But in most Latin American countries the indigenous populations have been systematically (officially) pushed off their land for hundreds of years. They are also denied access of any of the levening agents of society. Here is an example from Guatemala that is fairly common:
The origins of rural poverty in Guatemala can be traced back to a long history of social discrimination and inequality. Indigenous groups have traditionally been excluded from the social, economic and political mainstream of the country. This situation has been exacerbated by Guatemala’s complex topography. High mountains and dense forests have kept these mainly indigenous communities remote from the rest of the country. Centuries of isolation and neglect have resulted in chronic poverty.
One of the main causes of poverty in the country is lack of access to productive resources, especially land and water. Land distribution in Guatemala is extremely unequal. About 40 per cent of the rural population does not own any land.
You have to realize that the system was never fair, these folks never had a fair chance. And work hard? Oh, I think they work pretty darn hard yet they barely survive.
When you talk about indigenous peoples do you mean Indians? I’ll grant that in Guatemala Indians are numerous. The majority of Mexicans do not consider themselves Indians and few really are under their view of it. Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina. Few Indians.
I would add that Guatemala has a problem peculiar to itself; language. Many, many, many Guatemalans do not speak Spanish, the national language, which is also the language of commerce in the region. Many indigenous people who do speak Spanish have an idiosyncratic version that is barely understandable to speakers of “real” Spanish. Also, many areas are, as you say, exceedingly isolated.
I’m no expert at all, but what I hear of Guatemala from Guatemalans leads me to think of it in a way that a traveler to Iran described that country in the 1970. “It’s not so much that it’s poor, exactly, as that it’s primitive.”
When I was a small child, I lived in a part of the country that was primitive. We had no running water, no electricity, an outhouse and heated with wood. My mother washed clothes in a creek and we drew our water laboriously from that same creek. Most farmers farmed with horses and mules, not with tractors. Horses and wagons were not uncommon on the roads. Getting to the nearest town without a flat tire was a stroke of luck, so people didn’t do it any more than they had to; certainly few attempted to work at jobs there. During all that time, people in cities and towns had television, flew if they could afford it, and made money while people where I lived were subsistence farmers, barely making it. Though they didn’t think of themselves as poverty stricken, objectively they were. Illiteracy was very common. The hill accent was nearly unintelligible to town people, marked them, and country people had no more understanding of town commerce than they had of space flight. Primitiveness can exist when it seems it couldn’t possibly exist. Where it exists, even in the midst of general modernity, it can take a lot of time, improved technology, lots of education and a lot of capital to change it. When primitive places do undergo change, it’s often wrenching, disruptive and for many, not particularly welcome. I can remember, when things started to change, the embarrassment of fundamentalist country girls who didn’t shave their legs or knew to do it, never cut their hair either, for religious reasons, and who wore clothing made of feed sack material, when they went to the town consolidated school because they were required to do it. I recall a young man who really never got over it when he was made an object of derision for bringing half a roasted squirrel to school for lunch. The instant he turned 16, he was never seen in school again. None of that was easy for them. Modernization is not always all sweetness and light.
Modernity did destroy much of the mountain culture in which I grew up. Vestiges remain, but it was not easy on anyone. But as it was inevitable, no matter what anybody thought about it, it had to be. Many welcomed it. Not all did.
There ae quite a few Hispanics here. I have noticed that Guatemalans do not mix with Mexicans at all. Mexicans consider them inferior and primitive. I have often wondered just how they feel coming from those villages into a world where nobody understands what they are saying most of the time, and where they cannot understand what the post office workers tell them when they send money back home, which they faithfully do. I sometimes think working here (after making their way through a Mexico that is very hostile to them) is the best thing their society has enjoyed for a long, long time. I know one Guatemalan who works two shifts at a poultry plant, day in and day out, and has for years. That’s a lot of overtime, but the plant puts up with it because he is always there and is very productive. He sends everything but a bare subsistence living back home. He lives in a large closet he rents for almost nothing from other Guatemalans who lease the house. He doesn’t own a car. He’s legal, but I have no idea how he got that done. Perhaps, by such labors, their society can finally become capitalized, at least to a degree better than it has been. His earnings are a lot of money in Guatemala from what I understand. I understand he’s buying land there through others, near some village on some river that sounds like it’s a long way from anywhere. The whole thing sounds like jungle or near-jungle to me. Oh, yes, he is engaged to a woman in Guatemala whom he never visits because of cost, but whom he intends to marry, and whose family he supports faithfully. He’s Catholic; a true Catholic gentleman if ever one drew breath.
