ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the predicaments faced by Paez farmers as well as their performance as part-subsistence farmers. The specialization of Paez as subsistence farmers, and of Whites as coffee planters and traders, as well as the difference between these two groups in regard to contact, knowledge, wage rate, and access to resources, permits people to treat Paez farmers as if they were members of a separate sub-system. The Indian community is not a perfectly homogeneous community as regards economic aspirations and willingness to comply with certain traditional expenses by each individual family. A farmer controls a minimal amount of labour; he has direct control only over his own and his wife's labour; he can count on the help of his small children, who are capable of performing light tasks, but he has only limited control over the labour of his adult sons and daughters.
