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

mountains, El Malacate, El Majaste, and El Lechón, are the entry point to the vast central
ranges and rainforests of Bosawás nature preserve. The climatic shift is very abrupt
between Telpaneca and San Juan. In fact, many Segovian inhabitants are not from the
rainforests but from the drier lowland regions of Las Segovias. The migrants from
lowland Segovia, accustomed to growing corn and beans production, deforested and
altered the climate of this once lush panorama.
David’s description of the village of Samarkanda before the Agrarian Reform
made it seem like an ideal place for people to work and live. Whether he was
romanticizing an idyllic past was not an issue for me. Rather, it was important to hear the
impression of someone who had experienced the changes in rural structures of power and
land distribution. His comments showed his feelings of disgust about the way
Samarkanda seems to him today.
“Está en ruinas. No hay orden. Han despalado y maltratado esos cafetales. Es
una desgracia lo que han hecho con semejante finca. (It’s all in ruins. There is no order.
They [the recipients of land redistribution] have deforested and mistreated those coffee
fields. It is a disgrace what they have done to such a farm).”
A couple of months after hearing David’s account, I decided to visit Samarkanda.
Danilo’s eldest daughter, Dinora, lives in Samarkanda with her husband, Noel, on his
mother’s land. Noel’s mother, Doña Miriam, came to Samarkanda to work at Santiago
Delgado’s hacienda in 1978. She acquired a residential lot and farmland after the
Agrarian Reform expropriated Delgado’s farm. Since Dinora and Noel travel by bicycle
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