The Family

In most Latin-American countries the family plays a prominent part in people's lives. Large families and the recognition of a wide network of kinship ties is a feature of Latin American life (Cubitt 1995). Generally speaking, for the rich the family is a property-owning unit, so that resources such as a business, land or houses are controlled and acquired by succeeding generations through the family. For the poor the family is more an institution to turn to because of scarcity of resources (Cubitt 1995). Peasants migrating to Galapagos usually turn to relatives on the islands for help in the new environment. Often it is kin who provide shelter the first few weeks. But in many cases, people come to the islands without any relatives already present, and have to either turn to friends, god-relatives or manage on their own. The practice of god-relatives, or compadrazgo is a pseudo-kinship tradition (Cubitt 1995) that is important in Latin-American societies, but perhaps not to the same extent on Galapagos as on the continent. Compadrazgo, is a compromise which attempts to combine the best of friendship with the advantages of kinship (Cubitt 1995). The godparents are to sponsor and provide religious education for their godchild. But the most important link is between the parents and the godparents. Parents and godparents are considered ritual kin, and are supposed to help each other at all times. One of the reasons that the compadrazgo tradition is not as important on Galapagos as on the continent is that in many cases the godparents reside on the mainland and the contact between them and the parents and the god-child is not as well maintained.

Another central trait of Latin-American family-patterns, is machismo, which can be described as "an ideology of behaviour in which distinctly different lifestyles are deemed proper for men and women. Machismo is an exaggerated cult of virility which expresses itself in male assertions of superiority over females, and competitions between men. To fulfil macho behaviour, a man must show no fear, demonstrate sexual prowess, father many children and exercise tight control over any female kin. Adultery is seen as natural for a man, but as a serious offence for women" (Cubitt 1995:111).

Many people on the islands meant that the family had in many ways lost some of its influence on people's lives on Galapagos. Some claimed that the major influencing factor these days was tourism, not the family. Serious, often economically motivated quarrels leading to separation and hostilities within the family were not uncommon both among European and Ecuadorian immigrants. Others held it that the family structure was changing, rather than loosing its influence. Women were sometimes supported economically by more than one man, although they were married and had children with one only. This could be successful since many of the men were away from home in connection with tourist-cruises, longer fishing tours or scientific expeditions, they claimed.

Among the earliest European colonists there were many interesting kinship-relations as a result of the scarcity of people on the islands. For instance Carl Angermeyer was married to Marga Kübler, while her daughter from a prior marriage, Carmen, married Fritz Angermeyer, Carl's brother. This made Carl his brother's brother-in-law and stepfather, while mother and daughter were sisters-in-law. The next generation was also caught up in complex kinship-relations. Often Europeans married Ecuadorians, making their offspring hybrids between Norwegian and Ecuadorian, say. Although remote, the tie to the European side of the family was in most cases not considered unessential. Many expressed a wish to sometime go to Europe to visit their distant relatives, and occasionally communicated with them by mail. The Ecuadorian kinship ties were in this respect easier to maintain.