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

to talk about the confiscation of Samarkanda Hacienda, were he had worked for many
years.
“Venimos en busca de pege para el corte. Todo el mundo sabía de Samarkanda y
las oportunidades ques existían,” David shared. Unprompted, he continued, “No creería
la cantidad de gente que llegaba. Llegaron de Managua, de Granada, de todas partes
para cortar café. (We came for jobs in the harvest. Everyone knew of Samarkanda and
that there were opportunities. You wouldn’t believe the number of people that came here.
They arrived from Managua, from Granada, from everywhere to pick coffee.)”
David invited me to finish my lunch in the back with him when the conversations
of the other patrons got louder. He kept watch through the doorway as he described what
life was like in Samarkanda before the Sandinistas took it over.
“Era lindo el lugar. Había cualquier tipo de animal. Abundaba el agua. Tenían
palos viejisimos y sus plantaciones bien ordenadas. Era un buen sistema de producir
café. Los hermanos Delgados eran buenos para esta comunidad y los Sandinistas la
cagaron. (What a lovely place. There was every kind of animal. There was water in
abundance. There were very old trees and well-ordered plantations. It was a good system
for farming coffee. The Delgado brothers were good for this community and the
Sandinistas ruined it.)”
David worked in all aspects of the coffee-growing process at the hacienda. He
arrived as a picker, but over time he became a year-round worker at the Samarkanda
Plantation. Like most people in San Juan, he had a thorough understanding of the
dynamics of coffee farming, even though he was not a farmer himself. He had worked in
processing and storing coffee. He led groups to prune and regulate shade. He even
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