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Who Shall Succeed Agricultural Development and Social
Inequality on a Philippine Frontier 1st Edition James F.
Eder Digital Instant Download
Author(s): James F. Eder
ISBN(s): 9780521104975, 0521104971
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 7.22 MB
Year: 2009
Language: english
This book records the emergence and institutionalization of social in-
equality in San Jose, a pioneer farming village located on Palawan Island
in the Philippines. Early chapters reconstruct the historical circumstances
surrounding San Jose's settlement and growth under conditions of relative
equality of opportunity. The community's development is examined in
detail through the experiences of eight migrant farmers, all self-made
men - some conspicuous successes, others conspicuous failures.
Comparing and evaluating the causes of pioneers' successes and failures,
Professor Eder stresses that the origins of inequality in San Jose depended
less upon the individuals' time of arrival or amounts of starting capital or
other such factors than it did upon personal differences. Social inequality,
for the most part, had its basis in a level of motivation and in a kind of "on-
the-job competence" that some men and women brought to the frontier
and others did not.
Later chapters shift in focus from the characteristics of the individual
farmers to the system of social inequality itself and how it operates today
to influence and determine behavior at increasingly disparate positions
within the community status order. An array of economic, social-structural,
and attitudinal circumstances keep rich farmers rich and poor farmers poor,
over the short run, and make it likely that the present generation of parents
will transmit existing inequalities to their children.
Eder concludes by stressing the diversity of circumstances and the
diversity of human motives and capabilities that can underlie the emer-
gence of social inequality in developing communities. Bringing the con-
trasting perspectives of Marxism and capitalism to bear on the question
of how the social orders of developing agricultural communities change
over time, he finds considerable support in San Jose's experience for the
Marxist view that third-world poverty is a child of development as well
as of tradition. That the causes of individual poverty are so variable, how-
ever, suggests that the "models of man" that both Marxists and capitalists
bring to their analyses are seriously incomplete.
Who shall succeed?
Agricultural development and social inequality
on a Philippine frontier
Who shall succeed?
Agricultural development and social inequality
on a Philippine frontier
JAMES F. EDER
Arizona State University
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge
London New York New Rochelle
Melbourne Sydney
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521104975
© Cambridge University Press 1982
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1982

This digitally printed version 2009
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Eder, James F.
Who shall succeed?
Revision of thesis (Ph.D.) — University of
California, Santa Barbara, 1974.
1. Agricultural laborers - Philippines - San
Jose (Palawan) 2. Rural conditions - Philippines
— San Jose (Palawan) 3. Agriculture — Economic
aspects - Philippines - San Jose (Palawan)
I. Title.
HD1537.P5E33 1982 307'.2 81-10178
ISBN 978-0-521-24218-9 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-10497-5 paperback
To my mother and father
Contents
List oj tables, figures, and maps page vin

Preface xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Rich man, poor man: life in a frontier farming
community 8
3 The economic and social origins of the migrant
farmers 30
4 Eight migrants 46
5 The origins of social inequality 72
6 The maintenance of social inequality: earning a
living 99
7 The maintenance of social inequality: earning
prestige 129
8 The perpetuation of social inequality? 153
9 Conclusion 178
Appendixes
A The measurement of social status 208
B Costs and returns in agricultural production 217
C The distribution of wealth and income 233
Notes 244
Bibliography 253
Index 259
Tables, figures, and maps
Tables
2.1 San Jose's balance of payments for 1971 (pesos) page 12
2.2 Social status and per household property ownership (pesos) 20
2.3 Social status and per household income (pesos) 21
3.1 Population growth in the Palawan area 42
4.1 Forty-four San Jose homesteads 47
4.2 Eight San Jose migrants 49
5.1 Year of arrival and social status 74
5.2 Education and social status 77
5.3 Birth order and social status 82
5.4 Geographical mobility and social status 89
6.1 Social status and per household landholdings 102
6.2 Married persons with permanent off-farm employment 103
6.3 Returns to land and labor for agricultural production ac-
tivities 104
6.4 Productive activities of seven farmers (man-days per year) 106
6.5 Time allocation by three farmers for four weeks (hours) 108
6.6 Average annual expenditure per household (pesos) 118
6.7 Components of per household production expenditure
(pesos) 119
7.1 Components of per household consumption expenditure
(pesos) 143
8.1 Infant mortality rates 154
8.2 Honor students and chronically truant students in the San
Jose elementary school 160
8.3 Unmarried, semi-independent children aged 16 and over 166
8.4 Seventeen marriages during 1970-1972 171
8.5 Social status differences between husbands and their
wives' brothers 172
8.6 Social status differences in pairs of parents and children 174
8.7 Status group membership of thirty-two children 175
A.I Nine status classifications 209
A.2 Individual and mean status scores for San Jose house-
holds 210
A.3 Final status distribution 215
List of tables, figures, and maps ix
B.I Swidden crops 219

B.2 Per farm returns and variable costs, rice swiddens 221
B.3 Labor productivity, rice swiddens (pesos) 222
B.4 Vegetable garden crops 223
B.5 Per farm returns and variable costs, vegetable gardens
(pesos) 225
B.6 Labor productivity, gardening (pesos) 227
B.7 Tree crops 228
B.8 Per farm returns, variable costs, and labor productivity for
tree crops (pesos) 229
B.9 Per farm returns, variable costs, and labor productivity for
livestock (pesos) 231
C.I Components of per household cash income (pesos) 239
C.2 Components of per household agricultural cash income
(pesos) 240
C.3 Components of per household wages and salaries income
(pesos) 240
C.4 Components of per household subsistence income (pesos) 241
C.5 Disposition of total per household agricultural output
(pesos) 242
Figures
2.1 Wealth and social status 22
2.2 Income and social status 23
4.1 Number of settlers arriving in San Jose in successive five-
year periods 48
7.1 Cliques in San Jose 133
8.1 Grade VI sociogram 163
A.I Composite status distribution of 112 households 214
A.2 Figure A.I drawn as a curve 214
Maps
1.1 Palawan 2
2.1 Puerto Princesa City and environs 9
Prefa<ce
During the 1930s and 1940s, a number of men and women left the
overpopulated island of Cuyo in the Philippines to homestead a
hitherto unpopulated region on the island of Palawan. Poor, unedu-
cated, and of humble birth, these migrants soon differentiated
themselves into haves and have-nots. Moreover, once this differen-
tiation developed, it stabilized, and it is now being transmitted to a
second and third generation of Cuyonons on Palawan. This book
analyzes the origins of social inequality in terms of particular indi-
viduals, in a particular time and place, and the conditions under
which it is maintained. Few topics have a more perennial concern
for social scientists, philosophers, and men of practical affairs.
Hence this study, although focused on a small community in the
Philippines, illuminates larger problems: Why do developing com-
munities embark upon trajectories of growing social inequality, and
where do such trajectories ultimately lead? Must they necessarily
terminate, as Marx envisioned, in a class polarization between the
privileged few and the impoverished many, or can the "benefits of
development" be more broadly shared?
I first went to the Philippines in 1965, a Peace Corps volunteer
assigned to teach biology at Palawan National High School in
Puerto Princesa City. Later I moved to a rural community, remote
but otherwise not unlike San Jose, the community on which this
book is based. Here I taught adult Tagalog literacy and the rudi-
ments of vegetable gardening, working as an activist with people
and problems that would later interest me as a scholar. For, like so
many of my Peace Corps colleagues in the Philippines and else-
where, I acquired at this time an enduring interest in other cul-
tures, an interest that brought me, in 1968, to graduate school at the
University of California, Santa Barbara.
I never visited San Jose during myfirstvisit to Palawan, but I did
learn of its reputation in Puerto Princesa as a successfully devel-
oping and relatively well-to-do migrant Cuyonon village. On that
basis, I selected it as the site for my dissertation research when I
xii Preface
returned to the Philippines in 1970, supported by a National Insti-

tutes of Mental Health Research Training Grant. The problems of
central concern in this book, however, were not those that I took to
the field. Instead, I arrived in San Jose with a loosely structured
plan to study "economic development and social change," a plan
vague in goals but with a hidden asset: a heavy emphasis on the
collection of quantitative economic data. For, as I collected this
data, a persistent problem kept surfacing - why were some individ-
ual migrants doing well on the frontier, whereas others were not?
When I discovered that my neighbors shared my puzzlement, I
knew I had found my field problem.
An often-heard local view, that "people are not all after the same
things in life," came to greatly influence the course of my research.
To be sure, in my own view of the world, people, after a fashion, are
all after the same thing in life. Fundamental to human nature, I be-
lieve, is a desire to earn prestige. Such an image of man has been
widely employed by social scientists, but nowhere has it been
stated more eloquently than by Rousseau, who spoke of that "uni-
versal desire for reputation, honors, and advancement, which in-
flames us all." But, once set in motion by a common desire for pres-
tige, people soon head off in many separate directions. Even within
a single community, I would discover, social stratum and subcul-
ture powerfully influence prestige-seeking goals and behaviors -
and in ways that provide an important key to unraveling the origins
and maintenance of social inequality.
I stayed in San Jose for twenty months. Initially, I spoke Tagalog,
but this is the language of outsiders, not of locals. I shifted to
Cuyonon as rapidly as possible and, after about four months, em-
ployed it exclusively for interviewing. A few younger people, how-
ever, genuinely fluent in Tagalog or English, preferred to converse
with me in these languages throughout my stay.
Myfieldworkcovered a broad range of San Jose's economic and
social affairs. Early in my stay, I completed a social anthropological
census of the entire community and studied how local residents
themselves perceived social inequality. Interviewing separately
nine persons from different positions within the community, I
asked each to rank, in groups, all community households according
to their "social standing." Analysis of the results of these interviews
yielded a threefold status classification (see Appendix A). This clas-
sification, the major dimensions of which are introduced in Chapter
2, was a starting point for subsequent fieldwork and informs the
analysis throughout the book.
In particular, as Appendixes B and C explain, I studied inten-
Preface xiii
sively for one year the affairs of a stratified sample of thirty-seven
households, one-third of the community, drawn from this local sta-
tus distribution. If I thought a topic might be connected with social
inequality, I asked about it: amount and source of income, patterns
of expenditure, landownership, quality of housing, indebtedness,
cropping patterns, contact with mass media, political participation,
previous occupational and geographical mobility, aspirations for
children - these were my chief concerns during the first twelve
months of myfieldwork.The generalizations made in Chapters 2, 6,
and 7 concerning levels of agricultural production, per household
wealth, and annual income and expenditures are derived from the
results of this inquiry.
Inevitably, however, as I returned repeatedly to my sample
households, I turned up new leads. I began to see my initial ideas
about the causes and consequences of social inequality in a new
and brighter light. For some topics, I realized that I needed greater
detail than I was then obtaining from my survey, but to pursue
these topics with all thirty-seven households would have been un-
wieldy and excessively time consuming. At these junctures, I se-
lected smaller, strategic samples of households, but again always
representing each status level. Such samples were used to study
the returns to labor in agricultural production, time allocation pat-
terns, values and attitudes, and the life histories discussed in Chap-
ters 4 and 5.
For other topics, I encountered the opposite problem. My sample
proved too small to provide adequate data for generalization about
particular conditions or behaviors. On these occasions, I arbitrarily
expanded this sample with additional households and then sought
them out for the needed information. These expanded samples
were used to obtain the data discussed in Chapter 8 concerning the
relationship between social status and infant mortality rates and the
manner of separation of mature but unmarried offspring from pa-
rental households.
I was not able to pursue as systematically all the topics that in-
terested me. But good preparation can help offset lack of time. I
spent only half a day, for example, in the community elementary
school, but my questions about academic performance and socio-
metric friendship choices were well rewarded, as Chapter 8 testi-
fies. Again, although I did do my own marketing there, I spent only
two days formally studying trade in the Puerto Princesa Public
Market. But with fifteen of my former high-school students lending
a hand, I was able to interview all produce sellers and a large frac-
tion of the buyers.
xiv Preface
Other topics, although important, were impossible to study in

greater detail because they involved uncommon events and behav-
iors. Some social events, for example, were unique - only one good
scandal broke out while I was there - and others occurred infre-
quently. But I eventually attended numerous weddings, funerals,
political caucuses, and village meetings, and, unique or not, I saw
in each an opportunity to collect some potentially valuable quanti-
tative data. How much did the wedding feast cost? Which kin did
and did not attend the funeral? Does social status influence seat se-
lection at village meetings? How many people sold their votes on
election eve? Later I took my tentative answers to such questions to
my best informants, both for their reactions to my analysis and for
their own insights about the events in question.
If these seem ambitious tasks, several congenial circumstances
facilitated fieldwork. First, I was able to employ a full-time re-
search assistant, a Cuyonon from the village of my Peace Corps ex-
perience. Second, after we settled in San Jose, my wife, herself a
Cuyonon, discovered that she had numerous kinsmen there. This
discovery, completely unanticipated, meant that we found our-
selves living among myriad second and third cousins and distant
"uncles," "aunts," "nephews," and "nieces" with whom we soon
developed close ties. Many anthropologists are routinely extended
kin terms by the people among whom they live and are brought into
kinshiplike relationships with them. We were extended kin terms,
or more often (being relatively young), we extended them to others,
because we were in fact kin.
Our status as relative insiders facilitated inquiry, in a society that
is quite open anyway, into many subjects that would be figuratively
or literally taboo in many other societies. Inquiries about income
and expenditures were not met with blank stares or evasion but
with apparently genuine efforts to reconstruct the desired figures
or, on occasion, offers to record the pertinent data in notebooks.
Again, questions about the covert exchanges of cash and goods so
essential to election-time politics were not brushed aside but were
met with honest efforts to provide the desired data and to explain
how the system works.
I returned to Santa Barbara in 1972 and completed my disserta-
tion in 1974. This book is an extensive and carefully considered re-
vision of that dissertation. It incorporates the principal arguments
of the dissertation itself and, critically, the results of an additional
year of fieldwork in San Jose (1976-7), supported by a Ford Foun-
dation Southeast Asia Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. During
that year I began the present revision in earnest. I followed up new
Preface xv
ideas and strengthened old ones, weeding out, in the process, old
arguments that no longer seemed satisfactory. I also made a memo-
rable, three-week trip to Cuyo Island, the isolated homeland of San
Jose's senior generation of farmers, to gather the material for Chap-
ter 3.1 would like to thank the National Institutes of Mental Health
and the Ford Foundation for their financial support for this study.
My greatest debt of gratitude is to the people of San Jose, and it is
truly a collective one. But I must separately thank Tay Martin and
Nay Binay, Manong Pikto and Manang Micing, and Manong Jaime
and Manang Maasi. They helped make the three years I lived in
San Jose the most rewarding of my life.
Many persons have contributed toward making this book a real-
ity. The members of my doctoral committee, D. E. Brown, Charles
Erasmus, and Thomas Harding, not only saw my dissertation
through its several drafts but exerted a lasting influence on the di-
rection my anthropological thinking would take. Later, some of my
own graduate students provided an invaluable critical audience as I
developed the structure and argument of the book itself. In particu-
lar, I want to thank Michelle Behr, George Ford, Gerrie Karman,
Ed Liebow, and Chris MacCrate. Special thanks are also due John
Aguilar, George Appell, Philomena Bell, David Brokensha, Robert
Cowell, George Dalton, Virginia DeVries, Carlos Fernandez,
James Greenberg, Emilio Moran, Juana Paz, Fred Plog, Walfrido
Ponce de Leon, Carolina San Juan, Randy Schultz, Thayer Scud-
der, Barbara Stark, Lyle Steadman, Ester Timbancaya, and Aram
Yengoyan - all of whom, for one reason or another, deserve some of
the credit for this book.
Finally, I must separately acknowledge my very personal debts
to Ben Pagayona and Tita Bandiola, who assisted me in ways they
themselves know best.
J. F. E.
1
Introduction
This book records a dramatic and unique event in the lifetime of a

single community: the emergence and institutionalization of social
inequality. It concerns the settlement and growth of San Jose, a pio-
neer farming village located on the east coast of Palawan Island, the
Philippines. San Jose is one of many such villages founded during
the 1930s and 1940s by migrant swidden farmers from Cuyo Island,
300 kilometers distant (Map 1.1). First by sailboat and later by
motor launch, these migrant "Cuyonons" 1 left an isolated and over-
populated homeland to seek a new life on a largely uninhabited but
potentially prosperous island that shares with Mindanao the dis-
tinction of being the nation's last frontier. During their early years
on Palawan, those migrants who settled in San Jose were preoccu-
pied with shifting cultivation of upland rice and with clearing the
virgin forest from their homesteads. Their lives were subsistence
oriented in a culturally homogeneous social order that was only
marginally linked to the market economy.
Today, San Jose is a fully occupied community with numerous
links to external socioeconomic systems. Its residents, responding
to the market opportunities created by rapid postwar population
growth in nearby Puerto Princesa City, specialize in the production
of fruits, vegetables, and livestock for sale in the town marketplace.
Favored by geographical location and a high level of return for their
farm output, they enjoy rising incomes and standards of living. But
no longer is San Jose a relatively homogeneous community. Occu-
pational and intracultural diversity is growing, and there are today
systematic differences between neighbors in wealth, prestige, and
power.
On the surface, San Jose's experience with agricultural change
seems ordinary enough. Regional economic growth created new ec-
onomic opportunities; because these opportunities were ecologi-
cally and economically viable locally, farmers responded. The re-
sult was a predictable one: the commercialization of village
economy and the expansion of cash incomes. Because some farmers
Who shall succeed?
BacunganVf < ( #*&

San Jose
\ PUERTO PRINCESA CITY
PHILIPPINES
0 20 40 Km
0 10 20 M
Map 1.1. Palawan

Introduction 3
moved more quickly and more successfully than others to take ad-
vantage of the new opportunities, market participation also brought
growing differences between farmers in incomes and standards of
living. Again, it has become a commonplace that nowhere do farm-
ers respond equally to the new economic opportunities brought by
modernizing change. The case of San Jose seems but one among
many.
But it is a case made striking by the conditions under which so-
cial inequality emerged and flourished. When social inequality
grows in areas where farmers already differ in economic or political
assets, we are not surprised; access to new technologies and new
opportunities is frequently biased toward farmers possessing such
assets. But San Jose's pioneer farmers did not differ significantly in
economic and political assets, and access to basic resources and to
the new opportunities themselves was broadly based. San Jose's
farmers had, in short, "equal opportunity" - or at least their oppor-
tunities to participate in economic growth were as equal as one
could expect any real-life group of farmers to have. That in these
circumstances they did not equally succeed is a matter of consider-
able comparative interest and significance.
San Jose thus presents a strategic opportunity to study the causes
of social inequality under conditions of agricultural growth and
change. On one level, this book may, in fact, be seen as a case study
of change in farming. More fundamentally, though, it is a book
about change in farmers, or, more accurately, about change in some
farmers but not in others, notwithstanding their common origins.
For San Jose's farmers, or at least its entire senior generation, were
all products of the same cultural milieu: the egalitarian, economi-
cally and socially isolated, subsistence-oriented Cuyo Island of the
1920s and 1930s. Out of this milieu came the migrant men and
women who would found San Jose - men and women similar in
age, education, occupation, and starting capital, and yet so variable
in personality, attitude, and ability that their differing responses to
modernizing change would revolutionize the frontier social order.
This book is the story of these men and women - of their back-
grounds, abilities, and aspirations; of their successes and failures
on the frontier; and of the new village society they created in a
modernizing world.
It is a story that poses, I believe, two fundamental explanatory
problems for the social scientist. The first is to explain why men
and women with such seemingly equal starting points responded
so differently to the new economic opportunities brought by agri-
cultural change. The second problem is to explain how the social
4 Who shall succeed?
inequality that resulted in turn influences individuals' prospects for
success or failure in life.
To answer thefirstquestion, we must look back in time to a previ-
ous generation's way of life in Cuyo and on the frontier to seek the
possible causes that men and women, once relatively equal, be-
come rich and poor- to seek, in other words, the origins of inequal-
ity. I will argue that in San Jose's frontier society, as in all human
societies, there were differences among men in competence, per-
sonality, and motivation of such magnitude that, upon exposure to
opportunities for economic growth, these differences rapidly gave
rise to pronounced social inequality. In other words, the potential
for social inequality is inherent in certain constitutional factors
common to all societies, and only awaits those conditions that will
allow it to progress. I will also argue, however, that such personal
qualities as "competence" and "motivation" are not necessarily
"innate." Diverse and ultimately fortuitous learning experiences
during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood may explain
why some men and women acquire these highly adaptive traits,
and hence why they succeed where others do not.
The second explanatory problem, concerning the consequences
of growing social inequality, will bring us from the experiences of
the past to the circumstances of the present as the determinants of
individual behavior. How does the emergent social order itself in-
fluence or determine the activities of men and women at increas-
ingly disparate positions within it? How do the individual differ-
ences instituted by social inequality interact with, reinforce, or
confound individual differences of a more personal nature? To an-
swer such questions, I will argue that in a status-differentiated com-
munity, the entailments of high or low social standing color an indi-
vidual's perceptions of the costs and rewards for different courses
of action. Economic opportunities and limitations on the one hand,
and patterns of interest and association on the other, vary across the
status order to create a unique pattern of motivational pressures at
each status level. Such pressures structure some common motives -
a need to earn a living, a desire to earn prestige - into different spe-
cific directions, directions which lead individuals to maintain their
already established status positions. Once institutionalized, social
inequality is thus maintained and perpetuated under quite differ-
ent conditions from those under which it originated.
These explanatory goals determined the order and content of
chapters. Chapter 2 describes the subjects of our study: San Jose's
farming men and women, and the kind of community in which they
live today. It explores the dimensions of social inequality as seen in
Introduction 5
the life-styles of two men, one rich, the other poor, and shows how
the sociocultural milieu of community life helps govern and shape
their lives and behavior. In keeping with my premise that prestige
seeking is a major imperative for human behavior, a special concern
in Chapter 2 will be to explain the nature of San Jose's social status
system and how the two men, and their neighbors, themselves per-
ceive their positions within it.
Chapter 3 and 4 reconstruct the historical circumstances sur-
rounding San Jose's settlement and growth. Because the behavior
of San Jose's settlers was inevitably colored by cultural precedents
inherited from the past, I first examine the economic and social mi-
lieu of prewar Cuyo Island that produced the senior generation of
village farmers. Chapter 3 explains how generations of life in the
economically closed and socially isolated Cuyo environment
shaped their cultural values and objectives, and created, even-
tually, the selective pressures that would cause them to migrate.
Also, and because some social and economic differentiation was
present in pre-War Cuyo, Chapter 3 explains and defends my char-
acterization of life there as basically egalitarian.
Chapter 4 concerns the growth of San Jose itself and the reactions
and adaptations of the migrant men and women to a frontier incen-
tive structure fundamentally different from the one they had known
in Cuyo. It examines the direction and nature of agricultural devel-
opment as realized in the experiences of eight migrant farmers, all
self-made men; some conspicuous successes, others conspicuous
failures.
Chapter 5 begins the argument itself. Comparing and evaluating
the cases of pioneer success and failure, I stress that the origins of
San Jose's inequality lay not in time of arrival, amount of starting
capital, or other such factors, but rather were personalistic in na-
ture. They lay, for the most part, in a level of motivation and in a
kind of "on-the-job competence" that some men and women
brought to the frontier and others did not. The presence or absence
of such qualities in particular individuals, I will argue, is not readily
explained by such conventional parameters as education or paren-
tal social standing. Idiosyncratic life experiences, unrelated to the
aforementioned parameters, more directly account for the variation
in question. The bulk of Chapter 5 then reviews a series of such life
experiences and their consequences culled from the personal his-
tories in Chapter 4 - birth order, geographical mobility, marriage
partner - that appear to explain why some individuals, but not
others, acquired the cognitive and noncognitive qualities contribut-
ing to success.
Following Chapter 5, I shift my focus from the characteristics of

individual farmers to the system of social inequality itself and how
it operates today to influence and determine behavior. Chapters 6
and 7 explore the wellsprings of stability, over the short term, in the
distributions of income and social status.
At the heart of social inequality today lie differences among farm-
ers in the ways they earn their livings, and Chapter 6 begins with
the mosaic of interdependent production activities in the contem-
porary village economy: rice growing, gardening, arboriculture,
livestock raising, day labor, and fishing. These activities are not
equally important on each individual farm, but are instead com-
bined in characteristic "production mixes" at each status level,
each production mix with a characteristic pattern of time utilization
and returns to labor. Chapter 6 shows how choice of production mix
is both cause and effect of social status. On the one hand, variation
among farms in production mix gives rise to the distributions of
cash and subsistence incomes which underlie the status order. On
the other hand, the distribution of incomes itself channels and con-
strains production, sales, and consumption choices in ways that
tend to maintain social inequality.
Chapter 7 shows that how farmers earn personal prestige, no less
than how they earn their livings, has a cause-and-effect relationship
with social status. Broad social structural and social psychological
imperatives, differing among status levels but everywhere asso-
ciated with the leisure-time searches for peer approval and self-es-
teem, also channel behavior in ways that tend to maintain social in-
equality.
The evidence of Chapters 6 and 7 suggests a system of consider-
able tenacity in terms of its ability to maintain the existing distribu-
tion of advantage and disadvantage over the short term. But it does
not show whether farmers necessarily pass their advantages and
disadvantages on to their offspring. To answer this question, Chap-
ter 8 focuses on the possible sociocultural processes whereby par-
ents might transmit to their children their welfare positions and
their life-styles. It shows that status-related differences in such
areas as child-training practices and educational chances are in fact
present and cause children of different parental social standing to
embark upon systematically different life experiences - experi-
ences that make it likely that existing inequalities will be perpetu-
ated, within families, in the generation to come.
In my final chapter, I recapitulate my findings and place my ex-
planatory interests, the emergence and institutionalization of social
inequality, on a broader stage. Comparing and joining individual
Introduction 7
and circumstantial levels of analysis, I argue that a greater diversity

of circumstances and a greater diversity of human motives and ca-
pabilities than is conventionally believed may underlie the emer-
gence of social inequality in developing communities. While ex-
panded market participation animated San Jose's experience with
emergent social inequality, comparative evidence suggests that
such participation is neither sufficient nor even necessary for social
inequality to emerge in other settings. It follows that the kind of
person who has "made it" in San Jose cannot be presumed to illus-
trate some sort of universal paradigm for socioeconomic achieve-
ment. For if the circumstances making differential socioeconomic
success possible are variable, so too are the personal attributes con-
ducive to such success. Thus despite their implicit claims to uni-
versality, popular American notions about men whose personal en-
dowments are such that they could "succeed anywhere" must be
construed as folk constructs of those characteristics appropriate
only to success under conditions of industrial capitalism.
Turning to the institutionalization of inequality, I bring the con-
trasting perspectives of Marxism and capitalism to bear on the
question of how the social orders of developing agricultural com-
munities change over time. Whether and to what degree such com-
munities actually realize the sort of class polarization envisioned by
Marx, I argue, depends upon many variables, including the ease of
obtaining subsistence, the direction of change in agricultural tech-
nology, and the availability of credit and off-farm employment. But
if such a polarization has not yet occurred in San Jose, a review of
conditions in the community's lower status group reveals consider-
able support for the Marxist view that third-world poverty is a child
of development as well as of tradition. That the causes of individual
poverty are so variable, however, suggests that the "models of
man" that both Marxists and capitalists bring to their analyses are
seriously incomplete.
Rich man, poor man: life in a
frontier farming community
San Jose lies 8 kilometers away from Puerto Princesa, the economic
and political center of Palawan Province (see Map 2.1). Rectangular
in shape and covering 758 hectares of unirrigated flatland, it has a
population of 112 households, with a total of 763 people. The na-
tional road running north from Puerto Princesa transects the com-
munity and at 1-kilometer intervals sends feeder roads off in oppo-
site directions. On the east side, these roads end in the mangrove
swamps that buffer San Jose from its only natural boundary, the
ocean. On its remaining three sides San Jose borders neighboring
communities. Along the highway travel buses bound for distant
northern communities and the numerous jitneys and tricycles (mo-
torcycles equipped with sidecars) that handle local traffic to and
from town.
Seen from the air, San Jose is unimpressive. The landscape is a
patchwork of scrubby regrowth and coconut, banana, and fruit tree
orchards. Only the community school and church stand out as
prominent structures. Barely visible are three stores and two rice
mills, the only other nonresidential buildings in the village. Scat-
tered here and there are tin-roofed houses and well-kept vegetable
gardens, the only indications from afar that San Jose is progressive,
developing, and, by rural Philippine standards, a relatively well-to-
do community.
Nor does such an aerial view provide much indication of the re-
centness of San Jose's development. What is today San Jose was a
virtually unbroken expanse of virgin forest during the early 1930s.
A Japanese logging company had removed most of the commer-
cially valuable hardwoods and still operated a sawmill near what is
now the center of the community. Here and there were the scat-
tered clearings of a few indigenous Tagbanuas. Some soon left the
area for the greater isolation of the foothills; a few remained be-
hind, and their descendants are still present. Earlier migrants to Pa-
lawan had already begun to clear and settle the land closer to
Puerto Princesa before interest in the San Jose area developed.
Rich man, poor man
To: Municipality of Roxas
Map 2.1. Puerto Princesa City and environs
Some migrants, too, had also already settled in more distant areas,
on land that they considered to be more desirable. Thus, San Jose
never attracted Ilocano or Visayan migrants, whose lowland rice
traditions led them further afield to seek suitable homesteads. Tag-
buros, San Jose's parent village and somewhat further away from
town, has several all year streams and was settled by migrant Vi-
sayan farmers as early as 1910. But San Jose itself awaited the ar-
rival of farmers who found congenial an upland, rainfed agriculture.
Only after 1930 did such farmers begin to trickle in. The three
decades that followed spanned the major period of San Jose's
growth and settlement. Not until 1948 did it gain formal autonomy
as a separate community, then with a population of about forty
households. Vacant land for homesteading was exhausted several
years later, but births and continuing in-migration subsequently
swelled the population to its present total. Subdivision, for sale or
inheritance, of many of the original homesteads allowed most of
these later arrivals to obtain at least some land. Excluding land
owned by nonresidents,1 San Jose remains today a community of
smallholders. The mean amount of land owned per resident house-
hold is 3.2 hectares, and 70 percent of households own at least 1
hectare. Only twenty-six households, 23 percent of the total, own
no land at all.
The years following the exhaustion of free land in San Jose also
saw the emergence of a commercialized agriculture. The growth of
a nearby market center, the development of a regional infrastruc-
ture, and the introduction of a new agricultural technology com-
bined to create opportunities for market participation that had not
existed in Cuyo. Rapid postwar population growth in Puerto Prin-
cesa, culminating with its conversion in 1970 from a municipality to
a chartered city, brought growing demand for fresh farm produce
among urban consumers, many of them well-paid businessmen and
white-collar workers. From a population of 716 in 1918, the pobla-
cion (town center) alone grew to 2,332 in 1939, to 3,326 in 1948, to
7,551 in 1960, and to 12,278 in 1970 (Census 1970). Meanwhile,
during the 1950s, the national government converted the highway
connecting San Jose to the town center to all-weather status. The
town itself erected a new public marketplace and, in San Jose, con-
structed a grid of feeder roads to connect the more remote farms
with the highway. The late 1950s and early 1960s also brought im-
proved seeds, fertilizer and pesticide use, and new cultural prac-
tices to gardening.
These changes led San Jose's farmers to allocate greater amounts
of land and labor to agriculture and to expand cash incomes. Some-
time during the 1950s, the pattern of farm production shifted, at
least on the more prosperous farms, from one in which more than
half of farm output was retained for home consumption to one in
which more than half was sold. In recent years, San Jose has be-
come a major supplier of fresh food to the town center. Each morn-
ing, twenty to thirty women leave the village bringing baskets and
bundles of fruits, vegetables, chickens, and eggs to sell wholesale
Rich man, poor man 11
or retail in the marketplace. On any given day in the marketplace,

15 to 20 percent of the fresh produce vendors, and 15 to 20 percent
of the fresh produce, are from San Jose. Less regularly, men bring
pigs, cows, and an occasional goat to market. Most of these foods
were traditionally produced in the Cuyonon subsistence sector.
Today, 56 percent of total village agricultural output is sold, and an
additional 8 percent is fed to livestock, most of which are subse-
quently sold. Of the remainder, 33 percent is for household subsis-
tence and the small balance is utilized for celebrations and gifts.
(Appendix B explains how data on the disposition of agricultural
production were obtained.)
Growing land scarcity, as well as growing market opportunity,
stimulated the commercialization of San Jose agriculture. But ex-
pansion of market participation has occurred under generally favor-
able economic circumstances. As farmers increased labor inputs
into agriculture and turned to more intensive uses of their land,
technological change and high prices in the marketplace insured
that the returns to their labor grew rather than diminished (Eder
1977). Because farmers expanded market participation by increas-
ing total production and not simply by retaining less for home con-
sumption, they still produce about half, by market value, of their
own subsistence. In caloric terms, they produce even more.
Growth in the regional economy has enabled San Jose's farmers
to expand nonagricultural as well as agricultural incomes. About
thirty men have full-time wage employment. They work in govern-
ment offices in Puerto Princesa and at a quicksilver mine in a
nearby community. A few men and women operate businesses or
are otherwise self-employed. Employed persons are found at all
status levels and all also engage in farming. In addition, some mem-
bers of households whose primary occupation is farming earn sup-
plementary cash incomes from secondary occupational specialities.
Masseurs, carpenters, and coconut wine gatherers are among such
specialists in San Jose. One might also include here those farmers'
wives who sell in the marketplace, for some regularly engage in the
buy-and-sell trade as petty brokers. In addition to or in lieu of
bringing their own farm produce, they buy produce in San Jose and
resell it in town, earning their profit from the transport and bulk-
breaking services they provide. Thus market selling may be both an
adjunct to farming and an occupation in its own right.
Table 2.1 uses balance of payments accounting (Epstein
1962:108-11) to show San Jose's trading position with the regional
economy during 1971. (The data used to construct Table 2.1 were
obtained from a careful, one-year study of income and expenditure
in a stratified sample of one third of village households; see Appen-
Table 2.1. San Jose's balance of payments for 1971 (pesos)a
Cash income Cash expenditure

Source Amount Percent Item Amount Percent
Agricultural Rice 33,700 11.6
produce Other food 47,300 16.2
sales 137,100 47 Household
Fish and overheads 19,300 6.6
mollusk Cigarettes & wine 19,950 6.8
sales 2,460 1 Clothing 21,950 7.5
Business and Medicine 5,710 2.0
trading Transportation 6,860 2.4
profits 30,000 10 Celebrations 3,920 1.3
Wages and Consumer durables 4,035 1.4
salaries 103,500 35 Taxes 1,345 0.5
Gifts and Education 22,750 7.8
remittances 14,100 5 Bank loan
Other 4,480 2 repayments 9,410 3.3
Fertilizer &
291,640 100 pesticide 4,930 1.7
Animal feeds &
supplies 3,920 1.3
Marketing costs 11,010 3.8
Land purchases 7,290 2.5
Equipment pur-
chases & repairs 5,390 1.8
Known savings 20,320 7.0
Other 1,570 0.5
Residual 40,980 14.0
291,640 100.0
a
Exclusive of production and consumption in the subsistence sector. In
1971 one U.S. dollar was worth 6.70 pesos.
dix C.) Sales of farn produce in the town marketplace, worth over
0,000 pesos (1 pesos equals 0.15 dollars), accounted for about one-
half of total village cash income. Wages and salaries accounted for
an additional one-third of total income. Business and trading profits
and gifts and remittances accounted for the remainder.
Table 2.1 shows that farmers use their cash incomes to purchase a
variety of goods and services in Puerto Princesa. Food, clothing,
medicine, and production requisites are all common items of con-
sumer expenditure. Two-thirds of all families own radios, kerosene
pressure lanterns, and private wells or water pumps. Many families
routinely send their children to high school. Average total annual
income in 1971 was 3,965 pesos per family, 71 percent cash and 29
percent subsistence. This total, equivalent to $87 per capita or $110
per consumption unit, was high by 1971 Philippine standards; the
median rural family income was then only 1,953 pesos (D.A.P.
1975). Notwithstanding the inequalities in status and welfare that
are the subject of this book, community residents generally feel that
they are better off than ever in the past. San Jose in fact enjoys a
reputation in Puerto Princesa as a prime example of a successfully
developing village.
To be sure, the community is still newly developing. Production
capital is scarce, and only in vegetable gardening are production
techniques unambiguously modern. Lacking the surface water re-
sources necessary to develop an artificially irrigated agriculture,
and confronted by prohibitive energy costs for developing ground-
water resources, farmers continue to grow their staple crops in the
traditional fashion. They employ slash-and-burn, or swidden, agri-
culture to grow upland rice, corn, cassava, and sweet potato in
three- or four-year rotations. While many farmers today routinely
interplant their swiddens with tree crops, few seek out grafted or
otherwise superior planting stock, and some land still lies fallow.
Likewise, there are many more chickens and hogs than in the past,
and some farmers now speak of their "piggeries" and "poultry
projects." But livestock are inadequately fed, and few farmers take
advantage of the vaccination and artificial insemination services
available from government agencies. Nor have many farmers
sought or obtained bank loans, and the few government extension
programs that have included San Jose have not been locally rele-
vant.
The fortunes of San Jose will thus continue to be bound up in the
future, as they have been in the past, with those of the wider Puerto
Princesa area. In the period spanning San Jose's growth, the town
center has itself matured from a sleepy municipal seat to a genuine
provincial city. Numerous city, provincial, and national govern-
ment offices today serve the local area. Those best known to San
Jose residents include the Post Office and the Bureaus of Land, So-
cial Welfare, and Public Works. Connected by plane and boat to
Manila, Puerto Princesa has its own trend-conscious local elite, the
local representatives of a mainstream lowland culture that draws
everything from fashions to ideas from Manila. The town's commer-
cial zone lies along six blocks of the main street, extending for one
block on either side. Here are found the full complement of goods
and services available in most Philippine provincial capitals. Cloth-
ing, hardware, paint, construction materials, motorcycles, furniture,
small appliances, and cooked foods are sold in numerous stores and
shops. For weddings there are seamstresses and photographers; for
illness, two hospitals and numerous private doctors; and for death,
a funeral parlor and a cemetery. One can also see a movie, go bowl-
ing, or have a radio repaired.
Proximity to Puerto Princesa's increasingly urban milieu has
bred a certain cosmopolitan air among San Jose's farmers not found
among those living in more distant areas. Many residents, for exam-
ple, have an intimate knowledge of the workings of city govern-
ment. Most have met the mayor, the vice-mayor, and some of the
city councillors. Many men know the mayor personally and have at
one time or another approached him for assistance. San Jose men
and women in general move easily in Puerto Princesa and most
find reasons to go there at least once a week.
But the village retains a powerful sense of community. It has its
own church and elementary school. San Jose is a barrio, one of
thirty-seven associated with Puerto Princesa, and hence a corporate
political unit in the Philippine political system.2 It regularly elects
a headman and six councillors to administer its internal affairs. All
residents periodically meet together in the forum of the Barrio As-
sembly. Cliques and friendship groups include few outsiders, and
informal interhousehold visiting rarely crosses village boundaries.
An annual villagefiestacelebrates Saint Joseph and the phrase taga
San Jose, "from San Jose," is commonly used for identification in
town. San Jose's sense of community is also reinforced by the nu-
merous consanguineal and affinal kin ties that interrelate its mem-
bers. In thirty-five households, the husband or the wife has one of
five major surnames. These kin ties receive regular instrumental
and affective support.
But none of these qualities can obscure the consequences for
consumption patterns and life-styles of growing social inequality.
Community residents no longer live in the relatively homogeneous
and egalitarian society they knew in Cuyo and on the frontier, but
in one marked by systematic and growing inequalities in wealth,
prestige, and power. The reasons for and consequences of such in-
equalities are a recurring theme in later chapters. But what of the
flesh-and-blood villagers themselves? How do they live, and what
are they like as people? Before we proceed further, let us first turn
to two of San Jose's real-life farmers, one rich, the other poor. Let us
see how their wealth, prestige, and political influence differ, for in
their contrasting life-styles we can see most effectively the meaning
of social inequality in San Jose.
Our rich man is Andres Rabang; our poor man, Jovencio Cena.
Neither the richest nor the poorest men in the community, they are
rather alike in certain ways. They are of similar age; Andres is 50
and Jovencio is 45. They have families of similar size; Andres has
five children and Jovencio has seven. Each was born in Cuyo, com-
pleted two years of elementary school, and migrated to San Jose
during the 1940s. Both acquired land and both took wives in San
Jose, women with backgrounds similar to their own. Neither man
has off-farm wage employment. But they are fundamentally differ-
ent in wealth, in political influence, in sophistication, in outlook on
life, and in their relations with others and feelings about them-
selves.
The most visible manifestation of Andres Rabang's high social
standing is his house. An imposing two-story structure of concrete
block and hardwood construction, it faces onto San Jose's main
feeder road from a neatly landscaped houselot surrounded by fruit
trees. On one side, a poultry coop contains fifty chickens and a pig
pen houses thirteen pigs. On the other side, a recently built porch
shelters the motorcycle and sidecar used to take farm produce to
market. Behind the house, hoses and tanks connect a sealed water
pump to the kitchen and shower. Along the back wall hang the
nylon fishing nets that Andres and his sons use for Sunday after-
noon outings on the sea. One has to step inside the house, however,
to take the full measure of Andres's standard of living. Here is
found the full complement of furniture and other consumer dura-
bles typical of the well-off rural Philippine family.
Andres greets his visitors in a room amply furnished with tables
and chairs. The tables display a large radio and a record player. On
the walls hang a large clock and an assortment of photographs, cer-
tificates, and diplomas. In the adjoining hallway hang two kerosene
pressure lanterns; here too is the sewing machine Andres's wife
and daughters use to keep their clothes in repair. Back in the
kitchen is a china closet and, upstairs, two beds and a well-filled
clothes closet. The entire home has a neat and comfortable feel
about it.
Two hundred meters from Andres's house, and worth less than 1
percent as much, stands the house of Jovencio Cena. It is a dilapi-
dated, one-room structure built entirely of local materials. Jovencio
has long planned to build a larger one to accommodate his growing
family, but he has yet to find either the time or the resources. Joven-
cio's family eats, sleeps, and receives visitors on the floor; a small
wooden trunk that doubles as a chair is the only item of furniture.
Having no well of their own, they are dependent on that of their
neighbor. Jovencio's only consumer durable is a kerosene pressure
lantern. Furthermore, his house and houselot are barren in ways

that go beyond a mere lack of consumer possessions. There is no
yard as such, no decorative shrubs to set off the house itself from
the surrounding landscape. No potted plants decorate the stairway
and no cut-out pictures adorn the walls inside. The absence of
these items, easily acquired and common enough in other house-
holds, even those of modest means, helps create a makeshift, tem-
porary feeling about Jovencio's house, although it has been occu-
pied at this location for years.
Each man's most important productive asset is his land. Andres
owns 12 hectares of land; he homesteaded 7 hectares in 1944, and
his wife inherited the remaining 5 hectares from her father, one of
San Jose's earliest settlers. Andres's 7-hectare parcel is fully
planted to tree crops and is legally titled. A politician whom Andres
supported during the 1956 election secured the release of his title
from the Bureau of Lands the following year. Possession of legal
title has twice enabled Andres to obtain bank loans. With the first,
Andres plowed a hectare of his wife's land, fenced it with barbed
wire, and planted it with bananas, with the second he purchased
the family motorcycle. In 1971 Andres's net worth - the market
value of his productive and nonproductive property - was 73,540
pesos ($10,975).
Jovencio by contrast, has only 2 hectares of land, and even that is
not legally titled. He has applied for ownership of this parcel at the
Bureau of Lands but lacks the political muscle to expedite the nec-
essary paper work. In the meantime, while his tenure is secure, he
can neither borrow money against his land nor formally partition it
among his children. Most of his land still lies fallow. He owns few
farm animals, only five chickens and one pig, and cares for a
brother's cow. His only productive asset other than his land, tree
crops and farm animals is a small fishing canoe. In 1971 Jovencio's
net worth was 6,895 pesos ($1,029).
Andres and Jovencio may both be farmers, but they do not earn
their agricultural incomes in the same fashion. Both make a rice
swidden every year, each desiring to meet as much of his family's
annual subsistence needs as possible. Beyond this similarity, how-
ever, the two men differ markedly in the ways they divide their
time between different kinds of production activities.
Andres spends much of his time caring for his livestock and tree
crops. From these sources he derives a steady stream of cash in-
come. Piglets are born and weaned regularly. Almost daily, there
are bananas, green coconuts, and fruits of the season to be har-
vested. In addition, Andres shares with his wife Deling and their
children the work of maintaining a large vegetable garden. On al-

most any day of the year there is produce from Andres' farm ready
for market. Deling has a retail vendor's license in the town market-
place and sells there three to four mornings a week. Andres also
spends some time each day collecting coconut wine. He and his
family consume some of the wine themselves but Andres ferments
most to vinegar, making weekly trips to town to sell it in wholesale
lots. For some of the more routine farm tasks, such as those entailed
in swiddening, Andres hires day laborers, freeing his own time for
more important or remunerative activities that he pursues on his
own. But he considers himself primarily a farmer and speaks elo-
quently of his relationship to the soil.
Jovencio's few tree crops and farm animals absorb only a small
portion of his time. He and his wife, Minggay, garden only part of
the year and on a smaller scale than do Andres and Deling. Joven-
cio's family consumes much of their limited farm output. With mar-
ketable produce available only sporadically and in limited quan-
tity, Minggay never attends market herself; instead, she sells such
produce to her sister-in-law, who resells it at a profit in town. While
Jovencio can expect to sell a cow or a pig once or twice a year, he
earns much of his cash income by seeking out the unskilled day
labor opportunities provided by better-off farmers. He even works,
now and then, for Andres Rabang. Jovencio himself never hires
labor, but he can mobilize extra hands by exchanging labor days
with friends and neighbors. Large and boisterous, the exchange
labor groups that Jovencio joins each year to help clear and plant
his swidden are decidedly more convivial than the small groups of
paid laborers that Andres hires for the same purpose.
During low tides, Minggay and her children gather edible ma-
rine life along the seashore. Several times a week Jovencio also
goes fishing. He and Minggay find the ocean an important source of
subsistence, and, should his catch be good, another source of
needed cash. Reliance upon such activities as day labor and fishing
give Jovencio's economic life a precarious, almost hand-to-mouth
quality: day labor is subject to the production plans of others, while
fishing is subject to the vagaries of weather. Not surprisingly, Jo-
vencio is chronically short of money. Unlike Andres, who normally
has cash on hand to deal with expenses as they arise, Jovencio does
not. Rarely does he look around for an opportunity to earn cash
without first being impelled by a necessary expenditure.
Andres is justifiably proud of what his large cash income has en-
abled him to do for his children. Two are in high school and two are
in college. Canned milk, meat, and fresh vegetables are regular
items in their diet. They are well clothed by a mother who consid-
ers new clothing to be a routine consumption expenditure. In a
household where allowances are given weekly and a motorcycle is
the family vehicle, one could even say that they are indulged. Jo-
vencio is also proud of his children, but he has been unable to do as
much for them. His children are younger, and his eldest daughter is
in high school. But she is not expected to continue to college, nor
are many of her younger siblings expected to attend high school.
All are poorly clothed. A few of the younger ones show the effects
of an inadequate diet in a family where canned milk and meat are
rarely eaten and even vegetables and fish are not consumed every
day. One of these younger children is chronically absent from ele-
mentary school due to a recurring illness, and the youngest in fact
died during my stay, after Jovencio had gone into debt in a belated
effort to seek medical treatment.
Let us listen to Andres and Jovencio as they speak for them-
selves. Tall and distinguished-looking, Andres speaks with the con-
fidence of a man today well known both in San Jose and in Puerto
Princesa as a successful Cuyonon pioneer:
You should have been here twenty years ago. I was as poor as any man in
San Jose. We were all poor, then, like chickens. "One scratch, one mouth-
ful." Look around you - some men are still like that. You know, I used to
work for some of those men. They arrived here earlier than I did and got
more land. Then they took it easy. Ha! When I got off working for them I
came home and worked some more, for myself. I've probably planted more
bananas and coconuts than any man in San Jose! Look around you - there
are men out there who think they're still in Cuyo. You harvest a little rice,
then you take it easy. They've been doing that for twenty years. Look at
them now! All they have to sell is their land. Some of them don't even have
that anymore.
A quiet man with an infectious smile, Jovencio speaks with the

resignation of one beaten by life:
What is life here like? Well, pretty much like Cuyo, I guess. Look for rice,
look for money - it's just the same. Well, things are a little easier here. In
Cuyo, money was really hard to come by. Here, there are a lot of chances to
work. But for poor men like me, it's hard to keep up. I don't have a lot of
land, like the others. It's already crowded here, just like in Cuyo. But in
Cuyo, even if you didn't have any land, you could find a way to get by. Here
there is always something else you need. If you don't work every day,
you're dead. But I wouldn't go back to Cuyo. There's no future there.
We will return in Chapter 4 to the backgrounds and beginnings of
Andres and Jovencio. Here, let us pursue further the differences
between them today and ask, how do others in the community envi-
sion these differences? How systematically do other community

residents themselves differ in their economic and social character-
istics? To answer such questions, I began with a standard sociomet-
ric procedure: a rating panel. I asked a number of longtime San
Jose residents to rank San Jose's 112 households according to the
positions they occupied in the community. Combining their sepa-
rate rankings, I constructed a single, composite social status scale,
shown in Figure A.I, Appendix A. Along this scale I defined analyt-
ically three status groups: an upper group of 21 households, a mid-
dle group of 47 households, and a lower group of 44 households.
Appendix A describes in detail the rating interview and scale con-
struction procedures. While households, and not individuals, are
the units of status ranking, for stylistic convenience I will often fol-
low local usage and speak of households in terms of their heads.
For the same reason, and because most households contain simple
nuclear families, I use "household" and "family" interchangeably.
The model of the status order displayed in Figure A.I anchored
my analysis of social inequality in San Jose. From here my inquiry
proceeded in two directions. In one, I continued to question my
status raters. Their comments and observations, I hoped, would
help reveal the principles underlying their status placements and
might also provide clues illuminating the nature of their own sta-
tus-seeking behavior. Appendix A explains in greater detail the na-
ture of such questioning. In the other direction, I also studied inde-
pendently, using theoretically chosen criteria, the attributes of
individuals and households at different positions in the status
order. For a stratified sample of 35 households, for example, I col-
lected data on wealth, income, and spending patterns (see Appen-
dix B). Let us compare here some of the results of these various
lines of inquiry.
About Andres Rabang (and men like him) San Jose residents
themselves say, maayad den anang pagkabetang, "he is living
well." Like others of his high social status, he is known to have
"money" and "a lot of land." More fundamentally, he has "an as-
sured income" and is hence economically secure. All raters
evinced great concern with identifying evidence of economic secu-
rity, or lack of it, before making an upper-group status placement.
Possession of a cash reserve (resirba), for seeing projects through
and for handling crises, was widely cited as indicative of upper-
group social standing. One rater changed a tentative placement of a
family from his upper- to his middle-status group because the fam-
ily had started construction of a large new house but was taking un-
usually long to complete it - suggesting to him that "they probably
don't have what I thought they did." This same rater went on to say
Table 2.2. Social status and per household property ownership
(pesos)
Amount
Upper Middle Lower
group group group Mean
Productive property
Land 25,974 7,137 7,091 10,698
Immovable agricultural
equipment (fencing,
wells, poultry houses,
piggeries) 646 196 112 249
Moveable agricultural
equipment (plows,
sprayers, carts, bikes) 505 148 61 182
Livestock 2,245 991 456 1,020
Other productive equip-
ment (tools, sewing
machines, fishing equip-
ment) 434 402 78 282
Bank savings and
investments 2,226 260 0 532
Subtotal 32,030 9,134 7,798 12,963
Nonproductive property
Houses 3,850 1,315 304 1,402
Household equipment 676 322 115 309
Personal property 896 370 200 404
Subtotal 5,422 2,007 619 2,116
Grand Total 37,452 11,141 8,417 15,079«
a
Equivalent to U.S. $2,250 per household, or U.S. $418 per consumption
unit.
that genuine upper-group families all had money, at home or in the
bank, that they had "put to sleep." He cited Andres Rabang as an
example.
About men like Jovencio Cena, in contrast, it is said, makori an-
dang pagkabetang, "they are in difficult circumstances." Farmers
of Jovencio's low social status are also often referred to as the mga
inkokorang, "those who are always hard up." While such attributes
as poor clothing and rundown houses are obvious indicators of
lower-group social standing, a family's circumstances at this status
level are visualized more generally in terms of a pervasive lack of
economic security. A widely repeated comment about lower-group
families (and one often heard about Jovencio Cena's) was that, ig-
Table 2.3. Social status and per household income (pesos)
Cash Subsistence Total

Status group Amount Percent Amount Percent Amount Percent
Upper 6,499 80.7 1,556 19.3 8,055 100
Middle 2,526 71.8 1,019 28.2 3,615 100
Lower 1,278 54.4 1,070 45.6 2,346 100
Mean 2,824 71.2 1,141 28.8 3,965a 100
Equivalent to U.S. $592 per household, or U.S. $110 per consumption

mit.
unit
karaen den, agasagiap sanda pa' andang makakaen, "it's already

mealtime and they are still trying to find something to eat." Simi-
larly, makikita mo sanda adlaw-adlaw, agasagiap andang maka-
kaen, "you can see them every day, looking for their food." These
are the families that live a day-to-day existence, for ara sanda' pagi-
sip sa mga adlaw nga magaabot, "they give no thought to the fu-
ture.
Pagkabetang (level of living), a local English usage, is thus the
central concept informing status placements made by San Jose resi-
dents of their co-villagers. Some raters in fact classified households
by "high," "medium," and "low" pagkabetang. All such raters
placed Andres Rabang in their high group and Jovencio Cena in
their low group. Farmers of in-between status were just that; raters
referred to such men as "average," ordinario, or "in the middle."
Middle-group men lack the economic security of upper-group farm-
ers but are not always "caught short" as are lower-group farmers.
They "have enough to get by."
How do these local views of the social status order relate to the
various analytical dimensions of inequality that have, since Marx
and Weber, dominated our thinking on the subject? Independently
obtained data on wealth and income confirm our expectation that
economic conditions are a key determinant of status placements.
When we itemize, in Table 2.2, the different kinds of productive
and nonproductive property that households at each status level
own, we find that upper-group households own, on the average,
about 3 times as much land, 5 times as many livestock, and 8 times
as much nonproductive property as do lower-group households.
Overall, a factor of about 4.5 separates the total wealth of house-
holds in the upper and lower status groups. In the same fashion, the
average income is greater for households at each higher status
level. Table 2.3 shows that upper-groups households receive, on
Upper
group
Middle
group
* -
Social
status
Lower
group
TotaL wealth per consumption unit (in pesos)
Figure 2.1. Wealth and social status
the average, about 5 times the cash income and 1.5 times the subsis-
tence income of lower-group households. (Appendix C examines in
detail the components of cash and subsistence income at each sta-
tus level.)
Despite the close relationship between pagkabetang and ma-
terial well-being, the status order and the economic order are not
coterminus, not at least if such conventional, readily measured in-
dices as wealth and income define the economic order. For the rela-
tionships between wealth, income, and social status are, on an indi-
vidual household basis, problematic. Figure 2.1 displays wealth as
a function of social status by plotting separately the thirty-five sam-
ple households according to their individual wealth and status posi-
tions, the latter measured as explained in Appendix A. Wealth is ex-
pressed here in terms of consumption units in order to normalize
for households' differences in size and age composition. Figure 2.1
shows that there is considerable dispersion at all status levels in the
value of property owned. Five lower-group households in fact own
more property than nine of the middle-group households. Wealth
fails to correlate strongly with social status because, in part, in-
comes from employment may contribute directly to material well-
being without being reflected in property ownership. Also, some
lower-group farmers own large parcels of land but have failed to
develop them. They may be rich in land but, like Jovencio Cena,
they are poor in many other things, particularly tree crops, live-
stock, and agricultural equipment.
•41 • 16 .42
•32
Upper •73
group
• 40 •107
• 19
•29
77»«NQ •58
if* -32
' .78 • 15*65
46« «2 0
Social •
status 1,
•86
100. •92
4* •72
34 9
105 : • 68
• 54
•18 •95 «|0
48
200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800
Total income per consumption unit (in pesos) •
Figure 2.2. Income and social status (families are identified by the num-
bers assigned to them in Table A.I, Appendix A).
The relationship between income and social status, on an indi-

vidual household basis, is similarly uncertain. Figure 2.2 displays
the total incomes of our thirty-five sample households as functions
of their status positions and does show a strong positive correlation
at the upper end of the status order. No middle-group household
earns as much as the poorest upper-group household. But income
and social status are less clearly associated at the lower end of the
status order. If we take an income of 600 pesos per consumption
unit as a dividing line between the middle and the lower status
groups, only four of the fourteen middle-group households fall
below this line, and only one of the thirteen lower-group house-
holds falls above it. But the dispersion of households at the lower
end of Figure 2.2 indicates a progressive decline in the reliability
of income as an indicator of social status. In part, this is because
raters considered source as well as amount of income in making
their status placements. Thus one lower-group man is unusually ag-
gressive in seeking out agricultural day-labor opportunities, and
has a reasonable income. But lacking investment in tree crops and
animals, this man's overall economic position is rather precarious.
Given the emphasis placed on economic security, his lower-group
placement is not surprising.
But let us return to our two farmers. There are other dimensions
to the high and low social standing of Andres Rabang and Jovencio
Cena, dimensions that also enter into status placements.
Andres is an important political leader. When he is seen in public
his behavior is clearly that of someone who expects to be noticed
when he is present and listened to when he speaks. He regularly
comes late to community meetings, arriving only after other, more
ordinary men have already gathered. Andres's political importance
becomes particularly visible each election time. He is one of five
San Jose political leaders who, according to Puerto Princesa's
mayor, can between them deliver most of the community's votes
each election. Each of these leaders swings a large bloc of San
Jose's 340 registered voters, either by calling up old debts of grati-
tude or by creating new ones. Consanguineal and affinal kin pro-
vide the core of Andres's electoral support, but he also delivers
some of his neighbors each election. Between elections he is ex-
pected to consolidate the support of all such followers through
small political and economic favors. Such favors may include inter-
cession with a government official on a neighbor's behalf or the ju-
dicious manipulation of government projects in the community to
temporarily employ the party faithful.
During the 1971 general election, Andres headed the vote-get-
ting effort for one of the two major political parties. Throughout the
campaign, cars and jeeps traveled up and down the feeder road
leading to Andres's house, bringing city and provincial officials and
candidates to organize the local campaign and to consolidate politi-
cal alliances. Because voters do not always vote straight tickets, all
candidates must make personal contact with the entire electorate.
Such visits to Andres's house remind all that here is a man of impor-
tance outside the community as well as within it. During the cam-
paign, Andres arranged a patronage job for his son in a provincial
government office in return for a promise to actively support his
party's entire slate of candidates. In this manner, those at the top of
the community political order are rewarded for their campaign ef-
forts on behalf of their still higher-up political patrons.
Andres's participation in the election culminated with a major
vote-buying effort on election eve. At dusk, Andres and his party's
other local leaders met to review the names of those voters, mostly
of lower social status, known to be still uncommitted to one side or
the other. At dusk their party's mayoral candidate himself arrived,
now in constant radio contact with his lieutenants in other villages.
Calling Andres and two of his leaders aside, he quickly delivered to
them 1,000 pesos cash, in 10-peso bills, for buying votes, and then
departed. Andres divided his leaders into teams, distributed the
money among them, and assigned each team a set of voters be-
lieved to be potentially buyable. During that night each team at-
tempted to make covert contact with their targets, and to outmaneu-
ver the teams of the opposing party, about to embark on a similar
mission from a base elsewhere in the community.
The next day all of San Jose's registered voters went to the polls.
Despite the strenuous efforts of Andres and his leaders to win
votes, the hotly contested race for mayor finished in a dead heat.
But as Andres's candidate lost badly in most other communities, his
tie vote in San Jose considerably enhanced Andres's political repu-
tation.
Jovencio Cena's involvement with the 1971 election was more
prosaic. Like others of his low social status, he spent the campaign
attending the periodic caucuses and rallies given on behalf of the
various party and independent candidates. Here he listened to dis-
cussions about their relative merits and prospects and enjoyed the
free cigarettes and drinks customarily distributed at such affairs.
During the campaign Jovencio was approached by many candi-
dates personally. Each shook his hand and asked him not to forget
him on election day. Many candidates gave him cigarettes. But Jo-
vencio's participation in the 1971 election, like Andres's, culmi-
nated on election eve. The wife of a high provincial official, in a late-
night visit, offered Jovencio 50 pesos if he, his wife, and his eldest
child would vote for her (and Rabang's) mayoral candidate. Joven-
cio refused. When he and his wife went to the polls the next day,
they voted for the mayoral candidate of the opposing party, thereby
repaying a debt of gratitude incurred several months earlier when,
upon the death of Jovencio's daughter, that candidate had loaned
his truck to bring the funeral party to the cemetery.
Not all San Jose voters have qualms about selling their votes. Un-
like Jovencio Cena, some lower-group people are so cut off from
the social structure, and from the debts of gratitude to one or an-
other political leader that contact with this structure normally en-
tails, that the only satisfaction they derive from the political process
is the price their vote will bring on election day. During the 1971
campaign, in nine lower-group households either the household
head or a voting-age son sold his vote. (Rabang's leaders used most
of their vote-buying fund to buy the votes of people registered to
vote in San Jose but not resident there. They squandered the re-
mainder on personal expenses and on gifts to kinsmen already com-
mitted to their party's candidates.)
Despite the contrasts in political influence between Andres Ra-
bang and Jovencio Cena, the status order is not itself a statement of
the distribution of political power and influence. Many upper-
group men eschew political participation and in fact have no influ-
ence over the outcome of elections or the allocation of public mon-
ies. Indeed, some middle-group men have more political clout than
some of Andres's status peers. But if status and power can vary in-
dependently, we may view the status order as a ranking of the like-
lihood that a person will achieve political power (Runciman
1968:52). At each higher status level, a greater proportion of men
and women are active in politics. This is not to say that San Jose
residents could not be ranked in a single, graded hierarchy along
the dimension of "power." They can be, and in another sort of anal-
ysis this might be quite useful. But people in San Jose do not them-
selves normally think in terms of a ranking of the politically active
apart from the positions they occupy in the general status order.
How San Jose's men and women spend their leisure time also re-
flects social status. Andres Rabang, despite his prominence in the
community, is not often seen about. His wife, active in the church
and vice-president of the local Catholic Action Association, is ordi-
narily more visible in the community than he is. On most days,
Andres himself is either at home or in his fields. He relaxes by him-
self or with his family. I did not consider Andres to be unfriendly,
but many think him to be somewhat egotistical and overbearing.
He describes himself as simply too busy for the kind of time-con-
suming socializing that others find more attractive than he does.
Jovencio, in contrast, is more often seen about the community
and frequently seems to have time on his hands. But he is a kindly
and responsible person about whose interpersonal behavior, ara
ka makokoon, "nothing (uncomplimentary) can be said." Jovencio
spends his spare time visiting neighbors or chatting with friends at
the corner store. While not a heavy drinker, social drinking is
clearly one of his pleasures. Jovencio often spends Saturday and
Sunday afternoons at the house of an uncle, drinking coconut wine
and playing card games such as Lucky Nine and Forty-one.
At all status levels, however, there are men who are sociable and
unsociable, liked and disliked, and these qualities have an uncer-
tain influence on status placements. That Andres is a relative loner,
even among upper-group men, did not lead raters to downgrade
him in social standing. Indeed, even a family that is actively dis-
liked may nevertheless be accorded high social status. For exam-
ple, while most upper-group families choose to express their
wealth in a living standard higher than the community average, one
such family lives austerely. Yet a steady flow of cash income - an
unfriendly spinster daughter takes a variety of tree crops to market
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
hijos, Araros, Filetero y Nicóstrato, se dedicaron también al cultivo de
la Musa cómica. El florecimiento de Aristófanes coincidió con la guerra
del Peloponeso (431-404 antes de la era cristiana), en cuyo azaroso
período se representaron diez de las once comedias que de él se
conservan. Afiliose al partido aristocrático, y atacó constantemente a
los demagogos, en cuyas manos estaba en su tiempo la dirección de
la república. Con este motivo se atrajo las iras de varios de ellos, pero
muy especialmente de Cleón, que fue su más constante y encarnizado
enemigo.
Tampoco se sabe si ejerció cargos públicos, por más que es de
suponer que, dada su gran significación, no dejarían de
enconmendársele algunos. Se tiene solo noticia de que en 430 pasó
en calidad de cleruco con otros conciudadanos a la isla de Egina
recobrada por los atenienses, con objeto de hacerse cargo de los
extensos dominios que en ella poseía[14].
O por timidez, o porque la ley o la costumbre exigiesen una edad
determinada para presentar comedias, Aristófanes, como él mismo lo
indica[15], puso en escena las tres primeras que compuso bajo los
nombres de sus dos actores Fidónides y Calístrato, aunque el público
no dejara de comprender a quién pertenecían. Fueron estas Los
Detalenses y Los Babilonios[16], de las cuales solo se conservan
fragmentos, y Los Acarnienses, que poseemos completa. En la
primera atacaba Aristófanes la defectuosa educación que se daba a
los jóvenes de su tiempo, presentando ante el coro, compuesto de una
sociedad de gastrónomos, un debate entre un joven modesto y
virtuoso (σώφρων) y otro corrompido (καταπύγων), análogo al que e
Justo y el Injusto sostienen en Las Nubes, cuyo objeto es, aunque
ampliado y mejorado, el mismo de Los Detalenses.
En la segunda, o sea Los Babilonios, representada en 426 po
Calístrato, el poeta echa por otro camino, y principia ya la audaz
empresa en que no cejó un punto de hacer del pueblo mismo, de la
constitución ateniense y de las resoluciones de los tribunales y la
ágora, el objeto de sus comedias. En esta atacó ruda y valientemente
ante el inmenso público que concurría al teatro en las brillantes fiestas
Dionisíacas, a muchos magistrados, y especialmente al arrogante
Cleón. El demagogo sintió en el alma la ofensa y trató de vengarla
citando ante el Senado a Calístrato, que era, por decirlo así, el edito
responsable, y acumuló sobre él tales insultos, calumnias y amenazas
que le pusieron a dos dedos de su ruina[17]. Contra Aristófanes valiose
para inutilizarle de medios indirectos, presentando la grave acusación
de usurpación de los derechos de ciudadano, γραφὴ ξενíας, de que e
poeta consiguió ser absuelto. La animosidad que entre ambos existía
adquirió con esto las proporciones de un odio mortal, que estalló con
una violencia sin ejemplo en la célebre comedia Los Caballeros, cuarta
de las compuestas por Aristófanes y primera de las presentadas con
su nombre. Siguieron a esta otras, hasta cuarenta y cuatro, de las
cuales solo se han conservado once, que son, además de Los
Acarnienses (Ἀχαρνῆς) y Los Caballeros (Ἱππῆς) ya citados, Las
Nubes (Νέφελαι), Las Avispas (Σφῆκες), La Paz (Εἰρήνη), Las Aves
(Ὄρνιθες), la Lisístrata (Λυσιστράτη), Las Fiestas de Ceres
(Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι), Las Ranas (Βάτραχοι), Las Junteras
(Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι) y el Pluto (Πλοῦτος)[18].
Ignóranse, por último, la época y las circunstancias de la muerte de
Aristófanes, conjeturándose únicamente que debió ocurrir siendo de
edad bastante avanzada, pues su Pluto reformado se representó en e
año 390, cuando el poeta debía estar ya en los 62 de su edad, y aún
compuso después el Cócalo y el Eolosicón, bien que estos se pusieron
en escena por su hijo Araros.
Hechas estas indicaciones biográficas, pasemos ya a ocuparnos de
teatro de Aristófanes, diciendo antes, para juzgarle con el debido
acierto, algo sobre el origen y carácter de la antigua comedia
ateniense, de que fue principal cultivador y es genuino y único
representante[19].
La comedia y la tragedia sabido es que nacieron en las fiestas de
Baco, cuyo culto, vario sobre manera, contenía una multitud de
elementos dramáticos[20]. Pero así como la segunda, inspirada en las
fiestas Leneas, tuvo un carácter triste y serio, conforme a los
sufrimientos aparentes del dios en aquella solemnidad conmemorados
la primera, nacida en las Dionisíacas campestres, fiestas de vendimia
en que el placer de ver terminadas las faenas agrícolas y llenos trojes
y lagares se manifestaba con todo género de locuras, lleva hasta en
sus menores detalles impreso el sello de la más descompuesta
alegría. Parte muy principal de estas fiestas era el comos (κῶμος)
festín animado y bullicioso sazonado con picarescos chistes y
canciones de sobremesa, al fin de las cuales los convidados
perdiendo su gravedad, se entregaban medio beodos a danzas
irregulares y desenvueltas y entonaban a coro un entusiasta himno a
Baco en que al dios del vino se asociaban Falo y Fales
representantes de la fuerza generatriz de la naturaleza. A esta canción
báquica se la llamaba la Comedia, es decir, el canto del banquete
según la fuerza etimológica de la palabra[21], y solía repetirse en una
procesión que a continuación del festín se organizaba. Los
comensales, disfrazados con abigarrados vestidos, grotescas
máscaras, enormes coronas de hojas y flores, y tiznados de heces de
vino y otras sustancias colorantes, recorrían encaramados en carros
de labranza el demo o villa en que la fiesta tenía lugar.
Una vez celebrado el dios causa de su alegría, esta especie de
ebria mascarada buscaba como blanco de sus burlas al primero que
se ofrecía ante su vista, y lanzaba contra él desde la carreta, embrión
del futuro tablado escénico, un verdadero diluvio de irrespetuosos
chistes, sacando a pública vergüenza todos los defectos, y saltando
las barreras del pudor entre las carcajadas y aplausos de la multitud
que los rodeaba e iba engrosando a cada instante. En Las Ranas de
Aristófanes encontramos vestigios de la costumbre que estamos
indicando, pues en ella el coro de Iniciados, después de haber dirigido
sublimes himnos a Dionisio-Iaco, los interrumpe sin transición alguna
para exclamar: «¿Queréis que nos burlemos juntos de Arquedemo?»
Circunstancia que con otras sirve de base al insigne Müller para
considerar las improvisadas burlas de los falóforos como parte
esencial del canto báquico.
El cómo y cuándo este rudimento de comedia se perfeccionó y tomó
carta de naturaleza en Atenas, convirtiéndose las farsas de la aldea en
espectáculo artístico digno de ser saboreado por los ciudadanos más
cultos, es cosa que no está bien averiguada. Dejemos a un lado la
historia de su oscura gestación, desconocida para los mismos griegos
y hagamos notar tan solo que este género dramático, aun después de
su perfeccionamiento, conservó en el fondo todos los caracteres de su
origen, siendo, por tanto, la antigua comedia ateniense una
composición enteramente distinta de las que con igual título cultivaron
Menandro y Filemón, imitaron Plauto y Terencio y se representan en
nuestro moderno teatro. Así, al aquilatar su mérito evitaremos el grave
error en que escritores de nota han incurrido, porque como dice
Schlegel[22], «para juzgar acertadamente al antiguo teatro cómico, es
necesario prescindir por completo de la idea de lo que en la actualidad
se llama comedia y los griegos designaron también con el mismo
nombre. La comedia antigua y la nueva no se distinguen solo po
diferencias accidentales, sino que son absoluta y esencialmente
diversas. Jamás podrá considerarse la antigua como el principio
grosero de un arte perfeccionado después; al contrario, constituye e
género original y verdaderamente poético, mientras la nueva
únicamente presenta una modificación más cercana a la prosa y a la
realidad.»
Nacida la comedia en las regocijadas fiestas Dionisíacas, conservó
siempre como carácter distintivo y esencial la alegría franca y
desenvuelta que en el canto del comos y los subsiguientes himnos
falofóricos e itifálicos dominaban. Buscando los poetas la fuente de lo
cómico, y huyendo en sus composiciones de cuanto pudiera ser grave
y serio, presentaron los errores, inconsecuencias y debilidades de los
hombres como resultado natural del imperio de sus apetitos y de
casuales accidentes sin desastrosas consecuencias. Comprendiendo
que la alegría rehuye todo fin determinado, y que así como cuando
llega a apoderarse de un individuo se manifiesta por saltos
desordenados, gritos, carcajadas sin motivo, atrevidas burlas, hasta
llegar a una especie de delirio, prescindieron por completo en sus
piezas de todo plan y presentaron la Musa cómica a modo de bacante
ebria que ya se eleva a regiones ideales, revelando en medio de su
beodez la pura esencia de su naturaleza divina, ya desciende al fango
de la realidad más repugnante; que enlaza en medio de un caos sin
objeto aparente sublimes himnos y obscenas groserías, sabios
consejos y virulentas sátiras; y que aspirando a la virtud y a la justicia
propone su ideal a los espectadores entre el bullicio del licencioso
córdax y las torpes imágenes del falo. Recordando las improvisaciones
carnavalescas y las ocurrencias imprevistas de los falóforos
presentaron sus obras en el tablado escénico como una inmensa
chanza, como una especie de bromazo universal, si se nos permite la
frase, en que no escapan impunes ni filósofos, ni generales, n
estadistas, ni poetas, ni oradores; en que se revelan los misterios más
recónditos de la vida de familia; en que se cruza el rostro con el látigo
de procaz ironía al pueblo que presencia, paga y juzga el espectáculo
y a los mismos dioses, en cuyo honor se celebra.
De esta suerte la comedia, embriagada, por decirlo así, con su
propia alegría y levantada en alas de la imaginación, pasó pronto de la
censura del ciudadano particular a mostrar bajo su aspecto cómico
dice un escritor ya citado[23], «toda la constitución social, el pueblo, e
gobierno, la raza de los hombres y la de los dioses, dándoles la
fantasía con los brillantes toques de su pincel los colores más vivos y
originales.»
Atenta únicamente la comedia antigua a rendir culto al dios de la
alegría, y apegada siempre a sus tradiciones, no trató en sus censuras
de evitar las personalidades[24]; todo lo contrario, designaba al vicioso
por su nombre, le presentaba con su propia fisonomía, y si acudía a
teatro, lo señalaba con el dedo. De otro modo hubieran parecido
insípidas sus sales a los espectadores, ávidos de hallar en ella pasto a
su natural malignidad, pues es de advertir que el público que acudía a
las representaciones escénicas no era, como en los teatros modernos
en escaso número y formado de las clases más ilustradas, sino e
pueblo en masa, que buscaba en aquel espectáculo una distracción
análoga a su gusto. Por consiguiente, los poetas quizá hubieran sido
silbados implacablemente si, prescindiendo de personalidades, única
parte de la comedia inteligible para la mayoría de su auditorio, se
hubiesen concretado a presentar obras de pura imaginación como las
modernas.
De aquí el carácter predominantemente político que
conformándose a la afición a intervenir en el gobierno y a la
constitución democrática de Atenas, llegó a revestir la comedia
antigua, convirtiendo la escena en una segunda tribuna y juzgando con
una audacia solo posible dado el buen sentido de los atenienses, las
decisiones que el pueblo adoptaba en la ágora y proponiendo además
reformas y medidas que le han dado cierta semejanza con la prensa
periódica moderna. Así es que, no contenta todavía con las alusiones
más o menos directas que en el decurso del diálogo van como
bordando el velo alegórico que constituye generalmente la trama de
las mismas, había un punto en que toda ficción se suspendía, en que
se cortaba la acción, y el poeta se presentaba frente a frente a los
espectadores, para decirles paladinamente en la Parábasis cuanto
creía oportuno sobre los más graves negocios del Estado o sus
asuntos particulares. En ella el corifeo, quitándose la máscara, no es
ya un simple actor que se dirige a los concurrentes a un espectáculo
sino el orador que arenga a una asamblea. De este modo, como
afirma Platón con una ironía que manifiesta el extremo a que la
influencia de los cómicos alcanzaba, la república ateniense llegó a se
una Teatrocracia verdadera[25].
En esta forma determinada llegó la comedia a Aristófanes, quien no
introdujo en ella más modificaciones que las que un ingenio superio
da inevitablemente a cuanto toca con sus manos. ¿Habrá, pues
derecho a exigirle en sus obras méritos y perfecciones impropios de
las mismas, dada la diferencia esencial que hemos señalado entre la
antigua comedia y la moderna? ¿No podría el poeta favorito de las
Gracias, rechazar como impertinente el interrogatorio a que el Abate
Andrés le sujeta al hacerle comparecer ante la autoridad de su
crítica?[26] ¿No tendría derecho cuando el erudito Aristarco le exige un
plan bien ideado y regular, una acción ligada, bien seguida y acabada
pinturas justas y fieles, caracteres bien expresados y distintos, y
afectos bien manejados, a contestarle: todo eso que echas de menos
en mis dramas es grave y serio, y en su composición yo no he tenido
más objeto aparente que la alegría; y la alegría solo existe cuando se
rechaza todo plan y toda traba; cuando se desarrollan de un modo
inesperado todas las facultades de nuestra alma; cuando e
pensamiento abandona sus trilladas sendas y vuela por la región de lo
imprevisto; cuando se reúne lo extraordinario, lo inverosímil, lo
maravilloso y lo imposible con las localidades más conocidas y los
usos más familiares; cuando se inventa una fábula atrevida y
fantástica, con tal que sea propia para sacar a luz caracteres
extravagantes y situaciones ridículas; cuando con la rapidez del rayo
se arranca su máscara al vicio y se disimula la indignación bajo una
estrepitosa carcajada; cuando, en una palabra, se toman como a juego
las cosas más graves y se presentan bajo el disfraz de divertida
chanza?[27]
Para convencerse de que Aristófanes fue, en efecto, digno
intérprete de Talía, y de que poseyó, como nadie, ese talento especia
y precioso de regocijar los ánimos, al que se ha dado el expresivo
nombre de vis cómica, no hay más que leer sin preocupaciones
sistemáticas ni espíritu de escuela cualquiera de sus obras, y no se
podrá menos de confesar que la serie de escenas que las constituyen
revelan tal ingenio, tal profusión de sales y de gracias, que si e
aparato escénico, los trajes, las danzas y la música eran dignas de las
concepciones del poeta, debieron producir en los espectadores, dice
Müller, una verdadera embriaguez cómica.
No se crea, sin embargo, que la comedia es en manos de
Aristófanes un simple juego de la fantasía, propio solo para divertir a
los niños y a la plebe más rústica y soez. Todo lo contrario. Parecida a
aquellas grotescas imágenes de sátiros que contenían en su interior la
estatua de una divinidad, oculta siempre bajo el revuelto vaivén de sus
locuras, liviandades y chocarrerías, el oro de un profundo pensamiento
moral y la constante aspiración a un ideal más perfecto, buscado entre
las heces de la realidad.
Perfectamente persuadido Aristófanes de la altísima misión de los
poetas, lleno de ardiente patriotismo, y amante de la justicia y la virtud
ataca, como Cervantes, con aquellas terribles gracias, φοβεράς
χάριτας[28], de que poseía inagotable caudal, todos los vicios y abusos
que minaban en su tiempo la existencia de la república ateniense o
contribuían a extraviar el buen sentido en el orden religioso, literario y
moral.
Así es que de las once comedias que de él se han conservado
unas son predominantemente políticas, como Los Acarnienses, Los
Caballeros, la Lisístrata y La Paz, y se refieren a la guerra de
Peloponeso, aconsejan su terminación y atacan rudamente a los
ambiciosos demagogos que conseguían captarse el aura popular
otras, como Las Avispas, Las Junteras y el Pluto, van dirigidas con
especialidad contra abusos introducidos en la interna administración
de la república por la viciosa organización de los tribunales y las
discusiones de la ágora, y tratan de atajar el mal que la predicación de
ciertas utopías filosóficas podían llegar a producir; otras, como Las
Fiestas de Ceres y Las Ranas, son verdaderas sátiras literarias en las
cuales el poeta trata de contener la decadencia del arte trágico
iniciada en Eurípides y Agatón; otras, en fin, como Las Nubes y Las
Aves, atacan la viciosa educación que a la juventud daban los sofistas
o presentan, en el cuadro más animado y pintoresco que ha podido
crear la humana fantasía, una especie de resumen de cuantos vicios
abusos y ridiculeces son objeto de especial censura en las demás.
Mas para salir victorioso en esta gigantesca lucha contra la
injusticia, las preocupaciones y el error, el poeta hubo de acudir a
todos los resortes de su ingenio, y doblegarse a la dura necesidad de
dar gusto lo mismo a la parte más sensata de su auditorio, que era
naturalmente la menor, que a la multitud ignorante, grosera y afiliada
por añadidura a un partido contrario al que Aristófanes se creía
obligado a defender. Por eso, sin duda, y teniendo además presente la
derrota de Cratino, expulsado del teatro por no haber sazonado su
comedia con los inmundos chistes que eran de rigor, nuestro poeta
mancha con excesiva frecuencia el espléndido ropaje de su Musa con
impúdicas sales, licenciosos cuadros, frases malsonantes, equívocos
bajos y pueriles, y recursos escénicos de pésimo gusto y mala ley. A
decir esto, no pretendemos defenderle a fuer de ciegos apologistas
pero sí creemos oportuno advertir, como circunstancia que atenúa
notablemente la gravedad de esas faltas, que más que del poeta son
de la corrompida sociedad y de la época en que vivió, a la cual, si le
indignase el verse pintada tan al vivo y con tan repugnantes colores
pudiera decirse con Quevedo:
Arrojar la cara importa,
Que el espejo no hay por qué.
Pues es de notar que entre los méritos que, aparte de los literarios
hacen sobremanera interesante el teatro de Aristófanes, figura en
primera línea el de ser un verdadero retrato de la república ateniense
en el interesante período de la guerra del Peloponeso, así como e
más completo monumento que de las costumbres griegas nos ha
legado la antigüedad. Y tan exacto es esto, que se cuenta que
deseando Dionisio el Joven conocer a fondo la situación de Atenas, e
divino Platón le envió como el libro más adecuado las comedias de
Aristófanes; y en nuestros días, para citar un solo testimonio entre mil
el docto Macaulay[29] las prefiere para igual objeto a las admirables
historias de Tucídides y Jenofonte.
Entiéndase, por supuesto, que al utilizar los dramas de Aristófanes
como documentos históricos, hay que proceder con la necesaria
discreción para prescindir de todas aquellas exageraciones, errores y
aun calumnias en que el espíritu de partido, la enemistad personal, e
amor propio lastimado y otras debilidades humanas hicieron incurrir a
poeta, especialmente al ocuparse de Lámaco, Cleón, Eurípides y
Sócrates.
Pues aunque Aristófanes, según él mismo dice y manifiesta, creía
obrar siempre a impulsos de un pensamiento generoso, como no era
ni un sabio ni un santo, no pudo librarse en todas sus censuras de
ofuscamiento de las pasiones y el error. Por eso confundió
lastimosamente a Sócrates con aquella muchedumbre de sofistas
corruptores del arte y de la moral y peligrosos maestros de la juventud
y envolviéndole quizá en el profundo aborrecimiento que sentía contra
Eurípides, de quien el ilustre filósofo fue amigo, le escarneció en Las
Nubes, sembrando las calumnias que veinticuatro años más tarde
sirvieron de base a su condenación. Fue esta una falta de que no
habremos de disculparle, por más que ni seríamos los primeros, n
faltarían razones sólidas que alegar; pero creemos sumamente injusto
el que algunos críticos, haciendo solidarios los errores del hombre con
los del literato, se ensañen por este motivo contra Aristófanes hasta e
punto de negarle, por decirlo así, el pan y la sal, y tratar de expulsarle
ignominiosamente del Estado de las letras, sin darle siquiera aquella
honorífica corona que Platón concedía a los vates al desterrarlos de su
república ideal.
Al hacer esta indicación, bien se comprenderá que nos referimos
especialmente a Plutarco[30], que en su violenta diatriba contra
Aristófanes en parangón con Menandro, punto de partida de muchas
críticas posteriores, aparte de comparar la poesía aristofánica a una
vieja e hipócrita ramera, tan insoportable a las personas sensatas
como a la más abyecta multitud, llega hasta motejar su estilo
desconociendo aquel aticismo seductor, encanto de San Juan
Crisóstomo, y en cuyo honor compuso Platón, autoridad nada
sospechosa en la materia, el sabido dístico en que se hace del alma
de Aristófanes el indestructible santuario de las Gracias.
Se necesita, en efecto, todo el apasionamiento y ceguedad de
autor de un tratado sobre la Malignidad de Heródoto para negar a
lenguaje de Aristófanes esa magia indescriptible, ese perfume
delicioso que se percibe todavía a pesar del trascurso de tantos siglos
raro conjunto de elocución sublime y familiar, de elegancia y rudeza
de giros graciosísimos mezclados a palabras de incomensurables
dimensiones, siempre exacto, puro, flexible, conciso y espontáneo, y
siempre encajado por decirlo así, en la pauta de una versificación rica
variada, armoniosa e irreprochable.
Mucho pudiéramos decir todavía sobre el Teatro de Aristófanes y
los encontrados juicios a que ha dado lugar, pero creemos que las
observaciones apuntadas bastan para preparar el ánimo del que
emprenda la lectura de sus comedias con la imparcialidad debida. Solo
nos resta, pues, reclamar mucha indulgencia para nuestra traducción
que por ser nuestra y la primera que aparece en lengua castellana
necesariamente debe adolecer de infinitos defectos. Al hacerla hemos
seguido el texto de Aristófanes, corregido por Dindorf y publicado en
1867 por Fermín Didot en su Bibliotheca græca, habiendo tenido
también a la vista, entre otros trabajos, las ediciones de Brunck
(Londres, 1823), Boissonade (París, 1826) y Bergk (Leipzig, 1867)
Para las notas, que necesariamente han de abundar en un autor todo
alusiones, parodias y alegorías, hemos acudido principalmente a los
escolios griegos, procurando apartarnos en ellas de todo cuanto
pudiera parecer de mera erudición. Y finalmente, en la versión hemos
procurado ceñirnos todo lo posible a la letra, adecentando a menudo
con el velo de la perífrasis sus obscenas desnudeces, y poniendo a
pie la interpretación latina de Brunck, excepto en aquellos pasajes
poco frecuentes por fortuna dadas las costumbres griegas, en que lo
nefando del vicio nos ha obligado a suprimirlos o a dejarlos en e
idioma original.
LOS ACARNIENSES.
NOTICIA PRELIMINAR.
Cuando se representaron Los Acarnienses, hacía ya seis años que

la guerra llamada del Peloponeso tenía en conflagración toda la
Grecia, y, sembrando por doquiera la discordia, la desolación y la
muerte, anulaba el resultado de los épicos combates de Maratón
Salamina y las Termópilas, y preparaba sensiblemente la ruina de la
nacionalidad helena. No siendo preciso a nuestro propósito el entra
en minuciosos detalles sobre el particular, remitimos a los que deseen
conocerlos a las obras de Tucídides, Diodoro Sículo, Plutarco y
otros[31], donde podrán satisfacer su curiosidad cumplidamente, y nos
limitaremos a espigar en el vasto campo de sus escritos las noticias
más necesarias para la ilustración de Los Acarnienses.
Algunos jóvenes de Atenas, después de haberse embriagado
jugando al cótabo, se dirigieron a Megara y robaron a la cortesana
Simeta. Los Megarenses, en revancha, arrebataron a Aspasia dos de
sus más íntimas amigas[32]. Entonces Pericles, cediendo a las
instigaciones de la hermosa y discreta hetaira, y más que todo, a la
necesidad de sostenerse en el poder por medio de una guerra que le
hiciese indispensable y distrajera a los atenienses, hizo aprobar e
célebre decreto que castigaba con la pena capital a todo ciudadano de
Megara que fuese cogido dentro del territorio del Ática. Los
megarenses solicitaron, pero inútilmente, la derogación de este
decreto, y vanas fueron también las reclamaciones hechas por los
lacedemonios. Pericles se opuso con toda su influencia, y el decreto
no se derogó. Tal fue el pretexto de aquella guerra funesta; pretexto
decimos, porque la verdadera causa que la hizo completamente
inevitable fue, como apunta el perspicaz Tucídides[33], el recelo y
justificado temor que a los lacedemonios inspiraba el siempre
creciente poderío de Atenas. No dejaba de haber, sin embargo, entre
ambas repúblicas otros poderosos motivos de resentimiento; pero
Plutarco[34] da por seguro que los espartanos jamás se hubieran
puesto a la cabeza de la liga, si el decreto contra Megara hubiera sido
revocado, estando acorde en este punto con lo que Aristófanes dice en
su comedia.
La mayoría de los atenienses, acostumbrados a vivir hasta
entonces en el campo con esa independencia, abundancia y libertad
que hacen la vida rústica tan agradable, viéronse obligados a busca
un refugio en la capital con sus mujeres e hijos, enviando sus ganados
a la Eubea, y abandonando sus hogares y tierras cuando apenas
habían concluido de repararse los estragos causados por las recientes
guerras médicas. «Desamparaban llenos de dolor, dice Tucídides[35]
las habitaciones y los templos a los cuales una larga posesión parecía
ligarles; y al renunciar a su modo de vivir, creían dar un adiós eterno a
su pueblo nativo.» La pena que naturalmente les hizo experimentar la
concentración se exacerbaba cada día por lo incómodo de los
alojamientos que en Atenas pudieron proporcionarse. «Muy pocos
dice el historiador citado[36], hallaron acogida en las casas de sus
amigos y parientes; los más se establecieron en los sitios
deshabitados de la ciudad, en los lugares consagrados a los dioses y a
los héroes, en todas partes, en fin, excepto en la acrópolis, e
Eleusinion[37], y otros recintos sólidamente cerrados. El mismo
Pelasgicón[38], a pesar del oráculo que a su ocupación se oponía, fue
también invadido, e igualmente las torres de las murallas.» Todo esto
no era suficiente, sin embargo, para la inmensa afluencia de
refugiados, y la mayor parte vivían mezquina y desastrosamente faltos
de aire y de luz, sujetos a todo género de privaciones y miserias[39], y
expuestos más tarde al furor de la espantosa peste que repetidas
veces desoló a Atenas durante el decurso de la guerra. La influencia
de esta, como no podía menos, dejose muy pronto sentir
introduciendo perturbaciones en el orden político y social. La discordia
tiranizaba las ciudades; todo eran disensiones y atroces venganzas
las ambiciones más bajas y viles tenían espacio abierto donde tende
las alas; la codicia era causa y ocasión de enriquecerse en los
frecuentes tumultos; la calumnia estaba segura de ser oída y
aceptada, no menos que la audacia irreflexiva o criminal de consegui
el favor de la desenfrenada muchedumbre; y a tal extremo llegaron e
desorden y la perversión, que se cambió arbitrariamente la acepción
de las cosas y palabras. «La inconsiderada temeridad se tuvo por valo
a toda prueba; la calma prudente por hipócrita cobardía; la moderación
por pretexto de timidez; y una inteligencia poco común por una grande
inercia. El ciego arrojo fue el distintivo del valiente; la circunspección
un especioso subterfugio. Al hombre violento se le consideraba como
el más seguro; y al que se le oponía, como sospechoso. El colmo de la
habilidad era tender asechanzas a sus enemigos, y sobre todo e
eludirlas, y en cambio, al que rehuía tan bajos medios se le acusaba
de traidor y pusilánime. Los vínculos de la sangre eran más débiles
que el espíritu de partido, este, en efecto, ligaba más fuertemente a los
hombres, por lo mismo que sus asociaciones no se pactaban bajo e
amparo de la ley sino con miras culpables, y en vez de esta
sancionadas por el santo temor de los dioses, tenían su sola
salvaguardia en la participación del crimen. Se estimaba en más e
vengar una ofensa que el no haberla recibido. Los juramentos de paz
solo tenían una fuerza transitoria que duraba lo que la necesidad que
los había arrancado; en cuanto se ofrecía ocasión no había reparo en
atacar al enemigo indefenso, prefiriéndose la vil traición al noble y
descubierto combate. Manantial de todos estos males fue el afán de
dominar instigado por la codicia y la ambición, envenenado después
por las pasiones, despertadas al grito de la rivalidad. Los jefes de
partido ostentaban en sus banderas, unos la igualdad de derechos
otros una aristocracia moderada; pero, bajo la máscara del bien
general, solo trataban de suplantarse mutuamente. Daban rienda
suelta a sus deseos y rencores, y sin más ley que el propio arbitrio
menospreciaban la justicia y el bien común. Llegados al poder
satisfacían sus odios personales a fuerza de sentencias inicuas y
descaradas violencias. Ninguno respetaba la buena fe: el dios éxito
era el único en cuyos altares se sacrificaba; y el perpetrador de algún
negro delito, como supiera encubrirlo con apariencias de honradez
podía estar seguro de la pública estimación. En cambio, los
ciudadanos que se mantenían apartados de la política, sucumbían a
furor de ambos partidos, ya por negarse a tomar parte en la lucha, ya
por envidia a su tranquilidad[40].»
Tan aflictiva situación veíase además sobremanera agravada, de un
lado por la escasez y carestía que se dejaba sentir como era natura
después de la devastación del territorio del Ática y el consiguiente
abandono de las tareas agrícolas, y de otro por una segunda invasión
de la peste que debilitó extraordinariamente a Atenas, arrebatándole
cuatro mil cuatrocientos hoplitas, trescientos caballeros, e incalculable
número de los demás habitantes[41]. Además, las esperanzas fundadas
en alianzas con reyes extranjeros habían menguado mucho, y aun no
pocas se habían desvanecido por completo, visto el ningún resultado
práctico de las negociaciones entabladas con Sitalces, rey de Tracia
casado con una hermana de Ninfodoro de Abdera, y con los monarcas
de Persia y Macedonia. Y para colmo de males, la sabia y moderada
influencia de Pericles, víctima de la peste a los dos años y medio de la
guerra, se veía sustituida por la del demagogo Cleón, hombre de baja
estofa, orador violento y audaz, ídolo entonces del populacho
ateniense, cuyos bélicos instintos halagaba incesantemente
excitándole además contra todos aquellos ciudadanos que podían
oponerse legítimamente a su poder.
En tal estado de cosas, las gentes honradas y pudientes, hartas de
ser juguete de ambiciosos e intrigantes, compadecidas de la miseria
pública, previendo el desastroso efecto de la guerra, cualquiera que
fuese el vencedor, desconfiando del envío de auxilios extranjeros
anhelando la tranquilidad y el sosiego, se pronunciaron abiertamente
por la paz. Aristófanes, haciéndose eco de tales sentimientos
compuso entonces Los Acarnienses, comedia cuyo objeto es
demostrar las ventajas de la paz, y la conveniencia de reconciliarse
con Lacedemonia.
El título de esta pieza, Ἀχαρνῆς, viene de Acarna (Ἀχάρνα), demo
del Ática, cuyos moradores, toscos y robustos, ejercían en su mayo
parte el oficio de carboneros. No sin razón escogió Aristófanes el coro
entre los ancianos de aquella comarca, pues además de estar dotados
del belicoso humor que le convenía para el contraste, el territorio de
Acarna fue de los primeros invadidos, hasta el punto que Arquidamo
rey de Lacedemonia, contaba con la exasperación de sus habitantes
para obligar a los atenienses a una decisiva batalla en los principios de
la guerra del Peloponeso. «Creía, en efecto, al tomar posiciones junto
a Acarna, que suministrando sus moradores al Estado hasta tres mi
hoplitas, no dejarían asolar impunemente su territorio y arrastrarían a
todos al combate, o que una vez tolerada la devastación no pondrían
igual empeño en defender las haciendas ajenas después de la ruina
de las propias[42].» El plan de Arquidamo era acertadísimo. Solo e
tacto exquisito de Pericles pudo contener a los acarnienses y evitar e
que en una sola partida se decidiese la suerte de Atenas.
Los acarnienses, pues, habían sido los más castigados por la
guerra: seis años hacía que habían abandonado sus fértiles campos
cubiertos de viñedos y los frondosos bosques donde ejercían la
industria carbonera. No fue sin motivo, por consiguiente, el elegirlos
para formar el coro en una comedia cuyo fin era aconsejar la paz, y e
sacar de entre ellos el protagonista.
Diceópolis, identificado, como indica su nombre (δíκαιος, justo
πóλις, ciudad), con la idea de lo que debe ser una república bien
administrada, acude al lugar de la Asamblea decidido a promover una
discusión sobre la conveniencia de la paz. A pesar de lo grave de la
situación de Atenas, encuentra el Pnix desierto, y distingue a los
ciudadanos y a los pritáneos muy distraídos en la ágora con pláticas
insustanciales. El buen viejo recuerda con amargura su vida pasada y
su situación presente, y se confirma más y más en sus proyectos
pacíficos. Ábrese al fin la sesión, y Anfiteo, que usa el primero la
palabra, en cuanto propone la paz con Lacedemonia es arrojado de la
Asamblea. Preséntanse después los embajadores de Atenas al rey de
Persia, acompañados de Pseudartabas, el Ojo del Rey, y luego Teoro
enviado a la corte de Sitalces, rey de Tracia. Diceópolis descubre sus
farsas y mentiras, y exasperado por el robo de su frugal desayuno y la
ineficacia de sus esfuerzos, hace levantar la sesión y encarga a
Anfiteo que pacte para él y su familia una tregua particular con los
lacedemonios.
A su vuelta de Esparta, Anfiteo es sorprendido y perseguido por un
grupo de ancianos acarnienses, y sin tiempo más que para entregar a
Diceópolis su tratado, huye precipitadamente. El furioso trope
encuentra a Diceópolis cuando se disponía a solemnizar con un
sacrificio su regreso al campo. La bilis acarniense, inflamable como
una encina seca, se desata contra él y tratan de matarle a pedradas
pero el astuto viejo les contiene amenazando hundir su puñal en e
seno de un inocente saco de carbón. Los acarnienses, enternecidos
por la desgracia que amenaza a un compañero querido, admiten
parlamento. Diceópolis, comprendiendo lo apurado del trance, acude a
Eurípides en busca de un traje a propósito para producir el patético. E
poeta trágico accede benévolo a las súplicas del viejo socarrón, y le da
a elegir los andrajos de Eneo, Fénix, Filoctetes y Belerofonte
Diceópolis escoge por último los de Telefo, que en el guardarropa de
Eurípides se hallaban entre los de Ino y Tiestes. Con su disfraz de
mendigo heroico, arenga al coro Diceópolis y logra convencer a varios
de sus compatriotas de que no todas las injusticias han sido cometidas
por los lacedemonios. El resto del coro, indignado, llama en su auxilio
a Lámaco, general ateniense, que es también blanco de las burlas de
Diceópolis. Este acaba por abrir su mercado a megarenses y beocios
con los cuales estaba entonces prohibida toda relación mercantil
Llega un megarense y da a conocer la espantosa miseria a que su
país estaba reducido. Obligado por el hambre, se propone vender sus
dos hijas disfrazándolas al efecto de puercos, lo cual da lugar a una
multitud de equívocos maliciosos. Un sicofanta o delator sobreviene
durante la corta ausencia del protagonista, que al fin le obliga a
callarse. Acude luego un beocio, inundando el mercado de todo
género de comestibles, legumbres, caza, aves, anguilas y otros
deliciosos manjares de que hacía tiempo estaba privada Atenas. La
venta es interrumpida por Nicarco, otro delator, que acaba por se
empaquetado como una vasija en castigo de su insolencia. Diceópolis
hechas sus provisiones, se prepara a celebrar alegremente la fiesta de
las Copas. Un sirviente de Lámaco, que se presenta a comprar para
su dueño algunos tordos y anguilas, es rechazado entre graciosas
burlas; pero la petición de una recién casada es benévolamente
acogida. El coro pondera las ventajas de la paz y la felicidad de
Diceópolis, y un afligido labrador contribuye a ponerlas de relieve con
la relación de sus miserias. En esto, una repentina invasión obliga a
Lámaco a partir, no obstante lo crudo del temporal. Con tal motivo hay
una graciosísima escena abundante en contrastes cómicos entre los
preparativos guerreros de Lámaco y los aprestos culinarios de
Diceópolis. Parten por fin ambos y vuelven a poco, el primero herido y
magullado, arrojando lastimeros gritos, y el segundo sostenido por dos
lindas muchachas, bien comido y bien bebido. Por último, las
lamentaciones del asendereado general son ahogadas por las
aclamaciones del coro en honra de Diceópolis, dichoso vencedor en la
fiesta de las Copas.
Esta comedia es una de las más notables de Aristófanes y la
tercera que compuso, según la más acreditada opinión que la coloca
después de Los Detalenses y Los Babilonios[43]. En toda ella se
observa una alegría siempre creciente, y verdadera plétora de aquellas
sales áticas que tan sabrosa hacen la poesía aristofánica. Las escenas
entre Eurípides y Diceópolis y este y Lámaco son de mano maestra en
su género, como el lector podrá juzgar por sí mismo, a pesar de lo
mucho que con la traducción se desfigura. La pintura viva y animada
de las ventajas de la paz debió sin duda hacerla apetecible a los más
belicosos. Pero el carácter inconstante y voluble, que Aristófanes echa
en cara a los atenienses, hizo sin duda ineficaces sus saludables
consejos. ¡Tanta influencia ejercía entonces hasta sobre ciudadanos
víctimas de los horrores de la guerra la audaz y arrebatada oratoria de
los demagogos!
Esta comedia se representó el año 425 antes de Jesucristo, como lo
indican varios pasajes de la misma[44]. Calístrato estuvo encargado de
papel de Diceópolis, y la representación tuvo lugar en las fiestas
Leneas, que se celebraban en el mes Gamelión (enero-febrero) y
ofrecían la particularidad de no admitirse extranjeros a sus
espectáculos.
PERSONAJES.
Diceópolis.
Un Heraldo.
Anfiteo.
Un Pritáneo.
Embajadores de Atenas, de regreso de Persia.
Pseudartabas.
Teoro.
Coro de Acarnienses.
Una Mujer, esposa de Diceópolis.
Una Joven, hija de Diceópolis.
Un Criado de Eurípides.
Eurípides.
Lámaco.
Un Megarense.
Muchachas, hijas del Megarense.
Un Delator.
Un Beocio.
Nicarco.
Un Criado de Lámaco.
Un Labrador.
Un Paraninfo.
Mensajeros.[45]
LOS ACARNIENSES.
DICEÓPOLIS[46].
¡Cuántos pesares me han roído el corazón! ¡Qué pocas
poquísimas veces, cuatro a lo más, he sentido placer! Pero mis penas
son innumerables como las arenas del mar; veamos, si no, qué cosas
me han causado verdadero júbilo. Nunca recuerdo haber gozado tanto
como cuando Cleón[47] vomitó aquellos cinco talentos. ¡Qué alegría
Desde entonces amo a los caballeros, autores de esta acción, digna
de Grecia[48]. En cambio, experimenté un dolor verdaderamente
trágico, cuando después de esperar con tanta boca abierta la aparición
de Esquilo[49], oí gritar al Heraldo: «Teognis[50], introduce tu coro.»
¡Golpe mortal para mi corazón! Otra vez gocé mucho cuando a
seguida de Mosco[51], ejecutó Doxiteo[52] un aire beocio; pero este año
pensó morir víctima del más cruel martirio, viendo a Queris[53
disponerse a cantar al modo ortio[54].
Mas nunca, desde que me es permitido lavarme en los públicos
baños[55], me ha picado tanto el polvo en los ojos como hoy, día de la
asamblea ordinaria[56], en este Pnix[57], todavía desierto. Allí se están
charlando mis conciudadanos en la plaza, corriendo arriba y abajo
para evitar la cuerda teñida de rojo[58]. Ni aun los pritáneos[59] vienen
eso sí, en cuanto lleguen, aunque tarde, los veremos empujarse sin
consideración, disputarse los primeros bancos de madera[60] y
tomarlos como por asalto. De los medios de conseguir la paz, no hay
temor de que se ocupen ¡Ah, ciudadanos, ciudadanos! Yo soy e
primero que acudo a la asamblea y tomo en ella asiento; y al verme
solo, suspiro, bostezo, me desperezo y desahogo a mi gusto[61]; no
sabiendo qué hacer, me entretengo en escribir con el bastón en la
arena, en arrancarme pelillos, en hacer cálculos; y, mirando al campo
amante de la paz y aborrecedor de la ciudad, echo de menos mi aldea

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The Code of Cuenca Municipal Law on the Twelfth Century

Migrants to the Coasts Livelihood Resource Management and

Farming the Frontier The Agricultural Opening of the

Handbook on Inequality and the Environment 1st Edition

The First Three Years and Beyond Brain Development and

Trading and Hedging with Agricultural Futures and Options

The Ethics of Intensification Agricultural Development and

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge University Press

© Cambridge University Press 1982

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 1982

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

ISBN 978-0-521-24218-9 hardback

List oj tables, figures, and maps page vin

B.I Swidden crops 219

returned to the Philippines in 1970, supported by a National Insti-

Other topics, although important, were impossible to study in

This book records a dramatic and unique event in the lifetime of a

BacunganVf < ( #*&

\ PUERTO PRINCESA CITY

Map 1.1. Palawan

Following Chapter 5, I shift my focus from the characteristics of

and circumstantial levels of analysis, I argue that a greater diversity

To: Municipality of Roxas

Map 2.1. Puerto Princesa City and environs

or retail in the marketplace. On any given day in the marketplace,

Cash income Cash expenditure

lantern. Furthermore, his house and houselot are barren in ways

children the work of maintaining a large vegetable garden. On al-

A quiet man with an infectious smile, Jovencio speaks with the

sion these differences? How systematically do other community

Table 2.3. Social status and per household income (pesos)

Cash Subsistence Total

Equivalent to U.S. $592 per household, or U.S. $110 per consumption

karaen den, agasagiap sanda pa' andang makakaen, "it's already

TotaL wealth per consumption unit (in pesos)

Figure 2.1. Wealth and social status

The relationship between income and social status, on an indi-

Cuando se representaron Los Acarnienses, hacía ya seis años que

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