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

egulation; preharvest financing necessary for paying the coffee pickers; and technical
assistance for off-season assessment of plant health, soil quality, and to address low-
yielding portions of the farm.
Access to transportation, storage, and adequate processing facilities is invaluable
for coffee produced far from population centers. The Nicaraguan nation-state,
international development agencies such as USAID and IADB, and private enterprise
were obliged to invest in farmers to help them produce a “successful” crop. This
institutional, governmental, and corporate support has been couched in the language of
“stimulating farmer productivity” and providing “incentives” for farmers’ hard work.
The diverging attitudes on “hard work” and “success” reflect how these ideals are
redefined under changing regimes of truth. This redefinition is similar to Field’s (1999)
description of Nicaragua’s national folktale, El Güegüense o Macho Ratón, as a
palimpsest, a national myth that serves as a constantly changing metaphor to reinforce the
agendas of successive political ideologies. 72
When they are organized into cooperatives, small farmers have a better chance of
mitigating the risks inherent in export commodity production and therefore competing
with large-scale producers in the global marketplace. On many occasions Danilo would
complain that Nicaragua depends on the growing revenue from coffee production, but
there is no national finance system for coffee growers. In his words:
72 El Güegüense o Macho Ratón is a folk dance and story that is based in native tradition
and has been reinterpreted in various epochs. Similar to tales about the Trickster, wellknown
in many Native American cultures. El Güegüense is a theatrical production that
displays a nuanced form of deceit or chicanery that requires understanding individuals’
intent beyond what is overtly stated. See Field 1999 for an eloquent analysis of this
characteristic.
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