Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

Latin American Cities: Aspects of Function and Structure Author(s): Richard M. Morse Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Jul., 1962), pp. 473-493 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/177696 . Accessed: 05/11/2013 15:17
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LATIN AMERICAN CITIES: ASPECTS OF FUNCTION AND STRUCTURE*

This essay will advance two interrelated hypotheses about the Latin American city. The first of them has to do with the role of the city in the settlement of the New World. The second suggests certain characteristics of the modern Latin American metropolis. The analysis of the colonial Latin American city is frequently prefaced by a review of its medieval Iberian origins. These origins are clearly reflected in the internal workings and institutions of the New World city: in the municipal control of common lands; in the function and structure of craft and trade guilds; in the procedures for election of town officers by property owners; in municipal supervision of prices and trade practices; and in the role of the church and of religious brotherhoods. Significantly, however, these quasimedieval organizations and procedures were assembled - in the Spanish if not in the Portuguese lands - within a Renaissance city plan whose geometric lines of force radiated out to the vast and often loosely settled surrounding space.' This leads us to perceive the New World city not solely as a projection of municipal and cultural traditions from the Middle Ages but as a protagonist in a large scheme of imperial colonization. The Spanish and Portuguese monarchs claimed a territory the size of thirty or forty Iberian peninsulas. The conquerors and colonizers were largely urban types from two urbanminded countries. Yet, ironically, their task was to make contact with the soil and subsoil from which all wealth would flow, given the labor of millions of Africans and American Indians. In Spanish America ultimate title to all land was vested in the crown, which delegated the right to grant lands to the conquistadors, and later to viceroys and governors by agreement with town councils. In practice, the town councils tended at first to allot lands directly, operating at the margin of the law. By the seventeenth century the crown, desperately needing income, was asserting its right to sell vacant lands or to question the rights
* This paper was read in abbreviated form at the December, 1960, meeting of the American Historical Association. Some of the research upon which it rests was done on a grant from Columbia University in the summer of 1958. 1 Erwin Walter Palm, "Los origenes del urbanismo imperial en America", Contribuciones a la historia municipal de America (Mexico City, 1951), p. 258.

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of those who already claimed land titles. When royal inspectorscame to examine questionable titles, however,it was commonfor a town council to a that allowedit to pay a lump sum for the properties request "composition" in question,thus legitimizingthe de facto distribution. Until well into the eighteenthcenturythe juridicaldoctrinesapplyingto crown lands were still in formulation.2 One historiangoes so far as to say that the municipality was "the authorized the crown to effect concessions essentially juridicalagent by and allotmentsof land, whetherruralor urban, accordingto the needs and interestsof each particular locality".3 The city, then, is the point of departurefor the settlementof the soil. And we can say that, whereas the Western European city representeda movementof economicenergiesaway from extractivepursuitstowardthose of processingand distribution,the Latin Americancity was the source of energy and organizationfor the exploitationof natural resources. This relation of city to land helps to explain several characteristics of colonial Latin Americancities. or transferof cities was frequentbecauseof errors First, the abandonment of judgment the whohadincomplete of localgeography by founders, knowledge and who couldnot accurately predictthe patternsof futuretraderouteswhich to mighthave been expectedto guarantee stabilityand commercial prosperity the administrative, and nuclei.4 military religious Second, crown officials were in many regions thwartedin their attempts to nucleatethe sprawling settlementpatternsinto towns or villages. Smaller lived underthreatof dissolutionas their leadingcitizenswere municipalities drawnoff to regionsof greatereconomicpromiseor else devotedthemselves to ruralpursuitsto the detrimentof municipaladministration. Third,many towns becameencircledand theircommonlands absorbedby the individualholdings preemptedby firstcomers. Status was defined by ownershipof the land ratherthan, as in older societies, the relationto the land being a functionof status. This caused the early growthof municipal oligarchieswhich controlled without putting into full productioncircumadjacenttown lands.5
Jose Maria Ots Capdequi, Manual de historia del derecho espafol en las Indias (Buenos Aires, 1945), pp. 273-292. 3 Francisco Dominguez y Compafiy, "Funciones econ6micas del cabildo colonial hispanoamericano"in Contribuciones..., op. cit., p. 166. 4 Jose Maria Ots Capdequi, Nuevos aspectos del siglo XVIII en America (Bogota, 1946), p. 283; R. MacLean y Esten6s, "Sociologia de la ciudad en el Nuevo Mundo", Proceedings of the 14th InternationalCongress of Sociology (30th August-3rdSeptember 1951), II, 277; Pierre Deffontaines, "The Origin and Growth of the Brazilian Network of Towns", The Geographical Review, XXVIII, 3 (July 1938), 399; Raimundo Lopes,
Antropogeografia
2

5 Jose Maria Ots Capdequi, El regimen de la tierra en la America Espaiola durante el periodo colonial (Ciudad Trujillo, 1946), p. 45; Juan Agustin Garcia, La ciudad indiana (Buenos Aires, 1937), passim.

(Rio de Janeiro, 1956), pp. 162-163.

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Fourth, the urban network was weakly developed. The lack of commercial reciprocity among the cities, which was accentuated by Iberian mercantilist policies, insulated them and tied them individually to Lisbon and Seville.5a If we assume such characteristics, we may permit ourselves the analogy between the Iberian colonization of America and the Roman colonization of Western Europe, fifteen hundred years earlier. In both cases the location of the colony-town is decided more by political, strategic and agricultural considerations than by industrial or commercial ones. (The Latin word for "colony", colonia, is in fact related to colere, meaning "to cultivate".) The administrative unit is a civitas or municipality, centering on a nuclear grid plan that is surrounded by arable fields, to be allotted to the colonists or to be held aside as an ager publicus or ejido. The Roman civitas was an old tribal unit, comprising a tribe and its territory. Its chief town served as its administrative center, having a government organized on the standard Roman model. "Gaul was ... too large, its tribes too backward and scattered, to be welded into the Italian type of a network of municipalities. A tribal territory was like a French department, or often larger."6 In Spanish America, similarly, municipal jurisdictions might extend scores or even hundreds of miles. The early Roman colonists were soldier-farmers, and their towns had a camp-like appearance. In Spanish America certain land grants were called peonias and caballerias, because they were allotted to foot soldiers or horse soldiers. If both situations yield the example of the geometrically planned town functioning as a metropolitan outpost and as a colonizing agent, so do they exhibit functionally comparable agrarian institutions. The latifundium, controlled by a single proprietor, originally from an urban background, becomes the agency by which rural workers are organized for production. In both cases a large number of these workers is culturally alien to the colonizers, and, whatever the dictates of the metropolis may be, it is largely the latifundium which determines the workers' relation to the soil and the nature of the justice which they may expect to receive. Potentially, the latifundista has mixed rural-urban allegiances. When the social or economic promise of the hinterland is great, or when life in the town is penurious and oppressive, he will be drawn to reside in the country. This deprives the town of administrative leadership and of chances for economic growth to the extent that the latifundium becomes self-sufficient in agriculture and manufactures.7 In Roman Europe by the third century A.D. the wealthiest landowners were spending little time in the chief towns, which were being exploited by
5a These historical aspects are further developed in Richard M. Morse, "Some Characteristics of Latin American Urban History", The American Historical Review, LXVII, 2 (Jan. 1962), 317-338. 6 Olwen Brogan, Roman Gaul (London, 1953), pp. 66-67. 7 Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient Worldand the Beginning of the Middle Ages (New York, 1931), pp. 115-130, and La Gaule (Paris, 1947), pp. 201-203, 406-407.

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in size, and becominggloomy fortifiedoutposts. the metropolis,diminishing Rural workers,reducedto servile dependencyupon the landholders,came to live in clusters of huts, and to form a kind of agricultural proletariat. bakeriesand such workshopsas forges A greatvilla not only had hand-mills, and carpentryshops needed for farm maintenancebut might also support embroiderers, chasers, goldsmiths,sculptorsand hairdressers.In short, the villa replacedthe town as the vehicle of Romanization."The towns",wrote romanization as the Collingwoodwith respectto Roman Britain,"represent wished to have it; the villas representit in the shape in centralgovernment which it commendeditself to the individualBritish landowner."8Of Gaul over municipal life Broganobservesthat with the decay of imperialauthority in the by the fifth century,the "greatestatesin the countryand the bishoprics towns were the chief institutionswhich eased the transitionto the Middle Ages".9 for it The SpanishAmericanencomiendawas not strictly a latifundium, but a stipulation of reciprocal dutiesand privileges was not a grantof territory and Indianlaborers. Withinthe limitsindicated obtainingbetweenSpaniards land earlier, grants (mercedes)were generallymade by town governments, and viceroys.As a while encomiendas were awarded audiencias by governors, definitionof social organization the encomiendashoweda medievalimprint. It scarcelycorresponded, however,to the medievalmanor,for encomenderos and theirtributary Indiansdid not sharethe commontraditions whichunderly of disposia manorialregimeof communityand mutuality.The prominence in the crown's constant tions affectingthe encomienda Spanishlaws revealed fear of the encomenderos'separatismand their exploitativeuse of Indian the latifundiary labor. In Brazil,moreover, fazendaratherthanthe encomienda was introduced from the start,while in SpanishAmericathe encomienda gave way in the eighteenthcenturyto the hacienda,which appearsto have had its originin municipalland grants.10 Revertingto the Roman analogy, we will recall the insistenceof Fustel in WesternEurope de Coulanges thatthe structure of ruralsocialorganization as determinedby the villa persisted as late as the ninth century. Village tendedto lead a somewhatmarginalexistenceand were usually communities scatteredamongand upon, and subordinated to, the villas. It was the villa, controlledby a single proprietor, and not the villagewhich originallydivided the land and organizedrurallife and agricultural production.T1 Neither the
The CambridgeAncient History, 12 vols. (Cambridge, 1923-1939), XII, 288. 9 Brogan, op. cit., pp. 210-211. 10 Silvio Zavala, Estudios indianos (Mexico City, 1948), pp. 207-353; Louis C. Faron, The Acculturation of the Araucanian Picunche during the First Century of Spanish Colonization in Chile: 1536-1635 (Ph. D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1954), pp. 62-67, 157-172. 11 Fustel de Coulanges, L'Alleu et le domaine rural pendant l'epoque merovingienne (Paris, 1889), pp. 38-42, 198, 229-231, 436-437.
8

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Latin language nor Burgundian and Salic law contained a term that unequivocally denoted "village".l2 In general, a "village" was a grouping of coloni and serfs on a villa, or else a small commercial or parochial center without agricultural functions. From roughly the fourth till the ninth century this situation prevailed. In Carolingian Gaul the "village, as a personality, did not yet exist, seeing that the 'parish' was scarcely beginning to be formed in the country districts".13 Only in the late Middle Ages did independent village communities come into being, growing in most cases out of the old villas.14 In the settling of Latin America the village community was of secondary importance alongside the town or "municipality" and the encomienda or later hacienda. The colonization of central Chile has been described as a concentration of land in the hands of a few, "an extensive domination over large territories rather than small village economies".l5 In modern Venezuela the most frequent form of rural social organization is not the village but the dispersed and nomadic farm families. Eighty-five percent of the centers of population have 25 houses or less, and 92.4% of them have fewer than 200 inhabitants. The resulting conditions of "solitude and isolation are contrary to the development of a spirit of communal cooperation".16 The colonial Brazilian village came often as an "afterthought", a spontaneous grouping to care for whatever needs of the settlers were not being served by the fundamental rural unit, the farm or fazenda. The nucleus of today's rural community is the neighborhood, rather than the village center to which a cluster of such neighborhoods may or may not be tributary.17 An eighteenthcentury captain-general despaired of implanting the Portuguese village system in Brazil because of the centrifugal tendencies of the settlers.18 His letters are similar to those of Spanish administrators in the viceroyalty of New Granada who, during this same period, were unable either to maintain the agricultural Indians in nucleated settlements or to gather the white settlers into systems of villages, or "parishes of Spaniards". Even the larger towns were partly
Ibid., pp. 200 ff. Fustel's theory needs the qualifications that are set forth in Robert Latouche, The Birth of the Western Economy: Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages (New York, 1961), pp. 59-72. 13 Lot, Ancient World..., op. cit., p. 369. 14 Roger Grand and R. Delatouche, "Les Communautespaysannes dans la France du Moyen-Age", in Francois Perroux (ed.), Agriculture et communaute (Paris, 1943), pp. 40-62. 15 Jean Borde and Mario G6ngora, Evolucion de la propiedad rural en el Valle del Puangue, 2 vols. (Santiago de Chile, 1956), I, 57. 16 J. A. Silva Michelena, "Factores que dificultan y han impedido la reforma agraria en Venezuela",in Resistencias a mudanca, ed. by Centro Latino-Americanode Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais (Rio de Janeiro, 1960), pp. 138-139. 17 T. Lynn Smith, Brazil: People and Institutions, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1954), pp. 495-502. 18 Carlos Borges Schmidt, "Rural Life in Brazil", in T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant (eds.), Brazil: Portrait of Half a Continent (New York, 1951), pp. 169-171.
12

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becauseof an exodus of inhabitants to ruralhaciendas.19 abandoned Today the nuclearruralgroupin this area - that is, highlandColombia- is still the neighborhoodor extended family (vecindario,vereda) rather than the of the groupsis village,althoughthereare signsthat functionaldifferentiation finally causing complementariness among them and thereforethe gradual of largercommunities.20 integration In describingthe autonomous and self-sufficienthacienda of northern Mexicoin the seventeenth century,formedoutsidethe pale of the encomienda the drained Crown",Chevalierexplicitlyadvancesthe analogy "already by withpost-Roman of free workerswere absorbed into the Europe. Settlements became hired labor upon it. Military hacienda,and the Indiancommunities power and judicial authorityin effect devolved upon the hacendados,who attracted large retinuesof relativesand hangers-on.Mexico City alone broke the monotonyof this disintegrated society, "as the point d'appuiof a State whoseauthority threatened to dissolvein the vast country".21 The regions of the most advancedIndian civilizations,where systems of nucleatedsettlementhad grown up before the Spanishconquest, permanent did not necessarilyoffer exceptionsto the generalizations being developed. into small areasfor use as a labor force. Such Indianswere often regrouped In the case of Guatemalathis "led to culturalintegrationon a 'township' basis", with the municipios becoming "the fundamentalcultural units". Divisionstendedto reflectpreexisting it is probable ethnicgroupings, "though In short, the uprooting that many of these lines were entirelyarbitrary".22 and regrouping of highlandIndianpopulationsunder Spanishadministrative and the disruption of pre-Columbian economies,mightproduce arrangements, unknit or disarticulated hinterlands,as did the settling of empty lands. To complete the analogy between post-ColumbianAmerica and postRoman Europe,of course,one would have to imaginea gradualcessationof all contact between the Old World and the New once the colonizationwas effected. Under such circumstances one might furtherimaginethe universal decadenceof town life and the decentralization of New Worldsocietyaround the landedestate,as Chevalier the processfor northern has described Mexico. the Americas centuries of isolated one Finally, allowing many history, might envisionthe growthof villagecommunities on or nearthese estates,as well as a networkof exchangeamongthem. In some regions,especiallythe more outlyingones, partsof such a process did certainlyoccur. In counterpoint to it, however,the moreimportant cities
19 Orlando Fals Borda, El hombre y la tierra en Boyacd (Bogota, 1957), pp. 47-50. 20 Ibid., pp. 188-198. 21 Fran9ois Chevalier, La formation des grands domaines au Mexique. Terre et societe' aux XVle-XVIle siecles (Paris, 1952), pp. 390, 404-406. 22 Felix Webster McBryde, Cultural and Historical Geography of Southwest Guatemala

(Washington, 1945), pp. 88-89, 100-101.

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commercial and cultural of LatinAmericacontinuedto serveas bureaucratic, after America as the Latin of and, Europe independence, outposts metropolitan the economyof LatinAmerica centersof nationalpoliticallife. Furthermore, as a whole, far from becomingautarkic,came to hinge more and more upon food crops in the exportof a few raw materialsand tropicalor semitropical return for manufacturesand other necessaries. This commercialrelation countriesbroughtabouterratic, with the increasingly industrialized temperate in of centers induced shifts the production. It tended to create externally of and an easily uprootedruralproletariat. exploitativepatterns agriculture And it militated against the emergenceof a stable network of towns and a varietyof economicsurplusesand linked in commercial villages,producing exchange. The history of the settlementof what is today the departmentof Norte in Colombiaexhibitsmany featurescharacteristic de Santander of the urban history of Latin America as a whole.23 Six settlementphases have been identified for this north Andean region. (1) The conquest. Towns were founded along strategicroutes between the coast and inland administrative centers,or between such centers. Some towns, like Salazarand Ocafia,had multiplefoundingsbefore certain militaryor commercialcriteriawere empiricallysatisfied. (2) Rural dispersion. During the seventeenthcenturyno new towns werefounded,but someexistingIndiancenterswere"Spaniardized" and broughtinto encomiendasas the rural taproots of economic life were struck. Also the earthquakes of 1610 and 1644 producedsome changesof town sites. (3) Cacao phase. The intensification of agriculture, and in particularthe new commercialpossibilitiesof cacao, attractedpopulationfrom the highlands to the hot, humidrivervalleys. Cucutaandotherlowlandtowns were founded,some at the cost of depopulating previousnuclei. The careful in for cities contained the regulations founding SpanishLaws of the Indies were now no longerfollowed. of Indian centers. Overlapping the cacao boom came (4) Rehabilitation a periodwhenold encomiendas or Indiansettlements took on moreimportance owing to the wealth of the whites who residedin them. Some towns were formedby the grouping Indiannuclei.(5) Improved comtogetherof scattered munication. Intensified and a denserpopulation causedan increase agriculture in transportation of new wayamongpopulationcentersand the appearance stationsettlements the routes. Before the nineteenth along century,however, it can be said that the three main towns of the region- Pamplona,Salazar and Ocafia - were still tributaryto their surrounding encomiendasand haciendas,and that amongthem "therewas no settlementnet by which they might be unified".
23

Miguel Marciales (ed.), Geografia historica y economica del Norte de Santander (Bogota, 1948), I, 230-239.

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(6) Coffee phase. The early nineteenthcenturysaw the ruin of the cacao industryand a consequentdislocationof people from the valleys to the uplands that was accentuatedby the impact of the independencewars. The coffee boom after 1840 causedan indiscriminate foundingof townsat centers of coffee productionand at temperatealtitudes,with little attentionpaid to topographyand other factors of site selection. The thrust from this most recent colonizingphase continuesinto the twentiethcentury,and is finally of the region. givinga more cohesiveset to the humangeography to the urban of Latin America as a whole, we may now Returning history it identify as having two broad stages. The first was the centrifugal phase, when the towns distributed status-and fortune-seekers out to the land. The social organization of the town was often unstable,and its verylife sometimes Social ephemeral. power tended to flow to the rural estate, especially in Brazil and outlyingSpanishAmerica. Such towns offer contrastto those of medieval Europe which, through the centripetal process representedin Henri Pirenne'sfaubourgtheory, acquiredlargerpopulationsand new economic processes. Latin Americanrural settlement,however,was exploitative,badly articulated and, we mightsay, of a provisional nature.It is easy to supposethat the ties and a tip in the balanceof social and economic looseningof latifundiary expectancymight have caused heavy migrationto the cities, giving urban a sharplycentripetal character.This is preciselywhat happened development in the nineteenthand above all in the presentcentury. and appeal of the larger Preliminarysigns of the new cosmopolitanism cities were the urban reformsof such eighteenth-century administrators as GovernorGomes Freire de Andradein Rio de Janeiroand Viceroy Revillagigedo in Mexico City.24 Under Gomes Freire and his successors Rio

received new public buildings,hospitals, streets and streetlights,parks and defenseinstallations.The city's famousaqueductwas built;pestilentialareas were cleaned up or paved; reforms in municipal administration were introduced.25 Mexico City benefittedfrom very similarimprovements, which includedbetterpolicing,paving and lightingof streets,a new aqueduct,and such buildingsas the mint, the customhouse and the school of mines. Lima was almostcompletelyrebuiltand modernized after the earthquake of 1746. "And what was true of Mexico and Lima was true only in lesser degree of the principalprovincialcities."26 With the comingof Latin Americanindependence in the early nineteenth cities and especially the new national capitals - assumed a century,
24 Ladislao Gil Munilla, "La ciudad de Hispanoamerica",Estudios Americanos, X, 48 (Sept. 1955), 307. 25 Vivaldo Coaracy, Memorias da cidade do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1955), pp. 563-574. 26 C. H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York, 1947), p. 345.

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pivotal role as the cockpits of national politics, as centers for trade now free of mercantilistrestraint,and often as refuges from the disruptionand banditryof rurallife. For GilbertoFreyre the key trend of the social and Brazil is the shift of power from institutionalhistory of nineteenth-century the rural"bighouse",or casa grande,of the planterclass to the town house, The ascendancy of economicliberalism or sobrado,of the urbanbourgeoisie.27 and build up capitalin the urban in the new nationshelpedto commercialize economy,and to make availablethe multiplying productsof the industrialized were the before banks societies. Even established, Braziliancity of the early nineteenthcentury "beganto extend its dominionover the country in the form of loans".28In 1844 a Venezuelanobservedthat, in his country,newly passed Benthamitelegislationauthorizedhigh, even usurious interest rates a stranglehold on the nation'sagrithat were giving the urbanmoneylender culturaldevelopment.29 Statisticsfor the provinceof Buenos Aires show that the ruralpopulation continuedto grow at a fasterrate than that of the city until the 1830's, when the failure of the government'scolonizationpolicy and the city's greater economicattractions swungthe balancethe otherway.30Fromthen until the First World War Buenos Aires, like other cities of Uruguayand southern Brazil,dependedfor its growthlargelyupon foreignimmigration.This, however, was unusualin LatinAmerica;and even in Argentinathe total number of permanent was only one half of the 6.5 millionarrivals,owing immigrants and industrialpossibilities.83 to the country'srelativelylimited agricultural has been fed By and large,LatinAmericancity growthsince independence are related by internalmigrations.The natureand extent of these migrations to the lack to the patternsof settlementalreadydescribed,and particularly basis for rural social organization. of a seigneurialor village-community Certainsocial and technological changesof the nineteenthcenturycast adrift large numbersof rural workers. These changes included the abolition of or resguardos of Indiancommunities by ostenNegro slavery;the disruption and of agrithe "liberal" industrializing commercializing sibly legislation; that offered the of and only culture; intensifying single-cropproduction seasonalemployment. Reinforcingthe push from the countrywas the pull of the city, especially with gas lights, trolleylines, broadpromethe capitalcities, now modernized
27 Gilberto Freyre, Sobrados e mucambos, 2nd. ed., 3 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1951). Smith and Marchant, op. cit., p. 201. Fermin Toro, Reflexiones sobre la Ley de 10 de abril de 1.834 y otras obras (Caracas, 1941), pp. 162-163. 30 Miron Burgin, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism 1820-1852 (Cambridge, 1946), p. 27. 31 Richard Robbins, "Myth and Realities of International Migration into Latin America", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 316 (March 1958), 106.
28 29

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nades, theaters, opera houses and monumental public buildings. By urban improvements the national strong man catered to the increasingly absentee and city-based landholders of an oligarchical, almost clan-like society. The same improvements, however, attracted rural masses to the cities, where eventually they were to exert their own pressures in national politics. Since the rural-urban migration was common to the whole Western world after the Industrial Revolution, one must bear in mind special characteristics of the process as it occurred in Latin America. First, the Latin American migration to cities, taken globally, represents a pressing against a social and technological system rather than against the soil itself. Latin America contains 16% of the world's habitable area but only 6.8% of its population.32 Second, the migration has been out of proportion to the opportunities for employment in manufacture. The ratio between employment in manufacturing and employment in "services" in Latin America is 1.4 to 1, as against a 1 to 1 ratio in Western Europe. In the United States the "services" ratio is high (1.5), but growth in this sector was preceded by tremendous expansion of industrial productivity. The increase in the "services" category in Latin America partly precedes industrial development, and it reflects activity in what are often called the least productive services, such as petty commerce and certain personal services. Moreover, half of the Latin Americans said to be employed in manufacturing are really in handicrafts.33 Third, migration has favored the large so-called "primate"city, usually one in each country, thus creating a topheavy pyramid or hierarchy of cities, and leaving the networks of secondary towns underdeveloped. Transportation nets radiate out from the primate cities, and give frequently poor direct connections among hinterland towns. Finally, migration tends to assume an unselective, diluvial character, and rural migrants often bypass the intermediate forms of non-agricultural, semirural employment.34 In Mexico and Ecuador there are even localities where the Indian becomes a factory worker or becomes urbanized without passing through the rural mestizo cultural stage.35
Kingsley Davis, "Recent Population Trends in the New World: An Over-all View", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 316 (March 1958), 7. 33 Harley L. Browning, "Recent Trends in Latin America Urbanization", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 316 (March 1958), 117; Davis, loc. cit., p. 9. 34 Browning, loc. cit., p. 118. The more gradual process by which rural migrants were absorbed into the European urban proletariat is described in Georges Friedmann (ed.), Villes et campagnes, civilisation urbaine et civilisation rurale en France (Paris, 1953), pp. 159-161. 35 Ralph L. Beals, "Urbanism, Urbanization and Acculturation",in Olen E. Leonard and Charles P. Loomis (eds.), Readings in Latin American Social Organization & Institutions (East Lansing, Mich., 1953), p. 172.
32

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A sociological study of Lima, Peru, publishedat the turn of this century account of the life and ingives a trenchantif somewhatimpressionistic stitutionsof that city.36 Many of its observationsmight be generalizedfor the otherurbansocietiesof modem LatinAmerica. Lima,we are told, lacked the "superorganic unity"of Europeancities. The regimeof associationwas weak.Neitherprofessional unionshad passed exceedingly groupsnor workers' beyond a rudimentary stage. Political parties were organizednot around but aroundpersonalistic leadersand theircliqueswho were seeking principles and identifications wealth and power. Class demarcations were loose, which impelledpeople to simulatehigherclass positionsthan they in fact enjoyed for reality. and to substituteappearance The citizen'ssense of civic responsibility and of loyalty to the largercomor and his for enterprise was were faint; munity, municipality, opportunities smotheredby the triple evils of monopoly,usury and heavy taxes. A large proportionof the populationwas therefore non-functional. Some 30,000 were idlerswho driftedamongthe cafes persons,or 30% of the inhabitants, or, if youths, formedplatoonson street cornersto block the way and insult passingwomen. Only one child in three in Lima attendedschool. The nuclear social unit of Lima's society, the author continues,was the extendedfamily, which might range across all the class strata and afford a permanentmeans for its indolent membersto prey upon the industrious. fromthe beggars'asylumto the wealthiest "Everyfamilyhas its links scattered class." The main cause of Lima's poverty and political corruptionis that "thechief of this tribe,howevermuchhe may work, can never,by the honest resources to providesustenance for so manypeople".37 path, acquiresufficient At the time this study of Lima appeared,the modern growth of Latin Americancities was still gathering momentum. Only four countrieshad over in cities of 20,000 or more. By 1950, however,25% 10% of theirpopulation of the total Latin Americanpopulationwas in cities of 20,000 or more, and was 9% above 17% was in cities of 100,000 or more.38This last percentage the averagefor Asia, 4% above the world average,and only 4% below the averagefor Europe. But while Latin America had nearly as many people in large cities, proportionately, as Europe,abouttwo-thirds of its labor force was still in agriculture, as againstslightlyover one-thirdfor Europe.39 Enough has been said of the causes and nature of growth of the Latin Americancity to suggestthat its structure fails to conformto othercity types of the Westernworld. A contrastthat has been drawnbetween the socioof Sao Paulo, Brazil, and that of Paris makes the point geographicstructure
36 J. Capelo, Sociologia de Lima, 4 vols. (Lima, 1895-1902), III, passim. 37 Ibid., III, 258-264. 38 Browning, loc. cit., p. 111. 39 Kingsley Davis and Hilda Hertz Golden, "Urbanization and the Development of Pre-industrialareas",Economic Development and Cultural Change, III, 1 (Oct. 1954), 8.

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that whereasParis is dividedinto scores of autonomous administrative units, Sao Paulo is an urban agglomeration that lacks any "organicsubcentersof collectivelife".40This does not mean that Sao Paulo is a disorganized mass of individuals. It means that there is archaic,paternalistic centralization of control at the top and a multitudeof quasi-familial, potentiallyvital social cells at the bottom,with weak structures and organizations between mediating them. The attempt to develop such intermediatestructuresneed not and probably should not follow closely the model of the classic cities of the Westerncommercialand industrialworld. A baselinefrequently used in studyingthe Westerncity is a unilinearscale which rangesfrom the close-knitfolk village to the metropolisand which is foreshadowed in the writingsof Maine, Tonniesand Durkheim. An ultimate model for the urban end of the continuum- for the competitive,depersonalized,anomicmetropolis- was identifiedby Americansociologyas the for Chicagoof the 1920's. One versionof this bipolarscale was formulated a Latin Americansettingby RobertRedfieldin his studyof ruraland urban in Yucatan. In comparisonwith the town, the village and the communities tribal settlement,he describedthe Yucatecan city of Merida as culturally heterogeneous,disorganized,secularized and individualized.4'It may be in constructing an ideal, inferred,however,that Redfieldwas more interested universal typology than in identifying the specifically Mexican or Latin of Merida. Americancharacteristics A leading trait of the Westernmetropolisis its highly developedregime of impersonal associations. This trait impliesthe conditionof anomie,which to pertainsnot a man who lives in an unorganized world, but to one whose worldoffers a bewildering excess of possibilities for impersonal groupaffiliation. The LatinAmerican is not endowed with associations. however, city, richly A study of Guadalajara, revealed that Mexico, (1950 population,378,000) over 60% of 415 respondentsbelonged to no voluntaryassociationat all; only 11 respondents(or 2.7%) belongedto three or more associations. Of the memberships, 49.8% were in church groups and 26.3% in athletic or "social"clubs. The fact that many of the city's associations paralleledthose of Americancities and werethereforeexplainable cultural diffusion,raised by a questionas to the extent to which they even answer"the functionalnecessities of an urbansocial structure per se". Moreoverthe diffusionhas been selective. The sample containedno memberships at all in secularwomen's clubs, fraternallodges, local political or "ward"clubs, or veterans'associations. There was little evidence of organization into pressuregroups.42
40

A. Delorenzo Neto, "O aglomerado urbano de Sao Paulo", Revista Brasileira de Floyd Dotson, "A Note on Participation in Voluntary Associations in a Mexican

Estudos Politicos, III, 6 (July 1959), 121-127. 41 Robert Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan (Chicago, 1941).
42

City", American Sociological Review, XVIII, 4 (Aug. 1953), 380-386.

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forms of organizationare In Latin America, rationalistic,depersonalized and forms. This is uneven personalistic headway against primary making borne out when we examine the structureof labor unions, political parties or when we are told that a residentof Sao Paulo, or business enterprise;43 a city of some four million, can be expected to be in touch with anywhere or when we observethat only 3% of the 47,000 from 30 to 500 relatives;44 in Colombia have more than twenty employees.45 manufacturing plants Rural migrantsto the big cities, howeverbewilderedand disoriented they They carrywith them or, may be, are not, strictlyspeaking,"massified".46 or neighborhoodarrangeas circumstances permit, re-createquasi-familial ments. It has been pointed out that whereas rural migrantsto European cities in the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturiessoon found new homes and in underdeveloped countries loyalties in the city, their moderncounterparts of The remains continue "belonging" to their places origin. city strangeto them and forces them to seek out as associates persons from their own and responsibility authority kinshipgroupor region. Patternsof co-operation, are fashionedupon ruralmodelsratherthanupon those of the Westerncity.47 In a Latin Americancity rural migrantsand, in general, the proletariat are not customarily crowdedinto a blightedarea at the urbancore, as in the schemadevisedfor the NorthAmericancity by the sociologistE. W. Burgess; often in makeshift in peripheral but they are scattered, or interstitial dwellings, zones. The LatinAmericancity centerwithits spaciousplazawas traditionally the residencearea for the wealthy and was the point of concentration for urban services and utilities. The quickeningof commercialactivity in this center may displace well-to-do residentswithout necessarilycreating"conbelts of social disorganization.The poor are taminated"and overcrowded often not attractedinto transitional zones by cheap rents;they tend to move out to unused land as the city expands, erecting their own shacks. The downtownarea becomes convertedfor commercial uses or for compactand modernmiddle-and upper-income residences.48 In Guatemala City in the 1940's the four worst slumswere all peripherally
43 For Sao Paulo see Richard M. Morse, From Community to Metropolis: A Biography of Sao Paulo, Brazil (Gainesville, 1958), pp. 209-212, 228-230. 44 Emilio Willems, "The Structure of the Brazilian Family", Social Forces, XXXI, 4 (May 1953), 343. 45 Ford Foundation Mission to Colombia, "Political and Economic Profile of Colombia", June 1960 (offset). 46 Yolanda Ortiz, "Algunas dificultades de adaptaci6n de las poblaciones rurales al pasar al medio urbano en los paises latinoamericanos y especialmente en Colombia", Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, XIX, 1 (Jan.-April 1957), 25-38. 47 Bert F. Hoselitz, "The City, the Factory, and Economic Growth", The American Economic Review, XLV, 2 (May 1955), 176. 48 Floyd and Lillian Ota Dotson, "Ecological Trends in the City of Guadalajara, Mexico", Social Forces, XXXII, 4 (May 1954), 367-374, and "La estructura ecol6gica de las ciudades mexicanas", Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, XIX, 1 (Jan.-April 1957), 39-66.

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located and all brand new. Within two kilometersof the city center there was only one areaof distinctly poorhousing. The "lowerclasshalf-urbanized" but in without on the Americanscale; being overcrowded groups greatmisery "the tendency to interior breakdownof the urban configuration which so North Americanplannersis not a problemin Guateconcernscontemporary mala". And while it is clear that the city's acculturation of the ruralmigrant is a disorganizing experiencewhich entails a period of culturalmarginality, we are led to question"the assumption that individualand institutional disare functions of urbanism se".49 organization progressive per Recent studiesshedlightupon the formation, structure and socialprocesses of the urban areas settled by ruralmigrants. In the case of Rio de Janeiro
the first favelas50 appeared in the late nineteenth century. However, most

of the city's poor continuedto live in collectivedwellings,usuallyconverted from houses of the wealthy,until about 1930, when there came a surge of rural migration. Constructionof "rustic"dwellingsin the city rose to an averageof 1,000 per year in the 1930's and to 2,700 a year in the 1940's. By 1957 650,000 people, or a fifth of Rio's population,lived in favelas.51 of Lima,Peru,about10% live in barriadas, Of the population or communities land generallyperipheral of dwellingson unimproved to the city. On a single Lima night in December, 1954, it is reportedthat 5,000 persons"invaded" to establisha colony on a tract along the Rimac valley.52 The majorityof the urbanproletariat tends to be of ruralorigin. Of the in the barriadas heads Lima studied,89% were born in the provinces, family in only 11% Lima. Of the former,more than three-fifthscame from the Indianculturesof the mountain A sampleof semi-andunskilled area.53 factory workersin Sao Paulo showedthat no less than two-thirds of them had either worked in agriculture or lived in rural settings.54Some of the migrantsto cities - those from the Andean or Middle American Indian areas, for example - may carry with them developedtraditionsof collective action. In Brazil,on the other hand, the rapiddisappearance of the mutirao,a rural
Theodore Caplow, "The Social Ecology of Guatemala City", Social Forces, XXVIII, 2 (Dec. 1949), 114-115, 124-125, 127, 133. 50 A favela is defined as a grouping of at least fifty rustic huts or barracks,unlicensed and uninspected, built by squatters on lands that lack any urban improvements. 51 Andrew Pearse, "Some Characteristics of Urbanization in the City of Rio de Janeiro", United Nations document E/CN.12/URB/17 - UNESCO/SS/URB/LA/17 (30 Sept. 1958), pp. 1-4. This study and those below by Matos Mar and Brandao Lopes are now published in Philip M. Hauser (ed.), Urbanizationin Latin America (New York, 1961). 52 Jose Matos Mar, "Migration and Urbanization, the 'Barriadas' of Lima: An Example of Integration into Urban Life", United Nations document E/CN.12/URB/11 - UNESCO/SS/URB/LA/11 (30 Sept. 1958), p. 12. 53 Ibid., p. 14. 54 Juarez Rubens Brandao Lopes, "Aspects of the Adjustment of Rural Migrants to Urban-industrialConditions in Sao Paulo, Brazil", United Nations document E/CN. 12/URB.3 - UNESCO/SS/URB/LA/3 (30 Sept. 1958), pp. 5-6.
49

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institutionfor mutual aid, has left few such traditions"beyondthe orbit of Even, however,in the barriadas relationship".55 kinship and neighborhood of Limawith theirmigrants from Indianhighlands, the insecurities and mixed work of the inhabitants so that "the family against cooperation, origins unit". In ruralareasthe family,the remainsthe sole effectivecompensating communityand traditionare all cohesive forces, "whereasin the city there is nothing left but the family".56 The fact that large extendedfamilies do not move from countryto city mean- as muchurbaniintactand in a momentof time does not necessarily zation theory would assume that the migrantfamily is strippeddown to the nuclearor conjugalunit. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro,to be sure, Pearse found only 17 "nuclearfamilies with accretions"in a total of 279 families studied. He also found, however,that migrantsto the city came as linksin a chainof kin groups"bothprecededandfollowedby kin in persistent movement citywards". City dwellers give every assistance to in-migrants belongingto their kin group. New kin groupsare createdwithinthe city by of godparentsmay either reinforceexisting marriages,and the appointment or them extend of non-kin. Visiting tends to occur by incorporation groups families of the same or differentfavelas ratherthan among amongkin-group neighbors. Little sentimentattaches to the geographicneighborhood,and attendanceat generalgatherings for the public is not well looked upon. The kin group serves as "the dominantand almost exclusivesanctiongroup"for the behavior,protectionand collective action of its members.57 Someversionof the extendedfamilyseemsto be a basicsocialunitcommon to all the urbanworking-class zones. Moreover,the familysize of the average dwellingunit is not alwaysso small as in the Rio favelasobservedby Pearse, nor always limited to the conjugal family. A comparisonbetween rural Venezuelancommunitiesand migrantcommunitiesin Caracasreveals that the numberof extended-family householdsdrops by only 1% in the city, and that the averagefamily size actuallyincreases.58Oscar Lewis followed his study of the Mexican village of Tepoztlanwith studies of districts,or vecindades,of Mexico City peopledby migrantTepoztecans. Not only was the averagehouseholdsize in the city largerthanin the village(5.8 against5), but the city householdscontaineda slightly larger percentageof extended families. Lewis found "verylittle evidence of family disorganization in the There seemed to occur no of over children city". weakening parentalauthority and no declinein churchattendance and religiouspractices. It even appeared that the trials of urbanlife gave continuityto a family solidaritywhich was
55 Ibid., p. 14. 56 Matos Mar, op. cit., pp. 17-18. Inter American Economic and Social Council, Pan American Union, Causas y efectos del exodo rural en Venezuela (Washington,n.d.), p. 188.
57 58

Pearse, op. cit., pp. 7, 10-12.

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Lewis reportsone evoked in the village only duringcrisis or emergency.59 vecindadin Mexico City in which most of the families, originallymigrants, have lived for fifteen to twenty years. Over a third of the householdshave blood relativeswithin the vecindad,and a fourth are relatedby marriageor based on provincesof origin, In Lima,the associations of residents kinship.60 the associationsof residentsof the barriadasand the trade unions are all secondaryto the family, "whichprovidesthe greatestsource of securityfor of these areas".61 the inhabitants are indefinitely The point is not that ruralor familialinstitutions preserved, in Latin American or precisely duplicated, the city. It is, rather,that the utilizationand adaptationof such forms are a necessaryalternativein the of mechanismsfor the rapid assimilationof migrantsinto the near-absence urbanmilieu. Thus we find that lower-classresidentsof the fast-growing city of Cali, Colombia,maintainnot only the traditional (extended compadrazgo urbanvarietyof it. relation)but also an improvised family or coparenthood the compadre The conventional one, carriedfrom the country,acknowledged as "the trustedpersonwho may eventuallyreplacethe fatherof the family", while the city-bornversionis designedto obtain "economicaid, even though from a personof higherincome"."Thusthe traditional compadrazgo sporadic, binds neighborsamong each other, while the economic one binds them to
the city."62

A study of political behavior in Rio de Janeiro concludes that the city of the powerfulorganizations worker,"failingto find in the urbanstructure professionaland social solidaritywhich constitutethe bulwarkof urbanlife in the highly industrialized countries,seeks to rebuildhis politicalbehavior The local ward boss is followingthe guidelinesof agrarianpatriarchalism". utilized by his higher-upsin the same way that the agrarian"clan"leader once utilized the compadre, the authority figure of the extended-family
relation.63

in Mexico City Lewis finds that it has made urban Of the compadrazgo without becomingweakened. In the city manytypes of godparent adaptations of baptismand marriage fall into disuse;by andlargeit is only the godparents are that continueto be named, and these generallyblood relativesbecause the family has not the friendsit knew in the village. Thus the urbancom59 Oscar Lewis, "Urbanization without Breakdown: A Case Study", The Scientific Monthly, LXXV, 1 (July 1952), 36-37. Lewis recognizes that Tepoztecans, coming from a traditional and stable community, are not typical migrants; he calls for similar studies of poor and landless migrants from plantation areas. Ibid., p. 41. 60 Oscar Lewis, Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (New York, 1959), pp. 13-14, 63. 61 Matos Mar, op. cit., p. 10. 62 Centro Interamericanode Vivienda Planeamiento, Siloe', el proceso de desarrollo y comunal aplicado a un proyecto de rehabilitacionurbana (Bogota, 1958), p. 9. 63 Jose Arthur Rios, "El pueblo y el politico", Politica, 6 (Feb. 1960), 34-35.

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padrazgo is reinforced by blood ties and becomes more personal, less ceremonial. It comes in fact to resemble more nearly the version originally introduced in Mexico City by the Spaniards.64 Hand in hand with the quasi-rural forms of social organization found in the city goes the conventionally agrarian attitude of dependency of the poor or weak upon the rich or strong. The urban or "economic" compadrazgo of Cali described above is a product of such an attitude. The migrant in Rio de Janeiro is not content with a mere wage nexus, and he looks for the patron, the bom patrao, who will advance him money or medicine, or help him cope with the bureaucracy. He may even appeal for tutelage to a strong saint through prayers or communication via a medium. Pearse uses the term "populism" to describe the system of patronage or "clientage" which preserves for the urban scene the spirit of rural face-to-face dependency relations. The common man receives his benefits - jobs, welfare services, recreation facilities, and so forth - through the intervention of "populist" and well publicized leaders who utilize informal patronage structures that usually lie outside the formal structures of administration. "Populism does not favour the organization of common interest groups or cooperative groups, and power is usually delegated downwards rather than upwards." The common man fits easily into this situation, for "he does not know either how to obtain his legal rights or how to operate successfully even in the lower echelons of the power and influence structures".65 Of course, the obverse to dependency is "independence". That the latter sentiment is no less intimately a part of the migrant's outlook is attested by his stubborn preference for the one-family dwelling, however crude and makeshift, even in the largest metropolises. Nearly every migrant to Sao Paulo looks for the chance to work on his own. "Any job where I'd give the orders", said one; "it could be anything, a liquor shop, a food store. Anything that could be mine. Nobody would give me orders there, see?"66 A factory worker employed some years may frequently be expected to lower his production rate so that he will be dismissed and may then set up his business with the dismissal compensation. Each worker's performance tends to be guided by an internalized norm, deriving from rural traditions but reworked under city influences and in answer to his particular needs as he sees them. That is, his job behavior is guided more by personal, independent criteria than by the requirements of the system. Given the urban worker's lack of experience with secondary groups and lack of identification with the industrial structure, it is no surprise that his most effective group participation is on an ad hoc, cooperative basis. It is through mutual-aid residents' associations that the inhabitants of the Lima
65

loc. cit., p. 38. Lewis, "Urbanization...", Pearse, op. cit., pp. 13-15. 66 Brandao Lopes, op. cit., p. 12.

64

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barriadasexert pressureon the bureaucracy, the church and other entities to acquirethe essential services of urban life. Organizedcommunitiesare thus constitutedwhich have "as their specific objectivehome ownership".67 An example of such an associationin Cali is the CentralPro-Viviendade of 3,850 lower-classfamily Colombia,a virtuallyspontaneousorganization headswho each pay abouttwentycents a weekto a commonfundfor acquiring residentialland and urban services. The Central is governedby its own generalassembly,boardof directorsand governingcommittee. Its objectives include:legal acquisitionof land for individualhome ownership;assistance in home construction;studies to determinethe greatestneeds of the poor classesand the abilityof each familyto pay for its land;solidarity of homeless without attention to or racial persons considerations; political, religious exertionof pressureto bring down land prices near the city; encouragement of cooperationand self-helpamongthe poor, especiallyfor the construction of dwellings;moral and culturalimprovement of the poor and defense of the nuclearfamily;resistance to the creationof new slumsand the "invasion" of privatelands.68 In all, some 4.5 million Latin Americanfamilieslive in urban slums and shantytowns. Oftenit is they themselveswho take the initiativeand organize to improvetheirliving conditionsand administer theirown affairs,to become on occasion effectivepoliticalgroups.69There exists an economicargument to improvethe materialconditionof againsthigh governmental expenditures these urbanpoor. It is that a fixed capital investmentin Latin Americaof $100 generates$40 to $50 of production per year. The samemoneyinvested in residentialbuilding generatesonly $10 to $12.70 This is an important considerationfor an underdeveloped country. As a cold dollars-and-cents it more becomes argument, palatable when taken in combinationwith a sociological one namely, that the hiatus between urban bureaucratic structures and the agrarian of the migrantis so greatthat accombackground modationof one to the other can be expected only after the migrantshave grouped themselves, if possible with understanding guidance, in ad hoc, transitionalassociations. In short, the alternativeto the urban worker's personalistic"dependencycomplex"is not necessarilyimpersonal,bureaucratic regimentation but mightbe an appealto his "independence complex". Wherever we pick our way in the studyof the modem LatinAmericancity we must be careful not to trip over concealed premises that derive from
67 Matos Mar, op. cit., pp. 11-12. 68 " 'Central Pro-Vivienda de Colombia:' Sintesis sobe origen, organizaci6n y finalidades", ms. by Eduardo Burbano R., secretary general of the Central, June 1960. 69 "Report of the Seminar on Urbanization Problems in Latin America", United Nations document E/CN.12/URB/26/Rev. 1 - UNESCO/SS/URB/LA/26/Rev. 1 (29 Feb. 1960), pp. 57, 61-62.
70

Ibid., p. 31.

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with West Europeanor North Americancities. At least three such familiarity have come to the surfacein this paper: premises The concen(1) primatecity. It is customaryto deplore overwhelming trationof persons and servicesin a single primatecity which is said to be of the hinterland. parasiticand to be a "cause"for the underdevelopment One observer asks, however, whether urban concentrationdoes not offer in countries whichcannotaffordto dissipate theirmeagerresources. advantages If Montevideo,which contains 40% of the populationof Uruguay, were divided into two or three cities, would these still offer the existing services and amenities? Also, the beef-and-wooleconomyneeds relativelyfew rural workers to run it. The question is raised, is not Latin America perhaps "over-ruralized" ratherthan "over-urbanized"? Is not the present afflux to the cities healthy,as helpingto provideboth a solutionfor agricultural underand a better opportunity for rationalizing ruralproduction?71 employment sector. Anotherobserverasks us to be waryof a facile (2) The "services" distinctionbetweenthe high proportionof tertiaryemployment,or employment in "services",found in rich countries(seen as an index of progress) and the high proportionfound in the poor countries(seen as an index of in LatinAmericaare often loosely referred to as "petty" poverty). "Services" ones in which "excessive" numbersare employed,thoughwith no definition of terms. The question occurs, do not people generallyseek out the most advantageous employment,and would not those who are in "pettyservices" tend to be less productivein the other occupationsopen to them? May not Latin American city growth be reallocatingthe working force into more effectiveoccupational patterns?72 The assumption is frequently madethat the (3) The city as "Gesellschaft". urbanization of modernLatinAmericaimpliesthe depersonalization of social the of the over the ties, ascendancy secondary primarysocial group, and the bureaucratization of the occupationalstructure. While it is clear that such processes are at work, it is less certain that they are as unequivocalor as as in the classic model of the Westernmetropolis. Certainly overmastering there is nothing prescriptiveabout them, and the attempt to build an independenttheoreticalmodel for the Latin Americancity would be of solid of its society. practicalvalue for the reconstruction There is alreadymuch evidencethat similaranalysesneed to be done for cities throughout the underdeveloped world. WilliamKolb suggeststhat these cities cannot "afford"the diversityand anarchicconflict of Chicago in its and achieve fitting levels of welfare largely heyday. They will industrialize undergovernmental control. Diffuse bonds of neighborliness and kinshipin
Browning, loc. cit., pp. 116-118. Simon Rottenberg, "Note on the Economics of Urbanization in Latin America", United Nations document E/CN.12/URB 6 - UNESCO/SS/URB/LA/6 (30 Sept. 1958), pp. 8-11.
71 72

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cities can be furtherdevelopedand may long endure. What Talcott Parsons calls the universalistic-achievement values of the Western city may never controlsof a community oriented receivefull stressin othersettings."Primary be much more both the control of individual action can in prominent variety and of corporateaction."73 Marriot speculates that in India extended primary group organization with the growthof cities.74Bantongives us a may even have grownstronger the of SierraLeone, which has a populationthat is of Freetown, study city tribal. Here the fusion points of African and Western about three-quarters cultureoften producenew culturalforms which are outwardly Europeanbut It shouldin fact be noted that retaina latent contentof tribalsignificance.75 that extendedfamily an attackhas even been launchedupon the assumption with the industrial democratic are society of the relationships incompatible West. It is now assertedthat the isolatednuclearfamily was the most funcA modifiedversion tional type only duringearlierstagesof industrialization. of the extendedfamily, no longer characterized by geographicpropinquity, relations,appearsto be cominginto occupational nepotismor strictauthority a more importantrole in the Westernindustrialcity.76If this is the case, it would almost seem that the Latin Americancity is, in certain respects of social organization, more "developed" than that of the developednations. At this point we may restatethe two interrelated hypotheseswhich have the processof LatinAmericancolonizabeen set forthin this paperregarding tion andthe structure of the modernLatinAmerican city. The earlysettlement and of a large, municipalpoint origin. Duringthe colonial patternshad, by period, however,rural institutionsdevelopedto an importantextent outside the radiusof municipalcontrol. Under such conditions,rural social organior neighborhood zationwas thrownback upon extended-family, compadrazgo units.77 These were reminiscentof the hermandador adfratatioof early medievalEurope,a social unit which at the time of the discoveryof America had given way to a more complextype of community organization.78
73 William L. Kolb, "The Social Structure and Functions of Cities", Economic Development and Cultural Change, III, 1 (Oct. 1954), 43-46. 74 McKimm Marriott, "Comments"on Kolb's article, loc. cit., pp. 50-52. 75 Michael Banton, West African City: A Study of Tribal Life in Freetown (London, 1957). 76 Eugene Litwak, "OccupationalMobility and Extended Family Cohesion" and "Geographic Mobility and Extended Family Cohesion", American Sociological Review, XXV, 1 and 2 (Feb. and April 1960), 9-21, 385-394. 77 Fals Borda, op. cit., p. 188. 78 Alfons Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundations of European Civilization (London, 1937), p. 158; Eduardo Hinojosa, "La comunidad domestica en Espafia durante la Edad Media", La Lectura, V, 2 (1905), 233-241, and "La fraternidadartificial en Espafia",Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, IX, 7 (July 1905), 1-18; Sidney W. Mintz and Eric R. Wolf, "An Analysis of Ritual Co-parenthood (Compadrazgo)", SouthwesternJournal of Anthropology, VI, 4 (Winter 1950), 341-368.

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As the Latin American city entered its centripetal phase in the nineteenth century, it began to reap as it had sown. It drew massively from the rural areas, and the migrants depended heavily upon traditional or impromptu primary group organizations for their accommodation to urban life. Thus the city, which imparted an individualistic, exploitative spirit to the settling of the land, exhibits internally the traces of agrarian, familialistic social structure. Any attempted reconstruction of the Latin American city which relies upon secondary associations to the neglect of primary groups would seem, therefore, to have only tenuous chances of success.
RICHARD M. MORSE

Yale University

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