Sharecropping

Even though most farmers in Buguias own land, many have inadequate holdings. Land-hungry couples usually look to sharecrop subsidiary plots owned by neighbors and relatives. As a general rule, poorer families sharecrop the fields of wealthier villagers, but household demographics as well as temporary turns of luck also influence tenancy arrangements. Young couples with many children often take on the fields of others, only to graduate from sharecropping later in life. If their children leave Buguias, such a couple might even find themselves with a surfeit of cropland. On a shorter time scale, two households can experience widely divergent for-

tunes depending on their cropping strategies; a couple might let out some of its land to sharecroppers in one year, only to lose some of its own fields (through salda) the next and be forced itself into sharecropping.

Unlike other villages in the region, Buguias Central has not had a single family that has been able to accumulate such expansive tracts of land as to necessitate the extensive use of sharecropper labor. Those couples who garnered great wealth preferred investments other than Buguias land. In Buguias, tenancy and labor arrangements most often link farmers who, despite disparities of wealth, are essentially of the same social class, and often closely related as well.

The population of Buguias mounted rapidly during the postwar period. As the inner village became increasingly crowded, many young couples chose to clear new lands on the higher slopes east of town. Relying at first on a "supply" sponsor, the fates of these gardeners depended on their luck at market, their farming strategies, and their ceremonial expenditures. But farming in any remote area presents heavy demands, since even after the plots are cleared, both supplies and vegetables have to be ported to and from the road. Many young adults therefore have preferred to relocate on the Mountain Trail where they can work as sharecroppers for large-scale growers. Most hope to return eventually and acquire land in Buguias, a reasonable expectation only if they harvest a jackpot crop.