Life April 9 1951 Page 120/121/122/123/124/125/126129

FIRST COMMUNION DRESS 

Lorenza Curiel, 7; is a sight for her young neighbors 

as she waits for her mother to lock door,

 take her to church. 

Spanish Village 

LIVES IN ANCIENT POVERTY AND FAITH 

PHOTOGRAPHED FOR LIFE BY W. EUGENE SMITH

The village of Deleitosa, a place of about 2,300 peasant people, sits on the high, dry, western Spanish tableland called Estremadura, about halfway be tween Madrid and the border of Portugal. Its name means "delightful," which it no longer is, and its origins are obscure, though they may go back a thousand years to Spain's Moorish period. In any event it is very old and LIFE Photographer Eugene Smith, wandering off the main road into the village, found that its ways had advanced little since medieval times.

ON THE OUTSKIRTS 

At midmorning the sun beat down 

on clustered stone houses.

 In the distance is belfry of Deleitosa’s church.

YOUNG WOMAN'S WORK 

Lutero Curiel's big sister Bernardina, 

18, kicks open door of community oven, 

which the village provides for public use.

At least once a week she bakes 

24 loaves for the family of eight. 

The flour comes from family grain, ground locally. 

Many Deleitosans have never seen a railroad because the nearest one is 25 miles away. The Madrid-Sevilla highway passes Deleitosa seven miles to the north, so almost the only automobiles it sees are a dilapidated sedan and an old station wagon, for hire at prices few villagers can afford. Mail comes in by burro. The nearest telephone is 121/2 miles away in another town. Deleitosa’s water system still consists of the sort of aqueducts and open wells from which villagers have drawn their water for centuries. Except for the local doctor's portable tin bathtub there is no trace of any modern sanitation, and the streets smell strongly of the villagers' donkeys and pigs. 

There are a few signs of the encroachment of the 20th Century in Deleitosa. In the city hall, which is run by political subordinates of the provincial governor, one typewriter clatters. A handful of villagers, including the mayor, own their own small radio sets. About half of the 800 homes of the village are dimly lighted after dark by weak electric light bulbs which dangle from ancient ceilings.

"EL MEDICO" 

Dr. Jose Martin makes rounds with lantern 

to light patients' homes. 

He does minor surgery, 

sending serious cases to city of Caceres,

 and treats much typhus. 

SMALL BOY'S WORK 

The youngest son in the Curiel family,

 5-year-old Lutero, sweeps up manure

 from the street outside his home. 

It is carefully hoarded as fertilizer, 

will be used on the eight small fields the 

family owns or rents a few miles out of town. 

"SENOR CURA" 

Out on a walk, the village priest, Don Manuel, 69,

 passes barred windows and curtained door of a home. 

He has seldom meddled in politics-the village

 was bloodily split during the civil war-but 

sticks to ministry. Villagers like that.

And a small movie theater, which shows some American films, sits among the sprinkling of little shops near the main square. But the village scene is dominated now as always by the high, brown structure of the 16th Century church, the center of society in Catholic Deleitosa.

DIVIDING THE GROUND 

At harvest time many of the villagers 

bring unthreshed wheat from their outlying fields

 to a large public field net to town.

 Here they stake out 5-by-12- yard plots where t

hey spread the full stalks, thresh grain as forefathers did. 

HAGGLING OVER LOTS 

Sometimes luck gives one family stony ground

 for threshing, another smooth. 

This brings arguments since the smooth ground 

makes for easier threshing-a process begun by 

driving burros over stalks with a drag that loosens kernels.

And the lives of the villagers are dominated as always by the bare and brutal problems of subsistence. For Deleitosa, barren of history, unfavored by nature, reduced by wars, lives in poverty-a poverty shared by nearly all and relived only by the seasonal work of the soil, and the faith that sustains most Deleitosans from the hour of First Communion (opposite page) until the simple funeral (pp. 128, 129) that marks one's end. 

SEEDING TIME

Beans planted, the villager presses hard 

on his flattened plow as it scrapes the 

dry soil back into furrows. 

A neighbor woman leads donkeys, one borrowed. 

PLOWBOY FOR HIRE 

Genaro Curiel, 17, son of man 

planting beans (above), 

carries his crude wooden plow

 as he heads for work at a wage 

of 12 pesetas (30¢) and one meal a day. 

WINNOWING GRAIN 

With the straw already broken away, 

wheat kernels are swept into a pile 

and one of the women threshers tosses

 them up so the breeze can carry off the chaff. 

GUARDIA CIVIL 

These stern men, enforcers of national law, 

are Franco's rural police. 

They patrol countryside, are feared 

by people in villages, which also have local police. 

VILLAGE SCHOOL 

Girls are taught in separate classes from the boys.

 Four rooms and four lay teachers

 handle all pupils, as many as 300

 in winter, between the ages of 6 and 14. 

FAMILY DINNER 

The Curiels eat thick bean and potato soup

 from common pot on dirt floor of their kitchen. 

The father, mother and four children 

all share the one bedroom.

A CHRISTENING 

While his godfather holds him over a font, 

the priest Don Manuel dries the head of 

month-old Buenaventura Jimenez Morena 

after his baptism at village church. 

THE THREAD MAKER 

A peasant woman moistens the fibers of 

locally grown flax as she joins them 

in a long strand which is spun tight by 

the spindle (right), then wrapped around it. 

HIS WIFE, DAUGHTER, GRANDDAUGHTER 

AND FRIENDS HAVE THEIR LAST 

EARTHY VIST WITH A VILLAGER