1university of california

Utila's low population density during the agricultural phase (see Appendix B) and what would seem to have been the rather easy matter of obtaining land either from Spanish or English governments (depending on the period in question) or from one of the already existing owners nevertheless did not prevent islanders from attempting to defraud one another of territory. Not only did they attempt to gain land from one another by chicanery, they at times would simply resort to squatting on another's land and win it to their own holdings by default.

The observation that islanders had, and have, a penchant for encroaching on one another's land is more than gossip or malicious slander on the part of informants. Rose (1904:67), in talking about various homicides that had occurred in Utila's history, notes that the first murder in the island involved land disputes and the moving of boundary markers.

Another datum we provided by (black) Utilian informants regarding an island tragedy taking place in 1905. During that year one of the black residents of the island, a long-time and trusted employee of many island whites, shot or otherwise murdered more than a dozen people (both black and white) on board the goleta (passenger and cargo ship) Olimpia (see Table 3). The Olimpia massacre is legendary in Utila as the font of interracial friction, but more importantly here is one particular account of the massacre given by black informants. According to this version, the murderer had committed the murders and robbery in order to get revenge and economic recompense for being cheated out of a parcel of land that he had put in pawn. A wealthy white Utilian had accepted the land as collateral for a small cash loan; when the borrower attempted to pay off the loan and recover his land the lender claimed that a sale had been effected.

Insofar as utilization of land was concerned, to Joseph Cooper and the other early settlers, cay and main-island land was merely a factor--the prime factor--of production in their farming economy. Although they termed their cocals, etc., "plantations" the sense in which they used the term is not the conventional academic usage found, for example, in the writings of Mintz and Wolf (1957:380) in which they say:

We shall let plantation stand for an agricultural estate, operated by dominant owners (usually organized into a corporation) and a dependent labor force, organized to supply a large-scale market by means of abundant capital in which the factors of production are employed primarily to further capital accumulation without reference to the status needs of the owners.

By and large, bush properties were divided into pasture lands and plantations. No exact figures nor estimates could be found, but pasture land seems to have been by far the lesser use to which the bush was put. Animal husbandry was not, apparently, a popular pursuit with islanders even though one could imagine that there would be a ready local market for such a product as beef. The quality of pasture fed tropically grown beef might have been one factor inhibiting a local market, however, since--without corn or other cereal grains to fatten the animals--that meat would be lean and stringy (in contrast to imported meat that might well have been corn fed). Still another factor bearing on the quality of island-grown beef would have been the lack of refrigeration or proper preservation of butchered meat: Utilian butchers, however deft they might have been in cutting less-than-prime carcasses, could never adequately age the meat to provide tender, tasty viands for island households.

In pure economic terms, it could be hypothesized that animal husbandry was not popular since, for example, beef raising is a high capital, long term investment. From calf stage to marketable beef stage might take as long as two to three years, which along with the problems of insuring good health to the tropically raised animals (warding off insect and parasite pests such as ticks, mosquitoes, worms, etc.) may well have made beef raising too risky a venture.

In contrast to relatively small scale, economically secondary pastoral usage, land for plantations was crucial to Utilians. Again, no exact figures are available, but plantings from a few to several score acres are known to have existed in the island. Popular with Utilian farmers were banana and plantain "trees" (actually perennial herbs with soft herbaceous stalks) that could be brought into production within two to three years from the time the root stock material was planted. Coconuts, which took up to seven or eight years to bear, were also popular since they would continue to produce year after year with relatively little care once they had reached maturity. Fruit trees, especially citrus and mango of different varieties, also found a place in island plantations although they do not seem to have been economically as important as bananas or coconuts.

The care of a banana or coconut "walk" consisted mainly in keeping back the ever-encroaching tropical bush and harvesting ripe fruit. Some walks appear to have consisted of mixed trees, i.e., some coconut, some banana, some mango or citrus, rather than solid stands of just one kind. This is evidently due to terrain; banana plants, for example, are quite tenacious growers and can even survive in little pockets of earth between lava flows where other trees or tree-like plants could not prosper. The mixed nature of an individual's plantation required considerable familiarity with his inventory of cultivars; a man had to know each of his trees in order to properly attend to it during various facets of the growing/bearing cycle (this too, perhaps, inhibited large scale use, at least initially, of outside wage laborers: too much reliance on individuals not intimately concerned with planting would put a block between a man and his production--with costly results).

As already mentioned, seaside and hillside properties were specifically housesites. The major consideration in choosing the shorefront or hillside was comfort; either of these locales was kept cooler and more insect free than inland sites because of the easterly winds. Subsequently, when trade and transshipping of fruit from the island interior became important to Utila, shorefront lots gained economic value for their ready access to ships at wharves or at anchor in the harbor. Stores and bars were located along the shoreline in order to minimize problems of supplying them from cargo boats. Large warehouses were even built out over the water near the shore as collection centers for agricultural produce (especially coconuts) to make transshipment easier. Those who owned the wharves and/or seaside lands could levy fees for access to the various boats. In this way too the peculiarities of land tenure, as it developed in Utila, helped to reinforce the growth of distinctive socioeconomic classes.

Settler families were, logically, in an advantageous position to establish and control any initial economic enterprises. Not surprisingly, then, a relatively larger amount of Utila's wealth gravitated to the founding families, especially when monies earned in planting were multiplied by the entrance of these same families into maritime trade and/or merchandising. Reference to Table 3 should provide sufficient evidence that a handful of families dominated shipping; the same families, essentially, who were the merchants and holders of the largest amounts of land.

Support, from the section on land ownership, also exists for the contention that socioeconomic classes formed rather early. Additional data regarding differential distribution of wealth come from two other sources, one direct and the other inferential. Francis Moran (a pseudonym), a merchant in the Utila of 1973, pointed out that during the "Coconut Oil Years," already mentioned, his family's store was the only such venture (out of more than half-a-dozen) to weather the depression disaster. As will be recalled, merchants during this period were in the position of operating "company stores": people could render out coconut oil, but payment was received only in merchandise from the purchaser. Either the Moran enterprise was simply luckier than others, or--as asserted by my informant--there was more substantial foundation to it: the Moran family was categorically in a different position relative to the other merchants and other islanders as well. Those merchants who were financially submerged by the depression must have entered those years relatively better off than most islanders, which further points to the existence of economic gradations in Utila's population.

Inferential evidence of (socio)economic classes in Utila comes from census records and various registries in the municipality. Taken together the figures from these sources show the importance to Utila of emigration during the agricultural phase as a literal escape valve from the local economic situation. Emigration points quite directly to certain aspects of Utila's economic class structure as well as to the overall condition of an economy that would force many people to evacuate.

Appendix B, compiled from a number of different sources, demonstrates that between 1858 and 1935 Utila's population increased by 955 people. Vital statistics were not kept in Utila before 1881, but from 1900 (after which date fairly reliable, intact records exist) until 1935 only 507 births were recorded. For the same 1900-1935 period some 200 death entries can be found. Obviously natural population increase would not account for the number of resident Utilians in 1935: many outsiders had to have immigrated to the island over the years. And, indeed, informants affirm the importance of outsiders augmenting the island population.

Reference to Appendix B again shows that Utila experienced two sizeable jumps in population--between 1867 and 1889 (during the fruit boom) and between 1897 and 1935. The first jump would, as just noted, have to be due to the influx of immigrants since Utilian fecundity would not account for the increase; this is also logical since there was the attraction of wealth to be made from the expanding fruit production frontier.

The apparent jump from the 1897 to 1935 populations is, however, mainly due to natural increase but the figures hide the fact that during this period Utila in fact lost a significant proportion of her population through emigration to the United States.

Although the overall island population grew from approximately 600 to slightly more than 1000 during the period under discussion, an estimated 500 emigrants permanently left Utila to settle in New Orleans, Tampa, New York, Chicago and other U.S. cities. Most of these islanders maintained contact with Utila and, in fact, returned--with varying frequency--to visit friends and relatives. Some sent money to family members still in the island in order bolster flagging finances. Lowenthal and Comitas (1962:202) make an observation that is significant here in the analysis of Utila's outward-bound population:

The common belief that international migrants are the most desperately poverty-stricken misfits and outcasts is denied by the evidence; in the Irish famine, for instance, only the comparatively well-off could scrape up the energy and the passage money to emigrate across the Atlantic.

Shortly before the United States entered World War II, United Fruit Company sent representatives to Utila to sign up seamen for its steamship line. The score or so local men who joined the company, having become experienced with United, rapidly found themselves working in wartime U.S. merchant shipping. While at sea they sent monthly allotments to family members at home. Monthly money orders and checks from absentee sailors and remittances from permanent emigrants started an economic upturn in Utila. Nor did economic renaissance end with the war; returning sailors inspired others to ship out, and themselves returned--again and again--for tours of sea duty.

In the years that followed, Utilian males have totally forsaken agriculture, part time subsistence fishing, or any of the traditional pursuits of island men. Young boys have been socialized, and therefore geared themselves, to the expectation that at age eighteen (when they can obtain seamen's papers) they would take their place in the ranks of merchant mariners. Females have likewise been socialized to anticipate wifedom and motherhood as largely solitary status-roles, solitary save for the company of other women who share in the same cultural pattern.

Utilians spend much of their wealth on improved housing and/or their own piece of land. So great an expenditure of money can best be explained by the reward that having these commodities represents to islanders, but while being the reward on one hand for going to sea, the house and lot are also the motivation for shipping out. Traditional house plans have been retained, but additional refinements are made. Many people have wired their houses for electricity, which came to Utila on a part time basis during the 1950s; some half a dozen men bought their own generators. Some houses (less than a score out of 240, however) are now totally equipped with indoor plumbing--sinks and lavatories, showers, toilets--rather than wash basins and pitchers, out-of-doors bathing facilities and privies. House pilings--used to elevate structures off the ground as protection against high tides, and for circulation of air--were made taller and from reinforced concrete (as opposed to short buttonwood posts). Space "under the house floor" could now be used for storage or work purposes, or as a recreation area where a porch swing could be suspended.

Furnishings have been far from neglected. Many islanders own kerosene refrigerators and stoves and new vinyl covered furniture.

In 1973 Utila obtained full time water and electrification service from a fish processing plant that had been opened by U.S. investors. Subscribers to the service--an estimated 80%-85% of island households--pay for electricity according to kilowatt-hours used and for water based on the number of people in the household and have become thoroughly tied to the existence of these amenities. (The rate of electricity runs from $5.00 for 0-20kwh to $37.65 for 440kwh, or 16¢ per kwh, about three times as much as Southern California Edison.) Although the utilities are very costly in themselves, the effect of their availability has been most significant economically.

Ever since electrification was available even on a part time basis, Utilians have purchased an increasing number of appliances and electrically-operated gadgets. There are, for example, more than forty television sets in the island, an equal number of stereophonic record players, radios, electric irons and fans and perhaps a score of electric refrigerators and washers. These have absorbed much of the island income, as have butane gas stoves, power tools, motor cycles, bicycles and motor-driven dories. Ready-made clothing, imported canned goods (as well as tobacco and liquor) continued to appear in increasing volume from the beginning of this phase.

Men often have returned to Utila with lump sums of money that they had saved while abroad; it is not rare for a man to bring $2000-$3000 with him when he comes home. Much of this latter wealth has been spent in outright recreation. Thus, while wives or other family members might use remittances on things noted above, sailors themselves often exhaust the lump sum savings on a two or three month spree involving day or week-long binges at local bars or in private parties held in someone's home. Inasmuch as home leave is coordinated, in most cases, with island holidays (the 15th of September, Central America's Independence Day, to New Years, inclusive), partying has been reinforced by the culture itself, to say nothing of sailors' traditional desire to "blow off steam."

The foregoing is not meant to imply that islanders have totally consumed the earnings brought in by merchant mariners; some investment has taken place, even if inadvertent, in the purchasing of real estate. Also, without question, many Utilians put money aside in a savings account in the United States (in Tampa, for example) or in La Ceiba, the nearest coastal city to Utila. Not until 1966, however, was there any formal financial institution in the island itself. In 1966 a credit union was established where islanders could save money, and--just as importantly--borrow it.

The incidence of island males investing in businesses (shops or bars, for example) or in capital goods (land for use as plantations, boats that could be run on coastal or other trade) has nevertheless been relatively small. Few households have earmarked funds to obtain schooling for their children beyond the primary school level, although it has not been unusual for a child to be sent to the United States for secondary school.

In sum, economic prosperity achieved by Utilians in post World War II years has not been harnessed in order to insure long term economic well-being that could derive from the island itself, and the argument advanced in this study is that opportunities for such investment would be limited and largely unprofitable anyway.

Before turning to other aspects of Utila's remittance phase economy, a look at some specific features might bring contemporary production and consumption patterns into greater relief. At the time I did research in Utila its remittance economy had been in force for almost a quarter of a century. Approximately 240 households--around 900 islanders--constituted the population of the main island, and these households marshalled close to 150 men between the ages of 18 and 55 to work various U.S. and Scandinavian shipping lines.

According to figures provided by the manager of the recently opened bank in Utila, some 270 remittances clear his bank monthly (based on figures from 17 February 1973, when the bank opened, until May 1974). At an average of $100 per check, roughly $27,000 has entered Utila via Bancahsa each month. The Credit Union manager also provided remittance figures: between $15,000-$20,000 monthly entered Utila in money order or check allotments. In addition to the $40,000+ income to Utila each month for at least ten months of every year has been the lump sum savings (previously referred to) brought by sailors on home leave, monthly pensions coming to retired mariners, and incidental remittances from emigrants (temporary and permanent) in the United States. It would seem that just short of $1,000,000 a year enters Utila. Per capita income is therefore over $1100 if just the main island population of Utila is used for calculations (slightly more than $830 if the Cayans are included), and is thus far higher than it is in most of Central America or most Caribbean islands. Utila's overall standard of living obviously far surpasses that of any mainland Honduran community of the same size. (For comparison figures, see Table 4.)
TABLE 4
COMPARISON PER CAPITA INCOME FIGURES FROM CENTRAL

AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES

1960 1963 1968 1969 1970 1971

British Honduras --- 346 --- --- --- ---

Costa Rica 347 351 429 468 504 542

Dominican Republic 222 284 280 309 338 362

El Salvador 219 235 265 265 274 276

Guatemala 258 284 306 315 337 353

Haiti --- 74 86 87 --- ---

Honduras 197 201 259 260 264 270

Jamaica 368 412 507 561 634 631

Martinique --- 573 --- --- --- ---

Mexico 315 370 543 580 632 ---

Netherlands Antilles 1193 1113 1139 --- --- ---

Nicaragua 242 286 377 385 399 416

Panama 349 431 552 600 646 ---

Puerto Rico 717 914 1393 1533 1671 ---

Trinidad, Tobago 535 595 683 --- --- ---

Source: United Nations Statistical Yearbook, 1972, p. 622.

With regard to expenditure of this income, it has already been observed that two or three months of the year are "rest and recreation" time for returned sailors. At the rate of 35¢ per bottle of beer and around 50¢ for a shot of rum, a major (though seasonal) expense in Utila has been the alcohol consumed in traditional drinking sprees.

Savings accounts at the bank amount to $125,000, and shares in the Credit Union total $120,000. Savings may have been accumulated over a number of years; the bulk of Utila's annual income still has to be accounted for.

Loans from the Credit Union have averaged a little more than $70,000 a year since its inception (divided roughly into thirds between loans for medical bills, passage money for men to go to their ships, and house construction) and these, obviously, must be repaid.