the study of family life among latin americans is an essential key to understanding their culture the similarities to our way of life and the difference is fortunate as a visitor from the north west in the interior of a fine home and who is been accepted into the family circle such a visitor may see the son of the house bringing his girl home this almost certainly means that they are enga in most cases she has already met his parents and now there's this little ceremony of showing her the family heirloom her first visit is almost part of the marriage ritual much of the art scene in latin american home bears witness to proudly remembered family history paintings and sculptures many of them acquired during sojourns in europe form a cherry spark of a family governs even the most ordinary family function it never occurs to the younger generation to complain of this authority this intense family feeling is especially in evidence on sun church going they do together as a family habit a racial custom a lifelong discipline we see the family come from church together each observing his duties of respect and the niceties of endor family relationship situation among ourselves on a sunday in a typical american town well sunday is a real family day with us to the day we spend enough time together to approximate the group quality of latin american family life we need to go to church with our family and after church we need to feel a pall of a clan pride as we greet the members of other clan we would be awake people our family life where we we all know that it is not we are a concern at the moment to point out some interesting differences between the latin american and our after sunday dinner our young folks are pretty sure to wander off in pursuit of their own interests the older people are left to their own devices in the amiable hope that they will find something useful or amusing to do our young people don't have to obey the conventions familiar in latin america boys and girls are accustomed to share their good times together how differently these things are managed in the lands to the south at both ends of the social scale the system of greatest states tends to preserve the family structure your state and often they are amazingly large have been handed down from generation to generation their closely held family affair it is easy enough to lay stress on the huge income from a tremendous estate on the magnificence of the owner scale of living on the fact that even the local chapel was built by him and on the land owners economic control over the lives of his workers it is also easy to overemphasize all it for in latin america as elsewhere an immensely wealthy landowners can hardly be called typical of these people now for the other end of the scale the workers on the estate the unit is not the individual as it is for the most part among our employed farm labor families working  living as such so that the estate becomes a collection of families one in the exalted station of owner an employer all the others wage earners everybody from top to bottom is part of a family group mother brother and sister are in the fields with fathers whether the work be picking coffee beans or planting to back up each family is a small working unit with father as foreman employment is often seasonal and the total family income is small the housing is what the landowner can or will provide there are no labor unions among these plantation workers hours wages and living conditions could in many cases be a great deal better a farmer's family father mother sons and daughters depend on one another completely they live and die as they work and play together if you go along the dusty back roads of mexico or brazil of perl or colombia sooner or later you'll meet with the country people on their way to town at fiesta time these are their days out their vacation their shopping trips their holy days and their drinking days all come by but seldom does a man old or young set out on this road without his whole family how to tell you fiesta means to a latin american you live a block or two from a movie theater and the corner drugstore can you understand the excitement of a visit to a town market joy of just being it's simple commodity of knowing its noise it smells it's a few rapid phrases can hardly do justice to the religious feeling of a simple indian family to the satisfaction and security which faith gives to these people their ancient traditions have been given a new expression and a new meaning by the spiritual forces that came from europe costumes and rituals that came into latin america with the spanish and portuguese priest of the sixteenth century have been handed down from father to son and from father to son have come down the indian special rhythm is love of song and dad the two traditions have been combined and together they make  end these two elements one american the other european are to be found in every ceremony of native family life they strengthen each other and lend significance to the words latin america return from the fiesta with some of the indians and part in the ins who don't work on the big plantations but on their own little farm usually way up in the hills such a little farmer needs family co operation even more than the est worker or his incredible toil never end anything but the simplest agricultural tools are unknown except for the oxen which the white man introduced the indians workers their fathers worked before color ambers cross the ocean life is not easy appeared twelve thousand feet above the sea strangers are rare the outside world seldom climbs this high except for salt and iron implements the essentials of living can be rested from the steep hills themselves if you're tough enough to do it but this hard simple living has its compensations you see it in the faces of the hill people throughout central america and south america a sturdy self reliant a simple dignity a humble kind of self assurance that comes from taking nothing from any man and needing nothing these people are independent but not independent of their families the families are so compact and unified that each member takes the relationship for granted it's as though these were the limbs of a living tree cut off they could not exist property is family property work is family where each member has certain specific duties of his old in addition to acting as a member of a team when the work to be done is more than a one man job and the specific duties are fixed by a tradition that is probably thousands of years old from the time she was a toddling baby the indian woman has learned the skills of mother and cook as well as those of butcher and baker and candlestick make her family with count on her having the skill there is no other place for them to turn that is how personal pride gets mixed up with family pride how self respect comes respect for the family and for a father and mother who are symbols of its unity in this simple world when you need something a suit or a shawl or even a pair of shoes you make it yourself right from the material on up there are no specialists as such in this kind of community the arts and crafts are familiar to everyone in the family unit and they are not mere hobby art becomes part of the daily experience of living the same kind of united family effort is used in the making of things that are to be sold that is the economic production of the family if it's weaving straw hat if it's repairing nets or fishing the business is a family business carried on by all its members within the conventions of family tradition terrapin father may have the skill to build a boat but he may depend on his wife and children to weave the pitot these they take to market together they win their common bre but in recent years many of the indian families have come down to the town to stay one market day they didn't go back to their homes on the largest states or in the hills of they did not leave their traditions behind they knew only one way of life and they continued to live in the city as they did in their quarters on a coffee present day or in a nand ian hut they live together as a unit adapting themselves as well as they can to their new circumstances in a complex modern world but a great change is taking place in family life a change that is connected with the progress and development of all of latin america and india and can bring his wife to help him in a steel mill or machine shop a new family relationship is come into existence based on the special technical abilit of a single member it means that the workers children can be educated for more skilled work and ultimately find a place in an economics game higher than their father no two is the freedom that is being won by the latin american woman freedom to face life there is no place for a chaperone in the busy life of an ernest professional are good neighbors to the south a building themselves a new world youth of the upper classes are coming out of the seclusion of their courtyard and are facing the future in a world to which everyone contributes according to his ability only slowly as the industrial revolution begins to permeate the structure of latin american family life is the middle class gaining strength and import most of us in the united states feel that we belong to a middle class our family life is all right to know each one of us has his own interests an individual point of view that is not always shared or even approved by the others we like it that way it's natural to us but if latin americans feel differently we must try to understand their as we want them to understand our way of life take the lopez family in buenos aires they're getting along fine the father is a skill mechanic the young folks like to go to the movies and they and their friends are good at the games we play and they have in abundance that special family feeling when you look around their table their affection and loyalty and devotion you know that they have something find something to be guarded and cheri