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

of the Madriz department, to check on his land indemnity cases. He has had to fight to
recover his family’s vast holdings.
I had the chance to meet with Walter in May of 2006, near the end of my field
project. We met at his house/school. I explained my research to him as he showed me the
classrooms and the living quarters in the stone house that his family had built. Walter’s
father, Reimundo Delgado, was the brother of Santiago Delgado. Reimundo had a
hacienda/latifundio that was similar to Santiago’s in Samarkanda. The Delgado brothers
came to San Juan in the 1950s as empresarios and began to buy fincas (small farms).
Their holdings grew to encompass the town of San Juan, each of them owning more than
2,000 manzanas. 33
Reimundo’s coffee operation, La Dalia, was on the west end of San Juan, only a
couple of kilometers from town. The Delgados arrived at a time when the Somoza
government was offering premiums to land investors. “They [his family] opposed the
Somoza regime, but they took the good financing, an 18-year loan with a three-year grace
period.” Walter added, “It was a good investment. My father bought La Dalia for 50,000
córdobas. At its peak, that hacienda was worth 5 million dollars.”
Hacienda La Dalia produced nearly 15,000 quintals of green coffee on 600
manzanas of land until the mid 1980s, when it was confiscated. The family established 70
kilometers of roads, and the annual gross income was more than one million dollars,
according to Walter Delgado. “My father had the most beautiful coffee farms you have
ever seen. His rows were perfect. He terraced all of them.” Walter explained how his
father and uncle ventured far from town on difficult trails and poor roads to spot potential
33 1 manzana = 1.7 acres
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