What lessons are to be learned from the frontier experiences of the eight migrant farmers discussed in the last chapter? “All of them,” in the words of one San Jose resident, “could have chosen to ride water buffaloes, but some chose only to ride goats.” Why? Despite their common origins on the island of Cuyo, our migrant farmers differed profoundly in ability and motivation, and in ways that, when exposed to the milieu of a developing agriculture, allowed social inequality to emerge and to flourish. For some men and women simply put longer, more competent, and more productive hours into agriculture than did others. Our problem in this chapter is to explain why.

To be sure, even in San Jose's competitive frontier milieu, not all the differences between men and women that contributed to the growth of social inequality were as personalistic as “ability” or “motivation.” Some successful farmers, like Andres Rabang, were clearly advantaged by early arrival, at a time when vacant land was still abundant. Other successful farmers, like Flavio Gacot, arrived late but obtained off-farm employment and thereby enjoyed an access to agricultural investment capital that others did not.

It is my contention that such “extrinsic factors,” as I shall call them, do not satisfactorily account for the origins of social inequality in San Jose. Like San Jose residents themselves, I believe that differences in personal attributes, the theme of my case studies in the last chapter, were far more crucial.