May 1999
John D. Abell
Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
2500 Rivermont Ave.
Lynchburg, Virginia 24503
jabell@rmwc.edu
(804) 947-8502

* A shorter version of this article titled "The Neoliberal World Order: The View from the Highlands of Guatemala," appeared in NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) Report on the Americas, Vol. XXXIII No. 1 (July/August 1999), pp. 37-41.  This version is reprinted with their permission. 

Summary: The author is associate professor of economics at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia. A sabbatical visit in early 1999 to San Lucas Tolimán in the highlands of Guatemala to volunteer in a variety of community projects and to study the conditions of the local economy yielded the following analysis. Guatemala’s connection to the global economy is examined from the perspective of a poor family struggling to make ends meet. Last year’s economic crisis that began in Asia was treated by the strategists at the IMF and US Treasury as an event that simply needed careful management along with tighter adherence to the export-oriented neo-liberal model. Guatemala has adhered to this model or its variants for nearly 500 years and for the majority of those years it has yielded significant benefits for a small percentage of society while the landless masses have experienced essentially a permanent economic crisis. The argument is made that a significant land reform would not only benefit the majority poor, but the oligarchy as well, since a middle class might eventually evolve which can afford to participate in the economy for the first time and buy the products that at the moment have to be sold to the United States.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

Don Ramón vs. the Capitalists

It had been a productive morning so far. The family I was helping had picked close to 200 lbs. of red, ripe coffee beans and we were relaxing around a cooking fire where the women had prepared a feast of frijoles, tortillas and aguacate. Life seemed peaceful for the moment. Bellies were full. Beautiful Lake Atitlán, the jewel of Guatemala, was glistening in the distance. The only serious issue that remained this day was the matter of getting a couple of 100 lb. sacks of coffee two miles down the side of Volcán Tolimán to the beneficio where they would be weighed and scrutinized for leaves and stems prior to the payout.

Our discussion at lunch ranged from coffee prices to politics, focusing especially on the recent peace accords. Yes, they all agreed, life had improved since the cessation of hostilities in December 1996, if only because the Guatemalan military was no longer dragging their sons off the streets and soccer fields to fight in the counterinsurgency war against the rebel forces of the URNG. Also, sleep came a lot easier knowing that the chances of a visit in the middle of the night from a paramilitary death squad were significantly, though not entirely, reduced.

Had any of the benefits of the accords on the social economy or judicial reform trickled down their way, I asked? Beyond a basic recognition that the accords had left land holding patterns untouched, they weren’t aware of too many details. Their lives had remained essentially unchanged, they told me, living from day to day, eagerly awaiting the coffee harvest in hopes that it would be profitable enough this year to allow them to keep their kids in school and to pay their medical bills.

I asked if they were aware of the global economic crisis that had engulfed Asia, Russia and Brazil, and if they were concerned that Guatemala might be next. Don Ramón, the patriarch of this family, tried to patiently explain to me that during his entire lifetime, and that of his father, and that of his grandfather, and for nearly 500 years, Guatemala had been going through an essentially permanent economic crisis. How could a country possibly have a healthy economy when most of its people go to bed hungry each night, he asked; when most people don’t have land or any control over their lives? How could the latest problems from Asia or wherever make their lives any worse?

I was thinking about this lesson in real world economics the next day when I stumbled on an issue of Newsweek that was devoted to the global crisis.¹ One of the broad themes running through all the stories was that while calm was returning to financial markets, economic recovery in the developing world was slow in coming. In fact, a glance at any newspaper suggests that there is genuine suffering going on in the affected countries. In the arctic regions of Russia, people whose life savings vaporized in the early days of the ruble crisis faced starvation during one of the worst winters on record. In Jakarta, fathers who were once gainfully employed, have now joined their families in the garbage dumps scrounging for their next meal. For many people, life, which was never very easy, has become precarious and desperate.

Many are beginning to blame the global financial system itself for such outcomes.² With countries like Malaysia setting a dangerous example by establishing restrictions on the movement of foreign capital, there is a genuine fear in the establishment that some serious backsliding may be in the offing among those countries that had so eagerly embraced the neo-liberal agenda. This may help to explain why Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum, selected "Responsible Globality" as the theme of this year’s conference in Davos, Switzerland. Schwab points out that globalization is not going away anytime soon. The key, therefore, for lifting people out of poverty, he maintains, is an improved infrastructure; "procedural, legal and institutional mechanisms" to help harness the global revolution. Furthermore, he suggests, "The new dividing line between richness and poverty is not between the haves and have-nots, but between the knows and don’t knows. The best way to help the poor is to enable them to take advantage of a global knowledge-economy."³

While Schwab is looking at the big picture, Coca-Cola’s CEO, M. Douglas Ivester is worried about his company’s bottom line. In the same issue of Newsweek, he states that a global presence is a necessity for most firms. Coke is committed to being a good global citizen, he indicates, but it is not in the business of running a charity. "Companies have to focus on doing what they do best," he argues, and that means selling more Coke. In fact, selling more Coke in Indonesia or Guatemala is going to improve the social well-being in those countries far more than charitable donations would, he suggests.⁴

I wonder what Don Ramón would say about all that? I suspect his eyes might glaze over a bit if I suggested that there was a fellow by the name of Klaus Schwab who was of the opinion that it didn’t matter that his family was a have not, but rather that they could improve their lives if they would just take advantage of the "global knowledge-economy." What Don Ramón would tell me in response, I suspect, is that his knowledge of the coffee business is just fine. What he needs is not a fancy Internet hookup or a web page, or some other aspect of the global knowledge-economy, but rather, a higher price for his coffee, and more land on which to grow it.

Each of the 100 lb. sacks (referred to as a quintal) that Don Ramón’s sons carried down the mountain that day only brought the family 100 quetzales, or approximately $14. They only have half an acre of coffee, and because of the age of the trees, will be lucky to harvest a total of 25 quintales this year. If they can avoid the ladrones who prey on small producers—lying in wait to take at gun point a family’s harvest—they will earn an extra $360, a nice supplement to Don Ramón’s weekly income of $17, but still not yet within striking distance of Guatemala’s average annual income of $1500.

Another way to think about the Ramón family’s precarious position in the world economic order is to suppose that with a bit of luck some of their coffee ended up in the inventory of an upscale coffee shop. Out of every $4.00 cup of café latté sold, Don Ramón would receive about $.02, or less than 1%. Coffee processors and exporters, transportation companies, advertising agencies, roasters, retailers and other intermediaries will earn the remaining 99%.

In spite of all that, Don Ramón is one of the lucky ones. Most people have no hope of owning their own land. A Bread for the World study (1990) indicated that just two percent own 80 percent of the land. It also indicated that, not coincidentally, three-quarters of Guatemalans live in poverty, with nearly 60% of the population unable to meet minimal nutritional needs. Furthermore, it found that 85% percent of children under age five experience malnourishment to some degree. Stunted growth was observed in up to 95% of the non-Spanish speaking children in some regions of the country.⁵

While pondering these depressing statistics, I’m reminded once again of Coca-Cola’s Mr. Ivester and his prescription for social well-being. No matter how accepting I try to be of the corporate viewpoint, I fail to see how Don Ramón’s family and Guatemala’s malnourished children will be better off with a one coke per day soft drink habit at a cost of $.28 US per soda. If all six members of the Ramón family who picked coffee that day did drink a Coke a day for an entire year, it would require the entirety of not just one, but two coffee harvests to afford such an expenditure.

Don Ramón is further lucky because of his steady $17/week job as a bee keeper. For many highlands residents, however, not only is land an impossible dream, but work itself has become scarce. Many highlands families survived for generations as residential employees of the giant coffee fincas, a throwback to the days of the colonial encomienda, where the indigenous were forced off their own lands, and through a variety of forced-labor laws, made to work on the giant estates. The constitution ostensibly protects modern finca workers by obligating the patrón to provide his workers with housing, clean water, a minimum wage (currently $2.80/day), schooling, and health care—not a bad deal, on paper. In reality, many of those services are not provided, including payment of the minimum wage. More often than not, a daily wage of only $2.10-$2.60 is paid. Guatemala’s own Ministry of Labor estimates that there is only 15% compliance with payment of the minimum wage in rural areas.⁶ Since the workers generally are poorly educated, not aware of their legal rights, and since there is no justice of the peace to whom they can turn, the patróns can operate with impunity.

No one knows these families any better than Father John Goggin, a priest in the parroquia of San Lucas Tolimán, the same community where Don Ramón lives. Father John’s ministry is to the outlying aldeas surrounding San Lucas, including these tucked away finca communities. I say tucked away because many don’t even show up on maps they are so remote. I accompanied Father John one day on a visit to just such a place where he was to say mass and, with a delicate blend of Catholic and Mayan traditions, bless and spiritually cleanse the home of a family who had lost a loved one. As in most of these villages where foreigners and their fancy technological devices are rarely seen, the children gathered around our trusty four-wheel drive jeep, eager to see us. Looking them over though, they seemed somehow other-worldly, not like other poor kids I had encountered so many times before. They were gaunt, their clothes in absolute tatters, and I could find no evidence that faces, hands or teeth had been cleaned in months. I asked a young mother where her cooking water came from and she pointed to a nearby stream, which did not look particularly clean. In one home, I observed a meal being prepared. It consisted of tortillas with a little bit of salt. No beans, no meat, no dessert. So much for constitutional guarantees.

John Goggin’s colleague, Father Greg Schaffer, who has worked in San Lucas for three and a half decades, also grapples with problems of hunger, poverty, and homelessness on a daily basis. There has rarely been a day in over 35 years, Father Greg told me, when he has had less than 3 families come to him desperately seeking assistance regarding land or help with a sick child. I have observed as many as ten families lined up all at once outside his parish office patiently awaiting their turn to seek advice and assistance.

A recent case involved nearly 100 families who had been kicked off of the coffee finca Santa Teresa. What was particularly troubling about their situation was that their former patrón seemed to be a fairly decent fellow—he paid them a legal minimum wage, seemed reasonable in his work demands, and even provided them with tiny individual plots on which they could grow their own food. I can not emphasize enough how important this arrangement was for the families, because their wages simply didn’t go far enough, even though they met the constitutional minimum. The food grown on their own plots, small as they were (only a cuerda or two, where one cuerda is approximately one fifth of an acre) literally made the difference between starvation and subsistence.

Though fincas rarely get sold, it happens occasionally, and a change of ownership was in store for Santa Teresa. A new patrón arrived in April 1997 from Guatemala City with new ideas about what constituted a normal work load on the plantation. Having worked as a factory manager, he was unfamiliar with the long-standing tradition on this and other well-run fincas whereby the day started as early as 3:30 or 4:00 AM with work concluding by mid-day so that the families could retire to tend their own crops. This system for generations had produced high yields of excellent quality coffee and had also provided a subsistence lifestyle for the workers and their families.

The new owner happened to take over at a point in the seasonal cycle when the workers’ task was to fertilize the coffee trees with crushed limestone. The daily work load, or tarea was 100 lbs. per person. For those not accustomed to farm work, especially in Guatemala, it may be difficult to envision what is entailed in the application of 100 lbs. of limestone. The hardest part is getting the limestone from the storage shed to the stand of trees. Imagine carrying a large bag that weighs nearly as much as you do a couple of kilometers up the side of a mountain. You are not provided with a wheel barrow, donkey or a pick-up truck, instead, you suspend the load on your back with ropes attached to a leather strap that goes around your forehead, known as a macapan, and you walk. At the appointed site, under the careful watch of a foreman, you apply a prescribed amount of limestone to each tree until you have emptied your bag.

To the new owner, stopping work at mid-day seemed to be the height of inefficiency. He demanded that they increase the tarea to 500 lbs. and that they work until the end of the day with no increase in their wages! For the workers, this was an impossible request, for two reasons. First, and most obvious, was the unbearable physical strain that the additional 400 lbs. of limestone would bring. Second, and equally important, was the fact that an extension of the work day to sundown would preclude access to their precious little agricultural plots that helped put food on the table each day.

Hesitantly, they voiced their concerns to the patrón. Predictably, he wasn’t interested in listening to their complaints—who were they to question his authority? He simply ordered them to leave the property! They were given a meager severance pay and two days to leave the property. 100 families who had lived and worked on the same piece of land through several generations were suddenly homeless and without work.

So what becomes of families like those of Santa Teresa?⁷ As oppressive as the conditions are on a finca, there is a degree of comfort in the certainty and routine of plantation life. Imagine the fear in every one of those families as they face the prospect of a new life on their own. For the first time, they are faced with decisions such as where to live, where to work, where their next meal is coming from and so on. Regarding work, one of the first problems they’ll likely face is that word of their "defiance" may have been shared widely among other finqueros such that they may be "blackballed" from further employment opportunities in the region. And if they do actually find some work, it will no doubt be on a seasonal basis. Their wages, which were never adequate to begin with, will be cut in half or more since seasonal work is just that—seasonal.

There is a subtle economic effect to all this, as well. The families of Santa Teresa are not the only ones to have been dismissed. Plantations in ever increasing numbers are beginning to realize the efficiencies—i.e., cost-savings—from not using a permanent labor force. Such benefits far outweigh the uncertainties associated with a temporary work force. This process of permanent labor force downsizing has been under way for well over a decade now, starting initially on the coastal sugar plantations and more recently spreading to the coffee fincas. The added presence in the contract labor force of these downsized workers simply contributes to the erosion of an already low market-clearing wage.

Try to imagine feeding and caring for your family with at most 6 months of work at sub-minimum wages that average approximately $2.30/day. For a typical highlands family of six, this is nearly impossible. All hopes will be pinned on a bountiful coffee harvest. The months of January and February are the peak months and entire families will head up the mountainsides at daybreak to pick coffee for the patrón. They are paid by the pound, and with all hands working feverishly, both big and little, they may pick 300 pounds/day. At a pay scale averaging $.023/pound, the family may bring home almost $6.90 every day during this peak period. It is imperative that these two months go well for the families because nearly 70% of their annual income is going to be earned at this time. The yields are so much lower in the month before and the month after, that only 25-30 pounds/day, or $.62/day can be counted on.

With some luck, the father and possibly an older boy may get hired for an extra couple of months for weeding, pruning or planting on one of the fincas. Additional work could conceivably be found on one of the coastal sugar plantations, though the harvest season tends to overlap with that of coffee. At any rate, the family’s income for the season will be in the vicinity of about $715, an amount unfortunately that will cover only about a third of the required minimal daily caloric intake of a basic corn and beans diet.⁸ In addition, housing, medical care, school and clothing will take as much as a third out of this already strained family budget. Income earning opportunities during the rainy season for families like this are limited. The occasional odd job, shining shoes, selling prepared foods in the mercado, or for the desperate, begging or prositution, bring only a modicum of financial relief. It is not hard to see where the depressing statistics on malnutrition come from when so many families face similar circumstances. It is also easy to see why a plot of one’s own land is so critical for survival.

Secretary Rubin, Meet Don Ramón.

Lots of emergency free-market strategy sessions were held into the wee hours of many an evening last year during the darkest days of the global economic crisis in the offices of the US Treasury Secretary on the third floor of the Treasury building. To my knowledge, neither former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the architect of US neo-liberal economic policies during the 1990s, nor his replacement Lawrence Summers, ever invited Don Ramón or any of the rest of the world’s poor campesinos to any of their meetings to find out how such policies impacted real human beings. When an individual economy would appear perched upon the brink of disaster, the Treasury men would jet off to critical meetings in Moscow, Hong Kong or some other important capital city to convince the faithful to stay the neo-liberal course. I don’t recall, however, any accounts of their visits out to the campo to share a meal and a discussion with Don Ramón or any of the other locals for whom the benefits of trickle-down economics have been very slow to arrive.

Herein lies the heart of the global crisis. It has little to do with the fact that Secretary Rubin hasn’t quite gotten interest rates or exchange rates right, or that the various countries’ budget deficits are too high, or some other statistical imbalance. It has a lot to with the fact that policies aimed at the developing world are far removed from the needs and realities of the majority of the world’s peoples. Such policies, implemented by the rich and powerful, assume a textbook world in which producers and consumers operate at arms length, negotiating until a price and quantity are determined that clear the market and benefit both parties to the transaction. Overlooked are the more realistic scenarios whereby Don Ramón and other small producers receive take-it-or-leave-it prices from agribusiness concerns that control the world’s markets.

A survey done by the Association for the Development of San Lucas Tolimán—this is Don Ramón’s community you will recall—indicated that small coffee producers need to receive a price of $28.50 per quintal in order to cover their production costs and to put an adequate diet on the table. Unfortunately, market prices like that haven’t been seen in years.⁹ You can be sure that if there is a glut of coffee on world markets—and if the powerful coffee merchants have their way, there will always be a glut—prices will fall for Don Ramón and his family. On the other hand, café latté prices will hold firmly, or possibly rise a little bit at the fashionable coffee houses.

Secretary Rubin’s policies, which draw upon free trade concepts first espoused by the British economist David Ricardo over 200 years ago, are supposed to work like this: Guatemala should produce those products in which it has a comparative advantage such as coffee, sugar and bananas. The United States, its largest trading partner, should do likewise, focusing on sport utility vehicles, computers and information services. Then, by trading freely with one another, their respective national incomes will be higher than if each country attempted to be self sufficient in the production of all goods.

So how much coffee would a land owner in Guatemala have to produce to be able to afford to purchase the latest $50,000 sport utility vehicle? At an average wholesale price for top-end, gourmet coffee of $100/quintal, the finquero would need to produce 2500 quintales (250,000 lbs.) of coffee beans.¹⁰ This would entail the use of approximately 50 acres of land.¹¹ He would employ approximately 21 workers during a four month harvest season and pay them approximately $.23/hour.¹² This would add up to a collective wage bill of about $5700, or 11% percent of the cost of the SUV. If the finca in this example happened to be among the county’s largest, it might be in the vicinity of 600 acres, according to USAID, enabling the owner to buy a fleet of nearly 12 SUVs per year.¹³

On the other hand, suppose that one of the patrón’s workers also wanted to purchase a vehicle. If he were somehow able to save every single centavo of his paycheck it would take him 18 years to accumulate enough money to buy a $5000 used car. If his goal was to be able to buy the same kind of SUV as the patrón’s, then in order for this to actually happen during his lifetime, he would have to share the purchase with each of his (21) co-workers, and they would each have to save the entirety of their paychecks for 9 years. I’m not sure that this is what David Ricardo had in mind.

Such free trade policies will be deemed successful as long as they can continue to generate 20% returns year in, year out, in the US financial markets. But, how long can this continue? The investment guru Peter Lynch emphasizes in his television commercials for Fidelity Investments that there isn’t anything magical to successful stock market investing. Good portfolio performance results from doing one’s homework; carefully scrutinizing those companies that have strong profit potential. What isn’t mentioned, though, is how those profits come about, and especially how critical the connection to the developing world is.

Profits, of course, arise when sales revenue exceeds the costs of production. Don Ramón might be amazed to realize just how vital he is to the amassing of global corporate profits—he figures critically in both variables in the equation (revenues and costs). His family’s 25 quintales of coffee sold at $14/quintal represents just another cost of doing business to the coffee merchants. The more small growers like him there are around the world, the more coffee is produced. And with more coffee comes lower production costs for the coffee multinationals. The lower are coffee prices, however, the less food Doña Ramón can afford to buy in the mercado for her family’s meals. But that is not the concern of the coffee companies.

The Ramón family is also critical to the revenue side of the profit equation. Here is how that connection works: The United States produces many more goods than it is capable of consuming domestically. In certain industries such as agriculture, this imbalance is quite significant. For example, wheat production exceeds domestic consumption by as much as 50% in a given year, corn by 25%. In order for corporations to provide investors with 20% annual returns, not only do they need to hold the line on costs, but they need to find overseas outlets for their surpluses, as well. In the cases of wheat and corn, this entails finding markets for as much as 50,000,000 metric tons per year.¹⁴ Exports, therefore, represent an increasingly large share of GDP, having grown from less than 6% to nearly 15% of GDP in the past 10 years. Also, countries of the developing world have become increasingly more important as destinations for US surpluses during this period, increasing their share of US exports from 35% to 45%.¹⁵ In countries like Guatemala, the well-to-do have been consuming imports from the U.S. for years. It is people like Don Ramón and his highlands neighbors who are now being called upon more and more these days to increase their share.

We’ve created a system that generates enormous profits for a select few who sell products like soft drinks, snacks, televisions, automobiles and cigarettes to the masses around the world. The glitch occurs when the masses can no longer afford to buy these things. When this happens, the system begins to grind to a halt. In other words, the system is sustainable only as long as the masses are actually able to participate in it, i.e., when they are paid a livable wage.¹⁶ But unfortunately, there can only be so many years of 20% returns when the people who actually have enough disposable income to buy these consumer goods number less than 10% in most countries of the developing world.

Nevertheless, thanks to aggressive advertising, as well as high sugar and nicotine content, Don Ramón and the remaining 90% in Guatemala who are among the have nots are for the moment obediently consuming soft drinks, snacks and cigarettes like there’s no tomorrow, much to the detriment of their health and well being. It is not an uncommon sight to see a family that can’t afford to send its kids to school or buy them shoes, spending their hard-earned quetzales in the tiendas on Coca Cola, Chiclets, Doritos or Marlboro cigarettes. However, I have seen no indication that the means exist for the Ramóns and their neighbors to buy 20% more of these products next year and 20% more the year after that. Amazingly though, stock market investors continue to place their bets that, somehow, the multinationals will either reach 20% more people throughout the world with their advertising, or convince those already in their grasp to dig deeper into their pockets to buy even more. Personally, I’m a little dubious about the prospects.

Herein lies the core capitalist contradiction. With the goal of increasing global profits, corporations are searching all over the world for new customers like Don Ramón, promising them unlimited happiness if they would just buy their products. The corporations’ hope, on the other hand, is that someone else will pay them a high enough wage so that they can afford their products. So far, none appear willing to do so.

Solutions?

Is there a way out of Guatemala’s economic crisis of nearly 500 years? Yes. But the solution goes far beyond the limited aspects of the peace accords. They are a necessary, but insufficient step in the right direction. Most certainly, the military needs to be reigned in, especially in light of the recent revelations of the Clarification Commission. Judicial reform is an absolute necessity. Human, indigenous and women’s rights must be respected, period. Tax collections must be increased by at least the 50% amount suggested in the accords, so as to better share the burden of development in Guatemala. A significant portion of this increase needs to be allocated to health and education as mandated by the accords. Lands taken from families and communities as they fled the military during the 1980s must be returned or equal compensation given. Where possible, national lands must be made available to the population.

The accords would lead one to believe that a simple redress of land grievances from the 1980s would somehow lead to national healing. What they overlook, and which is glaring through their omission, is the fact that land has been forcibly and continually taken from the indigenous population for nearly 500 years, not just the past decade or two. This is the real issue that the oligarchy fought so hard behind the scenes to keep off the negotiating table.

Like the global corporations, Guatemala’s oligarchy also faces a contradiction. In its effort to maintain power, prestige and wealth, it refuses to treat the indigenous and campesino poor of their country humanely—to share with them the richness of the land. Without land, the poor are forced to work as seasonal laborers or to assemble clothes in the maquiladoras for wages that can’t put food on the table, much less consumer goods or luxury items. Therefore, Guatemala’s producers have no choice but to become ever more dependent on export sales. What they find, though, is that the oligarchy in nearly every other developing country is doing the same thing, from Brazil to Indonesia to Russia. Prices around the world fall as a result of the collective attempt to run trade surpluses, and the persons who have to tighten their belts as a result are not the land owners—they don’t want to give up their SUVs and their country clubs—but rather the Don Ramóns of the world.

According to historian Jim Handy, no attempt to significantly improve the living standards of the masses will succeed unless there is an "attack" on the system that oppresses the masses; namely the system of land tenure. As he puts it, "There can be no workable democracy until the coercive power of the local landowning elite, supported by the military, is destroyed through a substantial, broadly encompassing agrarian reform."¹⁷ The peace accords stopped far short of that.

As badly as the technocrats of the Party of National Advancement (PAN) want to modernize Guatemala’s economy, surely they can see the advantages of a society in which there are legitimate opportunities for all members to participate; for kids to attend school, for families to have access to quality health care and a decent diet, and for all to aspire to whatever Guatemala’s definition of a middle class might be. In an agriculturally based society this would surely include ownership of land; just an acre or two would make all the difference in the world for families that have struggled without for all these years.

When families like the Ramóns are able to meet their basic needs and to have the option for the first time in their lives to set a little money aside for a nest egg, i.e., to share a little of society’s surplus, then the entire economic picture in the country changes, and not necessarily for the worse for the oligarchy. The indigenous majority in Guatemala may not yet be thinking along the lines that the advertisers of Madison Ave. would prefer; desiring the full array of capitalist trinkets, from Cuisinarts to Pokemons. On the other hand, the nearly 500 years of contact with the Western capitalist world can not but have yielded dramatic changes in culture and outlook. Syncretism has occurred, for good or bad, in Guatemala’s highlands. Evidence abounds in such simple examples as the consumption of soft drinks, white bread, packaged sweets, western style clothing, rock music and so forth.

So it is not completely unrealistic to imagine that Guatemala’s masses might some day be sufficiently well fed, such that they might have enough disposable income to buy the very products that the oligarchy is currently selling to the US middle and upper classes; export quality coffee, beef, bananas, clothing produced domestically in the maquiladoras, and so on. Some of the more enterprising families might even see the benefits from buying a computer so that they can better take advantage of Klaus Schwab’s "global-knowledge economy." And yes, a good number of them just might have an extra couple of quetzales left over to buy a Coke from Mr. Ivester.

Footnotes:

17. Jim Handy (1984). Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala. Boston, MA: South End Press.

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