When my wife June and I lived in a Guna village in 1970, 1971, and 1975, it seemed to us that our new friends might well have read Mauss’s essay. According to them, giving gifts was of vital importance in their lives: it united the Gunas and marked the boundaries between them and the national society at large. To the guna companions one had to “give without calculating” (binsa ukke) or thinking only of God (dio binsae), without expecting anything in return. Above all, generosity was important when it came to food and drink: our more traditionalist friends insisted that urban restaurants, which sold food for money, represented the worst aspect of the modern world.