A Study of Slum Culture: Backgrounds for LA Vida

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A Study of Slum Culture Backgrounds for La Vida

BOOKS BY OSCAR LEWIS

THE EFFECTS OF WHITE CONTACT UPON BLACKFOOT CULTURE ON THE EDGE OF THE BLACK WAXY LIFE IN A MEXICAN VILLAGE: TEPOZTlAn RESTUDIED VILLAGE LIFE IN NORTHERN INDIA FIVE FAMILIES:

MEXICAN CASE STUDIES IN THE CULTURE OF POVERTY

TEPOZTLAN, VILLAGE IN MEXICO THE CHILDREN OF SANCHEZ:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MEXICAN FAMILY

PEDRO MARTINEZ: A MEXICAN PEASANT AND FIIS FAMILY LA VIDA:

A

PUERTO RICAN

FAMILY

IN

THE CULTURE

OF

SAN JUAN AND NEW YORK A STUDY OF SLUM CULTURE:

BACKGROUNDS FOR LA VIDA

POVERTY-

A Study of Slum Culture Backgrounds for

LA VIDA

Oscar Lewis

University of Illinois

With the assistance of

RANDOM

douglas butterworth

HOUSE

New York

FIRST PRINTING © Copyright, 1968, by Oscar Lewis All

rights

tions.

reserved

under

International

Published in New York by

and

Random

Pan-American House,

Copyright

Conven¬

Inc., and simultaneously in

Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada Limited. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-11969 Manufactured

in

the

United

States

of

America

by

The

Colonial

Press

Inc.,

Clinton, Mass. Design by Diana Hrisinko This investigation was supported in part by Cooperative Research Grant #127, provided jointly by the Social Security Administration and the Welfare Admin¬ istration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, D.C.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to my student Douglas S. Butterworth for his as¬ sistance with the fieldwork and for his help in the analysis and write-up of the data. I am very much indebted to Francisca Muriente, whose excellent fieldwork in the slums of San Juan and in New York City was a major contribution to this book. I would also like to thank Aida Torres de Estepan, Vera Green, Judy Hellawell,

Richard Pieternella, Betsy Hegeman, and Lourdes

Marin for their assistance with some aspects of the fieldwork. I am indebted to Dr. Rosa Celeste Marin of the Puerto Rico School of Social Work for sharing with me her knowledge of lower-class family life and for inviting me to collaborate in a study of some of the families of her own research project. The members of Dr. Marin’s staff were very helpful in this phase of the project. I am also grateful to Hugh Barton for providing me with statistical data on the economic development of Puerto Rico and to Edna Torres de Ranck for helpful data on urban renewal. 1 am very grateful to my wife, Ruth M. Lewis, for her com¬ petent editing of this manuscript. Thanks are also due to Jean Smith, College Department, Random House, for editorial assist¬ ance and to Marjorie Schlatter for checking the tables. For secre-

Acknowledgments

vi / tarial assistance in

the transcription of the tape recordings I

would like to thank Selenia Cabrera, Aida Munoz, Rosa Morales, and Etanisla Rivera. I also want to thank Susan Van Osdol for secretarial assistance in typing the manuscript. I wish to express my gratitude to many friends in Puerto Rico for their hospitality and kindness to me and my family during the fieldwork on the island. I am especially grateful to the Honorable Luis Munoz Marin and to his wife, dona Ines, for their sympa¬ thetic interest in my research. 1 should also like to thank Jose Alonso; Manuel Maldonado-Denis; Rene Marques; Thomas G. Mathews; Jos£ Nieto and his wife, Maria Teresa Babin; Dr. Angel G. Quintero Alfaro; Beata Salz; Pedro Juan Soto; Howard Stanton and his wife, Hazel; Nilita Vientos; Kal Wagenheim; Fred Wales; and Charles Zimmerman.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

3

The Culture of Poverty

4

Methods and Research Design PART

i:

PUERTO

21

RICO

Chapter 1: The San Juan Slums

33

Housing

38

Age and Education

41

Employment

43

Income

44

Household Size

45

Chapter 2: Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan

47

Rural-to-Urban Migration and Settlement in Slums

47

Age Distribution

49

Household Size

49

Contents

viii / Marital Status and Family Composition

49

Religion

52

Education

53

Occupation and Employment

57

Income

58

Income and Length of Residence

60

Income Level of Rural- and Urban-Born Adults

61

Income from Relief

64

Marital Status and Income

64

Material Inventories

66

Material Possessions of Families on Relief

81

Contact with Rural Relatives

82

Contact with New York Relatives

84

Chapter 3: Case Histories and Summary of Findings Case Histories Summary of Major Findings in Puerto Rico

PART

II:

60

Education and Income

NEW

87 87 102

YORK

Chapter 4: The New York Sample

109

Location of Sample Families

110

Age at Migration

112

Household Size

114

Motives for Migration

116

Puerto Rican Background

121

The Trip to New York

125

Residence Patterns

132

Apartments and Apartment Living

140

Shopping Patterns

142

Employment and Income

144

Education

157

Problems with Children

159

Marital Conflict

162

Material Inventories

164

Clothing

173

Contents / ix Living Expenses and Budgets

175

Advantages and Disadvantages of New York

179

Attitudes Toward Americans and Other Puerto Ricans

182

The Use of English

185

Visiting Patterns

191

Compadrazgo

194

Religion

195

Spiritualism and Herbs

197

Travel

198

Chapter 5: Summary of Major Findings in New York and Some Comparisons with Puerto Rico

203

Summary of Major Findings in New York

203

Comparison of Findings in Puerto Rico and New York APPENDIX:

SUPPLEMENTARY

208 STUDY

OF

IN THE LA PERLA SLUM

SELECTED

INDEX

FAMILIES

215

Household Size

215

Income

218

Education

219

Marital Status

220

Occupation and Work History

221

Housing and Material Possessions

223

Residence

224

BIBLIOGRAPHY

227

TABLES

1. Distribution of Annual Family Income for Puerto Rico and for One Hundred Sample Slums of Greater San Juan

Families from

Four 22

2. Housing Characteristics in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

39

3. School Years Completed by Adults Ages Twenty-five and Over in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960 4. School Attendance in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

41 42

5. Distribution of Occupations in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

43

6. Annual Family Income in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960 7. Size of Households in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

44 45

8. Length of Residence in Metropolitan Area of RuralBorn Adults in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

48

9. Age Distribution of Males and Females in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Tuan, 1964

50

T ables 10. Size of Households of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

50

11. Household Composition of One Hundred Sample Fam¬ ilies from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 12. School Years Completed by Adults of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

51

53

13. Distribution of Occupations in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

57

14. Frequency Distribution of Income of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

58

15. Frequency Distribution of Per Capita Monthly Income of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

59

16. Per Capita Monthly Income and Number of School Years Completed by Household Heads of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

62

17. Education and Income Level of Household Heads of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

63

18. Marital Status and Income Level of Household Heads One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

65

19. Income and Ownership of Luxury Items in One Hun¬ dred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

80

20. Distribution of Families on Relief by Income Levels in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

81

21. Ownership of Luxury Items by Families on Relief in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

82

22. New York Relatives of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

85

23. Travel to the United States and Income Level of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

85

Tables / xiii 24. Years of Residence of Heads of New York Sample Families, 1964

111

25. Age of Heads of Sample Families at Time of Migration to New York, 1964

112

26. Age of Members of New York Sample Families, 1964

113

27. Size of Households of New York Sample Families, 1964

115

28. Household Composition of New York Sample Families, 1964

116

29. Rent Paid by Sample Families, Total Number of Puerto Ricans, Nonwhites, and Other Whites in New York

140

30. Occupations of Men and Women in

the New York

Sample Families, 1964

144

31. Annual Income of New York Sample Families, 1964

147

32. Per Capita Monthly Income of New York Sample Fam¬ ilies, 1964

147

33. Breakdown of Annual Income of New York Sample Families, 1964

148

34. School Years Completed by Adults over Eighteen in Fifty New York Sample Families, 1964

157

35. Relation of Income to Investment in Material Posses¬ sions by Forty-six New York Sample Families, 1964

165

36. Inventories of Goods Possessed by Forty-six New York Sample Families, 1964

166

37. Method of Payment of Household Articles Purchased by New York Sample Families, 1964

169

38. Distribution of Gifts Among New York Sample Fam¬ ilies, 1964

170

39. Average Amount Spent on Household Goods in Year Preceding Inventory by Forty-six Sample Families Com¬ pared with Their Length of Residence in New York, 1964

172

40. Comparative Monthly Expenditures of a High Income Family and a Low Income Family in the New York Sample, 1964 41. Estimated

Monthly Expenditures in

176 New York and

Puerto Rico of Six Middle Income Families in the New York Sample, 1964

178

Tables

xiv / 42. Size of Household of Thirty-two Sample Families in La Perla, 1964

216

43. Family Composition of Thirty-two Sample Families in La Perla, 1964

217

44. Annual Income of Thirty-two Sample Families and Total Number of Families in La Perla, 1964

218

45. Monthly Per Capita Income of Thirty-two Sample Fam¬ ilies in La Perla, 1964

219

46. School Years Completed by Adults Ages Twenty-five and Over in La Perla, 1964

220

47. Marital Status of Household Heads of Thirty-two Sam¬ ple Families in La Perla, 1964 48. Occupations of Adults in Thirty-two Sample Families in La Perla, 1964

221

222

49. Amount Spent on Household Possessions by Thirty-two Sample Families in La Perla, 1964

223

50. Years of Residence in San Juan, in La Perla, and in Present Home of Household Heads and Spouses of Thirty-two Sample Families in La Perla, 1964

224

A Study of Slum Culture

Backgrounds for La Vida

Introduction

The research design of this project called for a comparative analysis of one hundred low income Puerto Rican families from four slums of Greater San Juan and of their relatives in New York City. The major objectives of the study were to contribute to our understanding of urban slum life in San Juan; to examine the problems of adjustment and the changes in the family life of migrants to New York; to develop a comparative literature on intensive family case studies;* to devise new field methods and new ways of organizing and presenting family data; and finally, to test and refine the concept of a culture of poverty by a com¬ parison of my Mexican and Puerto Rican data. Because the concept of the culture of poverty is central to the * The family case studies will be completed with funds from other sources and will be published separately at a later date.

4/

A

present research design,

STUDY

I shall

OF

SLUM

summarize

CULTURE

some of its

essential features.

The Culture of Poverty As an anthropologist I have tried to understand poverty and its associated traits as a culture or, more accurately, as a subculture* with its own structure and rationale, as a way of life that is passed down from generation to genera¬ tion along family lines. This view directs attention to the fact that the culture of poverty in modern nations is not only a matter of economic deprivation, of disorganization, or of the absence of something. It is also something positive and provides some rewards without which the poor could hardly carry on. In my book Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty, I suggested that the culture of poverty transcends regional, rural-urban, and national differences and shows remarkable cross-national similarities in family structure, interpersonal relations, time orientation, value systems, and spending patterns. These similarities are ex¬ amples of independent invention and convergence. They are common adaptations to common problems. The culture of poverty can come into being in a variety of historical contexts. However, it tends to grow and flourish in societies with the following set of conditions: (1) a cash economy, wage labor, and production for profit;f (2) a persistently high rate of unemployment and underemploy¬ ment for unskilled labor; (3) low wages; (4) the failure to provide social, political, and economic organization, either * Although the term “subculture of poverty” is technically more ac¬ curate, I shall use “culture of poverty” as a shorter form. ■(•Although the model presented here is concerned with conditions in contemporary urban slums, I find remarkable similarities between the culture of poverty and the way of life of Negro slaves in the ante¬ bellum South of the United States.

Introduction / 5

on a voluntary basis or by government imposition, for the low income population; (5) the existence of a bilateral kinship system rather than a unilateral one; and finally, (6) the existence in the dominant class of a set of values that stresses the accumulation of wealth and property, the possibility of upward mobility, and thrift and that explains low economic status as the result of personal inadequacy or inferiority. The way of life that develops among some of the poor under these conditions is the culture of poverty. It can best be studied in urban or rural slums and can be described in terms of some seventy interrelated social, economic, and psychological traits.* However, the number of traits and the relationships between them may vary from society to society and from family to family. For example, in a highly literate society, illiteracy may be more diagnostic of the culture of poverty than in a society where illiteracy is wide¬ spread and where even the well-to-do may be illiterate, as in some Mexican peasant villages before the revolution. The culture of poverty is both an adaptation and a re¬ action of the poor to their marginal position in a classstratified, highly individuated, capitalistic society. It repre¬ sents an effort to cope with feelings of hopelessness and despair that develop from the realization of the improba¬ bility of achieving success in terms of :he values and goals of the larger society. Indeed, many of the traits of the culture of poverty can be viewed as attempts at local solu¬ tions for problems not met by existing institutions and agencies because the people are not eligible for them, can¬ not afford them, or are ignorant or suspicious of them. For example, unable to obtain credit from banks, they are thrown upon their own resources and organize informal credit devices without interest. The culture of poverty, however, is not only an adapta¬ tion to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. * For discussion of these traits, see pp. 7-21.

6/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

Once it comes into existence, it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children. By the time slum children are age six or seven they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of the changing conditions or increased opportunities that may occur in their lifetime. Most frequently the culture of poverty develops when a stratified social and economic system is breaking down or is being replaced by another, as in the case of the transi¬ tion from feudalism to capitalism or during periods of rapid technological change. Often the culture of poverty results from imperial conquest in which the native social and economic structure is smashed and the natives are maintained in a servile colonial status, sometimes for many generations. It can also occur in the process of detribalization, such as that now going on in Africa. The most likely candidates for the culture of poverty are the people who come from the lower strata of a rapidly changing society and are already partially alienated from it. Thus, landless rural workers who migrate to the cities can be expected to develop a culture of poverty much more readily than migrants from stable peasant villages with a well-organized traditional culture. In this connection there is a striking contrast between Latin America, where the rural population has long ago made the transition from a tribal to a peasant society, and Africa, which is still close to its tribal heritage. The more corporate nature of many of the African tribal societies as compared to Latin Ameri¬ can rural communities and the persistence of village ties tend to inhibit or delay the formation of a full-blown culture of poverty in many of the African towns and cities. The special conditions of apartheid in South Africa, where the migrants are segregated into separate “locations” and do not enjoy freedom of movement, create special problems. Here the institutionalization of repression and discrimina-

Introduction / 7

tion tends to develop a greater sense of identity and group consciousness. The culture of poverty can be studied from various points of view: the relationship between the subculture and the larger society; the nature of the slum community; the nature of the family; and the attitudes, values, and charac¬ ter structure of the individual. The lack of effective participation and integration of the poor in the major institutions of the larger society is one of the crucial characteristics of the culture of poverty. This complex matter results from a variety of factors, which may include lack of economic resources, segregation and discrimination, fear, suspicion or apathy, and the develop¬ ment of local solutions for problems. However, participa¬ tion in some of the institutions of the larger society—for example, in the jails, the army, and the public relief system —does not per se eliminate the traits of the culture of poverty. In the case of a relief system that barely keeps people alive, both the basic poverty and the sense of hope¬ lessness are perpetuated rather than eliminated. Low wages and chronic unemployment and underem¬ ployment lead to- low income, lack of property ownership, absence of savings, absence of food reserves in the home, and a chronic shortage of cash. These conditions reduce the possibility of effective participation in the larger eco¬ nomic system. And as a response to these conditions we find in the culture of poverty a high incidence of pawning of personal goods, borrowing from local moneylenders at usurious interest rates, spontaneous informal credit devices organized by neighbors, use of secondhand clothing and furniture, and the pattern of frequent buying of small quantities of food many times a day as the need arises. People with a culture of poverty produce very little wealth and receive very little in return. They have a low level of literacy and education, do not belong to labor

8/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

unions, are not members of political parties, generally do not participate in the national welfare agencies, and make very little use of banks, hospitals, department stores, mu¬ seums, or art galleries. They have a critical attitude toward some of the basic institutions of the dominant classes, hatred of the police, mistrust of government and those in high position, and a cynicism that extends even to the church. These factors give the culture of poverty a high potential for protest and for being used in political move¬ ments aimed against the existing social order. People with a culture of poverty are aware of middleclass values; they talk about them and even claim some of them as their own, but on the whole they do not live by them.* Thus, it is important to distinguish between what they say and what they do. For example, many will tell you that marriage by law, by the church, or by both is the ideal form of marriage; but few marry. For men who have no steady jobs or other source of income, who do not own property and have no wealth to pass on to their children, who are present-time oriented and want to avoid the ex¬ pense and legal difficulties involved in formal marriage and divorce, free unions or consensual marriages make a lot of sense. Women often turn down offers of marriage because they feel that it ties them down to men who are immature, punishing, and generally unreliable. Women feel that con¬ sensual union gives them a better break; it gives them some of the freedom and flexibility that men have. By not giving the fathers of their children legal status as husbands, the women have a stronger claim on their children if they decide to leave their men. It also gives women exclusive rights to a house or any other property they own. In describing the culture of poverty on the local com* In terms of Hyman Rodman’s concept of “The Lower Class Stretch,” Social Forces, Vol. 42, No. 2 (December 1963), I would say that the culture of poverty exists where this value stretch is at a minimum, that is, where the belief in middle-class values is at a minimum.

Introduction / 9

munity level, we find poor housing conditions, crowding, gregariousness, and, above all, a minimum of organization beyond the level of the nuclear and extended family. Occa¬ sionally there are informal temporary groupings or volun¬ tary associations within slums. The existence of neighbor¬ hood gangs that cut across slum settlements represents a considerable advance beyond the zero point of the con¬ tinuum that I have in mind. Indeed, it is the low level of organization that gives the culture of poverty its marginal and anachronistic quality in our highly complex, special¬ ized, organized society. Most primitive peoples have achieved a higher level of sociocultural organization than our mod¬ ern urban slum dwellers. In spite of the generally low level of organization, there may be a sense of community and esprit de corps in urban slums and in slum neighborhoods. This can vary within a single city or from region to region or country to country. The major factors that influence this variation are the size of the slum, its location and physical characteristics, length of residence, incidence of homeownership and landownership (versus squatter rights), rentals, ethnicity, kinship ties, and freedom or lack of freedom of movement. When slums are separated from the surrounding area by enclosing walls or other physical barriers, when rents are low and fixed and stability of residence is great (twenty or thirty years), when the population constitutes a distinct ethnic, racial, or lan¬ guage group or is bound by ties of kinship or compadrazgo ,* and when there are some internal voluntary associations, then the sense of local community approaches that of a village community.

In

many cases

this combination

of

favorable conditions does not exist. However, even where internal organization and esprit de corps are at a bare minimum and people move around a great deal, a sense * Compadrazgo is a system of relationships and obligations between godparents (padrinos) and godchildren (ahijados) and between god¬ parents and parents, who are compadres.

10/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

of territoriality develops that sets off the slum neighbor¬ hoods from the rest of the city. In Mexico City and San Juan this sense of territoriality results from the unavail¬ ability of low income housing outside of the slum areas. In South Africa the sense of territoriality grows out of the segregation enforced by the government, which confines the rural migrants to specific locations. On the family level the major traits of the culture of poverty are the absence of childhood as a specially pro¬ longed and protected stage in the life cycle; early initiation into sex; free unions or consensual marriages; a relatively high incidence of the abandonment of wives and children; a trend toward female- or mother-centered families, and consequently a much greater knowledge of maternal rela¬ tives; a strong predisposition to authoritarianism; lack of privacy; verbal emphasis upon family solidarity, which is only rarely achieved because of sibling rivalry; and com¬ petition for limited goods and maternal affection. On the level of the individual the major characteristics are strong feelings of marginality, of helplessness, of de¬ pendence, and of inferiority. I found this to be true of slum dwellers in Mexico City and San Juan among families who do not constitute a distinct ethnic or racial group and who do not suffer from racial discrimination. In the United States, of course, the culture of poverty of the Negroes has the additional disadvantage of racial discrimination, but as I have already suggested, this additional disadvantage con¬ tains a great potential for revolutionary protest and organ¬ ization that seems to be absent in the slums of Mexico City or among the poor whites in the South. Other traits include high incidence of maternal depriva¬ tion, of orality, and of weak ego structure; confusion of sexual identification; lack of impulse control; strong present¬ time orientation, with relatively little ability to defer gratifi¬ cation and to plan for the future; sense of resignation

Introduction /II

and fatalism; widespread belief in male superiority; and high tolerance for psychological pathology of all sorts. People with a culture of poverty are provincial and locally oriented and have very little sense of history. They know only their own troubles, their own local conditions, their own neighborhoods, their own way of life. Usually they do not have the knowledge, the vision, or the ideology to see the similarities between their problems and those of their counterparts elsewhere in the world. They are not class conscious although they are very sensitive indeed to status distinctions. In considering the traits discussed above, the following propositions must be kept in mind. (1) The traits fall into a number of clusters and are functionally related within each cluster. (2) Many, but not all, of the traits of different clusters are also functionally related. For example, men who have low wages and suffer chronic unemployment develop a poor self-image, become irresponsible, abandon their wives and children, and take up with other women more

frequently

than

do men

with high

incomes and

steady jobs. (3) None of the traits, taken individually, is distinctive per se of the subculture of poverty. It is their conjunction, their function, and their patterning that de¬ fine the subculture. (4) The subculture of poverty, as defined by these traits, is a statistical profile; that is, the frequency of distribution of the traits both singly and in clusters will be greater than in the rest of the population. In other words, more of the traits will occur in combination in families with a subculture of poverty than in stable workingclass, middle-class, or upper-class families. Even within a single slum there will probably be a gradient from culture of poverty families to families without a culture of poverty. (5) The profiles of the subculture of poverty will probably differ in systematic ways with the difference in the national cultural contexts of which they are a part. It is expected

12/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

that some new traits will become apparent with research in different nations. I have not yet worked out a system of weighting each of the traits, but this could probably be done and a scale could be set up for many of the traits. Traits that reflect lack of participation in the institutions of the larger society or an outright rejection—in practice, if not in theory— would be the crucial traits; for example, illiteracy, provin¬ cialism, free unions, abandonment of women and children, lack of membership in voluntary associations beyond the extended family. When the poor become class conscious or active mem¬ bers of trade-union organizations or when they adopt an internationalist outlook on the world, they are no longer part of the culture of poverty although they may still be desperately poor. Any movement—be it religious, pacifist, or revolutionary—that organizes and gives hope to the poor and effectively promotes solidarity and a sense of identifica¬ tion with larger groups destroys the psychological and social core of the culture of poverty. In this connection, I suspect that the civil-rights movement among the Negroes in the United States has done more to improve their self-image and self-respect than have their economic advances,

al¬

though, without doubt, the two are mutually reinforcing. The distinction between poverty and the culture of poverty is basic to the model described here. There are degrees of poverty and many kinds of poor people. The culture of poverty refers to one way of life shared by poor people in given historical and social contexts. The economic traits that I have listed for the culture of poverty are necessary but not sufficient to define the phenomena I have in mind. There are a number of historical examples of very poor segments of the population that do not have a way of life that I would describe as a subculture of poverty. Here I should like to give four examples. 1. Many of the primitive or preliterate peoples studied

Introduction / 13

by anthropologists suffer from dire poverty that is the result of poor technology or poor natural resources, or both, but they do not have the traits of the subculture of poverty. Indeed, they do not constitute a subculture because their societies are not highly stratified. In spite of their poverty they

have

a

relatively

sufficient culture.

Even

integrated,

satisfying,

and

self-

the simplest food-gathering and

hunting tribes have a considerable amount of organization, including bands and band chiefs, tribal councils, and local self-government—traits that are not found in the culture of poverty. 2. In India the lower castes (the Chamars, the leather workers, and the Bhangis, the sweepers) may be desperately poor both in the villages and in the cities, but most of them are integrated into the larger society and have their own panchayat organizations, which cut across village lines and give them a considerable amount of power.* In addi¬ tion to the caste system, which gives individuals a sense of identity and belonging, there is still another factor: the clan system. Wherever there are unilateral kinship systems or clans, one would not expect to find the culture of poverty, because a clan system gives people a sense of be¬ longing to a corporate body that has a history and a life of its own and thereby provides a sense of continuity, a sense of a past and of a future. 3. The Jews of eastern Europe were very poor, but they did not have many of the traits of the culture of poverty because of their tradition of literacy, the great value placed upon learning, the organization of the community around the rabbi, the proliferation of local voluntary associations, and their religion, which taught that they were the chosen people.

* It may be that in the slums of Calcutta and Bombay an incipient culture of poverty is developing. It would be highly desirable to do family studies there as a crucial test of the culture of poverty hy¬ pothesis.

14/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

4. My fourth example is speculative and relates to social¬ ism. On the basis of my limited experience in one socialist country—Cuba—and on the basis of my reading, I am inclined to believe that the culture of poverty does not exist in the socialist countries. I first went to Cuba in 1947 as a visiting professor for the State Department. At that time I began a study of a sugar plantation in Melena del Sur and of a slum in Havana. After the Castro revolution I made my second trip to Cuba as a correspondent for a major magazine and I revisited the same slum and some of the same families. The physical aspect of the slum had changed very little, except for a beautiful new nursery school. It was clear that the people were still desperately poor, but I found much less of the feelings of despair, apathy, and hopelessness that are so diagnostic of urban slums in the culture of poverty. The people expressed great confidence in their leaders and hope for a better life in the future. The slum itself was now highly organized, with block committees, educational committees, party commit¬ tees. The people had a new sense of power and importance. They were armed and were given a doctrine that glorified the lower class as the hope of humanity. (I was told by one Cuban official that they had practically eliminated delin¬ quency by giving arms to the delinquents!) It is my impression that Castro, unlike Marx and Engels, did not write off the so-called lumpen proletariat as an inherently

reactionary

and

antirevolutionary

force,

but

rather saw its revolutionary potential and tried to utilize this potential. In this connection, Frantz Fanon makes a similar evaluation of the role of the lumpen proletariat based upon his experience in the Algerian struggle for in¬ dependence:

It is within this mass of humanity, this people of the shanty towns, at the core of the lumpen proletariat, that the rebel¬ lion will find its urban spearhead. For the lumpen proletariat,

Introduction / 15 that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.*

My own studies of the urban poor in the slums of San Juan do not support the generalizations of Fanon. I have found very little revolutionary spirit or radical ideology among low income Puerto Ricans. On the contrary, most of the families I studied were quite conservative politically, and about half of them were in favor of the Republican Statehood Party.f It seems to me that the revolutionary potential of people with a culture of poverty will vary considerably according to the national context and the particular historical circumstances. In a country like Al¬ geria, which was fighting for its independence, the lumpen proletariat was drawn into the struggle and became a vital force. However, in countries like Puerto Rico in which the movement for independence has very little mass support and in countries like Mexico that achieved their inde-

* Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 103. f “The present Partido Estadista Republicano (PER) is the inheritor of the coalition Republican Union Party of the thirties and early forties. As such it is deeply committed to the continuance of the juridical presence of the United States in Puerto Rico; but this com¬ mitment has only recently been expressed exclusively in terms of statehood. . . . ". . . The Partido Estadista Republicano, unlike the Partido Popu¬ lar Democratico, is formally affiliated with one of the national parties of the United States. The affiliation of the mainland and insular Re¬ publican parties dates from 1903, and, with the exception of a brief interlude between 1916 and 1919, during which the bonds were formally dissolved, the affiliation has continued uninterrupted to the present day. Federal patronage jobs in Puerto Rico now consist of only the customs collector, the United States attorney for the Puerto Rico district, two assistant federal attorneys, the federal marshal, the director of the Caribbean area office of the Production and Marketing Administration, and, when vacancies occur, postmasters and two fed¬ eral district judges.” From Robert W. Anderson, Party Politics in Puerto Rico (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 81, 91.

16/

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CULTURE

pendence a long time ago and are now in their post¬ revolutionary period, the lumpen proletariat is not a lead¬ ing source of rebellion or of revolutionary spirit. In effect, we find that in primitive societies and in caste societies the culture of poverty does not develop. In socialist, fascist,

and highly developed capitalist societies with

a

welfare state, the culture of poverty tends to decline. I suspect that the culture of poverty flourishes in, and is generic to, the early free-enterprise stage of capitalism and that it is also endemic to colonialism. It is important to distinguish between different profiles in the subculture of poverty, depending upon the national context in which these subcultures are found. If we think of the culture of poverty primarily in terms of integration in the larger society and a sense of identification with the great tradition of that society or with a new emerging revolutionary tradition, then we will not be surprised that some slum dwellers with a low per capita income may have moved further away from the core characteristics of the culture of poverty than others with a higher per capita income. For example, Puerto Rico has a much higher per capita income than Mexico, yet Mexicans have a deeper sense of personal and national identity. In Mexico even the poorest slum dweller has a much richer sense of the past and a deeper identification with the great Mexican tradition than do Puerto Ricans with their tradition. In both countries I presented urban slum dwellers with the names of national figures. In Mexico City quite a high percentage of the respondents, including those with little or no formal schooling, knew about Cuauhtemoc, Hidalgo, Father Morelos, Juarez, Diaz, Zapata, Carranza, and Cdrdenas. In San Juan the respondents showed an abysmal ignorance of Puerto Rican historical figures. The names of Ramon Power, Jos£ de Diego, Baldorioty de Castro, Ramon Betances, Nemesio Canales, and Llorens Torres rang no bell. For the lower income Puerto Rican slum dweller.

Introduction /II

history begins and ends with Munoz Rivera, his son Munoz Marin, and dona Felisa Rincon! I have listed fatalism and a low level of aspiration as key traits of the subculture of poverty. Here too, however, the national context makes a big difference. Certainly the level of aspiration of even the poorest sector of the popula¬ tion in a country like the United States with traditional ideology of upward mobility and democracy is much higher than in more backward countries like Ecuador and Peru, where both the ideology and the actual possibilities of upward mobility are extremely limited and where authori¬ tarian values still persist in both the urban and the rural milieu. Because of the advanced technology, the high level of literacy, the development of mass media, and the relatively high aspiration level of all sectors of the population, espe¬ cially when compared with underdeveloped nations, I be¬ lieve that although there is still a great deal of poverty in the United States (estimates range from 30 to 50 million people) there is relatively little of what I would call the culture of poverty. My rough guess would be that only about 20 percent of the population below the poverty line (from 6 to 10 million people) in the United States have characteristics that would justify classifying their way of life as that of a culture of poverty. Probably the largest sector within this group consists of very low income Negroes, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and southern poor whites. The relatively small number of people in the United States with a culture of poverty is a positive factor because it is much more difficult to eliminate the culture of poverty than to eliminate poverty per se. Middle-class people—and this would certainly include most social scientists—tend to concentrate on the negative aspects of the culture of poverty. They tend to associate negative valences to such traits as present-time orientation and concrete versus abstract orientation. I do not intend

IS

/

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STUDY

OF

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CULTURE

to idealize or romanticize the culture of poverty. As some¬ one has said, “It is easier to praise poverty than to live in it”; yet some of the positive aspects that may flow from these traits must not be overlooked. Living in the present may develop a capacity for spontaneity, for the enjoyment of the sensual, for the indulgence of impulse, which is often blunted in the middle-class, future-oriented man. Perhaps it is this reality of the moment that the existentialist writers are so desperately trying to recapture but that the culture of poverty experiences as natural, everyday phenomena. The frequent use of violence certainly provides a ready outlet for hostility so that people in the culture of poverty suffer less from repression than does the middle class. In the traditional view, anthropologists have said that culture provides human beings with a design for living, with a ready-made set of solutions for human problems so that individuals in each generation do not have to begin all over again from scratch. That is, the core of culture is its positive adaptive function. I, too, have called attention to some of the adaptive mechanisms in the culture of poverty —for example, the low aspiration level helps to reduce frustration,

the

legitimization

of

short-range

hedonism

makes possible spontaneity and enjoyment. Indeed, it seems that in some ways the people with a culture of poverty suffer less from alienation than do those of the middle class. However, on the whole it seems to me that it is a thin, relatively superficial culture. There is a great deal of pathos, suffering, and emptiness among those who live in the cul¬ ture of poverty. It does not provide much support or satis¬ faction, and its encouragement of mistrust tends to magnify helplessness and isolation. Indeed, the poverty of culture is one of the crucial aspects of the culture of poverty. The concept of the culture of poverty provides a high level of generalization that, hopefully, will unify and ex¬ plain a number of phenomena that have been viewed as distinctive characteristics of racial, national, or regional

Introduction / 19

groups. For example, matrifocality, a high incidence of consensual unions, and a high percentage of households headed by women, which have been thought to be distinc¬ tive characteristics of Caribbean family organization or of Negro family life in the United States, turn out to be traits of the culture of poverty and are found among diverse peoples in many parts of the world and among peoples who have had no history of slavery. The concept of a cross-societal subculture of poverty enables us to see that many of the problems we think of as distinctively our own or as distinctively Negro problems (or as those of any other special racial or ethnic group) also exist in countries where there are no distinct ethnic minor¬ ity groups. This concept also suggests that the elimination of physical poverty per se may not eliminate the culture of poverty, which is a whole way of life. What is the future of the culture of poverty? In con¬ sidering this question, one must distinguish between those countries in which it represents a relatively small segment of the population and those in which it constitutes a very large one. Obviously, the solutions will differ in these two situations. In the United States, the major solution pro¬ posed

by

planners and

social

workers in

dealing with

multiple-problem families and the so-called hard core of poverty has been to attempt to raise slowly their level of living and Wherever

to

incorporate

possible,

them

into

there has been

the middle

class.

some reliance

upon

psychiatric treatment. In the underdeveloped countries, however, where great masses of people live in the culture of poverty, a socialwork solution does not seem

feasible.*

Because of the

magnitude of the problem, psychiatrists can hardly begin to cope with it. They have all they can do to care for their own growing middle class. In these countries the people * Indeed, it is doubtful how successful the social-work solution can be in the United Statesl

20

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STUDY

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CULTURE

with a culture of poverty may seek a more revolutionary solution. By creating basic structural changes in society, by redistributing wealth, by organizing the poor and giving them a sense of belonging, of power, and of leadership, revolutions frequently succeed in abolishing some of the basic characteristics of the culture of poverty even when they do not succeed in abolishing poverty itself. Some of my readers have misunderstood the subculture of poverty model and have failed to grasp the importance of the distinction between poverty and the subculture of poverty. In making this distinction I have tried to docu¬ ment a broader generalization; namely, that it is a serious mistake to lump all poor people together, because

the

causes, the meaning, and the consequences of poverty vary considerably in different sociocultural contexts. There is nothing in the concept that puts the onus of poverty on the character of the poor. Nor does the concept in any way play down the exploitation and neglect suffered by the poor. Indeed, the subculture of poverty is part of the larger culture of capitalism, whose social and economic system channels wealth into the hands of a relatively small group and thereby makes for the growth of sharp class distinctions. I would agree that the main reasons for the persistence of the subculture are no doubt the pressures that the larger society exerts over its members and the structure of the larger society itself. However, this is not the only reason. The subculture develops mechanisms that tend to perpetu¬ ate it, especially because of what happens to the world view, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it.

For

this

reason,

improved

economic

opportunities,

though absolutely essential and of the highest priority, are not sufficient to alter basically or eliminate the subculture of poverty. Moreover, elimination is a process that will take more than a single generation, even under the best of circumstances, including a socialist revolution. Some readers have thought that I was saying, “Being

Introduction / 21

poor is terrible, but having a culture of poverty is not so bad.” On the contrary, I am saying that it is easier to eliminate poverty than the culture of poverty. I am also suggesting that the poor in a precapitalistic caste-ridden society like India had some advantages over modern urban slum dwellers because the people were organized in castes and panchayats and this organization gave them some sense of identity and some strength and power. Perhaps Gandhi had the urban slums of the West in mind when he wrote that the caste system was one of the greatest inventions of mankind. Similarly, I have argued that the poor Jews of eastern Europe, with their strong tradition of literacy and community organization, were better off than people with the culture of poverty. On the other hand, I would argue that people with the culture of poverty, with their strong sense of resignation and fatalism, are less driven and less anxious than the striving lower middle class, who are still trying to make it in the face of the greatest odds.

Methods and Research Design The one hundred families in Greater San Juan were selected from slums that represented significant ecological, racial, socioeconomic, and religious variables. We wanted old and new slum settlements, slums on dry land as well as those on

the ocean

front or on bay inlets, slums with both

Negroes and whites, and slums with Protestants—especially Pentecostal and Evangelical sects—as well as Catholics. The principal criteria used in the selection of families for our study were low income, relatives in New York, and willingness to cooperate. We located the poorest families with the help of social workers, who introduced us to their local

barrio

comisarios*

In

our

initial

reconnaissance

* A barrio “commissar” or “inspector” is usually an active worker in the Popular Party as well as a municipal employee. The comisario

22

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STUDY

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CULTURE

survey we found a remarkably wide range of income within the slums. A substantial number of families had compara¬ tively high incomes and owned such luxury items as re¬ frigerators, television sets, washing machines, and even cars. Although our primary interest was in low income families, we decided to include some families in each of the income groups reported in the United States census so that at some later time we would be able to compare high income families with low income families to determine the factors involved in upward mobility. Although these families were not a random sample, it turns out that on many basic indexes they were very close to the figures for Puerto Rico as a whole. For example, in terms of income our one hundred sample families in San Juan are typical of low income families throughout the island (see Table 1). In 1960, 42.7 percent of all families in Puerto Rico reporting monetary income earned less than Table 1. Distribution of Annual Family Income for Puerto Rico and for One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan PUERTO RICO* FAMILY INCOME

TOTAL URBAN

RURAL

(percentage)i(PERCENTAGE)

Less than $500

16.0

33.2

PUERTO

RICO

(PERCENTAGE)

100

SAMPLE

FAMILIES,

1964

(PERCENTAGE)

25.0

20.0

$500-$999

11.2

23.5

17.7

20.0

$1,000-$ 1,999

23.7

23.6

23.6

32.0

$2,000-$2,999

16.0

10.1

12.9

13.0

$3,000-$3,999

10.0

4.3

7.0

5.0

$4,000 or more

23.0

5.5

13.7

10.0

° Data for Puerto Rico as a whole are based upon the U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1960, Puerto Rico (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), Table 74.

serves as a liaison officer between the city administration, the local political leaders, and the people of the barrio.

Introduction / 23

$1,000 a year and 79.2 percent had less than $3,000. In our sample of one hundred slum families 40 percent earned less than $1,000 a year, 85 percent earned less than $3,000 a year, and 20 percent earned less than $500 a year. The mean annual income for families in our sample was $1,703. In 1960, 15 percent of all families on the island were on relief and 20 percent received food allotments.

In our

sample of one hundred families in San Juan, 20 percent were on relief and were receiving food allotments. In 1960, 22 percent of the total population twenty-five years old and over had no schooling, and in our four slums 25 percent had no schooling. In short, our slum population seems to reflect the island averages remarkably well, a terribly sad commentary on the extent of poverty in Puerto Rico as a whole. The task of locating and working with the New York relatives of the Puerto Rican sample families proved to be a time-consuming and frustrating process. In Puerto Rico we had the great advantage of working with families who lived in four or five small slum communities. In New York our families were scattered from Coney Island to the Bronx, and very few of them had telephones. The people in New York, moreover, seemed to have less free time and were more suspicious and not as readily available for interviews. Because of these fieldwork difficulties and our limited staff we decided to change the research design so that we could concentrate on fewer families and study related family clusters in greater depth. The methods used in this study were a combination of the traditional techniques used in sociology, anthropology, and psychology and included questionnaires, interviews, participant observation, biographies, and a limited number of intensive whole-family case studies, as well as the applica¬ tion of selected psychological tests such as the Thematic Apperception, the Rorschach, and Osgood’s sentence com¬ pletion. A novel aspect of the project was the use as research

24/

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STUDY

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CULTURE

assistants of two lower class Mexicans whose families I had studied in previous research. These assistants gave me a Mexican view of Puerto Rican poverty and helped point up the similarities and differences between Mexican and Puerto Rican slum life. Four basic schedules were applied to each sample family. The schedules dealt with household composition, an in¬ ventory of major household items, a summary of the resi¬ dence and employment history of each adult, and informa¬ tion concerning migration to New York. In addition to the four basic questionnaires adminis¬ tered to each family, fifteen other schedules containing more than 500 questions were used. These questionnaires dealt with the following: complete household inventory, including clothing, animals, religious objects, books, etc.; friendship patterns within the neighborhood; patterns of compadrazgo; family relations; income and expenditures; division of labor; recreational patterns; cosmopolitanism; health and

treatment of disease;

politics;

religion;

and

world view. The administration of the nineteen schedules took about twelve hours per informant. Ideally, the method I tried to use was a naturalistic observation of family life with a minimum of intervention. However,

the intensive studies of families involved the

establishment of deep personal ties, without which we could never have obtained the intimate data presented in this volume. My assistants and I spent many hours attending family parties,

wakes,

and baptisms and responding to

emergency calls. We have taken people to the hospital, secured their release from jail, filled out applications for them, arranged doctors’ appointments, helped get apart¬ ments and jobs, and helped get families on relief. The tape recordings of the life histories were begun only after we knew the family well. In some cases we visited the family regularly for a few months and picked up a great deal of information about their lives in casual conversa-

Introduction / 25

tions. Later, in the recordings, we often asked the inform¬ ants to repeat stories that we already knew so that we could have the accounts in their own words. My approach to family studies requires exhaustive re¬ search, which by its nature precludes large samples. The study of the hundred families was conducted by a question¬ naire method in order to gain background material for the much more detailed study of a smaller group of families. The intensive study of the family has many methodological advantages. Because the family is a small social system, it lends itself to the holistic approach of anthropology. The family is a natural unit of study, particularly in a large metropolis like San Juan or New York. In studying a culture through the intensive analysis of specific families we learn what institutions mean to individuals. Such a study helps us get beyond form and structure to the realities of human life. Whole-family studies bridge the gap between the conceptual extremes of culture at one pole and the individual at the other; we see both culture and personality as they are interrelated in real life. Family studies also serve to delineate the social networks within which families transact their lives, and to this extent the family-study approach and the social-network-study ap¬ proach are overlapping and mutually reinforcing. Relatives, neighbors, friends, compadres, fellow workers, employers, and shopkeepers all come and go in these autobiographies. On the whole, however, most interpersonal relations occur within a fairly narrow circle of close relatives, which serves as a defense in economic and emotional crises. In my earlier book Five Families, I suggested four sep¬ arate but related approaches that, when combined, may provide a rounded and integrated view of family life. The first, or topical, approach applies most of the conceptual categories used in the study of an entire community to a single family. A second approach records long, intensive autobiographies of each member of the family, thus permit-

26

/

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CULTURE

ting us to see the family through the eyes of each of its members and giving us insight into individual psychology and family dynamics. The independent versions of similar incidents in family life serve to check the validity and relia¬ bility of the data. The third approach is to study intensively a particular problem or a special event or crisis within the family. The way a family meets new situations reveals many latent aspects of individual and family psychodynamics. A fourth approach to the study of a whole family is the detailed observation and recording of a typical day in the life of the family. The selection of the day is arbitrary, practically a random choice; it may be an ordinary day or one marked by an unusual event such as a birth, a baptism, a fiesta, a funeral, or a move to a new house. The use of the day as the unit of study has been a common device of the novelist. As I pointed out in Five Families, it has as many advantages for science as for litera¬ ture and provides an excellent medium for combining the scientific and humanistic aspects of anthropology. The day universally orders family life; it is a small enough time unit to permit intensive and uninterrupted study by the method of direct observation, and it is ideally suited for controlled comparisons. It makes possible a quantitative analysis of almost any aspect of family life. For example, one can study the amount of time devoted to the preparation of food in different

families,

the

amount

of conversation

between

husband and wife or between parents and children, the amount of laughter, the extent and kind of table talk, and so on. One can also study the more subtle and qualitative aspects of interpersonal family relations, the tensions and shifting moods, as well as the variety of activities and the number of outside contacts. As a background for the observation and recording of days in these Puerto Rican families, I have added a further elaboration of method, namely, the reconstruction of days

Introduction / 27

through intensive interviewing of the heads of households. Each morning for a week or more the fieldworker studying a particular family questioned the informant about the details of the previous day. These reconstructed days were useful in several ways. First, they enabled us to see the actually observed and recorded days in better perspective as to typicality, and it helped us to estimate the effect of the presence of the investigator on the normal routines of family life. Second, the reconstructed days gave us new in¬ sights and leads that at times opened up entirely new lines of investigation. Third, the repeated questioning served to sensitize the informant to the type of detailed information we wanted and to improve the content and orderliness of his or her subsequent narrations. Before attempting to record an actual day with a family, rapport must be sufficiently good so that the normal be¬ havior and routines of family life are only minimally dis¬ turbed. Although the controlled laboratory procedures of small-group studies with built-in microphones and one-way screens were not used and are not possible, well-trained observers can succeed in giving cameralike views of the movements, conversations, and interactions that occur in a family. In some homes, in addition to an observer, I used a skilled stenographer to record all conversation. In the autobiographies, I have placed great reliance upon tape-recorded interviews. The value of this approach has been discussed in the Introduction to The Children of Sanchez (1961). Briefly, I believe that it captures the full flavor of the speech of the people, the slang, the nuances, the hesitations, the laughter, and the tears. Autobiographies based on tape transcriptions present living documents of a type that are difficult to match by any other method. In studying the extended family, it is highly desirable to have a complete family genealogy, including the names and relationship of all relatives, living and dead, known to the informant; their age, place of birth, civil status, occupa-

>(£

28

/

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STUDY

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CULTURE

tion, place of residence, and years of schooling; the fre¬ quency of their visits; informant;

whether

what assistance

they are

to

the

they are homeowners and/or land-

owners; and whether they have been to the United States. Since a single informant may have knowledge of over a hundred relatives (some know more than 300!), the prepara¬ tion of genealogies is a time-consuming, painstaking, tech¬ nical labor. A special research assistant worked for many months

preparing

genealogies

on

my

most

important

families. As part of the study of one hundred families in Greater San Juan I made a detailed analysis of their material possessions and also those of their relatives in New York. I was especially interested in the changes in New York as an index of acculturation. Studies of the material posses¬ sions of urban dwellers on a household basis have been generally neglected by anthropologists and other students of society. Actually, the study of the material possessions of the poor may give us another important dimension for the definition of poverty. It can tell us about their buying and spending habits; their definition of luxury items; the relationship between income and material wealth; the pro¬ portion of goods bought from stores, markets, street stands, and hawkers; the extent of trade or exchange of goods within slum settlements or neighborhoods and the social consequences and concomitants thereof; the distances trav¬ eled to make purchases;

the periods of economic crisis

within the family as revealed by the history of pawned objects;

the range and variation in the distribution of

“wealth” among families who seem desperately poor; and finally, the values of the people as reflected in the relative amount of their income spent on various types of objects, for example, religious items versus modern appliances. In this connection I designed an inventory form that calls for the following information on each item found in a household: number or quantity of each article; descrip-

Introduction / 29

tion and condition;

length of time in possession; cost;

method of purchase (installment plan or cash); item new or used at time of purchase, where purchased; who pur¬ chased the item; if a gift, when given, by whom, for what occasion, new or used, and approximate value; if home¬ made, who made the item, when made, and what value; cost of replacing the item and approximate present value; whether the item had been pawned and/or redeemed; other comments. The approach outlined above is analogous to that of the archaeologist who tries to reconstruct the culture of past civilizations through the analysis of material remains. The study of potsherds, for example, may enable him to draw inferences about trade patterns, sources and directions of cultural influences, economic levels, residence patterns, artistic achievements, and degrees of social stratification. Similarly, an analysis of the material possessions of a living people can tell us a great deal that may pass unnoticed or is unverifiable in a standard ethnographic account. Of course, the “archaeology” of living peoples has an important advantage over traditional archaeology: the abil¬ ity to question the people directly about their possessions. Thus, a question about a clay bowl might lead to an under¬ standing of gift-giving between godparents, whereas the sherds unearthed by an archaeologist will more than likely yield little or no specific information along social lines. However, quantitative analysis in both instances enables us to make important generalizations about the society. The study of the material possessions of contemporary peoples further enables us to make distinctions between what has been called the “real” and the “ideal” culture. For example, informants might tell the investigator that godparents always give gifts to their godchildren on the Day of the Three Kings (Epiphany). But if the inventories show that only a few children have in fact received gifts from their godparents, we are able to make a definitive

30/

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CULTURE

statement on this point. In addition, we would be able to see which godparents did present gifts to their godchildren over a certain period of time and perhaps draw some salient facts about social organization from several such bodies of data. In summary, the major steps involved in producing a well-rounded family study are as follows: (1) census-type data are gathered on a large number of families selected on the basis of the major variables of interest to the study; (2) from this sample, a smaller group of families are selected for more intensive study; (3) interviews are conducted with each family member to record his life story and to question him on a wide range of topics; (4) a week or more of con¬ secutive days are reconstructed on the basis of intensive interrogation; (5) complete days in the life of the family are observed and recorded; (6) recorded interviews are tran¬ scribed from the tapes; (7) typed data are translated, edited, and organized; (8) reinterviewing is done to fill in gaps in the data and significant new data are translated and in¬ serted; (9) the final versions of the autobiographies and days are edited for publication.

PART I

Puerto Rico

The San Juan Slums

The four slums finally selected for our study were La Perla, El Fanguito, Las Monjas, and Bravos de Boston. These slums were all in the San Juan metropolitan area and repre¬ sented the ecological and socioeconomic variables of inter¬ est in this research. La Perla is on the ocean front; the other three are built along the banks of inland waterways but differ in certain ways. El Fanguito is built largely on a swamp; Las Monjas is on the stagnant Martin Pena Chan¬ nel;

and

Bravos de Boston, which is on the San Jos£

Lagoon, extends inland over a series of low hills where the land is drier. Part of Bravos de Boston is almost rural in appearance because of its vegetable gardens and domestic animals. Before presenting the data on our hundred sample fami¬ lies in these four slums, I will summarize some statistical

34/

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STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

data for La Perla as a whole and for the Martin Pena slum belt. The data presented, except where indicated otherwise, are based upon the U.S. Census of Population for 1960, specially prepared by the Administracion de Renovacion Urbana y Vivienda of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.* The Martin Pena slum belt has five major divisions: Buenos Aires I and II, Buena Vista I and II, and Las Casas. El Fanguito is located in Buenos Aires II, and Las Monjas in Buena Vista I. Bravos de Boston, although not part of this slum belt, may be considered an extension of it. The belt contains approximately 71,000 individuals living in 14,000 dwelling units, which extend continuously for more than five miles along both sides of the Martin Pena Chan¬ nel. (The figures refer to the five major subdivisions of the large slum.) The major part of the slum sprang up during the Depression, when thousands of Puerto Ricans flocked to San Juan from rural areas. However, almost half of the population is made up of families that moved in during the period 1955-1960. The population density is about 135 inhabitants per acre, or an average of 27 families per acre. The highest density occurs in Buenos Aires II, where there are 32 families per acre. In Buena Vista, the density is closer to the average. The Martin Pena slum belt was described in 1964 as the worst slum area in the city. “Welfare cases, infant mor¬ tality, tuberculosis, pneumonia, delinquency, truancy and other indices of social pathology are much higher than any* The sources for the data are: Aspectos sobresalientes sobre vivienda y poblacion en Catano y en el sector de Juana Matos (San Juan: Administracidn de Renovacion Urbana y Vivienda, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, April 1965); Housing and Socio-Economic High¬ lights for La Perla (San Juan: Urban Renewal and Housing Adminis¬ tration, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, November 1963) ; Estudio socio-economico de las familias y la vivienda en el Cano Martin Pena (San Juan: Administracidn de Renovacidn Urbana y Vivienda, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, August 14, 1964); and Estudio sobre asistencia escolar en la zona urbana del area metropolitana de San Juan (San Juan: Administracidn de Renovacion Urbana y Vivi¬ enda, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, November 20, 1964).

The San Juan Slums / 35

where else in the urban area. Income, education, and life expectancy are much lower.” # Most of the houses in the Martin Pena slum were built clandestinely and illegally on public land adjacent to the dead-water channel that has been the main sewer of the city for decades. The houses crowd together in incredible density, and they frequently extend out into the channel, standing on piles above the sewage-contaminated waters. Until recently, there were no streets or public services in the swampy area, and many of the houses, particularly those built into the channel itself, are still without water, electricity, sewers, or trash collection. For the most part, the houses are constructed of scrap wood and metal, with flimsy partitions separating the rooms. The shuttered win¬ dows do not have glass panes and many houses are un¬ painted. An outdoor privy often serves more than one family. Some 40 percent of the families average 1.5 persons per room. As one

approaches

the channel,

the houses become

poorer in quality and are set ever higher off the muddy ground—some of them are raised fifteen feet or more. At high tide, the narrow paths near the banks are virtually impassable. Residents must often wade in water ankle-deep, or even

knee-deep, to reach

their homes.

Crude plank

bridges have been built in the water to reach houses located fifty or a hundred feet out into the channel. Garbage and human waste emptied into the water often drifts under the houses and onto the paths along the banks. In contrast to these inland slums, La Perla is located on the ocean front on the north side of Old San Juan. It is one of the oldest slums in the metropolitan area and the most scenic. The steep embankment between the city’s an¬ cient fort walls and the sea was first settled some fifty years * Theodore Caplow, Sheldon Stryker, and Samuel E. Wallace, The Urban Ambience: A Study of San Juan, Puerto Rico (Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1964), p. 41.

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ago. In 1960, there were 900 houses inhabited by about 3,300 people squeezed into an area not more than five city blocks long and a few hundred yards wide, forming a kind of narrow rectangle, with seven rows of one- and two-story houses running from east to west. The rows on the higher ground nearest the wall are straight and present an appear¬ ance of order and pattern as do houses on any city block. In La Perla, however, down toward the sea, where the em¬ bankment is steeper, the houses stand helter-skelter along a maze of cement alleyways that turn and twist up and down and across the slope or come to a dead end. Seen from the wall above, the slum looks almost pros¬ perous. This is because all the houses have roofs of new green tarpaper, a contribution of the mayoress, dona Felisa Rincon. From this distance the cement walks or alleyways look clean, and far below, one can see the ocean’s white breakers foaming against the rocks. Most of the houses are fairly large wooden structures with porches and overhanging balconies. The houses near the top of the embankment are cantilevered on the slope and are set on cement bases; those nearer the sea are raised on stilts to protect them from the high tides. Many of them have been painted in various shades of blue or green, with here and there a yellow or saffron-colored building. Tall wooden poles, loaded with electric wires, run from east to west, and on many of the houses there are TV antennas. Within

the larger settlement are

three

subdivisions,

known as Matadores, New La Perla, and Old La Perla. These subdivisions are connected with San Juan by four entrances. The first two are steep, rough cement steps that lead down from the wall to Matadores on the east. There are over fifty of these steps, interrupted at intervals by small landings; it is a long, difficult climb or descent for the older inhabitants of La Perla. At the foot of each set of steps is a grassy open space, about 100 by 200 feet. Here, especially on Sundays, groups of men from La Perla gam-

The San Juan Slums

/

37

ble, hold cockfights, or play baseball. The third entrance, a paved road that passes under an arch and leads to New La Perla, is the only paved street that runs the length of the settlement. Old La Perla, on the west, is reached by a cement stairway similar to the ones leading to Matadores. Although La Perla is only a ten-minute walk from the governor’s palace and the heart of San Juan, it is physically and socially marginal to the city. The wall above it stands as a kind of symbol separating it from the city. La Perla forms a little community of its own with a cemetery, a church, a small dispensary and maternity clinic, and an elementary school. There are many small stores, bars, and taverns. Most of the houses are decrepit, and the alleyways are usually littered with refuse. From the wall down to the sea, the physical condition of the houses becomes poorer and poorer, and the social status of the people grows correspondingly lower until, on the beach itself, the poorest people live in the most dilapi¬ dated houses. To live on the beach is dangerous, for there is the constant threat of a high tide, which could wipe out the houses. Only recently, during one night fifty homes were destroyed by high waves, and the residents had to be removed to public-housing projects. The beach is also the dirtiest part of La Perla. Several large conduits, broken in places, carry sewage down to the sea, and the beach swarms with flies and is littered with trash—garbage, human feces, beer bottles, condoms, broken beds, and rotted pieces of wood. It is a refuge for dope addicts, who gather under the houses to inject themselves. Nevertheless, the people of La Perla use the beach for bathing, for love making, for fish¬ ing, and when hungry, for collecting snails and crabs. Some families raise pigs on the beach because of the abundant supply of garbage. To the people of Greater San Juan, La Perla is known as the home of murderers, drug addicts, thieves, and prosti¬ tutes. Because of its bad reputation, most middle-class peo-

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pie are afraid of La Perla and have never visited it. Yet conditions are said to have been much worse twenty years ago; at that time it was not uncommon for people to be killed and buried under the houses. Today the residents of La Perla think of it as a relatively elegant and healthful place, with its beautiful view of the sea, paved streets, new roofs, low rentals, and convenient location. Fresh salt air blows in from the ocean, cooling the interiors of the small houses. The stench and mosquitoes of the lagoon slums do not exist here, although flies infest the community. In spite of the deprivation, poverty, violence, and occa¬ sional murders, the general mood of the people of La Perla is one of gaiety and exuberance. They seem outgoing, friendly, and expressive, with relatively little distrust of outsiders. They live in constant noise from radios, juke¬ boxes, and television sets and spend a great deal of time in the stores and bars, where they drink and play dominoes. Municipal services are provided in some parts of the slum. Garbage trucks daily empty the community trash cans, although many families near the beach prefer to dump their garbage on the shore, where it is eaten by the pigs or carried out to sea. Water is piped into La Perla, both to private homes and to public water taps located at various spots along the crude cement pathways. A large number of residents are without a private water supply and depend upon the outdoor water taps. Electricity is available, but some homes are completely without electric power and many others obtain it at a fixed fee by hooking into a neighbor’s power line.

Housing Some of the housing characteristics of the La Perla and the Martin Pena slums are summarized in Table 2. The Martin Pena slum contains a better residential area, which

The San Juan Slums / 39 Table 2. Housing Characteristics in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

LA PERLA

MARTIN PENA

(PERCENTAGE)

(PERCENTAGE)

Condition Sound

16.5

33.4

Deteriorating

46.5

36.2

Dilapidated

18.7

19.2

Inadequate original construction

18.3

11.2

T enancy Owner occupied

27.9

65.0

Rented

72.1

35.0

Monthly Rental No cash rent

8.4

Less than $9

19.3

4.6

$10—$14

35.3

17.1

$15—$19

20.0

18.0

$20-$29

12.3

29.1

4.5

31.2

$30 or more

source: Data are based on the U.S. Census of Population taken from two special publications: Housing and Socio-Economic Highlights for La Perla (San Juan: Urban Renewal and Housing Administration, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, November 1963) and Estudio socio-economico de las familias y la vivienda en el Caho Martin Peha (San Juan: Administracidn de Renovacidn Urbana y Vivienda, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, August 14, 1964).

accounts for the higher percentage of sound buildings and the higher rents. The larger proportion of owner-occupied homes is due to the relative newness of many sectors of this slum and to the influx of squatters who built on govern¬ ment land. However, only 8 percent of the homeowners in Martin Pena own their house sites. The average rent is $23.20 per month and the average value of privately owned dwellings is $1,406. Between 63 and 80 percent of the dwell¬ ings in all sectors except Buena Vista II are less than $2,000 in value. Only 303 structures in Martin Pena are worth $5,000 or more.* * Estudio socio-economico de la familias y la vivienda en el Cano Martin Pena, op. cit., p. 9.

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La Perla, which is much older than most sectors of Mar¬ tin Pena, has a higher incidence of tenancy and of cheaper rents. Only 27.9 percent of the residents own the house they live in. Of those who pay rent, almost one tenant in five pays less than $10 a month, over half of the tenants pay less than $15 a month, and about three-fourths pay less than $20 a month. The average monthly rent is $15. Nearly seven out of every ten dwellings are renter occupied. Be¬ cause most of the available land has long since been claimed in La Perla, newcomers usually must rent or purchase an already existing dwelling. New construction occurs on a significant scale only after the periodic tidal waves. Al¬ though residence in all the slums is remarkably stable, in La Perla the continuity of residence of some families over several generations contributes to the presence of absentee landlords there. Houses that are inherited are often leased out by the new owner. Some prosperous dwellers have ac¬ quired several houses through purchase or, occasionally, as collateral for usurious loans. The “mushroom” character of the development in the newer lagoon slums tends to pre¬ clude these kinds of transactions. In the lagoon slums, only one of our informants had inherited a house, and very few informants were tenants. In all the slums it is a common practice to buy a badly deteriorated house at a low price, often for less than $100, in order to rebuild it. Clandestine construction of new houses (usually with old materials), which still goes on at a rapid pace, is forbidden by law and is punishable by a $25 fine. Most squatters pay this without complaint and consider it part of the cost of the house. Once the fine is paid, a de facto situation exists and the government usually does not raze the house. Under certain circumstances, the municipality may even supply labor and materials to needy slum dwellers who wish to improve their homes. There is a higher incidence of deteriorated and dilapi¬ dated houses in La Perla than in Martin Pena; only 16.5

The San Juan Slums / 41

percent of the structures are considered “sound.” About eight out of every ten housing units in La Perla were classi¬ fied by the 1960 census as dilapidated or deteriorating, hav¬ ing inadequate original construction, and lacking some or all sanitary facilities. Over 40 percent of the houses have no separate bedroom, and another 40 percent have only one bedroom. Over half the dwellings average more than one person per room; the density is even higher when calculated on the basis of the number of persons per bedroom.*

Age and Education The population of the Martin Pena slum belt is young: there are over 16,000 children under 7, almost 14,000 be¬ tween 7 and 13, and 8,820 between 14 and 19 years of age. Of the slum’s entire population, 55 percent are under 20 years of age. The educational level in the area is low. Almost one in four adults have had no formal schooling whatever, 60.5 percent have not reached the fifth grade (see Table 3), and 23.6 percent (7,379 persons) are illiterate.

Table 3. School Years Completed by Adults Ages Twenty-five and Over in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

YEARS COMPLETED IN SCHOOL

LA

PERLA

MARTIN

PENA

(PERCENTAGE)

(PERCENTAGE)

0

25.2

23.6

1-4

42.9

36.9

5-6

15.2

16.3

12.6

15.6

1.6

6.6

.6

1.0

7-9 10-12 Some college

* See Housing and Socio-Economic Highlights for La Perla, op. cit., pp. 1-2.

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In La Perla, one-fourth of the adults twenty-five years and over had never attended school and 68 percent had not gone beyond the fourth grade. Only 2.2 percent had pro¬ gressed beyond the ninth grade. As Table 4 shows, 80 percent of the children in Martin Pena between 7 and 13 are attending school. However, when we look at the 14-19 age group, school attendance drops off drastically. Less than 45 percent of the children in that age bracket are attending school. Table 4. School Attendance in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE

LA

PERLA

MARTIN

PENA

(PERCENTAGE)

(PERCENTAGE)

Attending

82.1

80.0

Not Attending

17.9

20.0

Attending

34.0

44.9

Not Attending

66.0

55.1

7-13 years

14-19 years

A somewhat higher percentage (82.1) of La Perla chil¬ dren between 7 and 13 attend school. However, there are more school dropouts in the 14-19 age group. For these ages, the attendance rate is only 34 percent, which is lower than in most slums. Of these, attending school is only

the proportion of males

17 percent, compared with 50

percent for females.* A special study of school attendance in selected resi¬ dential areas of metropolitan San Juan reveals the educa¬ tional disadvantages of the slums.J In comparing the num¬ ber of children of school age (7-19) who do not attend school, figures show that 17 percent of the children in * Ibid., p. 4. f Estudio sobre asistencia escolar en la zona urbana del area metropolitana de San Juan, op. cit., p. 4.

The San Juan Slums

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43

“superior residential areas” and 19 percent in “good resi¬ dential areas” are not in school, whereas 23 percent in the “housing projects” and 31 percent in the “areas needing improvement”—namely, the slums—are not in school.

Employment In Table 5 the list of occupations indicates that 85.8 per¬ cent of the employed adults in Martin Pena and 92.3 per¬ cent in La Perla work in unskilled and semiskilled jobs. Table 5. Distribution of Occupations in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

OCCUPATIONS

LA

PERLA

(PERCENTAGE)

.1

Armed forces Agriculture Professionals

0

MARTIN PENA (percentage)

.5

.6

1.0

1.6

6.2

3.9

Clerks, sales workers

1S.9

11.8

Craftsmen

14.8

18.8

Proprietors, managers

Operatives

14.8

22.8

Service workers

31.1

19.7

Laborers

17.7

11.7

° This column totals 91 percent because the original source included a category, unemployed, 9 percent.

In Martin Pena, there are slightly more people working as craftsmen and as operatives, who do such semiskilled jobs as truck driving and delivery. One in five employed adults in Martin Pena is a craftsman and one in ten is a laborer. In La Perla the largest groups work as service workers and as laborers, including lesser skilled employees such as do¬ mestics, hotel and restaurant workers, janitors, longshore¬ men, and unskilled laborers. In this slum, 48.8 percent are service workers and laborers and only 29.6 percent are

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craftsmen and operatives. It is of interest to note that no men in La Perla and only seven in Martin Pena are in the armed forces, despite the fact that joining up generally im¬ proves one’s economic and social status. In La Perla, of the 17.7 percent employed as laborers, the majority work as longshoremen. In our survey of thirtytwo La Perla families, we found that about 40 percent of the male household heads had worked as longshoremen at some time. By contrast, in the other three slums we studied, only one man had been a longshoreman. Because of its proximity to the San Juan docks, La Perla is a convenient place for longshoremen. It has become almost a tradition in La Perla to work on the docks, and many youths look forward to doing it for the rest of their lives. Indeed, with the help of relatives and friends they have a better chance of obtaining the comparatively well paid dock jobs than do young men from other slums.

Income In Martin Pena, more than half the families have incomes under $1,999; one-fourth earn less than $1,000, half of Table 6. Annual Family Income in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960

INCOME

LA

PERLA

MARTIN

(PERCENTAGE)

PENA

(PERCENTAGE)

Under $500

22.0

$500-$999

15.0

10.5

$1,000-$1,999

32.0

29.5

$2,000-$2,999

19.0

22.0

$3,000-13,999

8.0

$4,000 or more

4.0

14.8

f

$3,000- J $4,999 $5,000 or more

16.0

1

r 1

7.2

The San Juan Slums J 45

whom earn under $500. The average income, however, is $1,835 because of the presence of a relatively high propor¬ tion (23.2 percent) of families with incomes over $3,000 (see Table 6). In La Perla the income level is somewhat lower. Over one-third (37 percent) of the families earned less than $1,000, and almost one-fourth earned less than $500. Whereas 69 percent earned under $2,000, only 12 percent had incomes of $3,000 or more.

Household Size The size of households is smaller (3.7 persons) in La Perla than in Martin Pena (5.1). The difference partially reflects the fact that almost 28 percent of the households in La Perla are composed of only one person (see Table 7). In Martin Pena a little less than 7 percent are of this type. There are a relatively large number of older men and women, as well as prostitutes, who live alone in La Perla. The number of households with six members or more in Martin Pena is almost two times higher than in La Perla.

Table 7. Size of Households in La Perla and Martin Pena, 1960 NUMBER IN HOUSEHOLD

LA

PERLA

(PERCENTAGE)

1

27.9

2

15.0

[ 29.2 14.2 -

4

10.6

5

!- 19.9 9.3 -

6

4.0 ] 8.8

8

4.9

9

2.2

10 or more

3.1

PENA

6.8

3

7

MARTIN

(PERCENTAGE)

-23.0

J

22.7 28.4

42.1

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There is other evidence that families are less stable in La Perla than in other slums. A lower proportion of the women are married and there is a larger number of con¬ sensual unions. Almost a third of the married female house¬ hold heads are separated or divorced and many of the women are widows.

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan

This report is based upon interviews and responses to ques¬ tionnaires administered in 1963-1964 by my staff and my¬ self to the heads of households of one hundred sample families living in four slums in greater San Juan, Puerto Rico. A total of 22 percent of the families were from La Perla, and 78 percent were from Las Monjas, El Fanguito, and Bravos de Boston.

Rural-to-Urban Migration and Settlement in Slums Of 176 adults in our sample, 83 percent were born outside the San Juan metropolitan area, mostly in rural areas of the island. Of these, almost half (42.8 percent) came from

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the sugar-cane areas of Puerto Rico, such as Arecibo and Manati; 22 percent were natives of coffee-growing areas, such as Jayuya and Ciales; 21.4 percent were from tobacco¬ raising districts, such as Caguas and Cayey; 9.3 percent had their origins in areas whose main crops are fruits, such as Vega Baja and Bayamon; and the remaining 4.5 percent of the adults were from places that have little agricultural pro¬ duction, such as the island of Vieques, off the west coast of Puerto Rico. None in our sample had migrated to San Juan from another city. As seen in Table 8, almost 11 percent of the migrants Table 8. Length of Residence in Metropolitan Area of Rural-Bom Adults in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 NUMBER OF YEARS

PERIOD OF

NUMBER OF

MIGRATION

BORN

RURAL-

ADULTS

PERCENTAGE

0-12

1952-1964

16

15.8

13-25

1939-1951

52

51.5

26-38

1926-1938

22

21.8

39-51

1913-1925

11

10.9

101

100.0

Total

had lived in the metropolitan area for thirty-nine to fiftyone years, and 21.8 percent had lived there for twenty-six to thirty-eight years. The heaviest migration occurred dur¬ ing the period 1939-1951. Of the 101 migrants studied, over half (51.5 percent) had come to San Juan during those years and over 40 percent had come between 1943 and 1949. A little over 15 percent came to the city in the twelveyear period preceding our study. These figures indicate that rural-to-urban migration and the expansion of the urban slums, initiated by the Depression, were spurred on by World War II and by Operation Bootstrap. The mean age of rural-born household heads was 46.7 years. Those household heads who were born in the metro-

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 49

politan area were, on the average, over eight years younger than their country-born neighbors. This did not mean, however, that rural-to-urban migrants were relatively ad¬ vanced in age when they came to the city; the average age of our migrants at the time of migration was only 23.5 years. Our data show that most migrants settled in a slum area upon arriving in the city. Although moves from one slum to another were not unusual, our sample migrant families averaged 13.65 years of residence in the slum where they were living. The range of length of residence was a wide one—from three months to forty years.

Age Distribution The data on age distribution (see Table 9) indicated the youthfulness of the sample population. Whereas 65 percent were under twenty, slightly more than 4 percent were over sixty.

Household Size The one hundred households averaged slightly more than six persons per dwelling. Some 27 percent of the households (see Table 10) contained eight or more individuals, or 44.3 percent of the total sample population. A high proportion of the households, a little over 7 percent, contained only one person.

Marital Status and Family Composition Of the household heads, 48 percent were married by the church, by a civil ceremony, or by both; 26 percent lived

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Table 9. Age Distribution of Males and Females in One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 AGE*

MALES

FEMALES

0-4

47

49

5-9

58

55

10-14

64

58

15-19

29

27

20-24

14

17

25-29

10

13

30-34

16

12

35-39

9

15

40^4

9

16

45-49

9

12

50-54

12

3

55-59

7

7

60-64

5

5

65-69

2

7

70 or older

4

Total

3

■

—

295

299

° Eleven ages unreported.

Table 10. Size of Households of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

NUMBER OF PERSONS

NUMBER

OF

HOUSEHOLDS

TOTAL

MEMBERS

1

7

7

2

5

10

3

7

21

4

10

40

5

16

80

6

17

102

7

11

77

8

9

72

9

9

81

9

115

10 or more Total

—

■

100

605

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 51

in consensual union; 14 percent were separated, abandoned, or divorced;

10 percent were widowed; 2 percent were

single. Only 38 of our 100 families conformed to the strict “nuclear” or elementary type of family consisting of hus¬ band, wife, and children (see Table 11). In 19 additional Table 11. Household Composition of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 TYPE OF FAMILY COMPOSITION

number

Husband, wife, their children

38

Husband, wife, wife’s children

3

Husband, wife, their children, wife’s children

7

Husband, wife, their children, husband’s children, wife’s children

1

Husband, wife, their children, husband’s children

2

Husband, wife, husband’s children

2

Husband, wife, their children, hijo de crianza

4

Husband, wife

3

Wife only

6

Husband only

2

Wife, children

7

Husband, children

1

Vertically extended

13

Horizontally extended

8

Both vertically and horizontally extended

3

families, children of either one or both of the parental pair by previous marriages lived in the house, thus forming a variant type of nucleated family. In all, 60 of the 100 house¬ holds were essentially of the nuclear family type. Three households consisted of man

and wife living

alone. In six households the wife lived alone, and in two the husband lived alone. Seven households contained only the wife and her children; there was one household in which the husband lived alone with his children. The remainder of the families may be considered to

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be “extended” in one form or another. Thirteen house¬ holds were three-generational, most often consisting of a married couple, their children, and their grandchildren. The ascending generation represented by the wife’s mother was also common. Eight families were horizontally extended to include brothers and sisters and cousins of the couple, and three households included ascending and descending generations and relatives of the same generation; that is, they were both horizontally and vertically extended. There is a slight trend toward matrifocality in these slum families. The wife’s mother formed part of the family in seven households. In eleven, the wife’s children by a previous union lived with the couple and the couple’s own children, if they had any. The wife’s brother lived in the house in three cases, and the wife’s sister in three other cases. The wife’s other relatives living in the home included her grandchildren, her daughter’s husband, her son’s wife, her cousin, and her nephew.

Religion Some 90 percent of the adults in our sample were Roman Catholic by religions affiliation. Almost 9 percent belonged to the Evangelist and Pentecostal sects, and the remainder were Baptists. There was no significant correlation between particular religious beliefs and income or education. How¬ ever, the proportion of Evangelists and Pentecostals in our sample was significantly below that of the general popula¬ tion of Puerto Rico. On the other hand, our sample had a very high incidence of spiritualist believers, most of whom were also Catholics. The practice of spiritualism involves the use of herbs and spiritist prayers, as well as professional or semiprofessional practitioners who are consulted to cure illnesses, solve personal problems, and cast spells.

Satnple Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 53

Education The educational level of the adults (over eighteen years of age) in our sample was low: a mean of 3.6 years of schooling per individual (see Table 12). Table 12. School Years Completed by Adults of One Hundred Sam¬ ple Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

YEARS COMPLETED

Less than 1

NUMBER OF

ADULTS

PERCENTAGE

44

25.0

1-3

40

22.7

4-6

55

31.3

7-9

33

18.7

10-12

4

2.3

More than 12

0

0.0

There was a significant difference in educational achieve¬ ment between the city-born slum dweller and the ruralborn migrant. The migrant had completed an average of 3 years of school, and the urban-born adult, 5.6 years, or 2.6 years more. If we include in the first group those who were born in the country and had an elementary education there but went on to secondary school in the city, the rural educa¬ tional achievement rose to an average of 3.4 years. Among the rural-born adults, 28 percent had less than one year of schooling or none at all. In comparison, only 7 percent of the urban-born were in this category. Ruralborn males had slightly more education than rural-born females; the men averaged 3.7 years of schooling, the women 3.2. Among city-born adults, however, females averaged more schooling than males (men, 5.2; women, 5.8). Although the family heads in our survey expressed high educational goals for their children, the results fell far short

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of their ideals. Aspiration levels among the children were generally low, and the parents often permitted their sons and daughters to leave school when attendance lagged and grades dropped. Expulsions accounted for only a small part of nonschool attendance, for teachers and school officials made a genuine effort to keep the children in school. Of 248 children of school age (seven to nineteen) living at home, 208, or 83.5 percent, were in school. Most of these were in the primary grades. Less than 4 percent were in grades

higher

than

the

ninth.

Twelve

children

under

eighteen years of age, living at home, had never been en¬ rolled in school. The children of migrants far outdid their parents in educational achievement. The generational difference was doubtless true for Puerto Rico as a whole, but in our slum sample the relative achievement was striking. Comparing only adults born in the country with their city-born chil¬ dren, we found that the parents had completed an average of 3.3 years of schooling, while their children averaged 7.1 glades. Only one family in this group had a child with no education. Those children who were born in rural areas and had completed their schooling before coming to the metropoli¬ tan area averaged six years of formal education. The chil¬ dren who began their education in the country and con¬ tinued school in the city completed an average of nine years of formal education. Thus, rural-born children who at¬ tended school in the city did as well or better than their city-born counterparts. Migration motivations might be the significant variable here. Of the total number of school-age children living at home, forty had dropped out of school before reaching the tenth grade. Their average grade level was 5.9. Only one had gone beyond the ninth grade. Because our sample did not include children who were not living at home, the

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 55

dropout rate of 16 percent did not present a true picture for this group. A detailed analysis of the dropout problem was not within the scope of this study, but case studies indicated that early marriage and lack of motivation to stay in school were important factors. The need to get a job appeared to be far less of a factor in school nonattendance in Puerto Rican slums than among the urban poor in other Latin American countries. In contrast to Mexico City, to cite one example, only a small proportion of Puerto Rican slum children had permanent or semipermanent sources of in¬ come to help support the family. Child-labor laws were en¬ forced in Puerto Rico, at least in the San Juan metro¬ politan area, and the government made a strong effort to enroll the children and to keep them in school. The school day was only five hours (morning or afternoon), leaving several hours free for part-time jobs when necessary. Never¬ theless, it was not common for boys to shine shoes, sell news¬ papers, help carry groceries at the supermarkets, mow lawns, wash cars, and do other usual schoolboy jobs to earn extra money. For one thing, slum-based children had few opportuni¬ ties to wash cars because there were few automobiles in the immediate area. As for cutting grass, private lawns were nonexistent in the slums. The grocery delivery boy was an¬ other strictly middle-class phenomenon. Why, then, didn’t boys look for odd jobs outside the barrios? Some did, of course, but the majority were not permitted to wander far from the school-to-home route. Many slum families were, by American standards, au¬ thoritarian and also overprotective of their children. Young boys and girls were not only required to stay in the house, but often were punished for straying out of the view of the mother. This applied to fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, as well as to the younger children. The after-school play

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group was not a Puerto Rican slum trait. Children were used by parents, particularly by mothers, to run frequent errands, to take care of the younger children, and to help with the housework. The control of young girls was much stronger than that of boys. A neighbor might occasionally ask the girl next door to mind her baby while she went on an errand, but evening baby-sitting was not a teen-age occupation. Many girls in the slums ran off with boys at an early age in order to escape the tight authoritarian control exercised by their parents. Other factors entered into the low rate of part-time em¬ ployment of minors. Jobs were scarce in Puerto Rico, and competition was high. The fifteen-year-old met a stiff chal¬ lenge from older, more experienced men. Outside the slum a boy who was dressed in shabby clothing and presented an unprepossessing appearance was not likely to inspire confidence or trust, or even sympathy, in a prospective em¬ ployer. Those boys who did earn money at minor jobs turned most of their earnings over to their parents. If they secretly kept some of it for themselves, they generally spent it on ice cream, soft drinks, or cigarettes. Saving was not a pat¬ tern among slum families, and children rarely developed the habit. Rather, incentive to save was quickly lost be¬ cause parents tended to confiscate any accumulated funds they happened to find.

Occupation and Employment There were forty-six distinct occupations, ranging from male nurse to female power-machine operator, distributed among the 114 working adults. These occupations can be categorized under eight classifications (see Table 13). More than one of every three employed males worked

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 57 Table 13. Distribution of Occupations in One Hundred Sample Fami¬ lies from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 FEMALE

MALE OCCUPATIONS NUMBER

PERCENTAGE

NUMBER

PERCENTAGE

9

11.4

4

11.4

Nonhousehold service

11

13.9

6

17.1

Craftsmen, foremen

21

26.6

1

2.9

Laborers, nonfarm

29

36.7

0

Operatives

Professionals

0

0

Private household workers

0

19

54.3

Clerks, sales workers

0

5

14.3

Managers, officials, proprietors Total

9

11.4

0

79

100.0

35

100.0

as an unskilled laborer; a more detailed breakdown of this occupation group showed that one of four worked as a janitor, gas station attendant, or taxicab driver. In the operatives category there were six small shopkeepers, a public-works supervisor, and two barrio comisarios. Among the craftsmen one of four men worked as an artisan, such as a carpenter or stonemason. About 49.4 percent of all the males worked at a job requiring some type of skill or train¬ ing. Of the women employed as private household workers, our data showed that over half worked at home, taking in washing and ironing. A small number (16 percent) worked outside the home, mostly as maids, although a few were seamstresses and saleswomen. Only about one woman in six had a job that entailed special skills or training. Of 102 adult males in the labor force, 23 were unem¬ ployed. This unemployment rate of 22.5 percent was about double that of Puerto Rico as a whole. There were 15 un¬ employed male household heads who received no relief pay¬ ments or unemployment compensation.

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Income The mean annual income for families in our sample was $1,703. While 82 percent of the families earned less than $2,500 a year, 40 percent earned under $1,000 and 20 per¬ cent received less than $500 (see Table 14). Table 14. Frequency Distribution of Income of One Hundred Sam¬ ple Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964 FAMILY INCOME

NUMBER

OF

FAMILIES

Annual Less than $500 $500-$999

20 20

$1,000-$ 1,499

12

$1,500-$ 1,999

20

$2,000-12,499

10

$2,500-$2,999

3

$3,000-$3,499

4

$3,500-13,999

1

$4,000-$4,499

3

$4,500-$4,999

3

$5,000 or more

4

Monthly Less than $50

22

$50-$99

20

$100-$199

34

$200-$299

14

$300-$399

4

$400 or more

6

Estimating family monthly income, we found that 76 percent of the families received less than $200 per month, 42 percent less than $100, and 22 percent less than $50. The families can be classified into four major categories: (I) those earning less than $10 per capita per month; (II)

Sattiple Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 59

those receiving $10 to $19.99 per capita per month; (III) those with a per capita monthly income of $20 to $39.99; and (IV) those with an income of $40 or more per capita per month. Of the 100 families, 22 belonged to the first category, 28 to the second, 28 to the third, and 22 to the fourth (see Table 15). Table 15. Frequency Distribution of Per Capita Monthly Income of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

INCOME CATEGORY

INCOME

NUMBER OF

FAMILIES

General Distribution I

Less than $10

22

II

$10-$19.99

28

III

$20-$39.99

28

IV

$40 or more

22

Less than $5

11

Detailed Breakdown I

II

III

$5-$9.99

11

$10-$ 14.99

15

$15—$19.99

13

$20-$29.99

17

$30-39.99

11

$40-$49.99 IV

The

first

group

7

$50-$59.99

5

$60-$69.99

5

$70 or more

5

(those

families

with

less

than

$10

monthly per capita) contained 142 people, an average of 6.5 persons per family. The mean monthly income for these families was $28.21 and the average per capita monthly in¬ come, $4.37. The second category ($ 10—$ 19.99) consisted of 28 fami¬ lies with 193 people, or 6.9 people per family. The mean

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family income within this group was $98.84 a month, with a mean per capita income of $14.34. Those families who earned from $20 to $39.99 monthly per capita had a total of 169 people, an average of 6 per family. The mean monthly income per family was $169.84, the mean per capita monthly income, $28.14. The fourth group of families, those receiving $40 or more per month per capita, contained 101 persons, with an average of 4.6 persons per family. The mean income was $271.89 per month, the per capita income, $59.21. Our entire sample contained 605 people, who earned a total of $14,123.39 each month, or $23.34 per capita. The above figures indicate that family size tends to de¬ crease somewhat as income increases.

Income and Length of Residence We found a complete absence of correlation between in¬ come and length of residence within the slum or in the metropolitan area. The families in each income category have lived in the slum for approximately the same average number of years. The families in our lowest income category averaged 16.6 years of residence in the slum. Those in the next high¬ est group averaged 15.4 years, the next highest group aver¬ aged 16.5 years, and the top income families averaged 15.9 years. Slum dwelling apparently becomes a way of life that is not readily abandoned when there is increased income.

Income Level of Ruraland Ui'ban-Born Adults Those families whose household head was born in a rural area were fairly evenly distributed among our four income

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 61

categories: 20.7 percent in the lowest; 26.8 percent in the second lowest; 28.1 percent in the next highest; and 24.4 percent in the highest category. The city-born slum dwellers were somewhat less evenly distributed within the four income brackets: 27.8 percent in the lowest; 33.3 percent in the second lowest; 27.8 per¬ cent in the next highest; and 11.1 percent in the highest. Thus, 52.5 percent of those born in the country were in the upper income brackets, while only 38.9 percent of the urban-born slum dwellers were in this category. One might expect to find a somewhat higher economic incentive in the migrant group, as this is one of the principle motives for migration. Persons born and bred in a city slum tend not to be as strongly motivated to improve their economic situation.

Education and Income Some support for the hypothesis that the economic incen¬ tives are stronger for the rural-born than for the urbanborn can be found in our data on education and income. Although income generally correlated with education, ur¬ ban-born adults had completed on the average almost twice as many school years as their rural counterparts. Yet the rural-born were better represented in the upper income brackets. Education was correlated with income, even among the very poor families. The fifty families in categories I and II, having an income of less than $20 per capita per month, averaged 2.9 years of formal schooling. The remaining fifty families averaged 4.7 years of education (see Table 16). Some 60 percent of the family heads earning under $20 per capita per month had three years or less of formal education. Of those earning $20 or more per capita per

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Table 16. Per Capita Monthly Income and Number of School Years Completed by Household Heads of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater San Juan, 1964

INCOME CATEGORY

INCOME

I

MEAN

NUMBER OF

Less than $10

3.3

11

$10-$ 19.99

2.5

III

$20-$39.99

4.9

IV

$40 or more

4.4

SCHOOL

YEARS

month, 38 percent had three years or less of schooling (see Table 17). In the fifty families earning less than $20 per capita, no adult had gone beyond the ninth grade in school. In the one hundred families in our sample, only two family heads had gone beyond the tenth grade. Of those adults born in rural areas, 40.8 percent in the lowest income group had no formal education or less than a year. The highest grade completed in this category was the seventh

(two individuals). Within the next highest

group, 38.3 percent had no schooling; the highest grade completed was the ninth (one individual). In the second highest income group, seven persons born in the country had completed the ninth grade, one the twelfth. In this category, 17.5 percent had not gone to school. In contrast to the zero modal score for the two lowest income groups, the third highest category had a trimodal distribution: zero, third, and ninth grades completed. The highest income group averaged more total grades com¬ pleted, but the mode was zero, 23.1 percent of the ruralborn adults having had no schooling. The small number of urban-born adults in our sample did not lend itself to modal analysis.

Table 17. Education and Income Level of Household Heads of One Hundred Sample Families from Four Slums of Greater

£ H CM

7 o o

CO

co



cm CM

co

m

Tf O CO

CM

cC3

C/5

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> HH I,

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STUDY

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Income from Relief Some 20 percent of the sample families received relief pay¬ ments from the government. Relief payments in Puerto Rico were small, rarely exceeding $35 or $40 a month even for large families, and in no case did they provide ade¬ quately for family support. If legal employment was ob¬ tained to supplement relief payments, the family usually was removed from the welfare rolls. Some families resorted to illegal activities, such as prostitution or sale of illegal lottery tickets or of bootleg rum.

Marital Status and Income If we define marriage as a union entered into with an as¬ sumption of permanency, the adults in our survey had a mean of 1.7 marriages.* Over half of the sample had only one marriage; 45 percent had more than one “permanent union.’’ Within this latter group, the average number of marriages per adult was almost three, indicating that if the first marriage fails, there is a high probability that a subsequent marriage will also fail. We found a significant correlation between income and type of marriage (see Table

18). In the lowest income

bracket only 22.7 percent of the family heads had been married by civil law or by the church, while 27.3 percent lived in free union. An equal percentage were divorced, separated, or abandoned; 4.5 percent were single. In the highest income bracket, legally sanctioned unions consti¬ tuted 72.7 percent of the families; only 18.1 percent of the family heads lived in free union. * This figure is probably an underestimate, because it is based on questionnaire data. Later intensive family studies showed a much higher number of marriages per couple.

o

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w hJ o

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rt« r-^ ©

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66 /

STUDY

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CULTURE

The abandonment of wives and children, consensual or free unions, and multiple marriages form a constellation of traits characteristic of the culture of poverty. Many of these traits are not necessarily urban in origin, as is em¬ phasized by the fact that the overwhelming majority of our slum dwellers were of rural background.

Material Inventories A special study was made of the possessions and expendi¬ tures of each family, their buying patterns—particularly of clothing and luxury items—and the relation of these to the level of family income. The figures in this report are based upon questionnaires that were applied to all the sample families. Complete material inventories of several house¬ holds will be reported in detail elsewhere. For each family, we analyzed purchases of stoves, refrig¬ erators, washing machines, radios, phonographs, and com¬ bination radio-phonographs, television sets, wristwatches, living-room sets, dining-room sets, and beds to determine whether the item was purchased new or used; whether it was bought by cash or on credit; how much the item cost and, if bought on credit, the terms of payment; and whether the item was a gift (if so, we classified it according to whether or not it was given to the family new or used). In all cases the length of possession of the article was included. The most striking trait we found was the purchase of new items on the installment plan. Of 570 purchases (ex¬ cluding gifts), we found that almost three out of every four items (71.2 percent) were bought on credit, and 433 of the articles (76 percent) were bought new. Credit was extended on both new and used items; there was a tendency to buy used items with cash, but the majority of these were pur¬ chased on credit. The marked preference for buying new goods on time

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 61

was especially evident in the purchase of main household items. Of 41 TV sets purchased, 76 percent were bought new, 85 percent on credit; of 67 radios, 73 percent were purchased new, 70 percent on credit; of 53 living-room sets 77 percent were bought new, 73 percent on installment; 81 percent of the sewing machines were purchased new, 90 percent of them on credit. The pattern is similar for other major items. The pattern of buying new goods on credit held about equally for the four income categories, although minor but significant differences were found. Compared with the lower income families, the families within our two upper income classifications bought more new items and fewer used items. Nevertheless, one out of every five articles was purchased second hand by the higher income groups. Secondhand beds accounted for almost half of their purchases of used furniture. In our sample as a whole, secondhand beds made up more than 40 percent of all bed purchases. There are sev¬ eral reasons why many families do not buy their beds new, as they do other furniture. As beds are expensive and the need for an additional bed is usually immediate, people find it more feasible and convenient to buy a used bed than a new one. Also, the durability of a good bed allows it to be used for many years and even to be resold at a good price. A further observation may be made concerning the high incidence of used beds among our economically better-off families. Although our data show that size of families de¬ creased in proportion to higher income, there was a trend for higher income families to have fewer people per bed¬ room and fewer people per bed. Thus, they used more beds and found it more economical to buy them second hand. Price and income were the two major variables in con¬ nection with used versus new and cash versus credit buying. Half the refrigerators bought by the two lower income cate-

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gories were purchased used. Nevertheless, the majority were not paid for in cash but were bought on credit. In the up¬ per brackets, two-thirds of the refrigerators were new when purchased, most of them on the installment plan. If we analyze the methods of purchasing stoves, how¬ ever, we find that in the lowest income group, 93.3 percent of the stoves were purchased new, over half with cash; whereas in the highest income category, fewer stoves (87.5 percent) were purchased new, and only 37.5 percent with cash. The explanation for this seeming contradiction lies in the types of stove. The lowest income group bought in¬ expensive kerosene stoves at $7.50, and the highest group bought gas stoves costing several hundred dollars. The majority of families eventually paid the install¬ ments on their purchases, although not always when they fell due. Neither the purchasers nor the furniture-store managers expressed much concern over missed payments. A survey of furniture stores patronized by our families turned up somewhat contradictory attitudes on the part of the managers. Several of them insisted that half their cus¬ tomers never paid the full purchase price, and they pro¬ duced records that lent credence to this. Other managers, however, claimed that the customers were quite reliable about meeting their commitments. Further investigation revealed marked differences in credit requirements and in general managerial policies, which affected both the records and the payments. Equally important was the interpreta¬ tion of what constituted nonpayment and what was merely delayed payment. For example, an item purchased in 1961 for which no payment had been received for two years was considered by some stores to be a closed nonpayment case but by others to be merely a case of tardy payment. We expected to find a high rate of reclamation of furni¬ ture in cases of nonpayment, but this was not the situation. Furniture was rarely reclaimed, even though the furniture store may have made some threatening moves to do so. In

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 69

most cases, if payment was not continued after several years, the furniture-store managers closed the books on the family and did not attempt to confiscate the furniture. The fami¬ lies involved would no longer be able to obtain credit from another branch of the same store, although there was noth¬ ing resembling a circulating blacklist. Nonreclamation of furniture may be explained mainly in terms of the buying habits of the Puerto Ricans. Store managers said that an item was useless for resale if a family had had it for some time. They cited the people’s preference for buying new items as their reason for not appropriating the unpaid-for article. Markup of price in installment-plan buying is high (in some cases approaching 50 percent), and the stores probably do not lose money even when the full price is never paid. There is probably a circular process involved here whereby nonpayment tends to increase mark¬ ups, which may in turn result in more nonpayment. This nonreclamation is in sharp contrast with Mexico City slums I have studied. In Mexico City, where credit is more limited than in Puerto Rico, the loss of furniture for failure to meet installment payments was frequent. Our hundred families owed a total of $11,054.80 on in¬ stallment purchases, an average of over $100 per family. The heaviest indebtedness was among families in the upper income brackets. They owed over $8,000, an average of more than $160 per family. The lowest income group owed a total of only $566, or $26.95 per family. As mentioned earlier, possession of old furniture, except for beds, is the exception rather than the rule in our survey households. Of $86,177.98 worth of purchased furniture found in one hundred homes, $22,942.10 worth was bought within the twelve months prior to our survey (26.6 percent of the total), and $57,937.08 worth (67.2 percent) was bought in the five-year period 1958-1963. Analyzing these figures by income group, we find that in the lowest income category 19 percent of the $9,097.68

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worth of furniture owned was purchased in the year from July 1962 to June 1963. Moreover, 58 percent of all furni¬ ture was bought during the five-year period ending June 1963. Purchases in the second lowest category during the year preceding our study accounted for 38.3 percent of the in¬ ventory value. Of the $13,788.85 total purchase value of major household items, $10,619.45 worth of goods (77 per¬ cent) was bought in the five years prior to our investigation. A similar trend was followed by the two highest income groups. Over one-fourth of the furniture was bought within the twelve-month period ending June 1963. Three-fourths of all household furnishings had been purchased since 1958. Gifts constituted an important part of household fur¬ nishings for the lower income levels. For the fifty families earning less than $20 per capita per month, gifts worth $3,610 accounted for

13.6 percent of the total value of

household furnishings. Two-thirds of the gifts were used articles, but news gifts accounted for such important house¬ hold equipment as four kerosene stoves, a sewing machine, two radios, three wristwatches, a living-room set, and seven beds. Among the fifty families with monthly incomes of more than $20 per capita, gifts had a slightly higher total value ($3,959), but they were of less importance in overall house¬ hold inventory. Gifts accounted for only 6.6 percent of the value of all items. New articles, including wristwatches, beds, and a refrigerator, accounted for 50 percent of all gifts in the upper income families. Many of the new gifts in all income categories were re¬ ceived from relatives in New York or other mainland cities. Gifts from the United States were either brought to Puerto Rico when the relative visited or, more often, were sent by mail or by air cargo. A preliminary survey of family clothing revealed that

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 71

this item constituted an extremely important expenditure. We decided, therefore, to obtain a complete clothing in¬ ventory (including jewelry) for every third family in our hundred-family sample. The painstaking, time-consuming task of noting the price, place, and date of purchase or other method of acquisition for every article of clothing owned by each member of the family proved worthwhile, for it turned out that clothing accounted for over 50 per¬ cent of all major household purchases. To phrase this an¬ other way, the clothing owned by our families was worth more than all their other goods put together, excluding the cost of the house. Among the twenty-two lowest income families in the special sample of thirty families for the clothing survey, 62.1 percent of their total expenditure for nonconsumable items went for clothing. A similar percentage (64.8 percent) was spent by the next higher income bracket. In the higher income categories, the ratio of clothing to other household items decreased somewhat (50.4 percent for the third high¬ est group, 45.6 percent for the highest), but the total outlay for clothing increased. Some families carried clothing purchases to such a point that it was grossly out of proportion to other expenditures. For example, in one family with a total monthly income of $100 ($20 per capita), clothing purchases within the fiveyear period preceding the study totaled $2,179.50. Of this amount, $2,073.10 was spent by the three adults of the household within the thirty-six months preceding our study. At the other extreme, there were families who had spent less than $50 on clothing; one family had spent as little as $11. These figures, however, did not include gifts received. The warm climate of Puerto Rico obviates the need for winter clothing, except for those people who spend a winter in New York. Therefore, the high expenditure for clothing called for an explanation. Occasionally there were obvious professional reasons, as in the case of a prostitute

72

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who, during the course of the year we interviewed her, re¬ placed most of the twenty dresses in her wardrobe, at a cost of $188.65. On the other hand, some families had spent large portions of their income on items such as men’s suits, which were worn very infrequently, or on twenty slips for a wife, or on an equally large number of panties for a child. Questioning informants to get at consumer motiva¬ tion, we were given such stereotyped answers as “I like to look nice” or ‘‘It’s good to have new suits in case you ever need them.” The basis of their attitude toward clothing is of a sociopsychological nature and deserves further study. A brief description of the clothing possessed by three families representing contrasting levels of income illustrates the high proportion of money spent on clothing and the relative size of the families’ wardrobes.

I The G. family, in our upper income level, consisted of Pedro G.; his wife, Maria; his married foster son, Juan; Juan’s wife, Anita; and three young grandchildren. Within the past five years the family had bought over $1,500 worth of clothing. Since her marriage to Juan G., Anita had bought $361 worth of clothes, the bulk of them consisting of dresses and shoes. Her wardrobe contained forty-eight dresses, which were made by a seamstress out of cloth supplied by Maria. The dresses, including a $20 wedding dress, were made at a total cost of $260. Eight pairs of shoes cost $47.60. Anita had no stockings, no handkerchiefs, no purse, no necklaces or earrings, one blouse and one skirt. She did not consider her dress collection extravagant. She said simply that she liked to have a lot of dresses. Since she never left the house except to buy dresses, her wardrobe was a rather curious phenomenon.

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 73

Her husband was even more lavish in his taste for cloth¬ ing. During the past five years he had bought $572 worth of clothing, including $105 worth of suits (at $30, $35, and $40 each), which he had worn only two or three times. He spent $196 on fourteen pairs of slacks, which he wore in the evening and on weekends. He had fifteen sport shirts to wear with the slacks; eight neckties at $2.50 each, which he wore as seldom as he did his suits; and three white dress shirts. His jewelry consisted of a $45 wedding ring and a $19.25 silver identification bracelet. Hilda, the two-year-old daughter, had $101.73 worth of clothing, $51 of which were spent on dresses. The clothing for the two younger children consisted mainly of diapers, an average of thirty apiece. Maria and don Pedro were a little more conservative than their son and daughter-in-law in their clothing pur¬ chases. Don Pedro had spent $500 on the clothing he was using at the time of our study. However, of the total, $100 was for a wedding ring, and the clothing had been pur¬ chased over a longer period of time, although mostly within the past five years. His three suits, worth $87 new, were al¬ most never worn; nor were his six white dress shirts. His daily apparel was a sport shirt and slacks. He had nine pairs of pants ($99), seven sport shirts ($28), and four pairs of shoes, which cost a total of $45. Marfa was less interested in clothing than were the other members of her family. Her nine dresses cost a total of $90, including one $42 “special occasion” dress. Her only other major outlay, except for $42 for eyeglasses, was $36.40 for four pairs of shoes. In total, Marfa had spent $237.90 for her wardrobe. The family as a whole had spent $1,795.31 on clothing and jewelry, 43 percent of their total household purchases. Put another way, the family had spent almost as much on clothing as it had for all other items put together.

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II The family of Abel G. consisted of his wife and four young children. The G. family is in category I, the lowest income level in our sample group. Compared to other men, Abel’s wardrobe was not ex¬ tensive. The total outlay for clothing now in his possession amounted to $90.33, most of which had been purchased dur¬ ing the two years preceding the study. An inventory of Abel’s clothing follows: AMOUNT

ITEM

TOTAL

COST

1 pair

Shoes

$ 8.50

4 pairs

Socks

1.50

5

Work trousers

12.50

5

Dress trousers

30.00

5

Work shirts

12.50

1

White dress shirt

2.25

2

Sport shirts

4.50

1

Belt

2.50

6

Undershirts

3.00

5

Undershorts

3.75

2

Hats

9.33 90.33

In addition to the above purchased items, Abel had re¬ ceived the following gifts of clothing: a new suit from his brother-in-law, a pair of boots and work shoes from the municipal government, another pair of boots from a neigh¬ bor, a belt from his brother, and five light jackets from a friend. Abel had no handkerchiefs or neckties, no billfold, no kind of jewelry. His wardrobe would have been larger were it not for the destructive impulses of his wife, who tore up clothing during her “nervous” attacks.

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 75

His wife, Antonia, had a more modest array of clothing than her husband. Aside from a pile of old clothing no longer wearable, she had purchased the following items of clothing: AMOUNT

10

ITEM

Blouses

TOTAL

COST

$14.20

1

Dress

1.50

1

Skirt

1.59

3 pairs

Shoes

4.99

2 pairs

Rubber thong sandals

3.49

3 pairs

Stockings

3.00

6

Half-slips

3.25

2

Brassieres

2.50

10

Panties

2.50

12

Handkerchiefs (also used

2.00

by the children) $39.02 Antonia also owned a skirt, which her brother had given her, and two dresses, which her cousin had brought as a gift from the United States. She used no jewelry or cos¬ metics. She had given away five pairs of earrings, a lipstick, and other such items during a brief conversion to an Evan¬ gelical sect in order to “cure her mind.” The children’s clothing follows: Abel, Jr.: ITEM

AMOUNT

TOTAL COST

2

School uniforms

$ 6.00

2 pairs

Trousers

6.00

1

Shirt

1.00

1 pair

Shoes

3.00

2

Undershorts

.64 $16.64

16/

A

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

Nicolasa:

1 36 pairs

TOTAL COST

ITEM

AMOUNT

$

Dress Panties

(shared

.49

with 9.00

sister)

1.75

1 pair

Shoes

4 pairs

Rubber thong sandals (shared

by

all

the

children)

5.96 $17.20

Herlinda: $ 1.98

1

Dress

2

School uniforms

3.00

1 pair

Shoes

1.00 $ 5.98

Narda: 12

$ 1.98

Diapers Total for all children

$41.80

The children’s clothing also included the gift of a dress for Herlinda. In summary, although the outlay for clothing in this family was minimal, it accounted for 71 percent of all pur¬ chases of material goods.

Ill The family of Ramos T., one of the poorest in our sample, belonged to category I. His barnlike house in one of the lagoon slums was sparsely furnished with a small kerosene

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 77

stove, two old beds donated by neighbors, another bed bought second hand by Ramos seven years earlier, and a homemade table, bench, and chair. The family had bought a total of $44 worth of furniture since moving into the house in 1957. The household at the initiation of the study included Ramos, an unemployed carpenter of fifty; his wife in free union, Monserrate, forty; Monserrate’s thirty-eight-year-old sister, Petra; the couple’s two youngest sons, age fourteen and seven; and two of their daughters, six and four years old. At the start of the survey, four of their children, three daughters and a son, were in New York. There was no steady family income during the year the family was investigated. Ramos, who was losing his eyesight, found an occasional odd job in the barrio but had to rely upon weekly visits to his native town of Guaynabo, where relatives gave him two or three dollars for food. The family was not on relief. Unknown to Ramos, Monserrate sometimes received five dollars from local men in return for her favors. Monserrate’s surreptitious income allowed her to ac¬ cumulate a $48 wardrobe

with which she dressed quite

neatly until her clothing was stolen in April 1964. Her hus¬ band’s clothing was limited to $13.35 worth of purchased items, plus a few gifts from relatives and neighbors. Carlitos, the fourteen-year-old son, did odd jobs in the neighborhood to earn a few cents, which he gave to his mother. Occasionally he used the money to buy some cloth¬ ing for himself. Carlitos left school after the fifth grade be¬ cause of lack of funds to buy a school uniform. The other two children of school age were not enrolled in school for the same reason. Their wardrobes were exceedingly scanty. The family had invested only $92.91 in clothing for all six members, and this sum included a $23 pair of eyeglasses for Ramos. Monserrate’s sister Petra owned $70 worth of clothing

A

78 /

STUDY

OF

SLUM

CULTURE

at the time she lived with the family. Had we included her in the inventory, the household would have spent a total of $163.32 on clothing, or 79 percent of all purchased items in the house. In view of the low economic status of most of our sam¬ ple families, a surprising number owned what we would normally consider luxury items. For example, within the lowest income bracket, over half the families (54.5 percent) owned a refrigerator. The people themselves did not con¬ sider an electric refrigerator a luxury, and it may be argued that the tropical climate of Puerto Rico makes possession of a refrigerator a “necessity.” However, anyone who has been to the tropical lowlands of Mexico can attest to the scarcity of refrigerators there, both among the very poor and among those who are better off. In Puerto Rico, owning a refrigerator seems to be a cultural necessity, analogous to the growing feeling among middle-class North Americans that two cars are a “neces¬ sity.” In any case, the real “necessity” for a refrigerator may be judged by observing the way in which it is used. In home after home, particularly among the poorer fami¬ lies, we found that the refrigerator contained only bottles filled with water and perhaps a few miscellaneous food items, most of which did not require refrigeration. Most food purchases of a perishable nature were made daily and were consumed the same day, generally with no leftovers. Although some families made bulk purchases once a week, the food items bought in this way were usually canned or were such foods as beans and rice, which require only dry storage. If ownership of certain appliances were linked to the tropical climate, we would expect to find a high percentage of electric fans, especially since they are much less expensive than refrigerators. Oddly enough, an electric fan was a

Sample Families from Four Slums in Greater San Juan / 19

true luxury item. None of the fifty families in the lower income groups had a fan (see Table 19). Among the highest income families, however, almost one-third owned electric fans. Another true luxury item was a gas or electric stove. Most cooking was done on kerosene stoves, even by those in our upper income brackets. The possession of a gas or electric stove occurred in direct relationship with increase in per capita income. One gas stove (second hand) was owned by a family in the lowest income group; two were owned by families in the second category; six by members of the third group; and nine by families in the highest in¬ come group. As shown in Table 19, a number of other major house¬ hold articles followed the same pattern. A positive corre¬ lation was found between income level and ownership of such items as a television set, a wristwatch, a set of livingroom furniture, and a car. Car ownership was rare within all groups; only twelve families possessed automobiles, most of which were used in business. Radios were fairly common household items, although almost as many people owned refrigerators as radios. In fact, in our entire sample there were only eight fewer refrigerators than radios. Not quite half the families (forty-eight) owned a tele¬ vision set; about two-thirds of them were owned by the two upper income groups. Ownership of the few washing ma¬ chines was also concentrated in the upper brackets; eleven of the thirteen electric washers belonged to the families above the $20 monthly per capita level. When they had the purchasing power, our one hundred families seemed to express the following preferences for major household items (ranking by number of items and years in possession): refrigerator, living-room set, television, dining-room set, sewing machine, phonograph, gas stove, washing machine, and car.

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