Daddy-YO

Re: cookshow´s The Rockman Cometh

My apologies for not posting in the proper thread, but I´m here, unwired as it were, on Nica time, visiting a neighborhood cyber, and got thinking on what cookshow wrote, in particular, "The thiefing problem here is difficult to explain, it is a bigger issue than just the theft." This is my mental distillate after a few Victorias (clasicas, claro ... mas Victorias!)


Dear Cookshow, you have my sympathy, but when I told my Nica wife your story, she laughed - because what happened (happens) to you is very common in the 'campo' where she grew up.

Her Mama had a finca bought with monies Papa, working as a wetback, sent from Miami. Thieves were so bold theydidn't just steal their corn but husked it there in the field leaving them the discards. Thieves stole from everything they grew: beans, tomato, avocado, etc. Once they even took a large sow, tied up near the house.

When Papa returned he got a pistol and took practice shots during the day so word spread. He stood guard at night with flashlight & pistol (to shoot in the air & scare 'em, he said). Of course, no thieves came by then. Later he bought a tract of land that included a path used by neighbors up the hill. When he fenced it off (as was his right) for cattle he bought, someone cut off the ears of one of his calves, which he interpreted as a personal warning. He sold the finca and, with the family, moved into town.

What goes on in Nicaragua, in actuality, is little different from the way homesteaders behaved toward each other in the area of Appalachia I knew.

It's the frontier code. The frontier that separates civilization from the lawless regions. Sometimes men stripped of the amenities, formalities and order of a civil life will revert to savagery. Many humans think we bear no kinship to animals here on Earth, until face to face with the raw reality.

Farmers (and those who could 'handle' the first critical technological tool, fire) were key to the birth of civilization. In the early stages 'cities' developed to store & protect the food farmers produced. Hunter/gatherers, when game, berries or whatnots got scarce, would raid farmers. Then farmers got smarter, organized the like-minded, built forts, developed better weapons, separated the biggest & strongest into a fighting force, an army for its defence (and later expansion), etcetera. Being naturally humble (salt of the Earth and all that) farmers eventually gave up power to specialists: politicians, managers & such, for continued security, but that's another story.

Cookshow, if I may dare guess, you have relocated from a relatively civilized country to what best compares to its pioneer period, its Wild West, where it could be near impossible to find a candidate to wear a sheriff's badge. You've gotten good advice here on TRN. And you clearly behave as a good Christian neighbor. I wouldn't suggest rocksalt buckshot in strategically located zip-guns on trip wires, nor landmines, nor tiger pits stocked with poisonous vipers or swarms of deadly scorpions or bamboo spikes. No. Life is too short to make enemies. But a man as industrious as yourself could support several women, keep 'em knocked-up and raise a slew of little guards. Or lease some of your land to sharecroppers who'll share in its defence, begin a cooperative that expands, buying more arable lands there, taking on more stakeholders . . . until something resembling civilization is established.