The Kiss of Death

economists, and sociologists. As a result, these projects narrowly focused on house improvement and spraying as the immediate solution to control vinchucas. Afterwards, with the exception of some communities in the Chuquisaca project, infestation began anew because peasants improved their houses for reasons other than vinchuca control.

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1. Dr. George Stewart, professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Arlington, has done extensive and noted research on parasites and disease. Many of the ideas and facts in the appendices are from his lectures. Nonetheless, I am totally responsible for the content of the appendices.

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1. For a comparison of sampling techniques for domestic populations of triatomines see Schofield and Marsden (1982:356), who used another method for studying house infestation. Inspectors examined a house for bugs at approximately monthly intervals for two and a half years. Two men, each equipped with a flashlight and long forceps, searched the house for forty-five minutes and collected all the live bugs they could find. These bugs were sorted, counted, and then destroyed. Bug population estimates were then made by the Zippin (1956:163-89) withdrawal method. Within the house being studied 92 adults and 169 fifth instars were collected. The number of the other stages present could not be estimated, but life-table studies indicate that these figures are consistent with a total bug population (including eggs) of approximately 2,200 individuals.

Bermudez et al. (1978) examined a henhouse in Gutierrez, in a rural area of the Department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and found 1,524 triatomines; less than 1 percent were infected with T. cruzi. One explanation is that these T. infestans predominantly fed on chickens, which cannot become hosts for T. cruzi.