This case study comes from my field research of an Indian (Indígena in Spanish) town of the Cuchumatán highlands of western Guatemala, Central America. I would like to discuss their mode of life, which has been transformed by the economic changes that occurred in Guatemala, during a span of ten years, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

In this town the 'economic development' (desarrollo económico) means the flux of the money into the community by accepting foreign tourists, adopting the projects of the NGOs whose offices are in and outside the community, increasing the production of the folk crafts, receiving foreign currency from the United States, and so on.

The people said things like, "There is hard commercial competition today (Hoy hay mucha competencia ),” “People are eager to earn even just one Quetzual [fifteen cents of a dollar] (Aun un Quetzal, quiere ganar),” and, “Here, everybody wants to have their own business (Aquí cualquier persona quiere tener su propio negocio).” Even before the peace agreement of the civil war in December 1996, there were many foreign tourists who wanted to stay in the town for a long period. Town people solicited these foreigners for investment in their own personal commercial ‘projects’. This interaction between the foreigners and villagers also affected the economic situation of the town profoundly.

The aim of this report is to discuss the social meaning of the episodes of local economic development, which I experienced. I posit that the episodes can be understood as fables of certain relationships between 'the rich and the poor,' 'the outsider and the insider,' and 'the donor and the recipient.' My conclusion is that only long-term fieldworkers, mainly cultural anthropologists, are able to understand the cultural allegory that hides behind each ethnographic dialogue with local people, an allegory of the concrete images of the economic development of the town.

During my field research I talked with three Indians, who, for the purposes of anonymity we will call Miguel, Dominga, and Benjamin, respectively a school teacher, hotel owner, and an employee of a souvenir shop.

By focusing on their local economic activities and their feelings about local economic 'development' (desarrollo), I am simplifying their characters in the way a fable simplifies the socially formed attitudes of the culture it comes from. Even though they are simplified, the stories of these three people can be seen as allegories for how individuals confront drastic economic change in their community.

1. Miguel, the school teacher

He was 30 years old at the time I talked to him. He was one of founders of the local NGO-run Spanish-language school for foreign tourists. He was not only economically but also politically ambitious.

He explained that the community became developed because of a well-established elementary educative system that he took part in. He was one of the Indian students given a scholarship by the U.S. Catholic mission, which allowed him to graduate from normal school, where he trained to be a teacher. During his normal school days he had experienced severe 'racial' discrimination from not only ladino colleagues, but also teachers. Ladino means mestizo people, more popularly "mixed race".

So he had experienced severe 'racial' discrimination again and again out of the town. He told me he believed that a 'democratic' education system is the most important catalyst for the long-term economic development of the Indian community.

In contrast with his ambitions, he was not popular among the people in the village. Sometimes the villagers rumored that he was rich because he earned salaries from both the government school and the NGO-run school. He deflected this criticism. He explained that the NGO-run school was a non-profit organization that donates any profits to the village, for example, giving villagers money to add an extra room to their house in order to house students as a home stay.

He and his wife opened a small hostel to rent for tourists. He complained that the owner of a local hotel, Dominga, whom I will introduce next, might disturb his business.

2. Dominga, the hotel owner

The town people believe that Dominga is one of the most successful women in the community.

By supporting her husband, she had kept the most famous hotel in town among foreign tourists for five years. Even though she was illiterate, her eloquence was very persuasive among both the town people and the tourists. She had a good reputation among the town people because she donated money to some of the public activities of the community.

She also had a talent for administrating tourist activities. Her grand design for the hotel catered to the tourists bent, especially 'culturally sensitive' foreigners. For example, she ordered the construction of a balcony that was an attractive place for foreigners to hang out during their stay. She invented an ethnic ambience for her hotel. For example, she hired her friends to weave on the patio of the hotel, a departure from traditional customs. Even now, weaving in the village is done in a family setting that is difficult for strangers to observe. Thus, she drastically changed the manner of treating foreign tourists in the town.

In the 1990s a series of indigenous women empowerment events took place. For example, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1992 was a Guatemalan Indigenous activist, Rigoberta Menchú. The people perceived the importance of women's social roles. Some activists in the town saw Dominga as an awakened Indian woman in a changing community.

During the same period she had been patiently enduring slanders aimed at of the way she conducted business by other shopkeepers and hotel owners in the town. Such slanders attacked her use of children as tout for tourists, and alleged that she exploited a local widow's craft making 'Cooperative' in order to sell her products. The town people never heard these slanders before Dominga's case.

3. Benjamin, the employee of a souvenir shop

Benjamin was an employee of small souvenir shop that a young, entrepreneurial commercial broker owned. The owner was born in the same town but lived in the capital of the department, where it was more convenient for his business.

Apart from his shop keeping, Benjamin managed a commercial brokerage in which he bought small articles of typical weaving souvenirs (tipico) brought to him by small-scale independent producers. He expressed that he was content with small business as a vocation. So he did not feel the need to venture a dangerous emigration to the United States. He thought that the costs of adventure were a risky 'investment.' But he did not criticize emigrants to U.S. because he recognized that some people might have a desire to make a lot of money. He only felt discomfited by the dissolution of their families due to absent family members.

His job consisted of selling the items in the shop. It didn’t seem very concerned with public interest. But he explained that his job contributed to 'very poor people' who could not sell their product without the help of his company. He analyzed a series of slanders against Dominga with cool detachment. He did not care how much money she earned, but did care about how she treated the 'poor people' she had working for her. In contrast, he felt that he was helping the poor people of the town in a small, but real way by brokering some of the items they were trying to sell.

**

I have mentioned that these three episodes on each persona can be understood as a fable of a certain social relationship in the town, for example, the relationship between 'the donors and the recipients.'

In the last part of my presentation, I will talk about the local mode of economic articulation in the community. In the decade from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the most important economic factor that changed the community was the flux of money from outside of the town.

One of the sources of the flux was dollars from emigrants who went to the U.S. Another source was the money coming from international or domestic development agencies after the establishment of the political calm in the late-1990s. The former source, money from emigrants, is more important for the town people than the latter. Generally, one emigrant worker sends about one hundred to one thousand U.S. dollars every two or three months. We can imagine how this amount of money compares with the GDP per capita, about 3,000 U.S. dollars, in the mid-1990s. We suppose that a large percentage of the total population are emigrants to the U.S..

In cases where villagers become rich, they are eager to construct a new house with two-stories. They are also preoccupied with decorating their houses and buying fine furniture. In 1996 some banks were planning to establish a local branch in the community. But establishing a savings account or funding investments was not popular among the people. The concept of economic investment was embodied first in beginning a new commercial business, for example, renting to a new tenant in the local market. Some newly rich families bought a pick-up truck for retail transportation services. Other families, as in the cases of the families of Dominga and Miguel, opened hotels for foreign tourists.

At the same time, they accept their destiny to adopt a new word, "inversión" into their own vocabulary. It is very interesting to consider the English translation of the Spanish word "inversión," because this word has two meanings, both 'inversion' and 'investment.' In other words, we Japanese or English speakers never confuse the two, because we have different words for each. But Spanish speakers (most of the town people are bilingual in both Spanish and the local Mayan language, the Mam) have to distinguish between them according to the context. Generally speaking, the town people first catch the meaning of “inversion,” because the sense of the word as “investment” was introduced later. The English phrase, "Do you want to invest something?" (¿ Quieres invertir algo? in Spanish) easy converts into: "Do you want to invert something?" Hence, the word 'investment' can be potentially both attractive and dangerous. People can play on this word, such as is the case when a donor inverts his/her position as a recipient, or the rich invert the poor. People love this fantastic word play and have adopted it as a metaphor of the economic development.

**

I was very impressed that the people were very realistic and patient in accepting these economic changes. But the town people understand that there may also be a similar world-wide phenomenon which none of us can oppose. To engage with the outer economy, or not. That is the question for us and for them.

Now we have to explain anthropologically the social condition with which we are confronting. We can agree that every person wants to earn more money for better life. Many anthropologists are asked by their informants in their field, "Please find out for me a good job when you go back to your home country." People's innocent request can be represented (or may be stereotyped) as an aspiration to become rich, something that is shared by all third or fourth world people.

We have more than dozens of theoretical words and kinds of jargon to explain the violent condition that the third world people are confronting under the global economic condition. But we do not yet have the plain explanations we need so that we can share with them what we know and have discovered. We have to undertake the popularization of our own concepts, so that the people we study can benefit from what we find out about them. My proposal is that we have to share not only our data that we draw by carrying on dialogues but also our theoretical framework by popularizing our practical reason. I believe that cultural anthropologists collaborating with other social scientists, are able to understand the cultural allegory which they are confronted through their long term research.

Thank you for hearing my speeach.

On October 30, 2004

At the National Museum of Enthnology, Osaka, JAPAN.