure 12) .
It is this energy factor v/hich makes the relationships with
outside suppliers so important. The type and amount of input
varies with the crop being grown; tomatoes, for example, require
more human labor than beans because they must be tied to poles
and more carefully weeded. Also the mix of crops which may be
interplanted varies considerably, which makes an important
ratio in the actual rate of return.

The rate of return in commercial farming is low relative
to.swidden farming if only human inputs are considered. Table

shows. a. rate of return of roughly 1:4, that is, for every
one calorie of energy expended only four are returned, while
the figure . in swidden farming was 1:1S. This relative inef-
ficiency is related to the necessity of maintaining and sup-
porting crops v;hich, when grown in a m.onoculture,. are extremely
susceptible to disease and pests. It is also related to the

132

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133

TABLE 9
Energy budget for commercial agriculture

Work hours per hectare (one year, two seasons: tomato + beans)

ACTIVITY

Plow

Plant

Transplant

Place poles and tie

Weed

Spray and fertilize

Harvest

Total

HOURS REQUIRED

54

20
101
303
543
2^1
449

1,751

Human energy inputs per hectare

INPUT AMOUNT

Labor 1,751 hrs

Oxen 22 hrs

Machinery 45 kg.

Fertilizer - 795 kg.

Fungicide + insecticide 19 kg.

KILOCA LORIES

335,300
271,700
207,120
1, lis, 912
21S,543

Energy returns per hectare of conmiercial tomato production

OUTPUT

AMOUNT

Tomatoes 34,363 kg.
Beans (intercropped) 7^4 kg.

Total

Ratio of human energy input to output

KILOCA LORIES

4,123,560
1,176.000

5,299,560

1:2 kilocalories
(first season)

TABLE 9 (continued)

134

Human energy inputs per hectare (beans)

INPUT AMOUNT

KILOCALORIES

Labor 1,072 hrs.
Oxen 54 hrs .

203,840
271,700

Machinery (accounted for)

Fertilizer 391 kg.

Insecticide + fungicide 7 kg.

530,565
80,514

Total

1,086,619

Energy returns per hectare (beans)

OUTPUT AMOUNT

KILOCALORIES

Beans 1,282 kg.
Maize 1,323 kg.

1,923,000
4,776,030

Total

RATIO OF ENERGY INPUT TO OUTPUT 1:6
AVERAGE RATIO FOR TWO SEASONS OF COMMERCIAL FARMING

6,699,030

1:4

* These figures are based on a survey of 30 commercial farmers
for two very good harvests: the bean harvest of fall 1973
and the tomato harvest of spring 1974.

135

nature of the plants grown. Sweet potatoes, for example, have
14s kcal per 100 gram portion, but tomatoes have a mere 21 kcal
and cabbage only 2B kcal (INCAP I96A-) . Beans, on the other
hand, do have a high caloric value, but they produce much less
per hectare than do sweet potatoes.

Commercial farming can be said to be more efficient,
however, when other inputs, such as solar energy are considered.
Given the need for a ten year regeneration period in swidden
farming, solar energy contributes 542 calories for every one
taken calorie off as a food crop. In commercial farming, how-
ever, where only a three month growing period is needed, only
13 calories of solar energy are needed for one food calorie.

Further, the modern techniques allow the grov/ing of crops
of a type and on a scale which bring greater cash return to
farmers than the traditional methods. An income in the 1973-
1974 season for commercial farmers based on the figures in
Table 9 is presented in Table 10, though this must be considered
to be on the high end of the income scale. The cash generated
by commercial agriculture is subsequently invested in cattle,
in part, which leads to large growers gradual direction of
swidden farming to obtain new pasture. Other investments,
in pulperias and in the rifa, are examined in the following
chapter. For large growers, income is higher due to their
ability to get cheap credit and their ownership of transport
vehicle.

Farming in Clear Creek, then, is changing not in response
to the need to raise more food more efficiencly, but to the

136

TABLE 10
Commercial farm income (based on Table

S)

COSTS

FACTOR

AMOUNT

COST PER UNIT

COST

Fertilizer

1,1S6 kg.

g.OO/goiintal

210. S4

Fungicide +
Insecticide

26 kg.

5.60/kg.

145.60

Plowing

5 times

136.00/ha.

136.00

Labor

2,^23 hrs.

•'I.50/S hr. day

529.31

Transport

34,363 kg.

1.50 quintal of
tomatoes

1,145.43

Transport

of

fertilizer

26 quintales l.OO/quintal

26.00

Interest

6 months

BOfo per annum

142. 55

TOTAL COST

2,335.76

RETURNS

PRODUCT ,

AMOUNT

PRICE PER UNIT

PRICE

Tomatoes

22,gS5 kg.

5.00/c^uintal of
lirst class

2,517.35

11,340 kg.

2.00/quintal of

second class

49S.96

Beans (June)

7S4 kg.

2S.00/quintal

4S2.94

(November) 1,2^2 kg.

40.00/quintal

l,12g.l6

Maize

1,323 kg.

S.OO/quintal

232. S5

TOTAL RETURNS

$4,560.26

TOTAL RETURNS
TOTAL COST

4,560.26
2,335.76

PROFIT

$2,524.24

137-

need to raise cash income. Hence the most successful farm in
the settlement is one which does not grow any food crops at
all, but rather grov;s flowers to be sold to an urban middle
class either in Santo Domingo or in the United States.

Summary

The need of commercial farmers to rely upon outside
sources of energy and agricultural supplies obtained only by
cash or credit alters key aspects of Clear Creek's earlier
adaptive strategy. The mode of production in commercial
farming, breaks out of the household and the labor exchange
relations which characterize slash and burn farming. Because
the commercial farmer must buy his material inputs and because
he works for a cash profit, individuals who work with him
expect the same. The percentage and type of labor which is
hired, however, depend upon the size of a particular operation.

In the productive process, large growers have distinct
advantages over smaller growers especially when large size
is combined with the ownership of a vehicle. These advantages
include cheaper credit, advantageous friendships with suppliers
and wholesalers, and easier access to information which allows
the. risk-lowering diversification of crops and cattle. The
advantages of friendship with suppliers and v/holesalers are
passed to smaller growers at a price; smaller farmers pay
dearly for transportation costs, and, in addition, are
expected to lend their social and political support to the
large farmers .

13^

An examination of the flow and sources of energy utili-
zed in commercial farming shows that this agricultural system
is not a particularly efficient one in terms of its caloric
return. Further, its efficiency in creating a cash income
depends largely upon the extent of the farmer's size and his
ability to manipulate credit, labor, and transport. Thus, a
pattern is emerging in the settlement which represents an
integral part of its agricultural development, namely, the
rapid absorption of smaller holdings in the llanos and hillside
pasture by large growers and outsiders who are able to secure
the necessary energy inputs in spite of changes in national
and international markets.

CHAPTER V
ECONOMIC ROLES AND LINKAGES

This chapter broadens the description of the Clear Creek
economy to include more than the two major adaptive strategies.
The concern is with understanding the various monetary link-
ages which connect households in the settlement with each
other and with the outside. Large farmers in Clear Creek have
been. shown to have the function of linking small farmers to
credit and marketing channels. But, in addition, there are
four distinct economic roles which have significant relevance
for understanding agricultural development in Clear Creek:
those of store owner, lottery seller, government employee, and
migrant .

The greater circulation of cash in Clear Creek has led
to larger numbers of residents adopting these roles. Further-
more, the system of commercial agriculture, itself, tends to
extract economic roles from the familial context in v;hich they
are found in subsistence agriculture. This process of speciali-
zation exemplifies the classic change from Gemeinschaft (inte-
grated, cooperative, reciprocal) relations such as those which
characterize swidden farming to Gesellschaft (specialized,

■ In the introductory chapter, economic role was defined as
an occupational category, involving a set of specific behaviors
which occupy a distinct niche in the economic system.

Migrants who will be discussed in this same chapter do not
form an occupational category in this same sense since the
actual work they perform outside the campo varies from that of

139

1/+0

separated, . cash) relations vjhich characterize commercial
farming (Toi'nnes I887) . An indication of the segmentation
of social from economic roles is demonstrated by the fact that
women, as well as men, take on these new, specialized economic
roles. For example, females operate three of the twelve pul-
perias (small stores); a woman is one of the 14 riferos (lottery-
sellers); and also a woman is one of the government employees.
The fact that women have greater access to a variety of econo-
mic roles is in sharp contrast to the Gemeinschaft community
in which the division of labor by sex roles is a basic principle.

All. of these roles involve making various transactions
which, link househols to each other and to the outside through
market exchange. Store owners, for example, sell goods to the

CA5I4

settlement residents for each and credit. Like other middle-
men already discussed (the agricultural suppliers, the market
v/holesalers, the truck owners), the store owners charge for
their service, but, at the same time, their pulperias serve
two or three household clusters to which the owners invariably
belong. Store owners must extend credit to their neighbors
and relatives in order to secure their business since cash
income in most households arrives only during the harvest
season. The owner, therefore, must combine his pulperia with
other forms of enterprise to maintain sufficient cash flow
to cover his ovni debts to the v/holesaler.

Brooklyn bus boy to a Santo Domingo rifero. Nevertheless, they
perform an econmic linking function for the settlement which
fits them into the present discussion. Therefore, the role of
migrant v/ill be herein treated as an economic role.

141

Lottery sellers (rlferos) link local households through
a popular gambling scheme. The illegal lottery in which they
engage mirrors the national lottery in all respects except
that, while the national contest generates revenue for the
government, this lottery generates income for the rifero and
his backer. Overtly, the rifa, as the lottery is called, is
a means by which individuals can gamble in the hope of trans-
forming a $.25 number into a $14.00 v/inner. Its covert func-
tion, however, is that it forms a crude savings institution
and helps to amass money in a settlement v;here large sums of
money at any time are otherwise very difficult to obtain.

Government employees, on the other hand, receive wages
as part of the political and bureaucratic apparatus of the
Dominican state. They are the only persons in the settlement,
except for resident social scientists, who, as the expression
goes, live by check ( los que viven por cheque) . In Clear Creek
there are two forestry agents, two school teachers, and one
alcalde (sheriff) v/ho receive monthly payments for their services

An important aspect of this discussion is that, except
for the teachers who earn $90 per month ($10S0 per annum),
none of these economic roles by itself brings more than a
minimal income to its practitioner. In addition to being
an alternative to farming, hov/ever, their economic viability
lies in the possibility of combining government jobs with one
another and v;ith commercial farming. Such combinations make
it possible for some individuals, particularly large growers,
to diversify their risks and to exercise better control over

142

the various transfers of cash and energy. In this, there is
a parallel to the diversity of the crops and the spreading of
risk in the primitive conuco of the svddden farmer.

Pulperia Owners

The intermediaries who o^'m pulperias in Clear Creek link
households to a limited range of processed foods and consumer
goods, which are produced outside the settlement. Like the
agricultural supplier in Constanza, the pulperia owner must
extend credit to gain and keep his clients who are usually
neighbors and kinsmen but not to the point where the store is
"broken" by the customers. To keep up liquidity, the store-
owner must therefore devise strategems which will bring in a
flow of cash and some small profit, for only as a pulperia is
reinforced by subsidiary activities can the enterprise flourish.

An examination of that enterprise must begin with a dis-
cussion of its spatial characteristics, of which an important
aspect is the distribution of stores in the settlement. There
were 14 pulperias in Clear Creek when I first arrived, but
two were "broken" during my stay, leaving a total of 12, a
ratio of roughly one for every ten households. Most of these
12 are located along the road. The two largest are located
at. the junctures of the small valleys into which the settle-
ment is divided, within the main commercial farming areas,
that is, where the valleys become widest and where cash income
is higher. The smallest pulperias, on the other hand, are
encountered in the further reaches of Pines, Goat, and Nuts,

143

where the stores are very poorly stocked.

Three-fourths of the pulperias are simply rooms added

onto an already existing house, but the largest are separate

25

buildings, sometimes referred to as bodegas . Stores which

are attached indicate a smaller sales volume and the fact that
the owner aims to provision his own household as well as pro-
vide a middleman service. Whether attached or separate, how-
ever, the interior use of space is invariably the same because
the pulperia, like the house and yard, is a symbolic center of
economic life and its form is recreated in every Dominican
settlement .

Within the store, the main division of space is a waist-
high counter which separates clients from the ovmer. On the
client's side, a few chairs or benches invite sitting and
socialization while on the other, commodities are arranged
in sacks, bottles, and tins. Over the counter hangs a scale
■t\/hose debatable accuracy is frequently a topic of heated dis-
cussion. On the counter itself are at least two display boxes,
one holding bread, cheese, and sweet cakes while the other
contains a variety of industrial products: notebooks, pens,
plastic combs, thread, hair rollers, flashlight batteries, and
shoelaces .

Against the back wall are arranged the conmiodities, most
prominent of which are long rows of bottles on narrow shelves:
rum, whiskey, beer, soda, and malt liquor, all of whose virtues

25

For a classification of such shops in an urban setting
see Norvell and Billingsley 1971.

144

along with cigarettes, are continually and loudly extolled by
Dominican radio. Below these items, the shelves hold tins
and packages of processed foods. Inevitably these include cans
of sardines from Southwest Africa, sweetened and condensed milk,
chicken bouillon cubes, tomato sauce, vinegar, and chocolate
squares. On a broad shelf which runs level to the counter are
found those small items which sell more rapidly: penny candies,
cookies, cigarettes, chewing gum, and andullo (strong, pressed
tobacco used for pipe smoking) . On the floor are hundredweight
sacks of rice, sugar, salt, boxes of spaghetti and noodles,
and a drum of kerosene and another of cooking oil.

Amidst all of this hang plastic bags of bread, lengths
of salami, and spices: cinnamon, cloves, allspice, garlic,
perhaps a few onions. If the owner can afford the price,
there will be a kerosene refrigerator off to one side. Paid
for on monthly installments, the refrigerator represents the
owner's largest overhead expense except for the extension of
credit. The refrigerator, however, is seldom stocked with
anything more than beer and soda; "ice cream" is made by
freezing syrups in the cube trays.'

The daily transactions which occur over the counter are
divided into two main spheres, one involving the purchase of
staples on credit and the other involving the purchase of less
basic commodities with cash. The purchase of staples takes
place under the direction of women who do the household cooking;
children are usually sent to the pulperia to get the goods
whose cost is noted in the owner's credit book. These purchases

U5

provide the main meal of the day, la_ comida, which should
ideally consist of rice, beans, and possibly meat which can
be bought several times a week, depending upon when the butcher
obtains an animal for slaughter.

There is tremendous variability, hov;ever, in the amounts
which households purchase. The most basic commodities, salt,
cooking. oil, and sugar, must still be bought daily by house-
holds, such as those of swidden farmers, who may eat rice and
beans only every three or four days, except when one or the
other is being harvested from the conuco. In the fall of 1974,
the minimum expenditure at the pulperia would be about $.45
per day for households practicing swidden farming.

In. the households other than those devoted to swidden
agriculture, however, there is a greater dependence upon the
store. In these households the diet contains rice and beans
four or more times during the week. In addition, condiments
and items such as tomato sauce or sardines would be added in
the food preparation process. In the household cluster examined
in some detail in chapter one, an average of $.75 per day per
household was spent at the local pulperia throughout the year.
Households of small commercial farmers spent a bit more while
those of large growers spent upwards of $2.00 since these
households would get several pounds of meat whenever it was
available.

In an average week, the butcher estimated he sold 300
pounds of meat, most of it pork, for betv;een $.60 and $.75 per
pound. This would equal .43 pounds of meat per resident per week
if it were evenly distributed which, of course, it is not.
Households which arc able to keep their o\rCi small domestic
animals are able to eat their ovm productionj a two or three
pound chicken every three or four weeks.

146

On an annual basis, this means that a household prac-
ticing swidden farming in Clear Creek spends a minimum of
$165.00 for staples at the pulpcria v;hile small commercial
farmers spend upwards of $310.00 v;ith peones, riferos, and non-
farming households falling in the middle. On the lower end of
the scale, such figures roughly equal many households* annual
incomes. This expenditure is exclusive of the tobacco which
every adult smokes, clothing, medicine, and other expenses.

The high cost of maintaining a basic diet means that the
household must constantly remain in debt to the pulperia.
On the household level this chronic debt means that there is
constant pressure to pursue cash-producing activities rather
than subsistence ones. On the pulperia level, it means that
extension of credit is a constant overhead expense for which
compensation must somehow be made.

The need for credit is directly related to the prolifera-
tion of pulperias, roughly one for every ten households in
Clear Creek. Capital is scarce and comes to farmers in lump
sums only at harvest, at the sale of animals or land, or at
the winning of the lottery. Credit becomes necessary to tide
households over the weeks and months where there is little
money. But understandably, credit cannot be extended to
everyone' for not everyone can be trusted to repay debts.

Therefore, credit is limited to neighbors and kinsmen,
the .definition of these categories being sufficiently flexible
to include more solvent but distant households and exclude
closer but more destitute ones. Repayment is more sure where
kinship and residence ties reinforce the ovm-er-client relation-

147

ship. Further, if there are multiple ties, the owner will
learn sooner and more accurately of any cash the client may
earn and, thus, be able to demand his share. But neighbors
and kinsmen may feel that credit is due them as part of the
reciprocities which normally exist among those who share
family and residence and become a drain on the pulperia's
limited resources.

Thus, on occasion, an owner may find himself overex-
tended in credit and, unable to collect on debts, his pulperia
goes broke. This breaking of a store occurred during my
residence to a neighbor who attempted to begin a pulperia by
buying $S-$10 of bread per week and reselling it at the usual
25'fo markup. He sold the bread in the living room of his house
whodi was built right on the road. Being the first building at
the entrance to Clear- Creek from Black Stone, this was an
excellent location>. But after several weeks, he stopped the
operation because he could not cover his costs. He was selling
roughly IvOfo- of his stock on credit and could not continue
buying bread from the delivery truck which comes once a week
to the settlement. Nor would his debtors pay him back;
pleading poverty, they claimed they did not have the money.
A list of his debtors revealed that his brothers and closest
neighbors were the main defaulters.

In this case, the novice owner was hardly helped by his
wife v;ho, illiterate and unable to sum correctly, was often
left to mind the store. More significant, however, was the
fact that my neighbor was unable to establish a viable client-

ll^>

ovmer relationship v;here only kinship and friendship had
operated before. He was unable to separate himself from
the ongoing reciprocal relations and his brothers merely
joked when he mentioned their debts, saying he would have
to have patience. In other contexts, however, they stated
individually that they thought the enterprise v/ould fail
anyway and so v/ere not going to pay if others v;ere not.
The problem for a pulperxa owner, therefore, is to
strike a balance betvreen his specific economic function as
a middleman and his vital membership in kinship and residence
networks. He cannot alienate the households which bring him
the main portion of his business or they will buy elsewhere
or someone else nearby will begin another pulperia, which will
absorb his clients. At the same time, he must make sufficiently
strong his own position so that they will pay their debts.
This same kind of tension has been shown to exist earlier in
this study v/ith the neighbor v;ho v/orks part time for a com-
mercial farmer or the large grower who separates himself from
his kinsmen but still needs their moral and political support.
Generally faced with problems of a small volume, compe-
tition from other pulperias, and the high overhead of credit
extension, the store owner does not appear to make any great
income on his sales and he, therefore, must seek other means
to make his business profitable. One of the owners of a small
pulperia located in Goat kept records of his ovm purchases
over a three month period. He bought a v/eekly average of $73*00
worth of food to which he added an average l^fo markup and sold

149

regularly to 12 households, of v/hom only three were engaged
in commercial farming. This gave him a weekly profit of some
$10.59. On an annual basis this v;ould equal some $550 if it
were not for the question of credit extension. The owner
claimed that because he was able to collect on only a small
portion of his outstanding debts, he made less than $200 during
the previous year and though this may be exaggerated, he often
did have difficulty paying off his own debt to the wholesaler
who carried him several weeks behind in payments. The main
advantage, the owner felt, for having a store was that he
could eat out of his own stocks without cost and this allowed
him to spend his earnings on medicine for his chronic asthma
and for his wife who, after having 14 miscarriages, was still
trying to have a child.

The owner of a pulperia has several alternatives open
to him to increase his cash flow. One way is to increase the
amount of his cash sales. Small scale purchases of non-staples
such as cigarettes, candy, soda, etc. are paid for in cash
rather than credit. These transactions vary from $.01 to
$.30 and. the items are consiomed on the premises. Cash purchases
can be increased by locating one's shop close to the main road
and by making the ambiente (atmosphere) as pleasant as possible.
By having a radio on and talk flowing at a steady rate,
passersby are encouraged to stop and the pulperia develops
a clientele which congregates there in nonworking hours.

Through the day males occupy the seats and benches on

1^0

the client's side of the pulperia. Adult males gather in the
afternoon to gossip and to discuss farming prices and to tell
and retell stories. In the evening, v;hen married males are
in their own kitchens or visiting those of neighbors, single
males gather to talk, play cards and dominoes, and if they
have been working, buy some refreshment. In the larger stores,
a room, also used for storage, is set aside for such purposes.
It is in such rooms that fiestas are held during the Christmas
season. One of the more successful owners has built a shed
alongside his store under whose tin roof sits a battered
pool table. Pool, a game played heavily by males, attracts
additional business to his store and he profits from a charge
of $.10 per game.

Besides increasing the proportion of cash sales, some
pulperia owners charge an informal interest on their credit
by adding purchases to the client's bill which never transpired,
Since credit records are kept by the owners and not by the
clients, this is easy to do. But it also has dangers, and
shops do lose business if suspected of such practices.

To reduce their debt, households may frequently sell

small amounts of beans or coffee to the pulperia owner who
buys at roughly 25^ under the price that could be obtained
from other buyers. The pulperia ov-Tier bulks these small
quantities and makes the sale himself. Swidden farmers sell
their bean harvest in this manner for living at a distance
from the main road it is difficult for them to contact other
buyers. Though the coffee groves which surround the bohios

151

are principally for household consumption, small amounts of
the harvest are often sold to the pulperia owners. The small
pulperia owner discussed earlier made $35.00 in 1973-74 in such
transactions on top of his retail profits.

Another way for the owner to increase his profit margin
is to link the pulperia with another enterprise, for example,
three-quarters of the pulperia ovmers also practice commercial
farming (Table 11). When these farmers hire peones. their
laborers get credit against their wages in the farmer's store.
This means that the farmer makes a loop with the flow of cash,
paying off his workers who then give him back an immediate
return by paying for their credit purchases.

An owner can greatly increase his profits if he has a
truck, as two ptilperia owners do. With a truck, a middleman
can bring supplies into the settlement, thus avoiding the
payment to a wholesaler who otherwise supplies the pulperia
from his own wagon. For this service a wholesaler charges
a 15^ markup. With his own truck the pulperia ovmer can make
roughly 30^ on his retail prices. If he can double as a
conimercial farmer and a truck owner, a pulperia owner is
better able to control the flow of goods and services in
the settlement, making a profit at each transfer point.

In summary, the pulperia acts as an economic counter-
point to. the house and yard, and sjnnbolizes the opposition
of market exchange to the reciprocities of the hearth. The
pulperia owner links the settlement and the outside through a
flow of goods, mostly processed foods, on whose sale he makes

152

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153

some small profit. While the extension of credit assures him
customers, it also means a relatively low return. To increase
his profits, he must resort to other strategies v/hich have been
discussed above. Another strategem sometimes followed by
pulperia owners will be discussed belov;, namely the backing of
a rifero in his numbers game.

Riferos

The rifero (lottery seller) makes a different type of
transaction from that of the pulperia owner. Unlike the latter
who exchanges goods for cash, the rifero operates a numbers
game v/hich provides a chance to parlay a small sum of money,
$.25, into a large sum, $14.00. Thus the winner obtains a sum
with which he can pay off some of his debts, buy cons\imer goods,
or make an investment. The rifero, for his part, makes his
living based, upon the premise that, in the long run, people
lose more than they win.

Virtually all households in the settlement are visited
two or more times a day by riferos selling the hope of a tem-
porary escape from poverty. In 1974, there were some 14 full
time riferos who together sold between $300.00 and $525.00
worth of numbers ($.25 each) each v/eek in Clear Creek. Riferos
follow set routes' five or six days a week, each week of the
year, which makes it impossible to combine their work with
commercial or swidden farming, except if there be other adult
males in. their household. The role of rifero, therefore, acts
as an alternative to that of the peon. But unlike the latter

154

it cannot be taken up on a casual basis ov;ing to the fact that
the rifero must constantly generate cash to cover potential
losses .

The rifero bases the numbers game on the national weekly-
lottery. The national lottery has several variations, but the
most popular is that of the quinela, a two digit number which
pays $14, $3, and $2 if it is drawn in the first, second, or
third position. The drawing of numbers takes place each Sunday
a: noon and is broadcast over national radio, including one
beamed at the Dominican community in New. York.

The quinelero sells government-issued tickets for this
lottery. These tickets, purchased as five series of 100 num-
bers (00-99) cost the quinelero $132.00. He sells each number
on a scale of prices from $.25 to $.50 each, depending on the
popularity of the number and the day of the week. Prices lower
toward the end of the week and on Sunday morning the quineleros
crowd together on busy street intersections in all Dominican
cities where buyers descend in droves to make their last minute
purchases.

In contrast, the rifero does not purchase the government
issued tickets and he avoids both the expense and the security
of the national system. While there is no outlay for tickets,
the . rif eros must pay winners out of their own resources. The
national winners, on the other hand, redeem their tickets at
any. branch of the National Bank. If all of the rifero' s num-
bers are sold, this will bring him $25 for each series out of
which he must pay $19 to the three winners who get $14, $3> and

155

$2. The catch is that the rifero sells only between 305S and
605J of his numbers each week.

Riferos sell most of their numbers in the beginning of
the week on credit, but the numbers must be paid for by the
Sunday dravdng or they will not be paid off. Riferos note the
numbers they sell on a small piece of paper or, if they cannot
write, the buyer signs his name next to a number in a small
notebook. This notebook and pen, clipped into a shirt pocket,
make the male rifero an easily identifiable figure in any ,/
Dominican campo .

Riferos, in contrast to the quineleros, charge a flat
$.25 per number and may sell half a number for $.12 or $.13.
They thus undercut much of the business of the national lottery
which must offer additional prizes in the form of special
number combinations on the quinela which may win a house in
one of the government-built lottery subdevelopments (barrios
de la Loteria) . For this reason, the riferos' operation is
illegal and the sellers are subject to arrest ,and harrassment

which means that they must remain on good terms with the local

-,. 26
police.

As with the pulperia owner, the interaction of the rifero

with his clients has important social as well as economic

In Whyte's Street Corner Society a similar numbers game
is. described in urban Boston. There he describes the gradual
absorption of independent numbers men into a syndicate run on
a corporate style of organization. In Clear Creek, on the other
hand, the small scale remains, though it will be shown that most
riferos do work v;ith backers who are store owners or commercial
farmers, and one rifero works for a wealthy v/holesaler in Bonao.
In both cases backiiig is necessary because of the great fluctua-
tions in income from the numbers game and in both cases coopera-
tion from the' police is essential (V/hyte 1955: 115-146).

156

functions, which is reflected in the riferos' use of space.
The rifero is constantly ambulatory, spending the day going
from one house to another along a given route, entering those
kitchens where sales have been made in the past. He is offered
coffee by the woman of the house and gossip ensues; information
about social entanglements and economic fortune is exchanged.
The dissemination of information is one of the riferos' social
functions. After these preliminaries, the rifero asks v/hat
number is to be bought that week and the amount of chances to
be taken. This usually sparks a discussion of last week's
results, of one's own poverty and ill luck, and then the house-
holders' preferences for that week. Each persons plays his or
her own number, but women play less, having less access to cash,
If a fixed number is played, the rifero simply asks the number
of chances to be bought.

While the salesman does sell some chances along the road
in chance encounters, the bulk of his trade comes from the
route he follows. These routes are not exclusive; each rifero
has . his own particular pattern but overlap exists and most
households buy from at least two or three sellers in any one
week.

A rifero' s route is set by a number of factors. He sells,
first of all, in the households of his kinsmen, his neighbors,
his compadres, and his friends; that is, the route follows a
network of his personal relations. Thus, all of the 14 riferos
sold numbers in at least three of the small valleys which make
up the settlement while none crossed into Deep Gorge where few

157

have connections and where the length of the trip and the lack
of cash in that area would make the crossing unprofitable.
Nine rif eros, however, did sell in Black Stone, four in River,
and four in Bonao. A number of chances, roughly equal to the
amount sold in Clear Creek, is sold by riferos outside the
settlement.

A more important factor in determining the number of series
of 100 chances a rif ero may sell is the amount of capital
backing his sales. The rif ero* s business is such that his
clients must have complete faith that he is able to pay off
their winnings. Because there are weeks in which he loses
money, the rifero must have someone to back him should he lose
a great deal at once or a number of weeks in succession. Of
the ten riferos who are backed, seven are backed by store owners,
two by large comm.ercial farmers, and one by another rifero.
The largest rifero with some twenty series (2,000 n\imbers) to
sell each week is backed by a big wholesaler in Bonao. Backers
split profits and losses 50/50 but can be counted on to provide
any additional moneys to cover heavy losses.

. . One in every ten households in Clear Creek is headed by a
rifero. This number can be supported because of the tremendous
popularity of the lottery. Only a tiny minority of adults,
perhaps five or six in the settlement, never buy a ticket,
though they are joined each week by a complaining number who
do not have the money to play. Though to an outsider the
lottery may be denounced as a vice (vicio) it is the focus of
continual conversation and interest anywhere in the Republic.

15S

On a survey of 24 households done during January 1975 in a time
of year when little money was available, the average house-
hold v/agered $2.50 with a low of zero and a high of $11.35 •

Some persons have a fixed mxmber which they play each
week; others change according to hunches or dreams. Dream
interpretation centers around the identification of individuals
who appear in dreams. Once awake, the dreamer tries to find
out the number of their cedula (national identity card). The
last two digits of the cedula are the critical ones. ' Cedula
numbers are freely exchanged; a good rifero knows most of his
regular clients' identity numbers and can pass these along
as necessary. In addition, license plates, distances, omens,
and dates figure in the consideration of possible winners.
Diviners advertise their ability to predict a person's lucky
number and any native curer (curandero) worth his or her salt
will include a number along with the other services provided.

The amount that is won in the lottery, of course, depends
upon the number of . chances which are bought. It happens from
time to. time that ..persons will win several hundred dollars;
one neighbor of mine won over $400 on the Christmas lottery in
1973 with "{^7." He used this money to pay off his pulperia
debt, then" about $150, and bought several head of cattle. At

27

When I left the Dominican Republic in February of 1975

immigration agents at the airport v/anted to take my cedula from
me. I wanted to keep it, both as a momento and to avoid having
to purchase a new one should I return. They were unmoved, how-
ever, until I pointed out that the last two numbers on the card,
51, formed the number which I played each week in the lottery
and they must knov; that no Sje puede cambiar su numero (you can't
change your number). They immediately returned the card to me.

159

the same time he held a fiesta to celebrate; as is customary,
he gave the rifero lOfo of the amount which was won. It is more
common to win smaller amounts.

The importance of v/inning is that it can come in a great
block of money. Since each number is only $.25 and is bought
from three or four riferos, the outlay is relatively small.
If one plays regularly, one will win, though never win back
quite the amount which one loses.

The importance of the rifero lies in the ability to bulk
a large, number of small amounts of money into a large sum,
which, as was the case with my neighbor, enables him or her
to make a major purchase or wipe out, however temporarily, a

major debt .

The circulation of money, however, does not act as an_
income-leveling device, because individuals with much capital
do not necessarily play more than those who have less. In
fact, the reverse may be true. Of the 24 households mentioned
previously there was a small correlation between poverty and
propensity to play the lottery. In ranking the respondents
according to wealth based upon the size of their llanos holding,
it was found that the top 12 respondents controlled 77?^ of the
total amount of llanos owned by the group, while the bottom 12
controlled only 235^. The top half, however, played only GOfo
of the total spent on the lottery while the bottom half played

While there may be no redistribution of income from

^^If my own experience is typical, I spent roughly $35
on the rifa'over a year's period and won $5,' but the week "51"

wealthier to poorer, it has been said that the riferos' i

160

ncome

is subject to great fluctuation. For example, there may be a
week in which a rifera has sold only 30^ of her numbers and yet
all of the v/inning numbers are included in that 3O5S. In that
case, for each of her series of 100, she takes in $7.50 but
must pay out $19.00. On the other hand, she may sell 50^ of
her numbers and have none of the v/inning numbers included in
that total. In that case, she makes $12.50 per series. A
number of bad weeks in a row, however, may take whatever reserves
she may have and, once she defaults on a payment, no one in the
settlement would play with her again.

In the long run both the backer and the rifero can make
money, though the amount depends upon the general income in the
settlement and the number of riferos operating. It has been
stated that between 305^ and 60^ of the winning numbers are sold,
a profit of $9.00 to $1S.00 per week v/hich v/hen split v/ith the
backer would bring between $4.50 and $9.00 to the rifero.

There are factors which tend to keep the riferos earning
toward the bottom of this scale, namely, the relative ease v/ith
v/hich competitors can begin selling. Store owners and commer-
cial farmers are willing to stake nev/ entrants because they
are able to see some small, if erratic, return on their invest-
ment. If riferos begin selling more than 6(y/o of their numbers,
others will begin to sell. This v/as particularly noticeable

came in first position, I v/as out of the camoo and did not
purchase my regular numbers. This, of course, is part of the
reason I kept playing until I left the country.

161

during the fall of 1973 after a very successful bean harvest
when individuals began to hold raffles on pigs, bolts of cloth,
and watches and even small children sold numbers for one and
two centavos each. The number of regular rif eros at that time
increased to more than 20 and some who usually worked outside
the valley began to include Clear Creek on their rounds.

Forced to sell as high a percentage of his numbers as
possible, the rifero is seldom able to sell much over 50?^
though this increases around Christmas and at post-harvest
times before new riferos can enter the competition. Assuming
again that winnings in the long run are equally proportionate
to earnings and that he has a backer to pay, this means an
annual income of roughly $300. It is the unevenness of the
income flow, however, which is the major drawback. The day
laborer, at least, is assured of a meal of the prestige staples,
whereas the rifero and his household oscillate between feast
and famine.

Government V/orkers
In contrast to the riferos and the pulperia ovaiers, as
well as to the farmers in the settlement, there are five indivi-
duals in Clear Creek who receive monthly checks from the govern-
ment for services: tv/o forestry agents, two teachers, and one
alcalde (sheriff). Despite their official connections, the
alcalde and the forestry agents exercise little political power
in the settlement while the large farmers are, in fact, the main
force. The large farmers are referred to as the heads ( las

162

cabezas) of the settlement and it has been shovm that they
develop far ranging ties between themselves and small farmers
as well as daylaborers. The alcalde is himself a swidden fanner
who, living close by Deep Gorge, spends much of his official
time mediating between livestock ovmers and other swidden
growers whose fields are violated.

The appointment of such an alcalde appears to be a con-
scious effort to diffuse political strength in the campo. The
previous alcalde, a man who subsequently migrated to the United
States, had been a supporter of the Reformista party when an
opposing party won the local election in Constanza and he was
ousted. Then the present one was picked.

Like the forestry agents, the school teachers received
their present positions through patronage connections in
Constanza. The monthly salaries of the teachers, $90 per
month, are triple that of any of the other officials, including
the alcalde. However, whereas the forestry agents do little
other than accept their checks, the teachers are in their
school from 8:30 to 5:00 each day, charged with formally
educating some 80-90 students of whom about 65^ attend regu-
larly. As pointed out in Chapter one, most of these students,
especially after the consolidation of the schools, are children
of commercial farmers. It has also been mentioned that the
school channels children out of the settlement into urban
situations. The teachers feel that migration out of Clear
Creek is a good idea since they are quite prejudiced against
the rural settlement as a backward and unenlightened place,
in spite of its agricultural development.

163

Migrants
The migrant, like pulperia o',^,ers, government employees,
and riferos, also plays an important part in the increasingly
monetized economy of Clear Creek. Pulperia ovmers and riferos
as demonstrated above are of prime importance in the local cir-
culation of goods and money; riferos link households to one
another and pulperfas link households to the national economy.
The migrant, in turn, links the local settlement to both the
national and world economy by sending remittances and returning
periodically with gifts from urban centers. These gifts enter
into traditional reciprocal spheres of exchange.

Immigration as well as emigration plays a continuling role
in the settlement. As indicated in Chapter two, migrants from
other places were the original settlers of Clear Creek, and even
now migrants continue to come to look for new forest in Deep
Gorge. During my stay, tv;o households were set up there by
persons from the outside; one was a family which had been dis-
placed by hydroelectric development near Santiago (Gonzales
1972) .

.. . The pattern of such immigration is strongly influenced by
ties of kinship and reciprocity. Over the past seven years,
a narrow valley near Deep Gorge has been filled with some five
households who were given land by the alcalde who lives there
and claims much of the surrounding mountainside. His son-in-
law from Jaravacoa settled there and he, in turn, brought his
brothers and aging parents. Three other families, cousins to
a close neighbor, also moved in. Though the land was supposedly
sold to these households, only a tiny share of the price has

164

been paid. The alcalde organizes juntas (work parties) several
times a year in v.-hich the adult males of these households par-
ticipate; he does not reciprocate. It is his relation to them
as landgiver, rather than as political office holder, which
entitles him to such help. The main movement of migrants, hov;-
ever, is out of Clear Creek into urban centers.

The pattern of emigration also is influenced by ties of
kinship and reciprocity although the initial urge to migrate
is motivated by the desire for cash income. Furthermore, after
migrating, the worker tends to maintain strong ties with the
settlement. Often the migrant's choice of destination and job
is sharply influenced by information gained through personal
and kinship netv;orks. During my stay, some 40 individuals
left the settlement singly to look for work or to engage in
employment for periods of more than one month. These were
predominantly unmarried males, but females also went primarily
to work as domestic help in the homes of relatives or friends.
Ten households, in addition to the 40 individuals, also left
the settlement, most of them after floods hit the settlement
in August-September, 1974.

Males almost invariably work as unskilled daylaborers in
a variety of tasks; those v/ho go to Constanza work on the large
capitalist farms, but the rest unload trucks, help at construc-
tion sites, work in pulperias, sell lottery tickets, or become
street vendors. Very few of these individuals bring back any
regular remittances, though they are expected to bring gifts,
often consisting of clothing or sacks of rice and sugar.

165

Many residents of Clear Creek talk of their desire to
make money in the urban setting. Those who do migrate often
hope to get v/ork at the huge mind of Falconbridge, a Canadian
firm, located on the outskirts of Bonao, where the lowest paid
worker is paid triple the salary of a Clear Creek peon. On
very clear nights, the furnaces of the smelters light up the
sky to the south of the settlement; in a straight line the mine
is only some 20 miles distant. This display of power reinforces
the hopes of those who talk of working at the mine. Without
connections, however, few succeed in getting work at the mine
and no one from Clear Creek ever has.

While residents converse about the economic advantages of
migration, they also value the attractions and services offered
by the city. The cities are centers for significant institu-
tions: schools, hospitals, and movies while electricity,
running water, and general movimiento (action) are all viewed
as important benefits. They have strong feelings that life is
easier in the city.

At the same time, residents viev/ cities with some ambiva-
lence. They are dangerous places, dirty and hot in contrast
to Clear Creek which is cool and tranquil. Farmers who sell
produce in the city return v/ith tales of the tir;res (cheats)
whom one cannot trust. On the other hand, everyone in tb.e canipo
is said to be bound by ties of kinship and sentiment and there-
fore is considered trustworthy,

V/'r.en migration does not involve the removal of a whole
household which often means the dismantling of the house and

166

its reassembly on an urban lot, it is a gradual process. For
only about 25/<' of the 40 individuals who left singly, not as
households in 1974, was it their first time to work away from
the settlement. For some, their return had become just a visit;
their loyalties v;ere already shifted away from the campo. This
process begins v/hen multiple ties are established in the urban
setting so that activities of a social nature are carried out,
including the creation of conjugal alliances, as well as econo-
mic ones, that is, wage earning alliances.

Migrants who return to Clear Creek after some time attempt
to emphasize their nev; sophistication. If they have only come
for a visit, they v/ear their best clothes, abstain from agri-
cultural v/ork, and converse at length about their city's advan-
tages. Furthermore, they bring gifts of "clothing and toys to
the household members where they visit. But, as the day for
their return drav;s near, they make it known that they are in
need of sacks of viveres v;hich they can take back — since such
produce costs dearly in the pulperias of the capital and the
other cities. Residents note these requests for yuca and sv:eet
potatoes with some amusement, but if the visitor has been
generous v/lth small gifts, then the request is not denied. In
addition, when visits are made by residents of Clear Creek to
the city, such gifts of viveres are always taken.

. Females are often of great importance in v;hat might be
called a kinship chain migration, since through marriage a
woman may obtain the benefits of migration for herself while
bridging the rural-urban gap for her v/hole family. Three

167

migrants to New York from Clear Creek have been v;omen who have
used the opportunity to bring their families with them. One
married a man from Bonao who subsequently migrated to Brooklyn.
He was able to call for her, and she, in turn, v/as able to
bring her father, Javier, there as well. Later he was able to
arrange for his wife and the rest of his children to join them.
This type of cliain migration is commonly practiced by Dominican
migrants to the United States. Today there are eight members
of this family and one member from each of two other Clear Creek
households in New York.

Javier, the father of this family in Brooklyn, has the
largest house in the settlement, which sits alone on some
three hectares of bottomland, all devoted to pasture. It has
its own electricity generated by a small gasoline engine and
even contains a television. It is occupied for about four weeks
each year when Javier returns with his v/ife or daughter, either
at Christm.as or in the summer. His last visit v;as in August,
1974, when he came dovm to check on his cattle after his New
York unemployment compensation had run out. He formerly served
as alcalde but was ousted because of his party affiliation.
Nevertheless, he remains one of the leaders of the settlement
and was the only one, for example, who was able to organize
a junta (v;ork party) to v;ork on the road which was in a bad
state of repair.

Thus, in contrast to the present alcalde who only calls
iuntas to benefit his ovm personal swidden activities, Javier

168

is able to organize persons for projects involving the well
being of the whole settlement. Since he lives in New York,
he is removed from many of the local disputes and therefore
he is able to maintain a posture of neutrality. At the same
time, he maintains good relations with his widespread kinsmen
and friends by bringing generous gifts when he returns. For
example, on each visit, he arrives with about $500 US in cash,
clothing, watches and other goods v;hich he distributes to
relatives and those persons who look after his animals and
property. His generosity is well known and his family, friends,
and acquaintances often feel free to request items from him on
his future visits. In addition, Javier has a fine natural
speaking ability which he has used to deal with influential
people in Jaravacoa, Constanza, and Santo Domingo to try to
obtain benefits for the settlement. For example, he tried to
get outside, aid in the construction of a new school. He speaks
of coming to live in Clear Creek permanently but acknowledges
that his children would never return.

Another woman also migrated to New York in the mid 1960*s
with the sole purpose of making money to invest back in the
settlement. Although she already ovmed a pulperia, with her
earnings as a garment worker, she v;as able to purcliase cattle,
land, and a pickup truck, thus diversifying her economic acti-
vities. Her daughter eventually follov/ed her to Nev; York,
leaving behind her own husband and four children.

Migration to New York is, of course, a very small part

169

of total migration from the settlement. Although migrants to
New York, as shown above, are important beyond their numbers,
most m.igration from Clear Creek is primarily to Bonao, followed
by Jaravacoa and Santo Domingo. At the same time, the New York
migrant sharply highlights the functions of a migrant vis-a-vis
those v;ho remain in the campo. The migrant is, first of all,
a funnel for industrial goods and cash and processed foods into
the local population. Even after a short trip to Bonao, for
example, the returnee is greeted, after the preliminary saluta-
tions, with "Que me trajo?" (What have you brought me?). The
response, if there is nothing, is "Que me guardo?" (What have
you saved for me?) . Participation in this reciprocity, especially
for those who are av;ay for long periods, is a means whereby
migrants maintain good standing in the settlement, while those
who remain can obtain highly desired industrial goods and
processed foods.

Returned migrants, however, do not merely give gifts,
but they purchase resources in Clear Creek such as land, cattle,
and houses. The settlement, in short, becomes a place of
investment in cases v/here the migrant is successful in accumu-
lating capital. In Javier's case, his investments have more
political overtones than those of the woman who used the bene-
fits of migration to diversify her economic roles. He is inter-
ested in maintaining a position as a settlem.ent leader, a role
which perhaps compensates for his lov; status job in a Manhattan
lunchroom as a busboy.

Altliough in most cases migrants are forced to sell land or

170

cattle to finance the move, particularly where this involves
an entire household, migrants ideally prefer to maintain land
and homes in the sett].ement as an alternative should the urban
experience not pay off. The rural plot represents donde traba-
jar (a place to work) which can provide subsistence if all else
fails.

Migration, then, represents a system of potential oscilla-
tion; the migrant is a person v;ho moves from one environment to
another as conditions warrant. Javier, for example, returned
to Clear Creek in March, 1975, to do some commercial farming;
his son told me on a recent visit I took to Brooklyn that he
had gone to get away from the bad air in New York. Thus the
migrant uses the two sets of resources to balance one another.
Gifts and purchases transfer urban resources to the campo v;here
they are exchanged for its products, whether they are sacks of
viveres or political prestige.

Migrants, as much as middlemen, promote a two-way flow
between rural and urban areas. Their remittances and gifts
com.e in exchange for ongoing reciprocities. In addition to
this, they represent an enlargement of the settlement's resource
potential. Others often follow them to their destination, as
is the case with the New York migrants who slowly link their
kinsmen into the nev; environment.

The functions of traditional migration into the settle-
m.ent, including the search for new resources, the supply of
the settlement of origin with those resources, the encourage-
ment of kinsmen to join in that same pattern of exploiting

171

resoui'ces, and finally the removal of the household to the new
setting are strikingly parallel to the functions of rural-
urban migration. The old links are not severed, although over
time they fade av;ay, but they always provide the potential
exploitation of an alternative environxaent .

The central point of this discussion is that the migrant,
as well as the middleman, the rifero, and the government worker,
provides economic links of critical importance to the settle-
ment. The migrant, like the middleman, links urban and rural
centers but more through the establishment of reciprocities
outside the market economy. V/here direct investment by migrants
occurs, this leads to a redistribution of funds, at best tempor-
arily, from the urban to rural sectors. Furthermore, the
migrant comes to represent an outpost for the settlement in a
particular urban setting, an individual who can be follov;ed
and joined if his venture is successful.

Summary
This chapter has shown that there are significant economic
roles in Clear Creek settlement which link both commercial and
swidden producers and their households to one another and to
the outside. The introduction of commercial agriculture to the
settlement has, owing to the greater amount of cash in circu-
lation, caused these roles to be widely adopted. The pulperia
owner links households to goods and foods produced outside of
the settlement. The rifero links households in a cash flow
wiiich amass small amounts of money into large scorns, allowing
such debts as are created in the pulperia to be periodically

172

wiped out. Of the employees* links, the strongest link is
forged to the national society Vjy the salaried teachers who
encourage students to migrate out of the settlement. Migrants,
in turn, link urban areas and Clear Creek through the exchange
of gifts and investments.'

V/hen linked to commercial farming, the pulperia and the rifa
(illegal lottery) serve to diversify the interests of large
growers. Many of the pulperia owners are commercial farmers
and it has been shown that others serve as backers for riferos .
The r if ere, in turn, offers an alternative to persons who other-
wise v/ould be peons . Government employment on the other hand
appears to be purposefully kept from large growers so as to
prevent the concentration of political pov/er in the same hands
which informally control the power in the settlement.

Some migrants from the settlement have gone to Nev/ York
where their slum apartments are in marked contrast to the large
block houses v/hich they construct in the campo. But the majority
of migrants leave the settlement to enter into occasional and
lowpaying urban employment vmich provide the only opportunities
for persons lacking in skills and education. As a funnel for
goods ar.d information, however, migrants form significant links
between Clear Creek and the outside.

CHAPTER SIX
THE PATTERN OF AGRICULTUPJVL DEVELOPMENT

The effects of agricultural development in Clear Creek
can best be understood by analyzing economic roles in light
of changes in adaptive strategies. This chapter, therefore,
discusses the material already presented on roles and stra-
tegies but does so taking into account more recent changes
in the local economy. These changes, including increased
emigration and abandonment of commercial farming by some small
growers, were partially brought about by a high rate of infla-
tion and a disastrous harvest in October and November of 1974.
But, while appearing to be short term adjustments, these
changes are, in fact, conditioned by long term constraints in
the environment, the political system and the economy on the
direction of agricultural development in the settlement.
This chapter explains what these constraints are and how
they encourage the consolidation of land by large farmers
and outside interests and the adoption of other economic roles
by small farmers v;ho are able to maintain neither commercial
nor swidden agriculture. This discussion shov/s that the
benefits of agricultural development accrue to outsiders and
a limited number of the residents of the settlement.

This chapter, then, makes explicit the interrelation-
ships among the two adaptive strategies and the new economic
roles in Clear Creek, as a part of the analysis of agricultural

173

174

development. It is necessary, thcreiore, to begin by revievdng
the major aspects of the strategies and roles in order to pro-
ceed with a discussion of the connections among them.

The traditional adaptive strategy, swidden agriculture,
was first practiced by a frontier population v/hich exploited
what appeared to be an unlimited supply of forest. Swidden
farmers converted forest into productive cropland which was
planted for only two years in a 12 year cycle, followed by
ten years of fallowing. After three such cycles, the clearing
was abandoned to rough pasture upon which a few animals
grazed. The major part of Clear Creek, as well as surrounding
sections, is today in such pasture which is now enclosed for
the cattle of large grov/ers (Figure 3)» The old system of
land tenure, terrenos comuneros, stressed flexible access to
new forest which became settled by isolated households. Out-
side of sun and fire, energy for the conversion of the
natural environment into natural resources was supplied by
the household. The household formed the mode of production
and because it also formed the unit of consumption, the flov/
of energy in this adaptive strategy v;as relatively closed.
Though related to the outside through the market exchange of
some produce for a few metal tools and some staples such as
salt, the adaptive strategy was exercised by self-contained
households which, except for labor exchange, supplied their
own needs. This adaptive strategy became increasingly diffi-
cult to follow as virgin forests disappeared.

The new adaptive strategy of commercial farming, in

175

contrast, allowed those v/ho practiced it to acquire cash and
buy consumer goods as well as staple supplies. This type of
agriculture which came to be practiced in Clear Creek in the
late 1960's v.'as based on the intensive utilization of irrigated
fixed fields. Another factor in the adoption of the strategy
of commercial farming v;as change in the land tenure system. The
enclosure of large sections of bottomland was encouraged by
the government edict which stated that animals, not agricul-
tural fields, had to be fenced. The enclosure v/as encouraged
also by the utilization of barbed v;ire. As a result, small
farmers* access to bottomland and open grazing in the hills
•was restricted at a time when the population was becoming more
concentrated there.

The adaptive strategy of commercial farming, in contrast
to that of swidden agriculture, relies heavily on forms of
energy v;hich come from industrialized society. As a result,
the adoption of the strategy by a significant proportion of
the population of Clear Creek created a fundamental change in
the relation of the settlement to the outside. Fertili::ers,
pesticides, irrigation flumes, and other tools were all supplied
from outside the settlement and could be obtained only by
entering deeply into market e changes before planting could
begin. These transactions were based upon credit and
cash. Commercial agriculture needed these inputs because it
utilised fixed fields and because its produce needed forms
of defense and maintenance which v/ere unnecessary in swidden
agriculture due to the diversity of fields and crops.

176

Commercial farmers also relied upon trucks, gasoline, and
intermediaries to market their crops v/hereas swidden farmers
formerly merely carried subsistence crops from conuco to the
kitchen. The energy flow became m.ore open and dependent upon
the outside.

The adoption of the new adaptive strategy brought v;ith
it a new division of labor, discussed in chapter four. The
mode of production v;as altered by the utilization of hired
labor as a response to the general monetization of the economy,
though the degree of reliance upon hired labor varied con-
siderably with the amount and intensity of production. In
addition, new economic roles became specialized occupations
achieved in their own right apart from the traditional ascrip-
ti^ve household division of labor, based upon sex, age, and
marital status. Thus, women who were formerly confined to
the sphere of the kitchens, and in sv;idden farming, to the
field, have the opportunity to take on these roles. The
wi.despread adoption of such economic roles has also been
encouraged by the monetization of the economy due to commer-
cial farming. Roles, such as pulperia owner, rifero, and
migrant, reflect the need for links between the settlement
and the outside to facilitate the flow of cash and goods.
When these roles are adopted by a commercial farmer, they
provide a means whereby his household is able to diversify
its energy and capital so that he extracts a small profit
at each of the significant transfer points in the flow of
casli and goods. Thus, the commercial farmer who is able to

rs

177

buy a truck can cut his transportation costs by transporting
the produce of other commercial growers. If he owns a store,
he can also make a small profit on the spendings of the peones
whom he pays, v;hile his cattle provide a source of ready cash
when needed.

Ramon, for example, is a large commercial farmer who has
already been mentioned as an important middleman in connecting
small farmers to the supplier in Constanza. He is a fairly
successful commercial farmer since he has sufficient land to
plant a diversity of crops as well as keep thirty head of
cattle. But his middleman roles allow him the advantage of
additional profits at various transfer points. He uses his
truck to get supplies for his farm as well as his pulperia.,
located on Clear Creek* s main road. He markets his own produce
along with that of small farmers at considerable profit to
himself. During the planting season he hires as many as 12
peones v;ho buy in his store. As a result, his family has a
distinctly superior life style. His v;ife has a paid domestic
helper, the only one in Clear Creek. The family lives in a
large and comfortable block house. The oldest of his six
children goes to school in River.

In contrast to the advantages obtained by such multiple
role playing, the adoption of one such role as a specialized
enterprise may leave an individual or household in a constantly
marginal economic position. Those individuals who contribute
only labor to the playing of the role, since they lack access
to land or credit, are most vulnerable. Tiie sharp differences

178

in economic security betv-/een the rif'ero and his backer, dis-
cussed in chapter five demonstrate what a tenuous position
such specialization can create. The rifero has to v;ork up
to six days v/eekly to gain an amount equal to that of his
backer v/ho supplies the needed capital in case of loss. Most
peones and riferos can supplement these activities with some
form of subsistence farming, tending house gardens as do
most residents, but the alternatives open to them for earning
additional cash are limited.

Cucuru, for example, is a rifero who supplements his
earnings v/ith subsistence farming. Cucuru has only three-
tenths of a hectare of land which he was given by his father
when he retired from farming due to failing health. Because
he is a rifero and doesn't have time for agricultural work,
his two older sons farm for him. (One of them occasionally
v;or*ks as a daylaborer foi" an uncle and some other farmers.)
Cucuru spends five out of seven days on his route through
Nuts, Pretty Creek, Goat and Black Stone, trying to sell the
500 chances he has to sell each week. He works on his own
and has no backer. Cucuru has a very low income level of
approximately $300 per year and is deeply in debt at Ramon's
store.

Between the extremes of the large grov/er and the rifero
or the peoii is the middle ground occupied by those farmers
v;ho are able to practice small scale commercial farming on
holdings which are less than two hectares. Of the 126 house-
holds in Clear Creek there are 49 which practice small commer-

179

cial farming. This 395^ of households shows how broadly based
agricultural development has been in tlie settlement. These
small commercial farmers are sometimes able to improve their
profits by utilizing household labor and forming partnerships
. ith other small grov/ers. They must rely on middlemen like
Ramon to provide them with marketing and other services, and
reduce their potential earnings.

Niku, for example, is a small commercial farmer who has
1.2 hectare of bottomland on which he plants tomatoes (with
beans) in March and beans (followed by corn) in August. Niku
relies for much of the necessary labor upon his two older
sons, one of whom attends school in River and v/ho helps on
the farm on weekends. Niku prefers not to have a peon de la
casa, but instead forms a partnership for one other crop
during the year with another farmer who has only .4 hectare.
Niku donates the land, the other his labor and both of them
split the costs and profits. Niku keeps a few cattle on the
hillside land which he holds still in association v;ith his
brothers though their father died many years before. He buys
about $1.00 worth of numbers each v/eek from Cucuru who is his
compadre and buys his supplies and markets produce through
Ramon v/ho is not .

By combining household with hired help and by making
connections to suppliers and wholesalers through local inter-
mediaries, farmers like Niku have been able to utilize commer-
cial farming technology. The speed of the adoption of the
commercial adaptive strategy by many small holders has resulted

1^0

from their rapid recognition of the potentials of irrigated
production and their ability to make the necessary economic
linkages. Connections to the international market, however,
have made farmers dependent upon a v.-hole nev; set of variables.
Changes in the market, as v;ell as in the natural environment
of Clear Creek, are making it increasingly difficult for
farmers to continue small scale operations.

The difficulties of small farmers bring into bold relief
the constraints v.'hich favor large scale operations. These
constraints, environmental, economic, and political in nature,
are producing a pattern of development which closely follows
that of the Valley of Const anza v/here the consolidation of
holdings by colonists and a few Dominicans has resulted in
the relegation of most of the local population to the position
of peones or otb.er poorly remunerated economic roles.

The more dramatic of the short term factors affecting
agriculture in Clear Creek in 1974 v;ere the heavy rains which
caused severe flooding in August and September and which
destroyed most of the fall bean harvest. Whereas in the fall
of 1973 over 700 quint ales were harvested, there were only
100 quint ales in the follov.'ing year. Though floods had
occurred earlier in the valley's history, none had risen
as high nor caused as much damage..

Both commercial and sv.ddden farmers recognize that a
major factor in the severity of the floods was the removal
of forest by slash and burn methods in the past few years
in the Clear Creek watershed, particularly in steep gulleys

181

which border the valley bottom. Residents realize that the
cutting dov/n of forest causes severe runoff in the hills
during the intense rains to v/hich the region is subjected.
But although the swidden farmers watched their ovm harvests
wash dovm the slopes of their conucos, this had happened
before and they suspected it v;ould happen again.

After the flood waters receded, only one holding took
preventive measures for possible floods in the future. The
owners of the flower-growing enterprise in Goat which had
lost several thousand pesos worth of flowers and plants had
a stout three foot wall built parallel to the creek to partly
hold back rising water in times to come.

The floods occurred in Clear Creek at a time when the
farmers were being subjected to inflationary pressures both
in terms of the supplies v/hich they had to buy and the food
which they bought. Between January 1974 and February 1975 >
the cost of food in the local pulperias had increased by
22.5^, taking an average of twenty items most frequently
sold. Rice rose 25^, sugar 55^> and cooking oil lOOfo.
During the same period the price of a hundred pound sack, of
fertilizer went from $6.25 to $14.00 and the price of pesti-
cides and insecticides also more than doubled.

Many of these inci'eases stem from abrupt changes in the
international market v/hich saw the spectacular price rise
in petroleum as well as in other coimnodities v/hich were in
short supply due to drought and crop failure. While the
price of beans rose along with these other commodities,

16:

farmers could not take advantage of the rise because their
crops had been destroyed. Prices of other produce had made
small profits for farmers during the first season of the
yeai', but these had already been spent by the fall of 1974 •

Not only v;ere the prices for agrochemicals high, supplies
were difficult to locate. Farmers who were used to buying
on credit had particular difficulty in locating supplies.
To obtain fei'tilizer for the bean crop (which was subsequently
destroyed), for example, small farmers had to have their
names put on a list in the supply store in Constanza and the
orders were filled only as shipments were received.

The combination of inflation and floods was felt sharply
throughout the fall of 1974 and into the nev; year and all
households were affected. A sign of the times was that the
fiestas normally given by large growers and pulperia ovmers
began a full ten days later than they had the previous year.
One of the pulperia ovmers in Clear Creek with a truck had
bought a large order of fertilizer and supplies for resale
to small farmers before the floods in August and September.
Because she bought on credit, she defaulted on more than
$3,000 v;orth of debts and v;as forced to sell her pickup.
Ramon, the large grov/er, sold a nu^mber of cattle to pay off
his ov.-n debts, and, then, using his truck was able to find
a cheapei" supplier in Jaravacoa than in Constanza. This
supplier did not have enough supplies for the small grov;ers
whom Kamon usually brought to Constanza. Cucucu, the rifero,
sold fewer numbers at the same price while his son went to

183

Constanza to look for full time work as a peon. Niku, the
small commercial farmer, had, by February of 1975, planted
a small seedbed for tom.atoes but still had not obtained credit
to buy the needed agrochemicals nor did he know of where he
could get them. So, he v/as thinking of trying to plant corn
from seed left over from the previous year.

In February 1974, only 50)^^ of the small farmers who had
planted commercial crops the previous year had been able to
find credit and supplies for the new season then beginning.
Some farmers, like Niku, planned to continue farming on a
more subsistence basis while others v;ere leaving the settle-
ment entirely. Between November of 1974 and February of 1975
some eight households moved out of Clear Creek, one to Jara-
vacoa, one to Santo Domingo, and six to Bonao. In addition,
some fifteen single males, like Cucuru's son, left to look for
casual labor elsev;here. Unlike these workers, however, the
removal of households represented a permanent move, since
single males often oscillate between urban and rural employment

These households represented 6.$^ of the total popula-
tion of the campo at the time of their removal. No one in
the settlement could ever remember such a large number leaving
at once. All but one had been engaged in small commercial
production for which they did not have credit to continue in
the coming year. V/hile a fev; of the members of these house-
holds talked about returning eventually to Clear Creek, most
made the move final by taking do\vT. their houses, loading the
walls and wooden supports onto rental trucks, and transporting

1£!4

them to their new homes. One such household was that of
Niku's brother, his sister-in-lav;, and their nine children,
all under I3 years old. "Well," said Niku's wife to me
watching them tear down their house, "God forgive me for
saying it, but I am not sorry. Now there is more for us
who remain."

It has been shov/n that Bonao has long been the main city
for rural-urban movement from Clear Creek so this pattern of
migration is, of course, not a new one. Though these emigrants
did not initially sell their holdings, they were expected to
do so within a year or two. It has been shown that the
selling of land rights and the giving up of inheritance to
those v/ho remain has also long been part of the pattern
whereby some of the pressure on the land is alleviated.
V/hat is nev/, hov/ever, is while the land is being abandoned
by such households, other holdings are being bought or
consolidated by large local farmers like Ramon or by outside
interests. In 1974 rights to nearly twelve hectares of
bottomland v;ere purchased either by outside firms or by
flower firms in Santo Domingo; the average price was $600
per hectare. In most instances, the previous owner had
already emigr-ated, while in others the money was taken and
used tov/ard the purchase of land or a small pulperia in the
urban setting. In one case an outside florist firm hired
the farmer as a salaried manager of the operation.

Foi" those farmers v/Iio were leaving, a return to sub-
sistence or swidden agriculture v.-as neither feasible nor

18 5

desirable. Involvement in the cash economy had led them to
consider themselves as modern farmers to whom swidden agri-
culture was a brutish and unrev;arding (in monetary terms)
strategy. At the same time, a return to swidden farming was
becoming an increasingly undesirable alternative compared
to entering a whole new urban environment. The urban area,
with its schools, offices, factories and its electricity and
movimiento offers a whole new set of resources available for
exploitation.

The fact that alternatives to large scale commercial
agriculture in Clear Creek are being eliminated may be seen
as a result of the operation of long term constraints which
are operating in the settlement. These environmental, socio-
economic and political constraints are considered in turn to
show some wider implications about the effect of agricultural
development upon the local population.

Environmental conditions force a sharp choice between
swidden and irrigation farming in Clear Creek. It has been
shown in chapter two that the fertile but thin valleys of the
settlement make a distinct contrast to the surrounding steep
hills. Another strategy employed in the region is that of
dryland farming which represents a condensed cycle of a year
of cropping followed by one or two years of fallow (V/alker
1972). Because these hills are, according to residents, too
sheer and too infertile for farming and because valley bottom-
land is used for irrigated production, dryland farming is
not utilized except for the subsistence house gardens. Else-

186

where, for example in River, peanuts ai^ grown under these
conditions with the direction of a quasi-governmental corpora-
tion. But in Clear Creek such a system, which might act as
a buffer between the extensive slash and burn strategy and
intensive irrigation is not v/idely employed, though small
farmers may turn to it in the future.

The higher level of technology in irrigation agriculture
lessens the stringency of the environmental constraints which
operate against the svndden and dryland farming. Irrigation
provides a technique for avoiding the limitations of a tem-
porary drought and fertilizer overcomes some of the limita-
tions of a depleted soil. Environmental constraints, there-
fore, limit the utility of the adaptive strategy of swidden
agriculture much more than that of irrigated farming.

In earlier chapters, it has been sho\vn that the main
environmental constraint in swidden farming is the lack of
virgin land. Virgin forest is preferred by farmers who claim
that secondary grovfth makes possible much lower yields. The
diversity of crops and clearings utilized by the slash and burn
techniques enables a household to compesnate for poor soil,
erosion, and pests. But the adaptive strength of this diver-
sity is predicated upon the continual clearing of new conucos
which has become increasingly difficult owing to the destruc-
tion of natural forest in the secciSn.

Furthermore, the forest which does remain is located
at some distance from the majority of households in the
settlement. In addition, areas v.'hich might otherTi-zise grow

187

back into secondary forest are cut and burned over to provide
for cattle pasture. This factor, of course, reinforces the
need for virgin forest. Fanners who practice swidden are
located in the upper reaches of Pines or Nuts or Goat v;here
clearings can be made v/ithin an hour and a half of the house.
For others to choose to practice swidden v/ould require even-
tually moving into the more remote areas of Blue Mountain
and Deep Gorge, repeating the form of the first settlement

of Clear Creek itself. There are few households in Clear

30
Creek who would choose to do so,' though it has been stated

that occasionally households from elsewhere do migrate to

these areas.

These constraints on the availability of forest mean
that swidden farming, in the long term, is of limited dura-
tion to commercial agriculture, though it will probably
continue to support a progressively smaller proportion of
the population for one or two m.ore decades.

As pointed out above, the environmental constraints
on commercial agriculture are less severe than those on
swidden farming. Flooding is the most harsh constraint,
one v/hj.ch is certain to devastate crops in the future unless
there is some program of refoestation undertaken on a wide
scale basis. In addition, pest buildup, poor drainage, soil

-^ It should be noted that opposition to such a movement
often comes from v;omen and children who fear the isolated and
"backward" (atrasado) circumstances of such a life, av;ay from
the clusters in waich they live and amenities o£ the pulperia,
chui'cli and scliool.

I&&

depletion, and pesticide residues are other serious environ-
mental problems v;hich corrar.ercial fanners face. However, they
are problems v/hich can, to some extent, be dealt vd.th through
the application of various technologies.

An example of the ability of coirunercial farmers to cope
with environmental constraints through technology occurred
during my stay. Two large farmers learned that soil analyses
could be done through their agricultural supplier if they
each brought in samples and paid a $5.00 fee. The samples
were sent to a laboratory in Santo Domingo. After doing so,
they v;ere told that their soil needed lime and organic matter
such as rice husks and chicken manure. Since the growers
owned trucks, they could, after taking produce to Santo
Dom.ingo, return loaded wdth these substances which could be
bought cheaply in Bonao. This example emphasizes the point
that large growers and outside corporations with capital
and transportation are able to acquire information and act
upon it to overcome limitations which continue to affect
small grov/ers. Thus, soil depletion becomes, for them, a
lesser environmental constraint, a factor which can be
managed and controlled if the proper resources are available.

Economic constraints on agriculture in Clear Creek
markedly favor large commercial enterprises. V/hereas high
caloric retui'ns to swidden agriculture assure it will remain
the most efficient system for households to exploit the
reamining forest, this strategy will play an increasingly
marginal role in the settlement's agriculture because the

1£59

v/oods are almost exhausted. The reason why the small commer-
cial farm will also play a marginal role will now be examined.

The distinctive feature of commercial agriculture has
been shovm to be its heavy reliance upon outside sources of
energy to produce a crop and outside markets to consume it.
The commercial farmer, therefore, becomes involved in a web
of socio-economic relationships which the large farmer can
manipulate and control more easily than the small farmer,
through access to credit, land, and labor.

Large grov;ers, as mentioned previously, have easier
access to cheap government credit than small growers. This
credit often is used for the purchase of land (either urban
or rural), cattle, consumer goods, and the paying off of
higher interest bearing debts, rather than being used directly
in the farming enterprise. In addition, greater contact with
informal lenders, wholesalers, suppliers, may result in the
large growers receiving lower terms or other fringe benefits.

Because of this access to credit and the larger volume
of their sales, large farmers and outsiders are able to buy
land moi^e easily when it is for sale. It should be remem-
bered from an earlier discussion that no one in Clear Creek
actually "owns" the land, rather it is rights and improvements
in land which are sold, the government retaining the legal
control. Thus, land sells more cheaply than it would if
titles v/ere held. For a small farmer, the $S00 price of a
hectare is a huge sum, but it is not for an outsider or
large grower.

190

Until 1974, this consolidation had occurred primarily
in terms of the bottomland, but in the last sale made in the
settlement before I left, a large tract of hillside pasture,
some of it only partly cleared, was sold with the bottomland.
Several of the commercial farmers see this as the beginning
of a trend in which the hills will be taken over by highly
capitalized ranching interests which will be able to put in
improved grasses and stock.

They see the influx of cattle interests as a response
to government confiscations of large arable holdings devoted
to pasture elsewhere in the republic. The government then
forms colonies on the former estates and distributes parcels
of land to landless urban and rural populations. The former
ovmers of such holdings would be forced to develop other
holdings, in areas such as Clear Creek where the hills are
officially described as suitable only for pasture or forest.
Already some modern ranches, belonging to old and new members
of the Dominican upper class and to some foreigners, have
been established closer to Constanza and to Bonao.

Large growers, particularly those controlled by outsiders,
areable to treat labor as a simple energy input in the pro-
duction process. By minimizing their involvement witli their
workers, their costs are kept low. Those farmers who are
unable to separate themselves from their workers, as the
case with Fiamon and his nephew, are liable for greater expense
than otherv/ise.

In addition to labor, there is another distinct advantage

191

of the outside corporation over even the large commercial
farmer. The large growers, in spite of attempts to limit
the size of their families and to educate their children to
leave the settlement must eventually divide their land among
their children, usually, as pointed out above, among the
male children who remain in the settlement. In this way
they fulfill their role as providers for their offspring.
Unfortunately, v/ithin a generation, the consolidated holdings
must again be divided. But for corporations and firms on
the outside, this does not hold true. The land is held
intact though the ovmers may change .

This greater access to credit, land, and labor gives
large farmers and especially outside firms the ability to
diversify their investments in order to gain better control
over the flow of goods and cash through the settlement.
Thus we find distinct connections between large holdings and
other forms of enterprise. For example, there are 12 holdings
in the settlement which have more than two hectares; of these
12, three are holdings whose landrights are held by outsiders.
These holdings constitute only S>v^ of the total holdings, ' but
include 435^ of the irrigable land. The ovmers of these
parcels control 755^ of the motor vehicles, SOfo of the gaso-
line pumps, and the tv;o largest stores. In addition, they
serve as backers for 20/' of the rif ero numbers in Clear Creek.
In marked contrast are the group of smallest holdings, those
witli .5 hectare or less, which are held by 73 households or
56^ of the total number of holdings. These holdings include

192

only l6fS of the irrigable land, and the households have none
of the motor vehicles nor gasoline pumps. All of the riferos
come from households in this latter category.

In addition to environmental and economic constraints,
political factors also favor the emergence of large scale
enterprises. The government encourages the abandonment of
subsistence activities in favor of the cash sphere. Some-
times goverrjiiental actions in this direction are favored by
farmers v;ho deliberately choose to abandon subsistence acti-
vitic:s in favor of cash-producing ones since they desire cash
incomes to purchase consumer goods and staples. Thus, the
government's action to build the road in 196? is viewed as
a major boon to the settlement by all of the residents who
consider it not only for its economic benefit but for the
fact that it has connected them to the rest of the country.
But, at the same time, the household's self-s\ifficiency is
often undercut by such actions v;hich increase its reliance
upon low-paying but cash producing employment.

Another example of governmental actions favoring large
scale firms occurred during the time of Trujillo. Several
small mills (trapiches) in Clear Creek which were operated
by hand produced a crude form of sugar. V/hen the dictator
expanded his ovni operations in the sugar industry (Crassv/eller
1966), he imposed a tax on these mills which made it impos-
sible for them to operate since they produced only small
amounts for sale. In the same manner, homemade liquor and
beer were banned to increase revenues from taxes on m.anufac-

193

tured spii'its.

Other political constraints v/hich affect the local
economic picture include major laws which prohibit slash
and burn agriculture and lottery selling. The farmers of
Clear Creek do realize the destructiveness of sv/idden
agriculture; the floods gave dramatic proof of that in their
own settlement. At the same time, sv/idden farming continues
to exist either in conjunction with commercial farming or
as an alternative to it as a means of providing household
subsistence to those who are able to exploit the remaining
forest. On the local level, therefore, the interests of the
individual household are placed above those of the "national
interest," especially v:hen the "national interest'-' is often
identified and defined as the personal benefit of office
holders. Hence, most residents interpret laws against the
cutting of trees as evidence that the government does not
v;ant or allow poorer households to work, but prefers them
to be idle (haragan) and vagrant ( vagabundo) .

The effect of such laws is that, combined vrith environ-
mental constraints, households are increasingly being forced
to abandon subsistence-oriented activities v;hile economic
factors prohibit them from entering into commercial or other
cash-producing agricultural activities. Thus, tliey are
caught between two systems and the only real alternative left
is to become unskilled laborers working for cash v/ages.
Thus, they enter the national and international market at the
very bottom of the economic ladeer. Even here, some of their

1%

activities, being a rifero or making charcoal for sale, are
illegal. The total effect of such legislation is to encourage
migration of unskilled and uneducated workers to the city
v/here cash may be more easily sought, though not necessarily
found.

The cumulative effect of these constraints on agricul-
ture in Clear Creek, therefore, is to promote a form of
development which results in the consolidation of the means
of production in the hands of a few large growers and outside
firms. The process is, however, far from complete, but by
early 1975, it was well under way. It, therefore, appears
certain that without any significant alteration the small
farmers of the settlement will gradually be absorbed into
the national economy, not as producers, but as marginal
laborers, many of whom will be in urban areas. If the birth
rate is not significantly affected by the adoption of birth con-
trol methods as discussed earlier, this will mean the growing
division of the population into those few who control resources
and those who sell their labor as one of the resources.
Rural depopulation would not be a likely result.

It appears, therefore, that those who receive the bene-
fits of development are those who are able to control the
sources and exchange of goods, energy, and cash. This group
includes a tiny minority of the total population of Clear
Creek as well as some absentee owners in the city. The rewards
to this segment are perhaps symbolized by the expensive
plastic flov/ers v-zliich are kept dusted in the modern rural

195

homes of the large growers of Clear Creek, while the absentee
owners and their middle class clients enjoy even more expen-
sive fresh gladiolas and roses grown in the settlement.

CHAPTER SEVEN
ALIERNATIVE PATTERiNS OF DEVELOPI^NT

One result of agricultural development in Clear Creek
is the growing concentration of the means of production in
the hands of a few large growers and outside firms. This
pattern is already evident in the Valley of Constanza v;here
foreign colonists and a fev^ Dominican growers control almost
all of the arable land (Walker 1972) . Nevertheless, there
are alternatives to the growing economic inequality in Clear
Creek which would more evenly distribute the benefits and
the costs of development. This short chapter outlines some
of these alternatives.

Any development plan for an area like Clear Creek must
provide for. more intensive utilization of the hills. Small
scale ranching schemes are being tried out under government
auspices in similar ecological zones closer to the Haitian
frontier. These schemes involve the distribution of small
parcels of fenced pasture and improved beef livestock to
farmers v;ho utilize them in connection v;ith dryland farming
operations. V/hile there have been problems with these
programs, in terms of poor coordination and failure to pro-
vide farmers with necessary information, the concept appears
to be feasible and could be tried on hillsides near the
sett J.e.'Tient if compensation v/ere paid to those who own the

196

197

31
land rights.-^

In other ai'eas, reforestation programs could be a long
term means of providing a livelihood to a portion of the
population. Fast grovd.ng types of trees, for example varieties
of pine or eucalyptus, could provide opportunities for selec-
tive cutting as well as prevent the erosion and heavy runoff
v;hich threatens development schemes elsewhere in the Cibao
region of the Dominican Republic (Antonini _et. a_l. 1975) •
Such programs for reforestation could provide an alternative
means of employment for swidden farmers who, due to environ-
mental and political constraints, find it difficult to con-
tinue their strategy. It may be possible, in fact, to inte-
grate swidden farming and reforestation projects but experi-
ments along these lines, in the Congo and elsev/here, have not
been successful (Ruthenberg 1971: 4S-52).

In the bottomland, however, the major alternative to the
trend toward consolidation of holdings lies in making small
farm enterprises viable enough to support the basic needs of
a household. The first focus for providing such an alter-
native involves the necessity to decrease the reliance upon
outside energy sources for the grov/ing of cash crops.

It has been shovm in this study that commercial farming

•^ In one such scheme, the government leveled nearly 50
hectares of virgin forest on a mountainside to plant grass for
the ranches. The forest v/as cut and burned, but no one from
the nearby settlement was allowed to take any vrood, not even
for cooking fires, since cutting trees for such purposes is
strictly illegal.

19S

is a far more inefficient system than swidden agriculture in
terms of the production of calories. Much of this ineffi-
ciency results from the almost total reliance upon expensive
agrochemicals to maintain plants v;hich are highly susceptible
to insects and disease. There are other practices, however,
which could encourage such maintenance, including a diverse
plant population, crop rotation, green manuring, fallowing,
and the building up of soil organic matter through composting.
But most farmers have limited access to information about such
methods, though in many instances a transfer of such practices
from swidden farming is possible.

A second focus necessary for m.aking small farming viable,
however, is the need of small commercial farmers to form an
organization which will enable them to better control their
economic links to the outside. A marketing and purchasing
cooperative, with a store and a truck would enable them to
cut the interest and transport paym.ents to middlemen which
they now must make. A cooperative v;ould also be a means for
funneling information into the campo upon which production
decisions could be made.

Such a cooperative, however, would be the end result
of a struggle to form an active mechanism for common action
among the small commercial farmers. The formation of such
a mechanism would be particularly difficult since it is the
household which traditionally forms the decision-making unit.
Outside of the cluster form of residential patterning, there
are few interhousehold links other than those v/hich tie small

199

fanners to large growers. One of the fev/ associations which
could provide the foundation for a growers' cooperative
already exists in the foinn of a burial society organized by
the priest. The society includes about sixty households in
Clear Creek as well as many in Black Stone. Payment of $1
for an adult member or $.50 for a child is collected from
each member of the society when a death occurs to defray
funeral expenses. As the Church is extremely active in the
cooperative movement in the Dominican Republic, the sponsor-
ship of a growers' association by the Church is a possibility,
especially since the new church-school building is nearly
complete, providing a meeting place.

But, without the active pursuit of such alternatives,
agricultural development, benefiting only a few, will con-
tinue to take place in the settlement. In contrast with
these few, the majority of households will have to seek the
marginal economic return of wage labor, lottery selling, and
subsistence farming. Migration from the settlement will
continue as the relative numbers of perceived opportunities
in the urban setting outweigh the advantages of rural poverty.
P'or the majority of Clear Creek's residents, then, agricultural
development will remain an unfulfilled promise.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AID

1974 Report on Agriculture in the Dominican Republic.
Unpublished report. Santo Domingo, Republica
Dominicana.

'ANJELLI, T. P.

1962 Agricultural Colonization in the Dominican Republic.
Economic Geography 3^, 1: 15-2?.

ANTONINI, GUSTAVO A.

1968 Processes and Patterns of Landscape Change in the
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Robert V/endell V/erge v/as born in l'/eehav;ken, New Jersey
on November 4, 1944, the son of Thomas Grotvik V/erge and Elna
Johnson Werge. He spent his early life in Hudson County, Kev/
Jersey, graduating from North Bergen High School in I962.
After attending Wagner College in New York City for one year,
he entered Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He graduated
with a B. A. in history in I966 and obtained an M. A. in the
same field from the University of Michigan the following year.
During this period, he attended a summer session of the Univer-
sity of Oslo in Norv/ay.

In June 196? » he entered a Peace Corps training program fo:
Nigeria and in the fall of that year was sent to Ethiopia.
Until the summer of 19^9, he lived in the small touoi of Dembi
Dolo near the Sudanese border where he taught social studies
in a secondai-y school and was in charge of the agricultural
club.

In September I969, he began to study agriculture and
anthropology at Oregon State University in Coi^vallis, trans-
ferring to the University of Florida in Gainesville the next
year. Under an assistantship from the Center for Tropical
Agriculture, he continued his studies in anthi'^opology and
carried out fieldwork in rural North Florida and in the
Dotninican Republic. For two years beginning in June 1973, he

sa--;.

210

received a Foreign Area Fellowship from the Social Science
Research Council to conduct research on agricultural develop-
ment in the Dominican Republic.

. Effective October 1, 1975, Robert Werge is employed as an
applied anthropologist by the Rockefeller Foundation at the
International Potato Center in Lima, Peru.

I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dr. G. Alexander Moore, Jr.

Chairman

Associate Professor of Anthropology

I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dr. William E. Carter
Professor of Anthropology and
Director for the Center of Latin
American Studies

I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertati.on for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dr. Solon T. Kimball

Graduate Research Professor of

Anthi-opology

I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dr. Hugh/'l. Popenoe
Professor of Soils, Botany,
Geography and Agronomy
Director for- the Center of
Tropical Agriculture

I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conform.s to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

/■ /'/

r. Larry D. White
Assistant Professor in the School
of Forest Resources and
Conservation

This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences
and to the Graduate Council, and was accepted as partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.

August, 1975

Dean, Graduate School

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA