La Falta de Brazos: Land and Labor in the Coffee Economies of Nineteenth-Century Latin

America
Author(s): William Roseberry
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 20, No. 3, Special Issue on Slavery in the New World (Jun.,
1991), pp. 351-381
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657557
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La Falta de Brazos
Land and labor in the coffee economies of
nineteenth-centuryLatin America

WILLIAM ROSEBERRY
New School for Social Research

A persistent problem for anthropologists and historians attempting to

understand social change in rural Latin America is the placement of
local regions within wider - global and "national" - economic, social,
and political frameworks.' One temptation is to subsume the local
within the global, to make the "system" - "capitalist" or "modem" -
determinative, as in the more extreme versions of dependency and
world-system theories that dominated the literature in the 1960s and
1970s. Another temptation is to avoid the problem altogether, to reject
any discussion of global political and economic pressures as totalizing,
reductive, or teleological. This view, increasingly popular over the past
decade, would have us reject the "fiction of the whole."'

Although both perspectives, as extremes, can point to respectable

intellectual pedigrees and can attract the sympathetic attention of theo-
retically inclined scholars, the student examining substantive problems
and aspects of social change in, say, Sao Paulo or Antioquia of the
1920s must remain skeptical. Confronting the global extremists, she or
he will agree that Antioquia was dominated by a coffee economy that
had drawn the region toward the centers of world economy; yet the
very shape of that economy, its most basic social relations and contra-
dictions, were fundamentally different from other coffee economies
that emerged at roughly the same time. Trying to understand why
Antioquia looked different, she or he will begin to explore the settle-
ment of the relatively open frontier, the prior emergence of a gold pan-
ning movement, the accumulation of capital by urban merchants
buying up gold, and their investment of accumulated resources in land
and coffee. In short, the "global" begins to recede from view and the
"local" seems predominant. Yet it hardly seems helpful to dismiss the
whole as a "fiction."Our student of 1920s Antioquia cannot ignore the

Theory and Society 20: 351-382, 1991.

? 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
352

massive investment of North American finance capital during the

"danceof the millions,"directedtowardthe constructionof roads and
railroadsand the acquisitionof controllingshares in local banks and
exportingfirms.And she or he cannot forget that the 1920s were fol-
lowed by the 1930s, the general depression and the collapse of the
world coffee market.The confidentassertionsof the postmoderntheo-
rist, telling us that we can relegate the world-system to the back-
ground,3begin to lose some of theirseductiveappealin the face of such
events and movements. A more careful reading of global and local
historiesis necessary.

One form of sociological understandingthat needs to be recoveredif

we are to understandthe contradictoryformationof humansubjectsat
the conjunctionof global and local histories is that sketched by F. H.
Cardoso and Enzo Faletto in their call for studies of the "internaliza-
tion of the external"in Latin America. Surveyingthe emergence of
capitalismin variousLatinAmericancountries,they argue:
The very existence of an economic "periphery"cannot be understood
without referenceto the economic drive of advanced capitalisteconomies,
whichwere responsiblefor the formationof a capitalistperipheryand for the
integrationof traditionalnoncapitalisteconomies into the worldmarket.Yet,
the expansionof capitalismin Bolivia and Venezuela,in Mexico or Peru,in
Brazil and Argentina,in spite of havingbeen submittedto the same global
dynamicof internationalcapitalism,did not have the same historyor conse-
quences. The differences are rooted not only in the diversity of natural
resources,nor just in the differentperiods in which these economies have
been incorporatedinto the internationalsystem (althoughthese factorshave
played some role). Their explanationmust also lie in the differentmoments
at which sectors of local classes allied or clashed with foreign interests,
organizeddifferentforms of state, sustained distinct ideologies, or tried to
implement various policies or defined alternativestrategies to cope with
imperialistchallengesin diversemomentsof history.4

What we need, accordingto this view, is a "historyof ... diversity,"a

sense that "the history of capital accumulationis the history of class
struggles, of political movements, of the affirmation of ideologies, and
of the establishment of forms of domination and reactions against
them."5A history of diversityis necessarily comparative.One way of
approachingsuch a comparisonis to examine the various regions that
produced a particularexport commodity during a particularperiod -
coffee, say,duringthe late nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies.All
such regions would be subject to certain common global pressures;
they would be experiencingthe same "worldhistoricalfact."6Yet an
understandingof the particularforms and dynamicsof social and eco-
 353

nomic relationsin the various regions would requirecarefulattention

to local contexts, local fields of power. This essay is directed toward
such a comparativehistory.

The comparativeproblem

The nineteenthcentury(thatis, roughly,from 1830-1930) was the cof-

fee centuryin LatinAmerica.It was a period that witnesseda dramatic
increase in world trade (from 320 metric tons in 1770, mostly from
Asia; to 90,000 metric tons in 1820, with half coming from Brazil;to
450,000 metrictons in 1870 and 1,600,000 metrictons in 19207) and
per capita consumption(in the United States, from 3 pounds in 1830
to 10 pounds in 1900 and 16 pounds in 19608). And it was a period in
which coffee productionwas associated with a profound transforma-
tion of landscape and society in several Latin American regions. In
most cases, the expansion of coffee cultivationcoincided with terri-
torial expansion, the movement of settlers into frontier zones where
tropical forests were destroyed, "new forests"9of coffee and shade
planted,towns established,roads and railroadsbuilt,regionalidentities
forged.
It is not surprising,then, that we find some of the same processes and
themes repeated from coffee-producing region to coffee-producing
region - the incorporationof regionswithin an expandingworld mar-
ket, the establishmentof outwardlyfocussed development strategies
with the export of a primaryproduct the price of which fluctuatessig-
nificantlybut is beyond the control of local producersand exporters,
the building of roads and railroads(generallywith foreign capital)to
carry the coffee from the newly settled interior to port cities, the
ambiguousquestion of land ownershipin frontierzones and the con-
flicts between ruralsettlersand urbaninvestors,the relatedlegal revo-
lutions in landed property and labor regulations,and the ubiquitous
concernfor the laborproblem- the "faltade brazos."

What is perhaps more surprisingis the remarkablevariationin social,

economic, and political structures and processes among coffee-
producingregions, the radicallydistinct structuresof landed property
and the different resolutions of the labor problem encountered in
Brazil or Costa Rica or Colombia.We need to consider this variation
as an interpretiveproblem:how is it to be understood?Each of these
regionsturnedtowardcoffee at roughlythe same time (thatis, withina
 354

few important decades of each other: Brazil, Costa Rica, and Vene-
zuela had importantcoffee economies by mid-century;Guatemala,El
Salvador,and Colombia turned to coffee several decades later - the
1870s, 1880s and beyond). Each was producing the same primary
product for export to the same European and North American ports
(though one might export primarilyto London, another to New York,
another to Hamburg).The structure of trade (that is, the relation
between local exportersand internationalfirms)was roughlythe same
(though importantdifferencesdeveloped in Brazil as it came to domi-
nate the market).Each of the regionsbecame "dependent"on a single
export commodity,sufferingthe same reverses and enjoyingthe same
booms.

Despite the commonalities in their incorporation within the world

market, however, their most basic social relations, including those
associatedwith labor mobilizationand "thespecific economic form,in
which unpaid surplus-labouris pumped out of direct producers,"10
were fundamentallydifferent.Easy assertionsabout the dominanceof
the "latifundia-minifundia
complex"are out of place, as are more com-
plex arguments that recognize variation but subsume the variation
within a common emergence of two "largenodes of decision-making
bodies"with the incorporationof regionswithin the world economy -
one based on the "plantation"solution and the other based on the
"merchant"solution (in which merchantsdominate and capture the
productionof small farmers)."Such assertionsexplainawaydifference
ratherthanconfrontingit.

Let us, then, confrontthese differencesin the coffee-growingregionsin

Latin America. Let us place Sao Paulo next to the CentralValley of
Costa Rica or Antioquia and ask why such fundamentaldifferencesin
landed property and labor mobilization occurred and what effects
these differencesmight have had for the respective societies in which
they occurred.A varietyof easy resolutions are closed to us. None of
the distinctionsin timingor marketsnoted above was decisive.Nor do
we have access to a mechanicalopposition between closed and open
frontiersor to differentland and labor ratios. If our only contrastwas
one between El Salvadorand Costa Rica, such oppositions and ratios
mightbe convincing,but most of the regions were open frontiers,with
differentresultsof settlementthat are too importantto gloss over with
grids and causal diagrams.A more considered examination of the
societies in whichthe frontierswereopened and settled, the social, eco-
nomic, political, and cultural contexts in which coffee became an
importantexportcrop, is necessary.
 355

This essay represents a preliminary examination of such contexts, the

aim of whichis not to explaindifferencebut to begin a comparativedis-
cussion. I develop the comparisonwith a discussion of the mannerin
whichcoffee elites in differentregionsresolvedone of theirmost press-
ing problems - the mobilizationand reproductionof labor.Although
other aspects of the respectivecoffee economies (e.g., commercializa-
tion and politics) deserve detailed attention,and will be treated else-
where,the labor problem- "lafalta de brazos"- was centralto each of
them, inflecting all aspects of social, economic, and cultural life. It
thereforeconstitutesour necessarystartingpoint.

However much this may seem to resurrectthe labellingcontroversies

associatedwith the mode of productiondebates, the crucialdifference
in the presentexerciseneeds to be stressed.The purposeof the present
comparisonis not to outline distinctmodes of production,and I do not
consider here the capitalist or non-capitalistcharacter of the labor
regimes examined.Indeed, one of the problems with earlierlabelling
exercises was that they directed our attentiontowardlabels and away
from a considerationof wider economic, social, political,and cultural
fields of power.

It is towardsuch a considerationthatthe presentstudyof laborregimes

in LatinAmericancoffee economies, and the largercomparativestudy
of which it is a part,are directed.We mightbrieflyoutline threedimen-
sions of the labor problem that illuminatewider social and political
relationsand processes. First, in places such as Brazil,Colombia,and
Guatemala,large landholdersattemptingto attractlaborerswere not
acting in isolation. They mightbe competing with growersfrom other
regions, with urban entrepreneurs,or, in the case of immigration
schemes, with plantersor entrepreneursin other countries.This is not
to say that landholderswere powerlessand a free marketprevailed:the
monopolizationof land in some regions was the most effectivemeans
for securinga labor force. It is to say that plantersacted withinparticu-
lar contexts, particularsets of constraints,and that the systems they
devised to attractworkersin the first place, or to assure more careful
tendingof coffee trees,or to feed the workingpopulation,often created
further constraints.Structuresof decision making and control could
become quite diffuse as coffee groves and food plots were let out to
tenants.

Second, labor mobilization schemes were never static. It would be

insufficientto set up a comparisonin simple spatial terms with large
356

estates and the colonato in Brazil, peasants and processors in Costa

Rica, haciendas in Cundinamarca,and peasants in Antioquia - the
large-estate regions being characterized by "oligarchic"domination
and the peasant regions seen as more "democratic."In each of these
regions,labor regimeschangedover time. Haciendasin Cundinamarca
began to disintegratein the 1920s and 1930s, for example,partlydue
to economic problemsencounteredmuch earlierand partlydue to the
increasingorganizationand militanceof theirtenants.Carefulattention
to the fault lines created by hacendados'resolutionof labor-mobiliza-
tion problemsin previousdecades is essentialfor an understandingof
their problemsin the 1920s. In the peasantregions,in turn,we need to
be sensitive to changes over time. In Costa Rica, for example, small
farmers faced increasinglydifficult pressuresfrom the middle of the
nineteenth century to 1930, as open lands closed off or as relations
with processors became more exploitative or as household heads
found it increasinglydifficultto provide an inheritancefor all of their
children.12

Finally,if we thinkabout labor mobilizationin terms of contexts, con-

straints,and fault lines, and if we consider the way particularresolu-
tions of the labor problemchange over time, we open up a most inter-
esting area for investigation.One of the interestingdevelopmentsthat
emerges in the literatureon coffee in Latin America is the frequency
with whichelites experimentwith differentstrategies.The most famous
is probablythe Vergueiroexperimentin Brazil with immigrantshare-
croppersin the mid-nineteenthcentury,four decades before the end of
slavery(see below).13But we also find other experimentsin, for exam-
ple, Cundinamarcain the 1920s'4 or Guatemalain the 1920s and
1930s. Indeed, carefulattention to such experimentsand debates can
illuminatethe most profound economic, political,and culturaldilem-
mas confrontingcoffee elites. As we examinethe kindsof solutionsthat
are attemptedand the solutions that are not even considered, we are
able to sketch the limits of the possible (whichincludethe limits of the
socially constructedmental and culturalhorizonsof the elites at a par-
ticulartime) in variouscoffee-producingregions.An apparentlysimple
"economic"question(how was labor organized),then, need not lead to
a labelling exercise. A discourse about labor is seldom "just"about
labor. Examining one such discourse, we may begin to unpack the
sociology of racismin Guatemalaor Brazilor Costa Rica;in examining
another,we may begin to understandthe particularfeaturesof liberal-
ism in, say,earlytwentieth-centuryColombia.
 357

In what follows, I concentrate on Brazil, Costa Rica, and Colombia,

which representa range of resolutionsto the labor problem in nine-
teenth-centurycoffee economies.In this discussion,my aim is to devel-
op a more detailed understandingof the dimensions of difference.I
then suggestan interpretiveframeworkin termsof whichwe can devel-
op furthercomparativediscussions.

Land and labor in Latin America'snew forests

Although the primary focus of this essay concerns land and labor
regimes and does not consider commercializationschemes in any
detail, certain basic features of the coffee trade in nineteenth-century
LatinAmerica deserve brief consideration.For those newly independ-
ent countrieswith exploitablesubtropicalsoils, coffee servedas a prin-
cipal point of linkage to an expandingworld economy, the means by
which they could turn towardan "outwardlyfocussed"model of devel-
opment. It could be stored for long periods with relativelylittle spoil-
age; it had a high value per kilogram,makingtransportcosts relatively
low and makinginland territoriesvaluablein a way they could not be
for crops such as sugar;15and it enjoyed a growing and lucrative
acceptancein European and U.S. markets.For merchantsand trading
firmsfrom countriesenteringthe new LatinAmericanmarkets,coffee
becamea focus of trade.

Throughoutthe nineteenth century,coffee productionand marketing

followed classic free-tradepatterns.Control of productionwas highly
dispersed, both among coffee-producingcountries and among pro-
ducers within countries. Although internationaltrade was controlled
by merchanthouses in London,Hamburg,and New York,therewas no
significantconcentration among the houses until the early twentieth
century.As concentration began to occur, it responded at once to
changingprocessing and marketingstructuresin consumingcountries
and to crisis periods in producingcountries,duringwhichforeignfirms
mighttake more directand activeroles.

Foreign coffee firms would establishcredit and commercialrelations

with exportersand merchantsin particularLatin American countries,
loaningfunds to exporterswithwhichthe exporterswould acquirecof-
fee - often by means of furtherloans to local producersand merchants.
The general features of such arrangementscan be briefly sketched.
First,despite the close connectionbetween Europeanor North Amer-
358

ican firms and Brazilianor Costa Rican exportersand producers,local

merchantsand exporterswere not subsidiariesof European or North
American firms for most of the period under discussion.Even where
the exporterswere German or English expatriates,they were expatri-
ates acting as individualentrepreneursand adventurers,often with a
privileged and preferred relationship with a particularLondon or
Hamburghouse, but the tie that bound them was one of credit and
shared nationality rather than ownership. Second, exporters, acting
with their own funds or with borrowed funds from abroad, were the
principalsources of creditfor local producersand merchants.For most
of the period that concerns us, nationalor internationalbankswere not
involvedin the coffee trade.Third,with purchasingand credit arrange-
ments linking particularinternationalfirms and exporters,producers
and merchants alike were subject to price fluctuations. Exporters
lacked the means to withhold coffee in periods of low prices. There
were no local exchanges,and states were not involvedin coffee trade.It
was only with the onset of the first generaloverproductioncrisis in the
1890s that discussions began finally resulted in Brazil'svalorization
scheme of 1906. With this scheme, the first chinks in the free-trade
armorappeared.'6

Furthermore,the marketwas not homogeneous.In general,European

consumershave preferredthe "quality"milds producedin Costa Rica,
Colombia, and Guatemala,and European marketswere the principal
outlets for the milds. These export marketswere cemented with long-
term arrangementswith particularforeign houses. Indeed, during the
free-trade period much of the quality coffee was exported not as
Colombianor Costa Rican coffee but, "likeFrenchwines,"7 under the
mark of a particularCosta Rican processor (beneficiador)or Colom-
bian hacienda.The United States, on the other hand, has served as a
marketfor the harsher,less expensive coffees, especially from Brazil,
but also as a subsidiarymarketearlyon for the othercountries.As with
all generalizations,this one requires some temporalspecification. In
the first place, no producingcountry exported to a single consuming
country.Second, duringthe twentiethcenturythe U.S. marketbecame
increasinglyimportant throughout Latin America, especially during
the two WorldWars.Nonetheless, the segmentationof the coffee mar-
ket is an importantfeature,especiallywhen we considerthe qualityend
of the scale. Given a marketingenvironmentpermeatedby a discourse
of qualityand a pricing system based on the gradinghierarchies,this
providesan importantpoint of control for coffee processors and mer-
chants,especiallyin relationto small producers.But detailedconsider-
 359

ation of such relationsremainsbeyond the scope of the present essay.

We need to turn now from the structureof commerce and investment
to the transformationof landscapesand societies.

The frontier characterof many of the coffee regions has often been
stressed in regional studies.18 If the frontierhas impressed historians
and social scientists,it has also impressedhistoricalactors, both at the
momentof frontiersettlementand in memory.The memoryof cutting
down the forest (tumbandomontes),or the image of a people forgedin
settlementand transformation(for example,"theethos of the hacha"9
[anax]in Antioquia)is strong.

Indeed,as we see in detail below,most of the areasconvertedto coffee

cultivationattractedpopulation migrationand settlement.Guatemala
and El Salvadorserve as counterpointsin this story,in that both were
densely populated.Even in Guatemala,however,the microregionsthat
were to become the most dynamicproductionzones - the piedmontof
Amatitlan,Suchitepequez,Solola, Quezaltenango,San Marcos,and the
Alta Verapaz- contained much unused land. Only in El Salvadordid
the coffee zone correspond with a region of relativelydense colonial
settlement,and only in El Salvadordid the expansionof coffee and the
transformationof landed propertythat accompaniedit involvea wide-
spreaddisplacementand expropriation.

Despite the frontier characterof much of the coffee expansion,how-

ever,most of the "wildernesses"into whichcoffee farmersmoved were
alreadyencumberedby people, overlappingand competing claims to
land, conceptions of space, time, and justice - in short, "history"-
before the coffee expansion began, and these encumberancesshaped
theirrespectivecoffee economies even as the regionswere transformed
by the move toward coffee. In each of the regions considered in this
essay,then, we begin with a brief discussionof the occupationof space
and the transformationof landed property.With this foundation,we
can then turn to a considerationof the labor problem in varioussorts
of productionregimes.

Brazil.Let us first consider Brazil, which stands alone in the dimen-

sions of its forest.The extent of territoryavailableand suitablefor cof-
fee cultivation,first in the ParaibaValley of Rio province in the early
and mid-nineteenthcentury and then into Minas Gerais and the Sao
Paulo west from the mid- to late nineteenth century, dwarfs whole
countriesin CentralAmerica,not to mentionthe much more restricted
360

zones suitable for coffee. The destructivenature of this expansion, in

which tropicalforest would be cut and coffee planted,settingin motion
a 30-40 yearboom duringwhichthe soil would be depleted, the boom
region set into decline, and then the coffee grove revertto pastureor
waste as new regions to the west were opened up, is well known.20In
one respect, these interior regions were "new,""untouched,""virgin."
The decliningsugarcomplex of the northeastwas quite distant.South-
ern developmentsduringthe colonial period had centered aroundthe
administrativecenter in Rio and gold mining in Minas Gerais in the
eighteenth century, which in turn stimulated cattle and agricultural
complexes in the coastal and more accessible areas.Colonial claims to
interior lands nonetheless emerged. During the colonial period, land
belonged to the Crown unless it had been ceded by a personal grant
(sesmaria), generally one square league (44 sqaure kilometers), in
returnfor services to the Crown and on condition of cultivation.With
the buildingof roads between Rio and the mines of Minas, sesmarias
were granted,as the discoveryof gold in Mato Grosso led to trail and
road blazingand the establishmentof way-stations.The lands encom-
passed by these grantswere underutilizedin the absenceof commercial
opportunities,however,and they were settled by squatterswho would
displace Indians (who were not protected and who were written out
very quickly,both in practiceand in historiesof settlement)towardthe
west. Squattersmight engage in subsistence agricultureor service the
way-stations along the proliferating mule tracks, but their lands
(posses),which could be quite extensiveand mightoverlapwith under-
exploited sesmarias,were not recognizedin colonial land law.With the
westwardexpansionof coffee, these conflictingclaims became impor-
tant as grant holders or the entrepreneursto whom grants had been
sold turned their claims into extensive plantationswith vague bound-
aries. With independence,sesmariaswere no longer granted,but both
sesmariasand posses were bought and sold in a conflictfulrush to con-
trol the land. The land law of 1850 resolved the conflict in favor of
grant holders and those posseiros wealthy enough to purchase their
claim from the state. That is, colonial grants were recognized as titles
but the rightof possession was not. Land could only be titled by means
of registration,survey,and the paymentof a tax. In practice, this dis-
placed small squatters toward the west, and the expansion into the
ParaibaValley or the western plateau of Sao Paulo was characterized
by a series of displacements:squattersdisplaced Indians toward the
west, only to be displaced by estate owners as roads or railroads
stretched further into the interior.2'Nonetheless, while the land law
had the effect of displacingsquatters,its desired effect of establishinga
 361

land registry with carefully surveyed properties was not realized.

Indeed, one of the remarkablefeaturesof the coffee economy through-
out the period we consideris the resistanceof largelandholdersto land
surveys and registries.Such resistance within the particularfield of
power in which they operated allowed them to avoid taxes but also al-
lowed them to extend the effectivedomainof theirestates.22

The spread of the large estate should not be treatedas unproblematic,

however.No LatinAmericanfrontierof settlementwas largerthan the
Brazilianinteriorin this period.A mechanicalapplicationof a frontier
thesis mightlead us to expect a more "democratic"landholdingpattern
to emerge.Yet here, as elsewhere,the importanceof the largerfield of
power, the political, economic, and culturalcontext of frontiersettle-
ment, needs to be stressed. Again and again, historianspoint to this
context and the mentaland culturalhorizon it produced.Commenting
on the failureof smallholdingin the vast frontier,WarrenDean notes,
"Unfortunately,the royaladministratorscould never entertainserious-
ly a reform that would bring about not only the desired increase in
revenuesbut also what would appearto them to be a social revolution.
The only organizationthey could conceive for the immensecolony had
to be a society preciselyas aristocraticas that of the metropolis."23
Of
the spread of slaveryto the frontier,Stein observes, "Freelabor as-an
alternativehardlyexisted in the mindsof the settlers."24

Such conceptions and minds have historical and social armatures.

While as a firstapproximationit mightbe useful to distinguishbetween
the sugar-growingnortheastand the expandingcoffee provincesof the
south, to see the one as conservativeand aristocraticand the other as
more liberal, "less wedded to the past,"and holding "moreadaptable
economic and social views,"25theirliberalismtook on a special,Brazil-
ian character.Viotti da Costa stresses that despite a late eighteenth-
and early nineteenth-centuryfascinationwith Enlightenmentthought,
which led to the formation of secret societies and pro-independence
conspiracies,the liberalismthat dominatedin Brazilby independence
was one thathad been purgedof its more radicalsocial content:

In Europe, liberalism had originally been a bourgeois ideology, an instru-

ment in the struggle against the absolute power of kings, the privileges of the
nobility, and the feudal institutions that inhibited economic development.
But in Brazil, liberalism became the ideology of rural oligarchies, which
found in the new ideas arguments they could use against the mother country.
These men were primarly concerned with eliminating colonial institutions
that restricted the landowners and merchants - the two most powerful
362

groups in colonial society. When they struggledfor freedom and equality,

they were actuallyfightingto eliminatemonopoliesand privilegesthat bene-
fited the mothercountryand to liberatethemselvesfromcommercialrestric-
tions that forced Braziliansto buy and sell productsthroughPortugal.Thus,
duringthis period, liberalismin Brazil expressedthe oligarchies'desire for
independecefromthe impositionsof the PortugueseCrown.The oligarchies,
however,were not willingto abandontheir traditionalcontrol over land and
labor,nor did they want to changethe traditionalsystemof production.This
led themto purgeliberalismof its most radicaltendencies.26

For both liberal and conservative planters, the monarchy became a

means for preserving an aristocratic society in the postcolonial era.
Indeed, a pact between northeastern sugar planters and the expanding
Rio elite was crucial in the ascension of Pedro II to the throne in 1840.

With this nineteenth-century monarchy, unique in Latin America, we

might understand something of the political and cultural context that
would attempt to extend into the frontier the system of production and
privilege that had served as the basis for colonial society. We can
understand the political context in which royal land grants were recog-
nized as legitimate but not the rights of possession. We can understand
the attempt to recreate a whole society and way of life, in which both
land titles and aristocratic rank could be granted, in which a personal
empire could rest on the labor of slaves.

But the attempt to expand and reproduce such a society took place in
new contexts. In the first place, planters viewing abundant land and a
dependent labor force adopted production techniques that made for
quick profits and long-term destruction. Initial productivity depended
upon the natural fertility of the forest. Whole sections of forest would
be cut and burned, and coffee trees planted in vertical rows up hill-
sides, to facilitate access to the trees by slave gangs. At harvest, trees
would be stripped of cherries and leaves. In a classic and oft-repeated
description, this harvesting method (unique in Latin America) is pic-
tured: "Each branch was encircled by thumb and forefinger, the hand
then being pulled down and outward, thus 'stripping the branch in one
swift motion' and filling the screen with leaves, dead twigs, and coffee
berries."27Such methods assured the productivity of labor but not of
land; indeed, with the erosion caused by the vertical rows, they assured
that the land would be exausted at the end of the 20-30 year cycle of
the coffee trees themselves.

Second, Brazil's new trade relationship with Britain threatened the

 363

slave trade, and by mid-century the trade had effectively stopped.

Thus, while the initialexpansioninto the ParaibaValleyhad been facil-
itated by the easy extension of slavery,the boom of the 1850s and
1860s brought with it an increasinglycostly labor force. Slave prices
doubled in the early fifties as an internationaltrade was replacedby an
interregionaltrade, with Rio plantersbuying slaves from the declining
northeast.By the 1870s, centrallegislationbegan to limit slavery.The
Rio Branco Law of 1871 freed slave childrenborn afterpassageof the
law,while the SexagenarianLaw of 1885 freed sixty-year-oldslaves.28

Behind the pictureof greatwealthand aristocraticprivilegecreatedby

estate agricultureand slave labor, then, lay a social reality of waste,
decay,and impendingcrisis.Yet one of the featuresthat impressesthe
readerof Stein'sstudy of Vassourasin the Paraibaor Dean's study of
Rio Claro in Sao Paulo is the inabilityof most plantersto respondto
that crisis,to envision anythingother than the slavocracythathad been
the basis of their wealth and was decayingaroundthem.Their opposi-
tion to abolition, their attemptto put it off for another generation,is
striking.Even so, other planters,especiallyin Sao Paulo, could foresee
the end of slaveryand experimentedearly on with alternativeformsof
labor - alternativesthat could not be realized as long as slaverycon-
tinued.Nicolau Vergueiro'sexperimentbeginningin 1845 on his Sao
Paulo plantationhas receivedconsiderableattention.'9Under this sys-
tem, Vergueirofinancedthe immigrationof Germanand Swissworkers
who were to settle on his plantation,sharecropan unspecifiednumber
of coffee trees, and pay off the debt incurredby their passage.Their
compensationwas to be half of the coffee yield (fromwhichhalfwas to
be deducted to retirethe debt), a house, and a food plot. While the ini-
tial success of the experimentled to expanded immigrationand share-
croppingin the early 1850s, enthusiasmfor the projecthad wanedby
the late 1850s, partly due to strikes and desertions of 1856-57, and
partly due to decreased labor productivity.The central problem,
accordingto Stolcke, was the initial debt. The indenturerequiredthe
sharecropperto work off his debt, but the deduction for debt encour-
aged the sharecropperto concentrateon the food plot ratherthanthe
coffee plot. The planterthereforehad to enforce an indenturecontract
in a situationin which desertionwas possible, and to stimulateproduc-
tivity in a situation in which control over the labor force was much
more diffusethanwith slavery.

Despite the demise of the Vergueiroexperimentin the 1850s and the

continued dominance of slave labor until 1888, some planterscon-
364

tinued to experimentwith free-laborregimes.30They faced two prob-

lems. On the one hand, the initialdebt associated with planterfinanc-
ing of immigrationcreated an immediate obstacle. On the other, the
planterneeded more control over the coffee productionprocess - and
by extension over the productivityof workers - than sharecropping
allowed. The first problem was to be addressedby the transferto the
Sao Paulo state of the entire cost of immigration;the second was
addressedwith the adoption of a "mixedtask and piece-ratesystem."31
Together,by the 1880s, these two innovationsbecame the distinctive
features of the colonato. Beginning in 1871, Sao Paulo began to take
over limited subsidization of European immigrationfor the coffee
farms. In 1886, the Sociedade Promotora da Imigracao, a private
organizationunder contract to the state, was formed, producinga 60-
page booklet promotingSao Paulo, publishedin Portuguese,German,
and Italian,and opened European offices, promotingand organizing
the immigrantstream.With the fall of the Empire and the establish-
ment of a republicin which the states had significantpower and auton-
omy, the immigrationprogramwas taken over by Sao Paulo'sDepart-
ment of Agriculture.32"From1889 to the turn of the century,"Hollo-
waywrites,

nearly three-quartersof a million more foreignersarrivedin Sao Paulo, of

which 80 percentwere subsidizedby the government.Fromabolitionto the
Depression nearly two and one-quartermillion immigrantscame in, com-
paredto a populationbase in Sao Paulo in 1886 of one and one-quartermil-
lion. Some 58 percentof all immigrantsin thatperiodwere subsidizedby the
state.33

The vast majorityof the immigrantswere Italian,althoughItalyprohib-

ited further subsidized emigrationto Brazil in 1902.34Furthermore,
the state engaged in a remarkablecoordinationof planter needs and
labor supply.Immigrantswould be transferredfrom Santos to a hostel
in Sao Paulo, where the state would serve as labor contractor.While at
the hostel, the immigrantfamily would sign a contract to work on a
particularplantationand would then be given railroadpassage from
Sao Paulo to the interior.35

The contractsthey signed representeda uniqueformof labormobiliza-

tion. First,they receiveda fixed wage per thousandcoffee trees weeded
and maintainedduring the year, regardlessof yield. Second, harvest
labor was compensatedon the basis of yield (so much per 50 liters of
cherries).Third,they receiveda house, and fourth,they receiveda food
plot. Variationsmight appearin regionswhere coffee was being plant-
 365

ed, allowing colonos to plant food crops between rows of recently

planted coffee. The system preserved some of the advantagesof a
sharecroppingregime (some of the risk was reduced with the harvest
compensationtied to yield; costs were reduced with the provisionof a
food plot) but eliminated some of sharecropping'sdisadvantages(the
set wage for tending a numberof trees allowed more space for planter
controlof the labor process).

Because of state subsidizationof immigrationand the eliminationof

debt as a social and economic relation between planter and colono,
therewas extraordinarymovementof persons in the Sao Paulo Westat
the close of each annual cycle. Colonos on the plantationmight leave
and move farther west, especially to zones of expansion, where con-
tracts were perceived by colonos as being more lucrative.As long as
the immigrantstreamwas maintained,however,the instabilityin terms
of personnel was of little concern for the planter.A dependable,state
subsidized and controlled mass of cheap and replaceable labor re-
mainedavailable.36

Once implanted,the colonato system dominatedcoffee productionin

Sao Paulo throughoutthe period thatconcernsus here, lastinguntilthe
1960s. The combination of incentives to individual laborers, cost-
reducingfeatures,and a structureof labordiscipline,proveda powerful
source of planter power in the early decades of this century.Stolcke
emphasizes,for example, that planterswere able to weatherincreas-
inglyfrequentperiods of low pricesbecause the provisionof food plots
allowed planters to reduce wages and compensate for decreased
prices.37Nonetheless, we need to look to the fault lines in any labor
regime.A labor regime that provides flexibilityin response to one set
of pressuresmay create obstacles in others.The planters'dependence
on an ever-flowingimmigrantstreamwas one such obstacle.Another
lay in the attraction of contracts in zones of expansion, providinga
built-in incentive to increase productionas planters entered decades
of overproduction.Thus, while the combination of food and coffee
productionprovided planterswith flexibilityduringlow-priceperiods,
the incentivesbuilt into the colonato could exacerbatethe overproduc-
tion problem,makingprice troughsmorefrequentand severe.

CostaRica also moved towardcoffee cultivationearlyin the nineteenth

century, but the occupation of space and titling of land differed
markedlyfrom the Brazilianexample.38In the firstplace, the land suit-
able for coffee is restricted,concentratedin the Central Valley from
366

Alajuela in the west to Ujarrasin the southeast.Throughoutthe colo-

nial period, Costa Rica was a periphery of a periphery.Part of the
Audienca of Guatemala,most of Costa Rican territorylay beyond the
area of dense Mesoamericanindigenoussettlement,and the Spaniards
who settled in the frontiercolonial outposts found little in the way of
exploitableresourcesor population.At the end of the colonial period,
40,000 out of a total populationof about 50,000 lived in the Central
Valley.The most importantcolonial commercialcrop, cacao, had not
been growntherebut on the AtlanticCoast, and the bulkof the Valley's
populationlived in towns such as San Jose, Heredia,and Cartagoand
villages,practicinga "villageeconomy."39

With independence came a search for a viable commercialcrop. In

1821 the municipalityof San Jose distributed coffee plants among
indigentsand conceded land to anyonewho would plantand fence cof-
fee groves. In 1831 the national assembly declared that anyone who
planted coffee in nationallands (terrenosbaldios)for five years would
be grantedtitle to the land.40This was the first of a series of relatively
open and generous (though not alwaysconflict-free)legal instruments
grantingnational lands to settlers who would cultivatethem.4'It also
led to the early establishmentof a land registryand survey,through
whichsmallholderscould protectand defend theirholdings.

The expansionof coffee cultivationin the CentralValleycan be distin-

guished among three regions:42(1) the nucleus around San Jose and
Heredia and surroundingvillages, which was the first to move toward
coffee, which had the most fertile lands for coffee cultivation, and
which was the most densely settled center of coffee production and
commercialization;(2) the Alajuela/San Ram6n region to the west,
along and near the road from San Jose to Puntarenas,toward which
migrantsfrom San Jose/Heredia began to move from the 1840s but
especiallyduringthe last half of the century,practicinga mixed coffee/
sugar cane/cattle and other crops regime;43and (3) the Reventaz6n
and TurrialbaValleys to the east, which did not develop coffee farms
until the completion of the Limon railway,which passed throughthe
Valleys. Unlike the other' regions, Turrialbadid not attract peasant
migrationand settlementbut was characterizedby large coffee, sugar
cane, and banana farms. Unlike the development of coffee in other
countries, regionalexpansion in Costa Rica was not accompaniedby
the decline of earlier centers of production. The San Jos6/Heredia
nucleus remainedthe center of coffee productionand commercializa-
tion even as new regionswere opened up.
 367

The expansion of coffee cultivation in Costa Rica's Central Valley

occurredwithina social, political,and culturalcontextthatrepresentsa
starkcontrastto the Brazilianexample.Colonial society had produced
a town and village aristocracywho were not far removed,in social and
economic terms, from the rest of the population.Slaverywas virtually
nonexistent(no more than 200 slaves at any point duringthe colonial
era) and was outlawedin 1824.44Nor were other forms of servilelabor
widespread.As Gudmundsonnotes:
Politicaland religiousoffice went hand in hand with the generationand pre-
servationof wealth,just as in other,more dynamicSpanishcolonialsocieties.
Ownershipof land was not the surestor quickestroad to enrichmentin this
society,howevermuchit mayhavebeen both a form of securityand a neces-
sary element in securingelite status and acceptance.Unlike other Central
Americansocieties, landownershipin centralCosta Rica (excludingGuana-
caste) did not bringwith it a servile labor force, a fact that meantthat there
was even less interestin landholdingamongthe elite.... [IlnCostaRica land-
ownership was not the distinguishingfeature of the elite; instead it was a
combinationof commerce,office holding,and diverseinvestmentsin urban
and ruralrealestate.45

Many authors have painted a picture of a widespread rural,peasant

population farming subsistence crops.46For these authors, the dis-
persed peasantryservesas a startingpoint for theiranalysisof develop-
ments duringthe coffee era, a minorityview arguingthat coffee led to
an accumulationof landholdingsand a proletarianizationof the peas-
antryand a majorityview arguingthatthe widespreadpeasantryserved
as the social basis for smallholdingcommercialproductionwith the
expansionof coffee cultivation.47On both sides, we encountersilences.
In Seligson's case, for example, the analysis seems to follow from a
theoreticalmodel of the effects of commercialagriculture,alongwith a
presentist reading of nineteenth-century census categories like
jornalero.In Hall'scase, her most vigorousargumentagainstland con-
centration and proletarianizationstresses the contrast with Brazil.
Unlike the huge landholdingsin Brazil,that is, largecoffee farmsin the
Central Valley were relativelysmall - 60 manzanason average,with
60,000 trees. By the 1930s, these farmsheld perhaps25 percentof the
coffee land in the San Jose/Heredia nucleus.48While this does repre-
sent a stark contrastwith Brazil,once the contrasthas been made the
Costa Rican estate needs to be placed in a Costa Rican context. A
60,000 tree farm is not a peasant farm and cannot be worked with
familylabor.We need to move beyond the contrast,then, and explorea
specificallyCosta Ricanfield of power.
368

This is an area where Gudmundson'smodel of a colonial villageecon-

omy and the ruralizationof the peasantrywith the expansionof coffee
cultivationis especiallysuggestive.It is a model that helps us better to
understandthose nineteenth-centurysocial processes that historians
have delineated:the privatizationof baldios, the move from subsistence
productionto commercialcrops, a specific migrationpatternin which
a particularregionwould be occupied and then the sons and daughters
of a subsequentgenerationwould be faced with the choice of divided
and reduced holdings, occasional or permanent labor on nearby
estates, or migrationto the westernfrontierof the CentralValley.The
property-holdingcommercial peasantry represented an obstacle to
land concentration.The expandingestate owner had to purchasesmall
propertiesand could not depend on generousland grantsor the sale of
extensivebaldios or a structuralspace created by vague titles and non-
existentregistriesand surveys.

While this landholdingpeasantryrepresentsa significantcontrastwith

other LatinAmericanexperiences,it should not be romanticized.With
the passing of generationsand the increasingshortage of land, small-
holders were to be divided by growing inequalities.49Further, the
requirementsof processingand marketingtheir coffee placed them in
direct contact with coffee processors (beneficiadores),who were to
become the coffee elite of Costa Rica. Indeed, as Hall notes, the large-
estate holders of the SanJose/Heredianucleuswere beneficiadores.

An examination of this commercial infrastructurelies beyond the

scope of this essay.50For now it needs to be noted that the Costa Rican
field of power is inconceivablewithout it. As in the colonial period,
landholdingwas not the primaryroute to power. Both the accumula-
tion of land and access to labordepended on one's position withinand
access to accumulated commercial wealth. As Gudmundson con-
cludes:

Coffee fundamentally transformed a colonial regime and village economy

built on direct extraction by a city-based elite from a peasantry that was as
yet privatized to only a small degree. The replacement of this direct extrac-
tion by more subtle and productive market-mediated mechanisms created a
qualitatively new, antagonistic relationship between the coffee elite of
processors-exporters and the thoroughly mercantile, landholding peasantry.
The road to agrarian capitalism in Costa Rica followed along these lines,
rather than those of an estate model based on the rapid proletarianization of
a formerly self-sufficient and self-determined peasantry.5'
 369

Yet the elite's immobilityin confrontingthe labor problemneeds to be

emphasized. Given the situation of the large estate within a peasant
milieu, estate owners attractedpermanentand seasonal laborerswith
relativelyhigh wages.The Costa Rican peon, as Cardoso stresses,"was
basically an employee, a wage labourer and not a 'serf.'"52Yet they
were unableto mount any sustainedeffortto attractadditionallaborers
to Costa Rica. On the one hand, this represents their more modest
resourcesin a world in which other countries- Braziland Argentina-
had begun massive subsidized immigrationschemes, not to mention
the North Americanzones of attractionfor Italianmigrantsduringthe
same period. On another,it representsthe limits of their own mental
and culturalhorizons. The 1862 colonization law specificallyforbade
settlement by blacks and Chinese, and Tomas GuardiarejectedChi-
nese workers in 1875, claiming they were "gamblers,thieves, and
opium smokers."53 Moreover,even when contractswere signedfor the
construction of a railway to the Atlantic Coast, the Costa Rican
governmentstipulatedthat the WestIndianlaborersbroughtin to work
on the railwaywere not to enter the CentralValley.54

Colombia. The expansion of coffee production in Colombia began

muchlater than in Braziland Costa Rica.Three branchesof the Andes
divide the countryinto regionsthat,in the nineteenthcentury,wereiso-
lated from each other and far removed from ports that could be
reachedvia the riversystems of the Magdalenaand the Cauca.At the
close of the colonial period, the bulk of the population lived in the
highlands, which had also been the site of indigenous settlement.
Around highlandtowns and cities, haciendasdeveloped alongsideand
often at the expense of indigenous reserves (resguardos).But the
haciendasand resguardosprovisionedregional,urbanmarkets.Topo-
graphy and demographycombined to hinder the developmentof an
export economy and promote the development of relativelyisolated
regionaleconomies. Justas a "national"marketor exporteconomywas
weakly developed, the central government was quite weak. Local
hacendados held power in particularregions, and though struggles
between liberals and conservativesconcerned control of the central
government,they also, and often more importantly,concernedcontrol
of local governments,their publicoffices and records,and theirlegisla-
tive power.

This is not to say that there were no exports at all, or that the new mer-
chants and free tradistsin cities such as Bogota did not organizeproj-
ects and attempt to establish closer ties with world markets.Gold
370

mining in Antioquia was an importantexport activity and source of

capital, and the mid-nineteenth-centurytobacco boom in the Magda-
lena valley, while short-lived,showed some of the possibilities of the
sub-tropicallowlandsand slopes. But it was only with the move toward
coffee production,which began in earnest after 1870, that firm links
with world marketswere established.With the move towardcoffee, the
regional structurationof Colombian topography, demography,and
economy was important.The developmentof the coffee economy fol-
lowed three cycles, each of which was concentrated in a particular
region.Each region,in turn,beganits coffee cycle with a differentcolo-
nial legacy in terms of prevailingsocial relations and the occupationof
space.

Santander,in the northeast,near the Venezuelanborder,was the first

Colombian region to turn towardcoffee, after 1850. A regionof colo-
nial settlement,hacendadoswere able to turn to coffee as their tobac-
co, cotton, or cacao marketscollapsed. As the first region to turn to
coffee, Santanderwas to dominate Colombian productionthroughout
its firstcoffee cycle, accountingfor some 60 percentof Colombianpro-
duction at the end of the nineteenthcentury.55An importantpercent-
age of its coffee was exported via the developing Venezuelanport at
Maracaibo, as coffee production was expanding in the Venezuelan
Andes at roughlythe same time.By the turn of the century,Santander-
ean productionwas beginningto level off, and the regionaccountedfor
an decreasingpercentageof productionin this century (only 8.9 per-
cent by 1943).56 Although the move to coffee involved changes in
structuresof productionand landed property,with an accumulationof
large properties aided by regional liberal/conservativewars (during
whichvictoriousforces would destroylocal land registries57),it did not
depend on or attractstrongpopulationmovement.

In Cundinamarcaand Tolima,however,the expansion of coffee after

1870 took place along mountainslopes and on lands thathad not been
importantduringthe colonial and early post-colonial period.Although
there were importanttowns that were to become centers of the coffee
trade, the coffee expansionalso opened up new lands. The new lands,
however,were encumberedby claims.From the late eighteenthcentury,
lands in the temperateslopes were claimed in large latifundia.58The
expansion toward coffee involved the investment by Bogota and
Medellin59merchants, a "new class"60 looking for investments in
export agricultureand buyingand dividing largerlatifundiaor buying
public lands to establishcoffee haciendas.6'It also involvedthe move-
 371

ment of indigenous and mestizo peasants from the Sabanade Bogota

and the highlandsof Boyaca, who settled as renterson the emerging
haciendas. Although the Cundinamarca/Tolimacoffee zone of the
westernslopes of the eastern Cordillerawas an importantcoffee zone
in that it served as the base for an oligarchicelite that lived in Bogota
and accumulatedpropertiesin the Cundinamarca/Tolima slopes, it was
never the most importantproducingregionin terms of volume of pro-
duction. By the time Santanderentered into a prolonged decline, the
western,Antioqueiio expansionwas firmlyestablished,and the Antio-
quia/Caldascoffee zone dominatedColombianproduction.

This westernzone has been the subjectof a powerfulmyth- the Antio-

queiio colonization, the establishmentof a settler society as colonists
moved into the sub-tropicalfrontier,carvedout farms,and established
towns and small-scale enterprises,with a "democratizing"effect on
Antioqueiio and Colombiansociety.More recent studies have empha-
sized the less idyllic aspects of this process, the appropriationof large
tracts of land by a few, the exploitationof small producersby urban
merchants,the violent conflictsover land and resourcesas publiclands
were privatized.62

Unlike the Santandersor Cundinamarca/Tolimathe area of western

colonizationcontaineda good deal of unclaimedpubliclands (baldios)
at the close of the colonial period.The predominanteconomic activity
was gold mining,which was not characterizedby the servilelabor rela-
tions predominantin other regions.Most of the gold had been mined
by mazamorreros,descendents of slaves and mestizos who had left
other regionsand workedindependentlyby mininggold along western
riversand streams,selling their gold to urban merchantsin Medellin.
At the beginningof the Antioqueiio colonization,then, the gold econ-
omy provideda social base for independentsettlementand activity(the
mazamorreros)and a source of capital accumulationallowing urban
merchantsto investin new enterprises.63

The settlementof baldios in the nineteenthcenturyfell into two broad

periods.Duringthe first,from independenceto the 1870s, publiclands
were sold as a source of revenue for a weak centralgovernmentand
withoutregardto the occupationof land by settlers,settingup the basis
for the same kind of conflictthatoccurredin Brazil.Duringthis period,
colonizationtook a "collective"character,in which a whole settlement
would be granted title, includinghouse and farm plots. In this form,
baldios might be ceded by the state of Antioquia,or colonists would
372

settle uncultivated forest land held in colonial land title (tierras

realengas), or merchants would organize settlement projects and obtain
title, ceding some land to settlers but maintainingthe bulk of the land
for cattle haciendas.Thus a mixtureof largeand smallholdingresulted,
with large cattle haciendasoccupyingthe lowlandsand small farms on
the forested mountainsides.In contrastwith Brazil,the passageof laws
61 of 1874 and 48 of 1882 placed limits on the size of holdings that
could be titledfrom publiclands and, more importantly,recognizedthe
rights of prior settlement and possession. In practice, this did not
representa transferof power from large landholdersto small, and sta-
tistical analyses of public-landsales and grantsshow a continued pre-
dominance of large holdings. But it created a legal terrainon which
settlers could struggle, and through which they could oppose the
appropriationof theirfarms.64

The laws of 1874 and 1882 were especiallyimportantas the lands held
by settlers increasedin value with the expansion of coffee production
in the west from 1890s forward.Before this period, Medellin mer-
chantsinterestedin coffee investedin haciendasin the Cundinamarca/
Tolima region,especially aroundSasaima.65The first Antioqueio cof-
fee farmswere establishedon largehaciendasnear Medellin(Fredonia)
in the 1880s. Furtherexpansion in the 1890s and 1900s occurred in
the areas of small-scale settlement, on the mountain slopes to the
south. By 1913, Antioquiaand Caldas had displacedthe Santandersas
the most importantproducing region, creating the basis for a prodi-
gious twentieth-centuryexpansion.66

Within and among the three Colombian regions that dominated

Colombian coffee production, we find land and labor regimes that
approach the Brazilian and Costa Rican extremes and that cover a
rangeof intermediateforms and relations.A roughsurveyof the three
regionscan be quicklysketched.67In Santanderin its period of expan-
sion and establishment (1840-1900), a form of sharecropping
(aparceria) predominated in which a tenant would be given a house,
food plot, and coffee plot in returnfor a third to a half of the coffee
produced and a smaller portion of the food plot's yield. Arango sug-
gests that this system emergedafter an early use of wage labor and was
a response to labor scarcity and the need to fix labor on the land.68
This, in turn, supports Palacios'contention that Santandereanshare-
croppingwas not associated with servile social relations.In this view,
sharecropping represented a short-term economic contract that
implied neither a long-term relationshipwith the land nor a servile
 373

relationshipwith an absentee owner.69If outside labor was necessary

for the harvest,it was employedby the sharecropper.

In Cundinamarca,a form of labor rent (arrendamiento)emerged

during its period of expansion and establishment(1875-1900). The
large haciendas on the western slopes of the eastern cordillerawere
owned by Bogota merchants who hired resident administrators.
Because the subtropicalslopes had been relativelyopen at the begin-
ning of the coffee cycle, the haciendas depended on the migrationof
highland Indians and mestizos from Boyaca and Cundinamarcawho
would settle on haciendalands and be given a house and access to land
for food and livestock production.In return,they would be expected
to provide a contractednumberof days per month on the hacienda's
coffee plot. While this was the most servile of the labor relations to
emergein Colombia,arrendatarioswere in privilegedpositions in rela-
tion to others such as the casual laborers(voluntarios)hired from the
region or from highland Cundinamarcaand Boyaca for the harvest.
Long-term rental arrangementson haciendas gave the arrendatarios
access to a livelihood;their access to land for corn, beans, sugar,and
livestock production created a space for an alternativecommercial
economy within the hacienda and with neighboringtowns, of which
some arrendatarioswere able to take advantage,hiringvoluntariosto
do theirobligatorywork on the hacienda.70

In Antioquiaduringthe initialexpansion(1885-1905), largehaciendas

near Medellinand Fredoniaused an intermediatesystemof agregados,
in which the house alloted to the workerwas separatefrom the land to
be worked,minimizingthe possibilitythat the agregadocould develop
an alternativeagriculturaleconomy within the hacienda.71With the
spreadof coffee cultivationto the south, however,small-scalecommer-
cial peasantproductionwas widespread,and a structureof production
and commercializationsimilar to that of Costa Rica's CentralValley
emerged.

Although it is useful to make an initialdistinctionbetween a structure

of production dominated by a commercial peasantryin the Antio-
queiio west and one dominatedby haciendasand dependenttenantsin
the east, such an opposition needs to be modified by more careful
attentionto spatialvariation(the existenceof small-scaleproductionin
regions dominated by haciendas, and of haciendas in regions domi-
nated by peasants)and to temporaldevelopment.Palaciossuggeststhat
the developmentof coffee productionin Colombiacan be divided into
374

three broad periods: the hacienda phase (1870-1910), the peasant

phase (1910-1950), and the empresarialphase (small-scalecommer-
cial farms,with much greatercapitalinputs for new strains,fertilizers,
and labor, 1960 to present).72On the one hand, the "peasantphase"of
the early twentieth century represents the growing importance of
Antioquia and the southwardexpansion of settlementand coffee pro-
duction. Yet it also reflects the fragmentationof haciendaholdings in
the center.

To understandthe dynamicsof this fragmentation,Palacios'emphasis

on the peasantcharacterof Colombiancoffee productionon haciendas
is especiallyhelpful.He begins by stressingthe frontiercharacterof the
Cundinamarcacoffee zone, the implantationof a haciendaregimethat
involved the investmentof commercial capital from Bogota and the
immigrationof highlandpeasantsfrom Boyaca. But he suggeststhat it
was "an entire peasant structure"that migrated,meaningthat servile
relations from the highlandswere successfully implantedin the early
decades but also that household-basedproductionwas installedat the
verycenter of the haciendaregime.73

This was to be increasingly important as arrendatariosestablished

commercialproductionin their food plots and pastures,and as hacen-
dados needed to renovate their coffee plots. Hacienda administrators
complainedabout the difficultyof enforcinglabor obligations.That is,
the mannerin which hacendadosresolved their laborproblemcreated
the structuralspace for an alternativeeconomy within the hacienda,
which was increasinglyimportantat the close of the initial expansion
phase. By the 1920s, the crisis on centralhaciendaswas acute, as peas-
ant movements began to organize, first against the arrendatariosand
then in combination with the arrendatariosagainst the hacendados.
One response of hacendadoswas to divide and sell off their estates to
peasants and outsiders, a long process that continued through and
beyond the depression.With this, the "cellularstructure"that charac-
terized the organizationof production within haciendas became the
basis for a new structureof landed property,and small-scaleproperty
and productionbecame central in the two most importantproduction
zones of the country.74As in Costa Rica, this peasantryshould not be
romanticized:the exploitativerelationshipbetween merchantproces-
sors and small producerswas crucial.But the importanceof the peas-
antry,both within the hacienda regime and in that regime'scollapse,
shouldnot be forgotten.75
 375

Fields of power: Toward an interpretive framework

This essay began with a paradox - the common transformation of Latin

America's coffee republics in the late nineteenth century and the radi-
cally distinct experience that transformation engendered. After a brief
exploration of one dimension of those distinct experiences, we need
now to ask why these different forms and relations emerged. My
answer, which cannot satisfy those who prefer their explanations to be
more precise and "economical," is that understanding can only be
sought in the comparative discussion itself. "The determinate 'cause' of
such changes," writes Sidney Mintz concerning another problem, "is a
context, or a set of situations, created by broad economic forces."76In
this case, I have tried to sketch radically different social contexts into
which these broad economic forces were inserted, and I wish now to
suggest that these different contexts "determined" the different direc-
tions the coffee economies took.

However much this may look like an argument that the coffee econo-
mies were different because they were different, the historical and
anthropological understanding that informs it is more complex and
requires elaboration. I have referred at various points in this essay to
specific Paulista or Costa Rican fields of power. I need now to make my
meaning more explicit. Despite the profilerating use of "power" as a
concept in recent literature, my most direct source for the phrase is
Eric Wolf's Peasant Warsof the Twentieth Century.77Characteristically,
he defines what he means by practice rather than explicit precept. The
phrase appears most prominently in his conclusion that, "Ultimately,
the decisive factor in making a peasant rebellion possible lies in the
relation of the peasantry to the field of power which surrounds it."78
While he goes on to use a definition of power offered by Richard
Adams, his understanding of the field of power is less susceptible to
codification. It clearly refers to the class structure of which the peasants
are a part - the landlords, merchants, state officials, capitalist planters,
and others who press claims upon or otherwise threaten peasant liveli-
hoods. But his understanding of the class structure is one that is less
dependent on a ready set of sociological categories than on detailed
anthropological and historical investigation. Earlier, Wolf observed that

the anthropologist is greatly aware of the importance of groups which medi-

ate between the peasant and larger society of which he forms a part. The
landlord, the merchant, the political boss, the priest stand at the junctures in
social, economic, and political relations that connect the village to wider-
376

rangingelites in marketsor politicalnetworks.In his studyof peasantvillages

he has learned to recognize their crucial role in peasant life, and he is per-
suaded that they must play a significant role in peasant involvement in polit-
ical upheaval. To describe such groups, and to locate them in the social field
in which they must maneuver, it is useful to speak of them as "classes."
Classes are for me quite real clusters of people whose development or de-
cline is predicated on particular historical circumstances, and who act to-
gether or against each other in pursuit of particular interests prompted by
these circumstances. In this perspective, we may ask - in quite concrete
terms - how members of such classes make contact with the peasantry. In
our accounts, therefore, we must transcend the usual anthropological
account of peasants, and seek information also about the larger society and
its constituent class groupings, for the peasant acts in an arena which also
contains allies as well as enemies. This arena is characteristically a field of
political battle.'7

There is much in this statement that bears the marks of the period, over
twenty years ago, in which it was written; there is also much in it that is
extraordinarily refreshing in the context of theoretical preoccupations
that have dominated the literature in the subsequent twenty years.
What Wolf was marking out was less a confining set of concepts and
hypotheses and more a historical and anthropological attitude, which
he then took to his six case studies of peasant rebellion. It is in these
case studies that we find, in practice, Wolf's concept of a field of power.
In his study of the Mexican Revolution, for example, he begins with the
formation of indigenous peasant communities during the colonial
period, their relations to haciendas, cities, and the colonial state; the
War of Independence and the social and political transformations of
the nineteenth century (the liberal reforms and the expansion of
haciendas, especially under the Diaz regime); the development of
mining and industry in the north. It was only in this context that he ana-
lyzed the various locally focussed Mexican Revolutions and some of
the initial consequences for regional peasantries of the new Mexico
that emerged. In each of the case studies, an attempt is made to under-
stand the formation of a particular peasantry in terms of its internal
relations, forms of landholding and community, its relations with
hacendados, merchants, the Church, representatives of the state, etc.,
and to examine how this complex of relations changes with, say, the
passage of new land laws in Mexico, the end of one colonialism or the
introduction of another, the imposition of a head tax or the develop-
ment of rice plantations in Vietnam. Although he does not use the lan-
guage, each of the case studies can be seen as an attempt to capture the
conjunction of local and global histories, or to explore the internaliza-
tion of the external.
 377

Although it might have seemed to some reviewers that Wolf's case

studies are "too complex and vague"and that he writesthe "leasttheo-
retically"of the authorswho examinedpeasant rebellionsin the 1960s
and 70s,80it should be apparentthat his approachto fields of poweris
actuallywell informedby theory.Likewise, the examinationof coffee
economies in this essay comes out of a certaintheoreticalunderstand-
ing, one that organizesour account of the differentsocial and cultural
contextsin whichcoffee economies developed in a certainway.To each
of the regions considered,I take a set of questionsthat fit comfortably
within a historicalmaterialistframework:the occupation of space and
the transformationof landed property,the mobilizationand reproduc-
tion of labor,and (in a discussionto be presentedelsewhere)the organ-
ization and capitalizationof markets,and the political and ideological
processes associated with state formation and the emergence of
hegemonicblocs.

In addressingthese questions, I have tried to avoid the temptationof

fillingstructuralboxes,by locatingwithineach themerealproblemsthat
confrontedhistoricalactors- obtainingtitle to land, or resistinga land
survey,recruitinga labor force by experimentingwith variousforms of
compensation,pressingthe state to pay for the transportof one's labor-
ers, or agitatingfor marketcontrol in a depressionand findingthat the
control scheme results in greater foreign domination. It is through
attentionto these problems,theirvaryinglocal solutions,and the prob-
lems createdby those solutionsthatwe can sketchthe structureof class
relationsin Sao Paulo or Antioquiain a way that pays attentionto the
action of humansubjectsand to the contradictoryforms and resultsof
such actions.

Notes

1. This article presents a portion of the summary and argument contained in my intro-
duction for a forthcoming volume on "Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin Amer-
ica," edited by William Roseberry and Lowell Gudmundson. While the present
essay concentrates on questions of land and labor, the longer introduction explores
these questions in a wider range of countries and also treats questions of coffee
processing, commercialization and trade, as well as class formation and politics, all
of which are necessary for the comparative interpretation suggested here. The
introduction, in turn, depends upon and was inspired by the essays by Michael
Jimenez, Lowell Gudmundson, Mario Samper, Hector Perez, Marco Palacios, Fer-
nando Pic6, David McCreery, Verena Stolcke, and Mauricio Font gathered in the
volume. The conference that led to the volume was generously funded by the Uni-
versidad Nacional de Colombia and the Social Science Research Council, with
funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
378

2. G. Marcus,"Imaginingthe Whole,"Critiqueof Anthropology,9 (3, 1989), 7.

3. G. Marcus,"ContemporaryProblemsof Ethnographyin.the Modem World Sys-
tem,"in J. Cliffordand G. Marcus,editors, WritingCulture:ThePoeticsand Politics
of Ethnography(Berkeley,Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1986), 165-193.
4. F. H. Cardoso and E. Faletto, Dependencyand Developmentin Latin America
(Berkeley,Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1979), xvii.
5. Ibid.,xvii, xviii.
6. K. Marx and F. Engels, The GermanIdeology (New York, International,1970
[1846]), 55-58.
7. J. de Graaf, TheEconomicsof Coffee(Wageningen,Netherlands,Centrefor Agri-
culturalPublishingand Documentation,1986), 26.
8. U.S. Departmentof Commerce, Business and Defense Services Administration,
CoffeeConsumptionin the UnitedStates,1920-1965 (Washington,D.C., 1961), 5.
9. M. Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,1850-1970, 2nd ed. (Mexico City,El Colegio de
Mexico, 1983), 178.
10. K. Marx,Capital,vol. 3. (New York,International,1967 [1984]), 791.
11. I. Wallerstein,TheModernWorld-System III:TheSecondEra of GreatExpansionof
the CapitalistWorld-Economy,1730s-1840 (San Diego, Academic Press, 1989),
152-153.
12. See L. Gudmundson,"Peasant,Farmer,Proletarian:Class Formationin a Small-
holder Coffee Economy, 1850-1950," HispanicAmericanHistoricalReview,69
(2, 1989), 221-258; M. Samper,"Enfrentamientoy Conciliaci6n:Comentariosa
Prop6sito de las Relaciones entre Productoresy Beneficiadoresde Cafe,"Revista
de Historia,NumeroEspecial(1985), 207-212.
13. S. Stein, Vassouras,A BrazilianCoffeeCounty,1850-1900:TheRole of Planterand
Slavein a PlantationSociety,2nd ed. (Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress, 1985);
W. Dean, Rio Claro:A BrazilianPlantationSystem,1820-1920 (Stanford,Stanford
UniversityPress, 1976); T. Holloway, Immigrantson the Land:Coffeeand Society
in Sdo Paulo, 1886-1934 (Chapel Hill: Universityof North CarolinaPress, 1980);
V. Stolcke, CoffeePlanters,Workers,and Wives:Class Conflictand GenderRela-
tions on Sdo Paulo Plantations, 1850-1980 (New York: St. Martin's, 1988).
14. A. Machado uses articles written by hacendados outlining the benefits of new
forms of tenancythat they had recentlyadopted.Machadouses the articlesas evi-
dence of particularformsof sharecropping,but they are also interestingas elite dis-
courses, as planterssimultaneouslytryingto present themselvesto each other in a
particularway and trying(publicly)to resolve increasinglyintractableproblemsas
their tenantsleft the farmsand worked on public works projects.(A. Machado,El
Cafe:De la Aparceriaal Capitalismo,[Bogota,Puntade Lanza,19771 179-199.)
15. See L. Bergad,Coffeeand the Growthof AgrarianCapitalismin NineteenthCentury
PuertoRico (Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress, 1982), 38.
16. With the depression of the 1930s and the closure of the European market in World
WarII, the United Statesand 14 producingcountriessigned the InternationalCof-
fee Agreementof 1940, settingexport quotas for the variouscountries.The agree-
ment was the first of a series of internationalcontrol schemes that stabilizedthe
market and facilitateda dramaticpost-war price increase. It also corresponded
with (indeed required)the formationof nationalcoffee-marketingboards,marking
the effectiveend of the free-trademodel of coffee marketing.Some of these boards
had been formed earlier, during the depression, or, in Brazil, to administerthe
valorizationschemes.
17. M. Arango, Cafe e Industria, 1850-1930 (Bogota, Carlos Valencia Editores, 1977),
 379

184. The analogy,while suggestive,is inexact.Coffee is subjectto a gradingsystem,

at first developed by tradersin consumingcountriesand in recent decades devel-
oped by marketingboards in producingcountriesas well. It has never been asso-
ciated with the sort of politicallyand commerciallychargeddesignationof lands
thatproducegrapesthat can be processedinto wines with certainappellations,and
within appellations,designationof grapes and the lands that produce them into
grand,premier,and lesser crus,nor can it be. That a discourseof qualitycan give to
a coffee processora controlanalogousto thatexercisedby, say, a wine negociantis,
nonetheless,an interestingpossibility.
18. Stein, Vassouras, 3; Dean, Rio Claro, 1-23; C. Hall, El Cafe y el Desarrollo
Hist6rico-Geogrdfico de Costa Rica (San Jose, Editorial Costa Rica, 1976); Pala-
cios, El Cafe en Colombia, passim; D. A. Rangel, Capital y Desarrollo: La Vene-
zuela Agraria (Caracas:Universidad Central, 1969); W. Roseberry, Coffee and
Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1983),
passim.
19. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 294.
20. The classicaccountfor Rio is Stein, Vassouras.
21. An excellentgeneraltreatmentof land policy is in E. Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian
Empire:Mythsand Histories(Chicago,Universityof ChicagoPress, 1985), 78-93.
For treatmentsof the conflicts between squattersand grantholdersin Rio and Sao
Paulo,see Stein, Vassouras,10-17; Dean, Rio Claro,11-20; Holloway,Immigrants
on the Land, 112-1 14.
22. See Holloway, Immigrants on the Land, 113, 120-121.
23. Dean, Rio Claro, 13.
24. Stein, Vassouras, 55.
25. B. Bums, A Historyof Brazil, 2nd ed, (New York, Columbia University Press,
1980), 189.
26. Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire, 7.
27. Stein, Vassouras, 35.
28. Stein, Vassouras, 65-67.
29. Dean, Rio Claro, 89-123; Holloway, Immigrants on the Land, 70-72; Stolcke,
Coffee Planters, Workers, and Wives, 1-9; Viotti da Costa, Brazilian Empire, 94-
124.
30. Stolcke, Coffee Planters, Workers, and Wives, 9-16.
31. Ibid., 17.
32. Holloway, Immigrants on the Land, 35-40.
33. Ibid., 41.
34. Other important nationalities of immigrants were Spanish, Portuguese, and Japan-
ese. See ibid.,42-43.
35. Ibid., 50-61.
36. This summaryhas depended on descriptionsin Stolcke, CoffeePlanters,Workers,
and Wives;Holloway, Immigrants on the Land, and Dean, Rio Claro.
37. Stolcke, Coffee Planters, Workers,and Wives, 28-34.
38. The best analysis of the occupation of space in Costa Rica is Hall, El Cafe y el
Desarrollo Hist6rico-Geogrdfico. See as well idem, Costa Rica: A Geographical
Interpretation in Historical Perspective (Boulder, Westview Press, 1985).
39. L. Gudmundson, Costa Rica before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the
Export Boom (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1986).
40. Hall, El Cafe y el Desarrollo Hist6rico-Geogrdfico, 35-37.
41. J. A. Salas Viquez, "La Btsqueda de Soluciones al Problema de la Escasez de
380

Tierraen la FronteraAgricola:Aproximaci6nal Estudio del ReformismoAgrario

en Costa Rica, 1880-1940." Revistade Historia,Nimero Especial (1985), 97-
160.
42. Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico, 72-101.
43. See as well M. SamperKutschbach,"LaEspecializaci6nMercantilCampesinaen el
Noroeste del Valle Central: 1850-1900. Elementos Microanaliticos para un
Modelo."Revistade HistoriaNdmeroEspecial(1985), 49-98.
44. M. Seligson, Peasants in Costa Rica (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press,
1980), 8.
45. Gudmundson,CostaRica beforeCoffee,57.
46. M. Seligson, Peasantsin Costa Rica; E. Fonseca, Costa Rica Colonial (San Jose,
EDUCA, 1983); C. Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico.
47. For the first view, see Seligson,Peasantsin CostaRica;for the second, see Hall, El
Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico.
48. Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico, 85-87.
49. L. Gudmundson,"Peasant,farmer,proletarian."
50. See the Introduction,cited in note 1, as well as Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHis-
t6rico-Geogrdfico,47-49; G. Peters Solorzano, "La formaci6n territorialde las
grandesfincas de cafe en la Meseta Central:Estudio de la firmaTouron (1877-
1955)," Revistade Historia(9-10, 1980), 81-167; V. H. Acufia Ortega, "Clases
sociales y conflictosocial en la economiacafetaleracostarricense:productorescon-
tra beneficiadores:1932-1936." Revista de Historia (Ntmero especial, 1985),
181-212.
51. Gudmundson,CostaRica BeforeCoffee,152.
52. C. F. S. Cardoso, 'The formationof the coffee estate in nineteenth-centuryCosta
Rica,"in Land and Labor in LatinAmerica,ed. K. Duncan and I. Rutledge,(Cam-
bridge,CambridgeUniversityPress, 1977), 194.
53. Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico,57.
54. Ibid.All the more interesting,then, the famousmuraldepictingCosta Rican econ-
omy and society in SanJose's NationalTheater.The romanticizedpictureof coffee
and bananaworkersshows them all to be white - an obvious misrepresentationof
the bananazone, an accuraterepresentationof an elite'sself-image.
55. Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,73.
56. Machado,El Cafe,117; Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,70-73.
57. Arango, Cafee Industria,47.
58. Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,169.
59. On Medellin merchantsin the early Cundinamarcacoffee economy, see Arango,
Cafee Industria.
60. Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,78-79.
61. Ibid.,131-169.
62. The classic study of Antioqueno colonization is J. J. Parsons, The Antiquenio Colo-
nization in WesternColombia, 2nd ed. (Berkeley,Universityof CaliforniaPress,
1968). Recent reconsiderationsinclude M. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia,293-
340; M. Arango, Cafe e Industria,68-87. C. LeGrand'sFrontierExpansionand
PeasantProtestin Colombia,1850-1936(Albuquerque,UniversityOf New Mexico
Press, 1986) is not limitedto Antioquiabut offers an innovativestudyof the appro-
priationof and conflict over public lands (baldios)in nineteenth-and early twen-
tieth-centuryColombia.
63. Machado,El Cafe, 17-32; C. Bergquist,Labor in Latin America(Stanford,Stan-
ford UniversityPress, 1986), 287-290.
 381

64. This entire discussion depends on LeGrand, FrontierExpansion, 10-18. See as

well Arango, Cafe e Industria, 68-87.
65. Arango, Cafe e Industria.
66. Machado,El Cafe, 117.
67. Sources for this comparison include Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 187-234;
Arango, Cafe e Industria, 130-151; Machado, El Cafe, 33-85; Bergquist, Labor in
Latin America, 313-330.
68. Arango, Cafe e Industria, 149-151.
69. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 191.
70. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 206.
71. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 193.
72. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 342.
73. Ibid., 171-175.
74. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia,372-401. See also M. Jimenez,'TravelingFar in
Grandfather'sCar:The Life Cycle of CentralColombianCoffee Estates.The case
of Viota, Cundinamarca (1900-1930)," Hispanic American Historical Review 69
(no. 2,1989), 216.
75. Here again,the limited natureof the presentcomparisonneeds to be emphasized.
A full understandingof the respective fields of power sketched in this essay re-
quires considerationof the relationsbetween small producersand merchants.But
the bases for merchantcontrol, and the special characterisiticsof coffee that make
such controlpossible,are sketchedelsewhere.See the Introduction,cited in note 1,
as well as the Costa Rican sources cited in note 50. For Colombia,see Palacios,El
Cafe en Colombia; Arango, and Cafe e Industria. For other countries, see Rose-
berry, Coffee and Capitalism; Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capital-
ism.
76. S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York,
Viking, 1985), 181.
77. E. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row,
1969).
78. Ibid.,290.
79. Ibid.,xii.
80. T. Skocpol, "WhatMakes PeasantsRevolutionary?"in R. Weller and S. Guggen-
heim, Power and Protest in the Countryside (Durham, 1982), 166, 178.