i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

for Danilo, but not as closely as when he was the hijo de casa. He is still de confianza to
the family, but his priority is now to his own family. He and his wife are completing high
school in the evenings as well.
Lisandro is one of the first workers I got to know. He is soft-spoken and has a
youthful face. He lives with his wife, Reina, and their three children, Freddy, Karina, and
Freiling. Lisandro and Reina attended school until the sixth grade; 44 they are originally
from Santa Cruz, a notoriously impoverished sector of the Segovian regional center,
Estelí. They moved to San Juan during the revolution, looking for work. They found jobs
in the kitchen of a Sandinista government-owned coffee plantation, Salinas Pinell APP.
Reina worked as a cook. Lisandro was responsible for preparing and grinding hundreds
of pounds of native white corn for tortillas for the nearly 300 workers on the plantation.
Once the revolutionary government fell, Lisandro and Reina obtained land from
the bankrupt Salinas Pinell APP to build a house. They built a modest adobe home in a
cluster of houses just below the entrance to Danilo’s farm in Las Grietas. Their house has
plastic tarps to separate sleeping from living areas. It has a wood-fire kitchen stove and
an outhouse in the back. They do not have running water or electricity. Lisandro and
Reina recently decided to return to school now that their children can care for one
another. They are attending evening classes at the Instituto San Juan del Río Coco, the
local high school.
Lisandro’s oldest son, Freddy, worked on Danilo’s farm with his father whenever
possible. He also performed the duties of a hijo de casa for Danilo and Marta as needed.
44 The compulsory educational level in Nicaragua is sixth grade. Most laborers I met did
not aspire to attend high school full-time, directly after completing primary school.
Rather, many begin working to help support their family after sixth grade and then work
on their high school education in the evenings or weekends.
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