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

state of small-scale coffee farming in Las Segovias. Their autobiographical accounts
exemplify how San Juan’s farmers engage in the present-day development scenario.
Don Sixto has worked in the coffee industry his entire life. He was a laborer on an
immense latifundio located on land that had belonged to his ancestors. Don Sixto
received title to some of this land after the Sandinista agrarian reform of 1981
redistributed the land from the latifundio, known as Santo Domingo, to the plantation
workers. Today, Don Sixto identifies himself as a member of the Casta Indígena de
Telpaneca. He states that he is a descendent of the Comalero tribe of Chorotega Indians
who inhabited this region long after Spanish contact. He says that his people founded the
settlement of Telpaneca, but they had to flee to the mountains to escape the brutality of
the Ladinos 15 and the church. Sixto emphasizes that “es un orgullo ser indio (I’m proud
to be an Indian)” and fights for indigenous land claims in Telpaneca and throughout the
Segovias region.
Don Amado was a worker for a generous and caring patrón, Don Pedro Molina.
Don Amado was born in Concepción, 23 km from San Juan. His mother came from
Condega, a prehispanic Segovian settlement, to work in San Juan del Río Coco in the
coffee industry. Don Amado said that Don Pedro had acquired large tracts of land
through marriage and that he was a kind man. Over time, Don Pedro gave parcels of his
own land to his workers for sharecropping and eventual lease-to-own arrangements. Don
Amado lived on the land rented to him and was able to produce enough so he could pay
what he owed to his patrón.
15 This is a common term for non-indigenous, Latin Americans. It is similar to mestizo,
but in Nicaragua connotes a higher class standing and very European physical features.
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