Fragile Lands of Latin America Strategies for ... - PART - USAID

192 Janis B. Alcorn
Table 2 shows the labor input into the different components of the
Huastec system. Labor is primarily done by household members. House-
holds often contain more kin than just the nuclear family and kin
living in separate houses often help one another. The work that children
do casually or work done at night (such as guarding the milpa as ears
ripen) is problematic and is not included, although young teenagers
regularly gather firewood. Households do pay wages for some work
done by non-household members. Weeding jobs are usually given to
poorer community members, especially women or teenagers, and there-
fore these labor opportunities have a special value for those members
of the community. The work done to maintain the household labor
force (cooking, carrying water, washing, marketing, etc.) has not been
included, although one of the peasant farm's major functions is to
maintain the labor force. Community labor projects have not been
included either. Each household is required to contribute one day's
labor per week to community projects (e.g., working school lands,
repairing community buildings, etc.)-a communal labor input of 5,096
mandays per year. Although much of this time is not spent in active
labor, the requirement keeps men from taking advantage of other
employment opportunities.
Because of their isolated location, the Huastec must invest substantial
time in noneconomic activities. In addition to one day per week donated
to communal labor, another day must be invested in making purchases
in the market each week. Trips for other purposes (e.g., to visit a
doctor/curer with a sick child or to take sugar into town for sale) also
usually require a full day. There is no regular bus or other transport
service, and many hours are spent either walking to one's destination
and/or waiting for transportation. Therefore Huastec have less time
available for doing remunerative activites. Overall the Huastec com-
munity devotes about 117 mandays/ha/year of labor in directly pro-
ductive activities.
Table 3 summarizes the estimated costs of the different components
of the Huastec production system (see Appendix A for detailed justi-
fication). This table does not include the interest paid on loans taken
out to buy seed or purchase equipment. For loans from local merchants
(patrbns of the typical Latin American patrbn system), farmers must
pay interest of 10Yo of the total original amount of the loan per month
until the total amount has been repaid (i.e., annual rate 120%). Sug-
arcane presses and horses are the major items of equipment. They are
necessary for the production of sugar. Approximately half of the house-
holds own a press and/or a horse, and the other half borrow them.
Assigning monetary values to labor is problematical. Most of the
work is done by household members. Some of the labor (particularly