la falta de brazos tierra y trabajo en las economias cafetaleras del siglo xix en america latina

7/29/2019 La Falta de Brazos Tierra y Trabajo en Las Economias Cafetaleras Del Siglo Xix en America Latina

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La Falta de Brazos: Land and Labor in the Coffee Economies of Nineteenth-Century LatinAmericaAuthor(s): William RoseberryReviewed work(s):Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 20, No. 3, Special Issue on Slavery in the New World (Jun.,1991), pp. 351-381Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657557 .

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La Falta de BrazosLand and laborin the coffeeeconomiesofnineteenth-century atinAmericaWILLIAM ROSEBERRYNew School for Social Research

A persistent problem for anthropologists and historians attempting tounderstand social change in rural Latin America is the placement oflocal regions within wider - global and "national"- economic, social,and political frameworks.' One temptation is to subsume the localwithin the global, to make the "system"- "capitalist"or "modem" -determinative, as in the more extreme versions of dependency andworld-system theories that dominated the literature in the 1960s and1970s. Another temptation is to avoid the problem altogether, to rejectany discussion of global political and economic pressures as totalizing,reductive, or teleological. This view, increasingly popular over the pastdecade, would have us reject the "fiction of the whole."'Although both perspectives, as extremes, can point to respectableintellectual pedigrees and can attract the sympathetic attention of theo-retically inclined scholars, the student examining substantive problemsand aspects of social change in, say, Sao Paulo or Antioquia of the1920s must remain skeptical. Confronting the global extremists, she orhe will agree that Antioquia was dominated by a coffee economy thathad drawn the region toward the centers of world economy; yet thevery shape of that economy, its most basic social relations and contra-dictions, were fundamentally different from other coffee economiesthat emerged at roughly the same time. Trying to understand whyAntioquia 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 merchantsbuying up gold, and their investment of accumulated resources in landand coffee. In short, the "global" begins to recede from view and the"local" seems predominant. Yet it hardly seems helpful to dismiss thewhole as a "fiction."Our student of 1920s Antioquia cannot ignore theTheoryand Society 20: 351-382, 1991.? 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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352massive investment of North American finance capital during the"danceof the millions,"directedtowardthe constructionof roads andrailroadsand the acquisitionof controllingshares in local banks andexportingfirms.And she or he cannotforget thatthe 1920s were fol-lowed by the 1930s, the generaldepression and the collapse of theworld coffee market.The confidentassertionsof thepostmodern heo-rist, telling us that we can relegate the world-systemto the back-ground,3beginto lose someof theirseductiveappeal n the faceof suchevents and movements.A more careful readingof global and localhistories s necessary.One form of sociologicalunderstandinghat needs to be recovered fwe are to understand he contradictoryormationof humansubjectsatthe conjunctionof global and local histories is that sketchedby F.H.Cardosoand Enzo Falettoin their call for studies of the "internaliza-tion of the external" n Latin America. Surveyingthe emergenceofcapitalismn variousLatinAmericancountries,they argue:

The very existence of an economic "periphery" annot be understoodwithout referenceto the economic drive of advancedcapitalisteconomies,whichwereresponsible or theformationof acapitalistperipheryandfor theintegration f traditionalnoncapitalist conomies into the worldmarket.Yet,the expansionof capitalism n Bolivia and Venezuela, n Mexico or Peru, nBrazil and Argentina, n spite of havingbeen submitted o the same globaldynamicof international apitalism,did not have the same historyor conse-quences. The differences are rooted not only in the diversityof naturalresources,nor just in the differentperiods in which these economies havebeenincorporatednto the international ystem (although hese factorshaveplayedsome role).Theirexplanationmust also lie in the differentmomentsat which sectors of local classes allied or clashed with foreign interests,organizeddifferentforms of state, sustained distinctideologies,or triedtoimplementvarious policies or defined alternativestrategiesto cope withimperialist hallenges ndiversemomentsof history.4

What we need, accordingto this view, is a "historyof ... diversity,"sense that "thehistoryof capitalaccumulation s the historyof classstruggles, of political movements, of the affirmation of ideologies, andof the establishmentof forms of domination and reactions againstthem."5A historyof diversity s necessarily comparative.One wayofapproaching uch a comparison s to examinethe variousregionsthatproduceda particular xport commodityduringa particularperiod-coffee,say,during he late nineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies.Allsuch regions would be subject to certain common global pressures;they would be experiencingthe same "world historical fact."6Yet anunderstanding f the particularorms and dynamicsof socialand eco-



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353nomic relations n the variousregionswould requirecarefulattentionto local contexts, local fields of power.This essay is directed towardsucha comparativehistory.

The comparativeproblemThe nineteenthcentury that s, roughly,rom 1830-1930) was the cof-fee century n LatinAmerica. It was a periodthat witnesseda dramaticincreasein world trade (from 320 metric tons in 1770, mostlyfromAsia; to 90,000 metric tons in 1820, with half comingfromBrazil; o450,000 metric tons in 1870 and 1,600,000 metrictons in 19207) andper capitaconsumption(in the United States,from 3 poundsin 1830to 10 poundsin 1900 and 16 poundsin 19608).And it was a periodinwhich coffee productionwas associatedwith a profoundtransforma-tion of landscapeand society in severalLatin Americanregions.Inmost cases, the expansion of coffee cultivation coincided with terri-torial expansion,the movement of settlers into frontierzones wheretropical forests were destroyed,"new forests"9of coffee and shadeplanted,townsestablished,roads and railroadsbuilt,regional dentitiesforged.It is not surprising, hen,that we find some of the sameprocessesandthemes repeated from coffee-producing region to coffee-producingregion- the incorporationof regionswithinan expandingworld mar-ket, the establishmentof outwardlyfocussed developmentstrategieswith the exportof a primaryproductthe priceof which fluctuates ig-nificantlybut is beyond the controlof local producersand exporters,the buildingof roads and railroads generallywith foreigncapital)tocarry the coffee from the newly settled interior to port cities, theambiguousquestionof land ownership n frontierzones and the con-flictsbetween ruralsettlersandurban nvestors, he related egalrevo-lutions in landed propertyand labor regulations,and the ubiquitousconcern for thelaborproblem the"faltade brazos."What is perhapsmore surprisings the remarkable ariation n social,economic, and political structures and processes among coffee-producingregions,the radicallydistinctstructuresof landedpropertyand the different resolutions of the labor problem encounteredinBrazilor Costa Rica or Colombia. We need to consider thisvariationas an interpretiveproblem:how is it to be understood?Each of theseregionsturnedtowardcoffee at roughly he same time(thatis, withina



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354few importantdecades of each other:Brazil, Costa Rica, and Vene-zuelahad importantcoffee economiesby mid-century;Guatemala,ElSalvador,and Colombiaturnedto coffee severaldecades later- the1870s, 1880s and beyond). Each was producingthe same primaryproductfor export to the same Europeanand North Americanports(thoughone might exportprimarilyo London, anotherto New York,another to Hamburg).The structure of trade (that is, the relationbetween local exportersandinternationalirms)was roughlythe same(thoughimportantdifferencesdevelopedin Brazilas it came to domi-nate the market).Each of the regionsbecame "dependent" n a singleexportcommodity,suffering he same reverses and enjoyingthe samebooms.Despite the commonalities in their incorporationwithin the worldmarket, however, their most basic social relations, including thoseassociatedwithlabormobilizationand"thespecificeconomicform,inwhich unpaid surplus-labour s pumped out of direct producers,"10were fundamentallydifferent.Easy assertionsabout the dominanceofthe "latifundia-minifundiaomplex"areout of place,as are more com-plex argumentsthat recognize variationbut subsume the variationwithin a common emergenceof two "largenodes of decision-makingbodies"withthe incorporationof regionswithinthe worldeconomy-one based on the "plantation"olution and the other based on the"merchant" olution (in which merchantsdominate and capturetheproductionof smallfarmers)."Suchassertionsexplain awaydifferencerather hanconfrontingt.Letus, then,confrontthesedifferences n the coffee-growing egions nLatin America.Let us place Sao Paulo next to the CentralValleyofCosta Rica or Antioquiaandask whysuchfundamentaldifferences nlanded property and labor mobilizationoccurred and what effectsthese differencesmighthavehad for the respectivesocieties in whichtheyoccurred.A varietyof easy resolutions are closed to us. None ofthe distinctions n timingor marketsnoted above was decisive.Nor dowe have access to a mechanicaloppositionbetween closed and openfrontiersor to different and andlaborratios.If our only contrastwasone betweenEl Salvadorand CostaRica, such oppositionsand ratiosmightbe convincing,butmost of the regionswereopen frontiers,withdifferentresultsof settlement hatare too importantto gloss overwithgrids and causal diagrams.A more considered examinationof thesocietiesin which thefrontierswereopened andsettled,thesocial,eco-nomic, political, and cultural contexts in which coffee became animportant xportcrop,is necessary.



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355This essay represents a preliminary examination of such contexts, theaimof which s not to explaindifferencebutto begina comparativedis-cussion.I develop the comparisonwith a discussion of the manner nwhich coffee elites in differentregionsresolvedone of their mostpress-ing problems- the mobilizationand reproductionof labor.Althoughother aspectsof the respectivecoffee economies (e.g.,commercializa-tion and politics)deservedetailedattention,and will be treatedelse-where,the laborproblem- "la alta de brazos" wascentral o eachofthem, inflectingall aspects of social, economic, and culturallife. Itthereforeconstitutesournecessarystartingpoint.However much this mayseem to resurrect he labellingcontroversiesassociated with the mode of productiondebates,the crucialdifferencein the presentexercise needs to be stressed.The purposeof thepresentcomparison s not to outlinedistinctmodes of production,andI do notconsider here the capitalistor non-capitalistcharacter of the laborregimesexamined.Indeed, one of the problemswith earlierlabellingexercises was that they directed our attentiontoward abels and awayfrom a considerationof widereconomic, social, political,and culturalfieldsof power.It is towardsucha consideration hatthepresentstudyof laborregimesin LatinAmericancoffee economies,and the largercomparative tudyof which it is a part,aredirected.Wemightbrieflyoutline threedimen-sions of the labor problemthat illuminatewider social and politicalrelationsand processes.First,in places such as Brazil,Colombia,andGuatemala, arge landholdersattempting o attract aborerswere notactingin isolation.They mightbe competingwithgrowersfromotherregions, with urban entrepreneurs,or, in the case of immigrationschemes,withplantersor entrepreneursn othercountries.This is notto saythatlandholderswerepowerlessanda freemarketprevailed:hemonopolizationof land in some regionswas the most effectivemeansfor securinga laborforce. It is to saythatplantersactedwithinparticu-lar contexts, particularsets of constraints,and that the systemstheydevised to attractworkers n the firstplace,or to assuremorecarefultendingof coffee trees,or to feed theworkingpopulation,oftencreatedfurtherconstraints.Structuresof decision makingand control couldbecome quite diffuse as coffee grovesand food plots were let out totenants.Second, labor mobilizationschemes were never static. It would beinsufficientto set up a comparison n simple spatialtermswith large



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356estates and the colonato in Brazil,peasantsand processors in CostaRica, haciendas in Cundinamarca,and peasants in Antioquia - thelarge-estate regions being characterizedby "oligarchic" ominationand the peasant regionsseen as more "democratic."n each of theseregions, aborregimeschangedovertime.Haciendas n Cundinamarcabeganto disintegraten the 1920s and 1930s, for example,partlydueto economicproblemsencounteredmuchearlierandpartlydue to theincreasingorganization ndmilitanceof theirtenants.Carefulattentionto the fault lines createdby hacendados'resolutionof labor-mobiliza-tion problems n previousdecades is essentialfor anunderstanding ftheirproblems n the 1920s. In the peasantregions, n turn,we need tobe sensitive to changesover time. In Costa Rica, for example,smallfarmers faced increasinglydifficultpressuresfrom the middle of thenineteenthcenturyto 1930, as open lands closed off or as relationswith processors became more exploitative or as household headsfound it increasinglydifficultto providean inheritance or all of theirchildren.12Finally, f we thinkabout labormobilization n terms of contexts,con-straints,and faultlines, and if we consider the way particularresolu-tions of the laborproblem changeover time,we open up a most inter-estingareafor investigation.One of the interestingdevelopmentsthatemerges in the literatureon coffee in Latin America is the frequencywithwhich elitesexperimentwithdifferentstrategies.The most famousis probablythe Vergueiroexperiment n Brazil with immigrant hare-croppers n the mid-nineteenth entury, ourdecadesbefore the end ofslavery(see below).13But we also findotherexperimentsn, for exam-ple, Cundinamarcan the 1920s'4 or Guatemala n the 1920s and1930s. Indeed,carefulattention to such experimentsand debates canilluminate he most profoundeconomic, political,and culturaldilem-masconfronting offee elites. As we examinethekindsof solutionsthatare attemptedand the solutions thatare not even considered,we areable to sketch the limits of thepossible (which nclude the limits of thesociallyconstructedmental and culturalhorizons of the elites at a par-ticular ime)invariouscoffee-producingregions.An apparently imple"economic" uestion(howwas labororganized), hen,need not lead toa labellingexercise.A discourse about labor is seldom "just"aboutlabor. Examiningone such discourse, we may begin to unpack thesociologyof racism n Guatemalaor Brazilor CostaRica; n examininganother,we may beginto understand he particulareaturesof liberal-ismin,say,earlytwentieth-centuryColombia.



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357In what follows, I concentrateon Brazil,Costa Rica, and Colombia,whichrepresenta rangeof resolutionsto the labor problemin nine-teenth-centuryoffee economies.Inthisdiscussion,myaim is to devel-op a more detailed understandingof the dimensionsof difference.Ithensuggestan interpretiveramework n terms of which we candevel-op further omparativediscussions.

Land and laborin Latin America'snew forestsAlthough the primaryfocus of this essay concerns land and laborregimes and does not consider commercializationschemes in anydetail,certain basic featuresof the coffee tradein nineteenth-centuryLatinAmerica deserve brief consideration.For those newlyindepend-ent countrieswithexploitablesubtropical oils,coffee served as a prin-cipal point of linkageto an expandingworld economy,the meansbywhichtheycould turn towardan"outwardlyocussed"modelof devel-opment.It could be stored for long periodswithrelatively ittlespoil-age;it had a highvalueper kilogram,making ransportcosts relativelylow and making nlandterritoriesvaluable n a way they could not befor crops such as sugar;15and it enjoyed a growing and lucrativeacceptance n Europeanand U.S.markets.For merchantsand tradingfirms fromcountriesenteringthe new LatinAmericanmarkets,coffeebecame a focusof trade.Throughout he nineteenthcentury,coffee productionand marketingfollowedclassic free-tradepatterns.Control of productionwas highlydispersed, both among coffee-producingcountries and among pro-ducers withincountries.Althoughinternational rade was controlledbymerchanthousesin London,Hamburg,andNew York, herewasnosignificantconcentrationamong the houses until the early twentiethcentury.As concentrationbegan to occur, it responded at once tochangingprocessingand marketing tructuresn consumingcountriesand to crisisperiodsin producingcountries,duringwhichforeign irmsmight ake more direct and activeroles.Foreigncoffee firms would establish credit and commercialrelationswithexportersand merchants n particularLatin Americancountries,loaningfunds to exporterswith which theexporterswouldacquirecof-fee - oftenby means of further oans to localproducersandmerchants.The general features of such arrangements an be briefly sketched.First,despitethe close connection betweenEuropeanor NorthAmer-



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358icanfirms and Brazilianor CostaRicanexportersandproducers, ocalmerchantsand exporterswere not subsidiariesof Europeanor NorthAmericanfirmsfor most of the period under discussion.Even wherethe exporterswere Germanor English expatriates, hey were expatri-ates actingas individualentrepreneursand adventurers, ften with aprivileged and preferred relationshipwith a particularLondon orHamburghouse, but the tie that bound them was one of credit andshared nationalityrather than ownership.Second, exporters, actingwith their own funds or with borrowed funds fromabroad,were theprincipal ources of creditfor local producersand merchants.For mostof theperiodthatconcernsus, nationalor international anks were notinvolved n the coffee trade.Third,withpurchasing ndcreditarrange-ments linkingparticular nternational irms and exporters,producersand merchants alike were subject to price fluctuations.Exporterslacked the means to withhold coffee in periods of low prices. Therewereno localexchanges,andstates were not involved n coffee trade.Itwas only withthe onset of the firstgeneraloverproduction risisin the1890s that discussions began finally resultedin Brazil's valorizationscheme of 1906. With this scheme, the first chinksin the free-tradearmorappeared.'6Furthermore,he marketwas not homogeneous.In general,Europeanconsumershavepreferred he "quality"mildsproduced n Costa Rica,Colombia,and Guatemala,and Europeanmarketswere the principaloutlets for the milds. These exportmarketswerecemented with long-term arrangementswith particular oreignhouses. Indeed,duringthefree-tradeperiod much of the quality coffee was exported not asColombianor CostaRicancoffee but,"likeFrenchwines,"7under themarkof a particularCosta Rican processor(beneficiador) r Colom-bian hacienda.The United States,on the otherhand,has served as amarketfor the harsher, ess expensivecoffees, especiallyfrom Brazil,butalso as a subsidiarymarketearlyon for the other countries.As withall generalizations, his one requiressome temporalspecification.Inthe firstplace, no producingcountry exportedto a single consumingcountry.Second,duringthe twentiethcenturythe U.S.marketbecameincreasingly mportant throughoutLatin America, especially duringthe two WorldWars.Nonetheless,the segmentationof the coffee mar-ket is animportanteature,especiallywhen we considerthe qualityendof thescale.Givena marketing nvironmentpermeatedby a discourseof qualityand a pricing system based on the gradinghierarchies, hisprovidesan importantpoint of control for coffee processorsand mer-chants,especially n relationto smallproducers.Butdetailedconsider-



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359ationof such relationsremainsbeyondthe scope of the present essay.We need to turn now from the structureof commerceand investmentto the transformationf landscapesandsocieties.The frontier characterof manyof the coffee regions has often beenstressed in regionalstudies.18If the frontierhas impressedhistoriansand social scientists, t has also impressedhistoricalactors,both at themomentof frontiersettlementand in memory.The memoryof cuttingdownthe forest(tumbandomontes),or theimageof a people forged nsettlementandtransformationforexample,"theethos of the hacha"9[anax] n Antioquia) s strong.Indeed,as we see in detailbelow,most of the areasconvertedto coffeecultivationattractedpopulationmigrationand settlement.Guatemalaand El Salvadorserve as counterpointsn this story, n that bothweredenselypopulated.Even in Guatemala,however, he microregionshatwere to become the mostdynamicproductionzones - thepiedmontofAmatitlan,Suchitepequez,Solola,Quezaltenango,SanMarcos,and theAlta Verapaz contained muchunused land.Only in El Salvadordidthe coffee zone correspondwith a regionof relativelydense colonialsettlement,andonly in El Salvadordid theexpansionof coffee andthetransformation f landedproperty hataccompanied t involvea wide-spreaddisplacementandexpropriation.Despite the frontier characterof muchof the coffee expansion,how-ever,most of the "wildernesses"nto which coffee farmersmoved werealreadyencumberedby people, overlappingand competingclaims toland, conceptions of space, time, and justice - in short, "history"before the coffee expansionbegan,and these encumberances hapedtheirrespectivecoffee economies even as theregionswere transformedby the move towardcoffee. In each of the regionsconsideredin thisessay, hen,we beginwitha briefdiscussionof the occupationof spaceand the transformationof landed property.With this foundation,wecan then turnto a considerationof the laborproblemin various sortsof productionregimes.Brazil.Let us first consider Brazil,which standsalone in the dimen-sions of its forest.The extentof territoryavailableandsuitable or cof-fee cultivation, irst in the ParaibaValleyof Rio provincein the earlyand mid-nineteenthcenturyand then into Minas Geraisand the SaoPaulo west from the mid- to late nineteenthcentury,dwarfswholecountries n CentralAmerica,not to mentionthe muchmorerestricted



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360zones suitablefor coffee. The destructivenature of this expansion,inwhichtropical orest wouldbe cutandcoffee planted,setting n motiona 30-40 yearboom duringwhichthe soil wouldbe depleted,the boomregionset into decline, and then the coffee groverevert to pastureorwaste as new regionsto the west were opened up, is well known.20 none respect,these interiorregionswere "new,""untouched," virgin."The decliningsugarcomplexof the northeastwasquitedistant.South-ern developmentsduringthe colonialperiodhad centered around theadministrative enter in Rio and gold miningin Minas Gerais in theeighteenth century,which in turn stimulated cattle and agriculturalcomplexesin the coastalandmoreaccessibleareas.Colonial claimstointerior lands nonethelessemerged.During the colonial period, landbelonged to the Crownunless it had been ceded by a personalgrant(sesmaria),generally one square league (44 sqaure kilometers), inreturn or servicesto the Crown and on condition of cultivation.Withthe buildingof roadsbetween Rio and the mines of Minas,sesmariaswere granted,as the discoveryof gold in Mato Grosso led to trailandroadblazingand the establishmentof way-stations.The lands encom-passedby thesegrantswereunderutilized n theabsenceof commercialopportunities,however,and theywere settledby squatterswho woulddisplace Indians(who were not protectedand who were writtenoutveryquickly,both in practiceandin histories of settlement) oward hewest. Squattersmight engage in subsistenceagricultureor service theway-stations along the proliferatingmule tracks, but their lands(posses),which couldbe quiteextensive andmightoverlapwithunder-exploitedsesmarias,were not recognized n colonial land law.With thewestwardexpansionof coffee, these conflictingclaimsbecameimpor-tant as grantholders or the entrepreneurs o whom grantshad beensold turnedtheirclaims into extensiveplantationswithvague bound-aries.Withindependence,sesmariaswere no longergranted,but bothsesmariasandposses wereboughtand sold in a conflictfulrushto con-trol the land.The land law of 1850 resolved the conflict in favor ofgrantholders and those posseiroswealthy enough to purchasetheirclaimfrom the state. That is, colonialgrantswere recognizedas titlesbut therightof possessionwas not. Landcould onlybe titledby meansof registration, urvey,and the paymentof a tax. In practice,this dis-placed small squatterstoward the west, and the expansion into theParaibaValleyor the westernplateauof Sao Paulo was characterizedby a series of displacements: quatters displaced Indianstowardthewest, only to be displaced by estate owners as roads or railroadsstretchedfurtherinto the interior.2'Nonetheless, while the land lawhad the effectof displacingsquatters,ts desiredeffectof establishinga



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361land registry with carefully surveyed properties was not realized.Indeed,one of theremarkable eaturesof the coffeeeconomy through-out theperiodwe consideris theresistanceof large andholders o landsurveysand registries.Such resistancewithin the particular ield ofpowerin whichtheyoperatedallowedthem to avoidtaxes but also al-lowed them to extend the effectivedomain of theirestates.22The spreadof the largeestate should not be treatedas unproblematic,however.No Latin Americanfrontierof settlementwaslarger hantheBrazilian nterior n thisperiod.A mechanicalapplicationof a frontierthesismight ead us to expecta more "democratic"andholdingpatternto emerge.Yethere,as elsewhere,the importanceof the larger ield ofpower,the political,economic, and culturalcontext of frontiersettle-ment, needs to be stressed.Again and again,historianspoint to thiscontext and the mental and culturalhorizonit produced.Commentingon the failureof smallholding n the vastfrontier,WarrenDean notes,"Unfortunately,he royaladministratorsould neverentertain erious-ly a reformthat would bring about not only the desired increase inrevenuesbut also whatwouldappearto themto be a social revolution.The onlyorganization heycould conceivefor theimmensecolonyhadto be a societypreciselyas aristocraticas that of the metropolis."23 fthe spreadof slaveryto the frontier,Steinobserves,"Free abor as-analternativehardlyexistedin the minds of thesettlers."24Such conceptions and minds have historical and social armatures.While as a firstapproximationt mightbe usefulto distinguishbetweenthe sugar-growing ortheastandthe expandingcoffee provincesof thesouth, to see the one as conservativeand aristocraticand the otherasmore liberal,"less wedded to the past,"and holding"moreadaptableeconomicandsocialviews,"25heir liberalism ook on a special,Brazil-ian character.Viotti da Costa stresses that despite a late eighteenth-and earlynineteenth-centuryascinationwith Enlightenment hought,which led to the formation of secret societies and pro-independenceconspiracies,the liberalism hatdominated n Brazilby independencewasone thathadbeen purgedof itsmore radical ocialcontent:

In Europe, liberalism had originally been a bourgeois ideology, an instru-ment in the struggle against the absolute power of kings, the privileges of thenobility, and the feudal institutions that inhibited economic development.But in Brazil, liberalism became the ideology of rural oligarchies, whichfound in the new ideas arguments they could use against the mother country.These men were primarly concerned with eliminating colonial institutionsthat restricted the landowners and merchants - the two most powerful



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362groupsin colonial society.When they struggled or freedomand equality,theywereactually ighting o eliminatemonopoliesandprivileges hatbene-fited the mothercountryand to liberate hemselves romcommercialrestric-tions that forced Brazilians o buyandsell products hroughPortugal.Thus,duringthis period, liberalism n Brazilexpressedthe oligarchies'desire forindependece rom the impositionsof thePortugueseCrown.The oligarchies,however,were not willingto abandon heirtraditional ontrol overlandandlabor,nordid theywantto changethe traditional ystemof production.Thisled themto purge iberalismof its mostradical endencies.26

For both liberal and conservative planters, the monarchy became ameans for preserving an aristocratic society in the postcolonial era.Indeed, a pact between northeastern sugar planters and the expandingRio elite was crucial in the ascension of Pedro II to the throne in 1840.With this nineteenth-century monarchy, unique in Latin America, wemight understand something of the political and cultural context thatwould attempt to extend into the frontier the system of production andprivilege that had served as the basis for colonial society. We canunderstand the political context in which royal land grants were recog-nized as legitimate but not the rights of possession. We can understandthe attempt to recreate a whole society and way of life, in which bothland titles and aristocratic rank could be granted, in which a personalempire could rest on the labor of slaves.But the attempt to expand and reproduce such a society took place innew contexts. In the first place, planters viewing abundant land and adependent labor force adopted production techniques that made forquick profits and long-term destruction. Initial productivity dependedupon the natural fertility of the forest. Whole sections of forest wouldbe cut and burned, and coffee trees planted in vertical rows up hill-sides, to facilitate access to the trees by slave gangs. At harvest, treeswould be stripped of cherries and leaves. In a classic and oft-repeateddescription, this harvesting method (unique in Latin America) is pic-tured: "Each branch was encircled by thumb and forefinger, the handthen being pulled down and outward, thus 'stripping the branch in oneswift motion' and filling the screen with leaves, dead twigs, and coffeeberries."27Such methods assured the productivity of labor but not ofland; indeed, with the erosion caused by the vertical rows, they assuredthat the land would be exausted at the end of the 20-30 year cycle ofthe coffee trees themselves.Second, Brazil's new trade relationship with Britain threatened the



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363slave trade, and by mid-centurythe trade had effectivelystopped.Thus,whilethe initialexpansion nto the ParaibaValleyhadbeenfacil-itated by the easy extension of slavery,the boom of the 1850s and1860s broughtwith it an increasinglycostly labor force. Slavepricesdoubledin the earlyfiftiesas aninternational rade wasreplacedby aninterregionalrade,withRio plantersbuyingslavesfromthe decliningnortheast.By the 1870s, central egislationbegan to limitslavery.TheRio Branco Lawof 1871 freedslave childrenborn afterpassageof thelaw,while theSexagenarianLaw of 1885 freedsixty-year-oldlaves.28Behind the pictureof greatwealth andaristocraticprivilegecreatedbyestate agricultureand slave labor, then, lay a social realityof waste,decay,and impendingcrisis. Yetone of the featuresthatimpresses hereader of Stein'sstudyof Vassouras n the Paraibaor Dean'sstudyofRio Claroin Sao Paulo is the inabilityof most plantersto respondtothatcrisis,to envisionanythingotherthanthe slavocracy hathad beenthe basis of their wealth andwasdecayingaroundthem. Theiropposi-tion to abolition,their attemptto put it off for anothergeneration, sstriking.Even so, otherplanters,especially n Sao Paulo,couldforeseethe end of slaveryand experimented arlyon withalternative ormsoflabor- alternatives hat could not be realized as long as slaverycon-tinued.Nicolau Vergueiro's xperimentbeginning n 1845 on his SaoPauloplantationhas receivedconsiderableattention.'9Under thissys-tem,Vergueiro inancedtheimmigration f GermanandSwissworkerswho wereto settle on his plantation, harecropan unspecifiednumberof coffee trees, and pay off the debt incurredby theirpassage.Theircompensationwas to be half of thecoffee yield (fromwhichhalf wastobe deductedto retirethe debt),a house,anda food plot.While the ini-tialsuccess of the experiment ed to expandedimmigration ndshare-cropping n the early 1850s, enthusiasm or the projecthad wanedbythe late 1850s, partlydue to strikesand desertions of 1856-57, andpartly due to decreased labor productivity.The central problem,accordingto Stolcke,was the initialdebt.The indenturerequired hesharecropper o work off his debt,but the deduction for debt encour-aged the sharecropper o concentrateon the food plot rather han thecoffee plot.The planterthereforehad to enforce an indenturecontractin a situation n whichdesertionwaspossible,and to stimulateproduc-tivity in a situation in which control over the labor force was muchmorediffusethan withslavery.Despite the demise of the Vergueiro xperiment n the 1850s andthecontinued dominance of slave labor until 1888, some planterscon-



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364tinuedto experimentwith free-laborregimes.30They faced two prob-lems. On the one hand,the initial debt associated withplanterfinanc-ing of immigrationcreated an immediateobstacle.On the other, theplanterneeded more control overthe coffee productionprocess- andby extension over the productivityof workers- than sharecroppingallowed.The firstproblemwas to be addressedby the transferto theSao Paulo state of the entire cost of immigration; he second wasaddressedwith the adoptionof a "mixed ask andpiece-ratesystem."31Together,by the 1880s, these two innovationsbecame the distinctivefeatures of the colonato. Beginning in 1871, Sao Paulo began to takeover limited subsidizationof European immigrationfor the coffeefarms. In 1886, the Sociedade Promotorada Imigracao,a privateorganizationundercontractto the state,was formed,producinga 60-pagebooklet promotingSao Paulo,published n Portuguese,German,and Italian,and opened Europeanoffices, promotingand organizingthe immigrantstream.With the fall of the Empireand the establish-mentof a republic n which the stateshadsignificantpowerandauton-omy,the immigrationprogramwas takenover by Sao Paulo'sDepart-ment of Agriculture.32From1889 to the turnof the century,"Hollo-waywrites,

nearlythree-quarters f a millionmore foreignersarrived n Sao Paulo,ofwhich 80 percentwere subsidizedby thegovernment.From abolitionto theDepressionnearlytwo and one-quartermillion immigrants ame in, com-paredto a populationbase in Sao Pauloin 1886 of one andone-quartermil-lion.Some 58 percentof all immigrantsn thatperiodwere subsidizedbythestate.33The vastmajorityof the immigrantswereItalian,althoughItalyprohib-ited furthersubsidizedemigrationto Brazil in 1902.34Furthermore,the state engagedin a remarkable oordinationof planterneeds andlaborsupply.Immigrantswould be transferredromSantosto a hostelin Sao Paulo,wherethe statewould serveas laborcontractor.Whileatthe hostel, the immigrant amilywould sign a contractto work on aparticularplantationand would then be given railroadpassage fromSaoPauloto theinterior.35The contracts hey signedrepresenteda uniqueformof labormobiliza-tion.First,theyreceiveda fixedwage per thousandcoffee treesweededand maintainedduringthe year, regardlessof yield. Second, harvestlaborwas compensatedon the basis of yield (so muchper 50 litersofcherries).Third,theyreceiveda house,andfourth, heyreceiveda foodplot.Variationsmightappear n regionswherecoffee wasbeingplant-



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365ed, allowing colonos to plant food crops between rows of recentlyplanted coffee. The system preservedsome of the advantagesof asharecropping egime(some of the risk was reduced with the harvestcompensationtied to yield;costs were reducedwith the provisionof afood plot) but eliminatedsome of sharecropping's isadvantages theset wagefor tendinga numberof treesallowedmorespacefor plantercontrolof the laborprocess).Because of state subsidizationof immigrationand the eliminationofdebt as a social and economic relationbetween planterand colono,therewasextraordinarymovementof personsin theSao Paulo Westatthe close of each annualcycle.Colonos on the plantationmightleaveand move fartherwest, especiallyto zones of expansion,where con-tractswere perceivedby colonos as being more lucrative.As long asthe immigrant treamwas maintained,however, he instabilityn termsof personnelwas of littleconcernfor the planter.A dependable,statesubsidized and controlled mass of cheap and replaceablelabor re-mainedavailable.36Once implanted,the colonato systemdominatedcoffee production nSao Paulothroughout heperiodthatconcernsus here,lastinguntil the1960s. The combination of incentives to individuallaborers,cost-reducing eatures,and a structure f labordiscipline,proveda powerfulsource of planterpower in the earlydecades of this century.Stolckeemphasizes,for example, that planterswere able to weatherincreas-inglyfrequentperiodsof lowpricesbecause theprovisionof food plotsallowed planters to reduce wages and compensate for decreasedprices.37Nonetheless, we need to look to the fault lines in any laborregime.A labor regimethatprovidesflexibility n responseto one setof pressuresmaycreateobstaclesin others. The planters'dependenceon an ever-flowing mmigrant treamwas one such obstacle.Anotherlay in the attraction of contractsin zones of expansion,providingabuilt-in incentive to increaseproductionas plantersentered decadesof overproduction.Thus, while the combinationof food and coffeeproductionprovidedplanterswithflexibilityduring ow-priceperiods,theincentivesbuilt into thecolonato could exacerbate heoverproduc-tionproblem,makingpricetroughsmorefrequentandsevere.CostaRicaalso movedtowardcoffeecultivationearly nthenineteenthcentury,but the occupation of space and titling of land differedmarkedly romthe Brazilianexample.38n the firstplace,the land suit-able for coffee is restricted,concentrated n the CentralValleyfrom



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366Alajuelain the west to Ujarras n the southeast.Throughout he colo-nial period, Costa Rica was a peripheryof a periphery.Part of theAudienca of Guatemala,most of CostaRicanterritoryaybeyond thearea of dense Mesoamericanndigenoussettlement,and the Spaniardswho settled in the frontier colonialoutposts found littlein the wayofexploitableresourcesor population.At the end of the colonialperiod,40,000 out of a total populationof about 50,000 livedin the CentralValley.The most importantcolonialcommercialcrop, cacao, had notbeengrowntherebut on theAtlanticCoast,andthebulk of theValley'spopulation ived in towns such as SanJose, Heredia,and Cartagoandvillages,practicinga "village conomy."39With independencecame a search for a viable commercialcrop. In1821 the municipalityof San Jose distributedcoffee plants amongindigentsand conceded landto anyonewhowouldplantand fence cof-fee groves.In 1831 the nationalassemblydeclaredthat anyone whoplantedcoffee in national ands(terrenosbaldios)for fiveyearswouldbe grantedtitle to the land.40This was the firstof a seriesof relativelyopen and generous (thoughnot alwaysconflict-free) egalinstrumentsgrantingnational lands to settlerswho would cultivate them.4'It alsoled to the early establishmentof a land registryand survey, throughwhich smallholders couldprotectanddefendtheirholdings.The expansionof coffee cultivation n the CentralValleycan be distin-guished amongthree regions:421) the nucleus around San Jose andHerediaand surrounding illages,whichwas the firstto move towardcoffee, which had the most fertile lands for coffee cultivation,andwhich was the most densely settled center of coffee productionandcommercialization;2) the Alajuela/SanRam6n region to the west,along and near the road from San Jose to Puntarenas, owardwhichmigrants rom San Jose/Heredia began to move from the 1840s butespeciallyduring he last half of the century,practicinga mixedcoffee/sugarcane/cattle and other crops regime;43 nd (3) the Reventaz6nand TurrialbaValleysto the east, whichdid not develop coffee farmsuntil the completionof the Limon railway,which passed throughtheValleys.Unlike the other'regions, Turrialbadid not attractpeasantmigrationand settlementbut was characterizedby largecoffee, sugarcane, and banana farms. Unlike the developmentof coffee in othercountries,regionalexpansionin Costa Rica was not accompaniedbythe decline of earlier centers of production.The San Jos6/Heredianucleusremainedthe center of coffee productionand commercializa-tionevenas newregionswereopenedup.



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367The expansion of coffee cultivation in Costa Rica's CentralValleyoccurredwithina social,political,and culturalcontext thatrepresentsastarkcontrastto the Brazilianexample.Colonialsocietyhadproduceda townandvillagearistocracywho were not farremoved, n socialandeconomic terms,fromthe rest of the population.Slaverywasvirtuallynonexistent(no more than 200 slavesat any point during he colonialera)and was outlawed n 1824.44Nor were other forms of servile aborwidespread.As Gudmundsonnotes:

Politicalandreligiousoffice went hand in hand withthegenerationandpre-servationof wealth, ustas in other,moredynamicSpanishcolonialsocieties.Ownershipof landwas not the surestor quickestroad to enrichmentn thissociety,howevermuch t mayhave beenboth a form of securityand a neces-sary element in securingelite status and acceptance.Unlike other CentralAmericansocieties,landownershipn centralCosta Rica (excludingGuana-caste)did not bringwithit a servilelaborforce,a fact thatmeant hat therewasevenless interest n landholding mongthe elite.... [IlnCostaRica land-ownershipwas not the distinguishingeatureof the elite; insteadit was acombinationof commerce,office holding,and diverse nvestmentsn urbanand ruralrealestate.45

Many authors have painteda pictureof a widespreadrural,peasantpopulation farmingsubsistence crops.46For these authors,the dis-persedpeasantry ervesas a startingpointfor theiranalysisof develop-mentsduringthe coffee era,a minorityview arguing hat coffee led toan accumulationof landholdingsand a proletarianizationf the peas-antryanda majorityviewarguing hatthewidespreadpeasantry ervedas the social basis for smallholdingcommercialproductionwith theexpansionof coffee cultivation.47 n bothsides,we encountersilences.In Seligson's case, for example, the analysis seems to follow from atheoreticalmodel of the effects of commercialagriculture, longwith apresentist reading of nineteenth-century census categories likejornalero.In Hall'scase,her mostvigorousargumentagainst and con-centration and proletarianization tresses the contrast with Brazil.Unlikethehuge landholdingsn Brazil, hatis, largecoffeefarms n theCentralValleywere relativelysmall - 60 manzanason average,with60,000 trees.By the 1930s, thesefarmsheldperhaps25 percentof thecoffee land in the San Jose/Heredianucleus.48Whilethis does repre-sent a starkcontrast withBrazil,once the contrast hasbeen made theCosta Rican estate needs to be placed in a Costa Rican context.A60,000 tree farm is not a peasantfarm and cannot be worked withfamily abor.Weneed to movebeyondthecontrast, hen,andexploreaspecificallyCosta Rican field of power.



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368This is an areawhere Gudmundson'smodel of a colonialvillageecon-omy and the ruralization f the peasantrywith the expansionof coffeecultivation s especiallysuggestive. t is a model thathelpsus bettertounderstandthose nineteenth-centuryocial processes that historianshavedelineated: heprivatization f baldios,the movefrom subsistenceproductionto commercialcrops,a specificmigrationpattern n whicha particular egionwould be occupiedand then the sons anddaughtersof a subsequentgenerationwouldbe faced with the choice of dividedand reduced holdings, occasional or permanent labor on nearbyestates,or migration o the westernfrontierof the CentralValley.Theproperty-holdingcommercialpeasantryrepresented an obstacle tolandconcentration.The expandingestateownerhad to purchasesmallpropertiesand couldnot dependon generous andgrantsor thesaleofextensivebaldiosor a structuralpacecreatedby vaguetitlesandnon-existentregistriesandsurveys.Whilethis landholdingpeasantryrepresentsa significantcontrastwithotherLatinAmericanexperiences, t shouldnot be romanticized.Withthe passingof generationsand the increasingshortageof land, small-holders were to be divided by growing inequalities.49Further,therequirements f processingand marketing heir coffee placed themindirect contact with coffee processors (beneficiadores),who were tobecome the coffee eliteof CostaRica.Indeed,as Hall notes, the large-estateholdersof theSanJose/Heredianucleuswere beneficiadores.An examinationof this commercial infrastructure ies beyond thescope of thisessay.50 ornow it needs to be noted thattheCostaRicanfield of power is inconceivablewithout it. As in the colonial period,landholdingwas not the primaryroute to power.Both the accumula-tionof landandaccessto labordependedon one'spositionwithinandaccess to accumulatedcommercial wealth. As Gudmundson con-cludes:

Coffee fundamentally transformed a colonial regime and village economybuilt on direct extraction by a city-based elite from a peasantry that was asyet privatized to only a small degree. The replacement of this direct extrac-tion by more subtle and productive market-mediated mechanisms created aqualitatively new, antagonistic relationship between the coffee elite ofprocessors-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 ofa formerly self-sufficient and self-determined peasantry.5'



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369Yet the elite'simmobility n confronting he laborproblemneeds to beemphasized.Given the situation of the large estate withina peasantmilieu,estate ownersattractedpermanentand seasonal laborerswithrelativelyhigh wages.The Costa Ricanpeon, as Cardosostresses,"wasbasicallyan employee, a wage labourer and not a 'serf.'"52Yet theywereunableto mountanysustainedeffortto attractadditional aborersto Costa Rica. On the one hand, this representstheir more modestresources n a world in which othercountries- Brazil andArgentinahad begun massive subsidizedimmigrationschemes, not to mentionthe North American zones of attraction or Italianmigrantsduring hesame period. On another, t represents he limits of their own mentaland culturalhorizons.The 1862 colonizationlaw specifically orbadesettlementby blacks and Chinese, and Tomas GuardiarejectedChi-nese workers in 1875, claiming they were "gamblers, hieves, andopiumsmokers."53Moreover,evenwhen contractsweresignedfor theconstruction of a railwayto the Atlantic Coast, the Costa Ricangovernment tipulated hattheWestIndian aborersbrought nto workon therailwaywerenot to enterthe CentralValley.54Colombia. The expansion of coffee production in Colombia beganmuch ater than in BrazilandCostaRica.Three branchesof the Andesdividethecountry ntoregionsthat, n the nineteenthcentury,were so-lated from each other and far removed from ports that could bereachedvia the riversystemsof the Magdalenaand the Cauca.At theclose of the colonial period, the bulk of the populationlived in thehighlands,which had also been the site of indigenous settlement.Aroundhighland owns andcities,haciendasdeveloped alongsideandoften at the expense of indigenous reserves (resguardos).But thehaciendasand resguardosprovisionedregional,urban markets.Topo-graphyand demographycombined to hinder the developmentof anexport economy and promote the developmentof relatively solatedregionaleconomies. Just as a "national"marketor exporteconomywasweakly developed, the central governmentwas quite weak. Localhacendados held power in particularregions, and though strugglesbetween liberalsand conservativesconcerned control of the centralgovernment, heyalso, and often moreimportantly,oncerned controlof localgovernments,heirpublicoffices andrecords,and their egisla-tivepower.This is not to saythat therewere no exportsat all,or thatthenew mer-chantsandfree tradists n cities suchas Bogota did not organizeproj-ects and attempt to establish closer ties with world markets.Gold



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370mining in Antioquiawas an importantexport activityand source ofcapital,and the mid-nineteenth-centuryobacco boom in the Magda-lena valley,while short-lived,showed some of the possibilitiesof thesub-tropicalowlandsandslopes.But it was only withthemovetowardcoffee production,which beganin earnestafter 1870, that firm linkswithworld marketswereestablished.With the movetowardcoffee, theregional structurationof Colombian topography,demography,andeconomy was important.The developmentof the coffee economyfol-lowed three cycles, each of which was concentrated in a particularregion.Each region, n turn,beganitscoffee cyclewith a differentcolo-nial legacyin terms of prevailing ocial relations and the occupationofspace.Santander,n the northeast,near the Venezuelanborder,was the firstColombianregionto turntowardcoffee, after 1850. A regionof colo-nial settlement,hacendadoswereable to turn to coffee as their tobac-co, cotton, or cacao marketscollapsed.As the first regionto turntocoffee, Santanderwas to dominateColombianproductionthroughoutits firstcoffee cycle,accountingor some 60 percentof Colombianpro-ductionat the end of the nineteenthcentury.55An importantpercent-age of its coffee was exportedvia the developingVenezuelanport atMaracaibo,as coffee productionwas expanding in the VenezuelanAndes at roughly he same time.By the turnof the century,Santander-ean productionwasbeginning o leveloff, and the regionaccountedforan decreasingpercentageof productionin this century(only 8.9 per-cent by 1943).56 Although the move to coffee involved changes instructuresof productionand landedproperty,withan accumulation flarge propertiesaided by regionalliberal/conservativewars (duringwhichvictoriousforceswoulddestroy ocal landregistries57),t did notdependon or attract trongpopulationmovement.In Cundinamarca nd Tolima, however,the expansion of coffee after1870 took placealongmountain lopes andon lands that had not beenimportantduring hecolonialandearlypost-colonialperiod.Althoughtherewere important owns thatwereto become centersof the coffeetrade,the coffee expansionalso opened up new lands.The new lands,however,wereencumberedbyclaims.Fromthe lateeighteenthcentury,lands in the temperateslopes were claimed in large latifundia.58 heexpansion toward coffee involved the investment by Bogota andMedellin59merchants,a "new class"60 looking for investmentsinexportagricultureand buyingand dividinglargerlatifundiaor buyingpubliclands to establishcoffee haciendas.6' t also involvedthe move-



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371ment of indigenousand mestizopeasantsfrom the Sabanade Bogotaand the highlandsof Boyaca,who settled as renterson the emerginghaciendas.Although the Cundinamarca/Tolimaoffee zone of thewesternslopes of the eastern Cordillerawas an importantcoffee zonein that it servedas the base for an oligarchicelite that lived in Bogotaand accumulatedproperties n theCundinamarca/Tolimalopes,itwasnever the most importantproducingregionin terms of volume of pro-duction.By the time Santanderenteredinto a prolongeddecline, thewestern,Antioqueiioexpansionwasfirmlyestablished,and theAntio-quia/Caldascoffeezone dominatedColombianproduction.Thiswesternzone has been thesubjectof a powerfulmyth- theAntio-queiio colonization,the establishmentof a settlersociety as colonistsmoved into the sub-tropical rontier, arved out farms,and establishedtowns and small-scaleenterprises,with a "democratizing"ffect onAntioqueiioand Colombiansociety.Morerecentstudies haveempha-sized the less idyllicaspectsof thisprocess,the appropriation f largetracts of land by a few, the exploitationof small producersby urbanmerchants,heviolentconflictsoverland andresourcesas publiclandswereprivatized.62Unlike the Santandersor Cundinamarca/Tolimahe area of westerncolonizationcontaineda good deal of unclaimedpublic ands(baldios)at the close of the colonialperiod.The predominant conomicactivitywasgold mining,whichwas not characterizedby theservilelaborrela-tions predominantn other regions.Most of the gold had been minedby mazamorreros,descendents of slaves and mestizos who had leftotherregionsandworkedindependentlyby mininggold alongwesternriversand streams,sellingtheirgold to urbanmerchants n Medellin.At the beginningof the Antioqueiiocolonization,then,the gold econ-omyprovideda socialbaseforindependent ettlementandactivity themazamorreros) nd a source of capitalaccumulationallowingurbanmerchantso invest n newenterprises.63The settlementof baldios in the nineteenthcentury ell into two broadperiods.Duringthe first, romindependence o the 1870s, public andswere sold as a source of revenue for a weak centralgovernmentandwithoutregard o the occupationof landbysettlers,settingup thebasisforthesamekindof conflictthatoccurred nBrazil.Duringthisperiod,colonizationtook a "collective" haracter,n whicha whole settlementwould be grantedtitle, includinghouse and farmplots. In this form,baldios mightbe ceded by the state of Antioquia,or colonists would



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372settle uncultivated forest land held in colonial land title (tierrasrealengas), or merchants would organize settlement projects and obtaintitle,ceding some land to settlers but maintaininghe bulkof the landfor cattlehaciendas.Thusa mixtureof largeand smallholdingresulted,withlargecattlehaciendasoccupyingthe lowlands and smallfarmsonthe forestedmountainsides. n contrastwithBrazil,the passageof laws61 of 1874 and 48 of 1882 placed limits on the size of holdingsthatcouldbe titled frompubliclandsand,moreimportantly,ecognized herights of prior settlement and possession. In practice, this did notrepresenta transferof powerfromlargelandholders o small,and sta-tisticalanalysesof public-landsales and grantsshow a continuedpre-dominanceof large holdings.But it created a legal terrainon whichsettlers could struggle,and through which they could oppose theappropriation f theirfarms.64The lawsof 1874 and 1882 wereespecially mportantas the lands heldby settlersincreasedin value with the expansionof coffee productionin the west from 1890s forward. Before this period, Medellin mer-chantsinterested n coffee invested n haciendas n the Cundinamarca/Tolimaregion,especiallyaround Sasaima.65 he firstAntioqueio cof-fee farmswere establishedon largehaciendasnearMedellin(Fredonia)in the 1880s. Furtherexpansionin the 1890s and 1900s occurredinthe areas of small-scale settlement, on the mountainslopes to thesouth.By 1913, AntioquiaandCaldashaddisplacedthe Santandersasthe most importantproducingregion,creatingthe basis for a prodi-gioustwentieth-century xpansion.66Within and among the three Colombian regions that dominatedColombian coffee production,we find land and labor regimes thatapproachthe Brazilianand Costa Rican extremes and that cover arangeof intermediate orms and relations.A roughsurveyof the threeregionscan be quicklysketched.67n Santander n its periodof 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 coffeeproducedand a smallerportionof the food plot'syield.Arangosug-geststhatthissystememergedafter anearlyuse of wagelaborandwasa response to labor scarcityand the need to fix labor on the land.68This, in turn,supportsPalacios'contention that Santanderean hare-croppingwas not associatedwith servile social relations.In this view,sharecropping represented a short-term economic contract thatimplied neither a long-term relationshipwith the land nor a servile



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373relationshipwith an absentee owner.69 f outside labor was necessaryfor theharvest,t wasemployedbythesharecropper.In Cundinamarca,a form of labor rent (arrendamiento) mergedduringits period of expansion and establishment 1875-1900). Thelarge haciendason the westernslopes of the easterncordillerawereowned by Bogota merchants who hired resident administrators.Because the subtropicalslopes had been relativelyopen at the begin-ning of the coffee cycle, the haciendasdependedon the migrationofhighlandIndians and mestizosfrom Boyaca and Cundinamarcawhowouldsettleon hacienda ands and be givena house andaccess to landfor food and livestockproduction.In return,they wouldbe expectedto providea contracted number of days per month on the hacienda'scoffee plot. While this was the most servile of the labor relationstoemergein Colombia,arrendatarios ere in privilegedpositionsin rela-tion to others such as the casual laborers(voluntarios)hired fromtheregion or from highlandCundinamarcaand Boyaca for the harvest.Long-termrentalarrangementson haciendasgave the arrendatariosaccess to a livelihood;theiraccess to land for corn, beans, sugar,andlivestock productioncreated a space for an alternativecommercialeconomy withinthe hacienda and with neighboring owns, of whichsome arrendatarioswere able to take advantage,hiringvoluntarios odo theirobligatorywork on the hacienda.70InAntioquiaduring he initialexpansion 1885-1905), largehaciendasnearMedellin andFredoniaused an intermediate ystemof agregados,in whichthe house allotedto the workerwasseparate rom the landtobe worked,minimizing he possibilitythat the agregadocould developan alternativeagriculturaleconomy within the hacienda.71With thespreadof coffee cultivation o thesouth,however, mall-scalecommer-cial peasantproductionwas widespread,and a structure f productionand commercialization imilar to that of Costa Rica's CentralValleyemerged.Althoughit is usefulto make an initial distinctionbetween a structureof productiondominated by a commercialpeasantryin the Antio-queiiowestandone dominatedby haciendasanddependenttenants nthe east, such an opposition needs to be modified by more carefulattentionto spatialvariation theexistence of small-scaleproduction nregions dominatedby haciendas,and of haciendasin regionsdomi-natedbypeasants)and to temporaldevelopment.Palaciossuggests hatthe developmentof coffee production n Colombiacanbe dividedinto



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374three broad periods: the hacienda phase (1870-1910), the peasantphase (1910-1950), and the empresarialphase (small-scalecommer-cial farms,withmuchgreatercapitalinputsfor new strains, ertilizers,andlabor,1960 to present).72On the one hand,the"peasantphase"ofthe early twentieth century represents the growing importance ofAntioquiaand the southwardexpansionof settlementand coffee pro-duction.Yet it also reflects the fragmentationof haciendaholdingsinthecenter.To understand he dynamicsof this fragmentation,Palacios'emphasison thepeasantcharacterof Colombiancoffee productionon haciendasis especiallyhelpful.He begins by stressing hefrontiercharacterof theCundinamarcaoffee zone, the implantationof a haciendaregimethatinvolved the investment of commercialcapital from Bogota and theimmigrationof highlandpeasantsfromBoyaca.But he suggeststhat itwas "anentire peasantstructure" hat migrated,meaningthat servilerelations from the highlandswere successfullyimplanted n the earlydecades but also thathousehold-basedproductionwas installedat theverycenter of thehaciendaregime.73This was to be increasingly importantas arrendatarios stablishedcommercialproduction n their food plots andpastures,and as hacen-dados needed to renovate theircoffee plots. Hacienda administratorscomplainedabout the difficultyof enforcing aborobligations.That is,the manner n whichhacendados resolved theirlaborproblemcreatedthe structuralspace for an alternativeeconomy within the hacienda,which was increasinglymportantat the close of the initialexpansionphase.By the 1920s, the crisis on centralhaciendaswasacute,as peas-ant movementsbegan to organize,first againstthe arrendatarios ndthen in combination with the arrendatariosagainstthe hacendados.One responseof hacendadoswas to divide and sell off their estates topeasants and outsiders, a long process that continued throughandbeyond the depression.Withthis, the "cellular tructure"hatcharac-terized the organizationof productionwithin haciendas became thebasis for a new structureof landedproperty,and small-scalepropertyand productionbecame central in the two most importantproductionzones of the country.74 s in Costa Rica, this peasantry hould not beromanticized:he exploitativerelationshipbetween merchantproces-sors and smallproducerswas crucial.But the importanceof the peas-antry,both withinthe haciendaregimeand in that regime'scollapse,should not be forgotten.75



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375Fields of power: Toward an interpretive frameworkThis essay began with a paradox - the common transformation of LatinAmerica's coffee republics in the late nineteenth century and the radi-cally distinct experience that transformation engendered. After a briefexploration of one dimension of those distinct experiences, we neednow to ask why these different forms and relations emerged. Myanswer, which cannot satisfy those who prefer their explanations to bemore precise and "economical," is that understanding can only besought in the comparative discussion itself. "The determinate 'cause' ofsuch changes," writes Sidney Mintz concerning another problem, "is acontext, or a set of situations, created by broad economic forces."76Inthis case, I have tried to sketch radically different social contexts intowhich these broad economic forces were inserted, and I wish now tosuggest 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 andanthropological understanding that informs it is more complex andrequires elaboration. I have referred at various points in this essay tospecific Paulista or Costa Rican fields of power. I need now to make mymeaning more explicit. Despite the profilerating use of "power"as aconcept in recent literature, my most direct source for the phrase isEric Wolf's Peasant Warsof the TwentiethCentury.77Characteristically,he defines what he means by practice rather than explicit precept. Thephrase appears most prominently in his conclusion that, "Ultimately,the decisive factor in making a peasant rebellion possible lies in therelation of the peasantry to the field of power which surrounds it."78While he goes on to use a definition of power offered by RichardAdams, his understanding of the field of power is less susceptible tocodification. It clearly refers to the class structure of which the peasantsare 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 lessdependent on a ready set of sociological categories than on detailedanthropological 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. Thelandlord, the merchant, the political boss, the priest stand at the junctures insocial, economic, and political relations that connect the village to wider-



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376

ranging litesin marketsor politicalnetworks. nhis studyof peasantvillageshe 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 fieldin 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 bythese circumstances. In this perspective, we may ask - in quite concreteterms - how members of such classes make contact with the peasantry. Inour accounts, therefore, we must transcend the usual anthropologicalaccount of peasants, and seek information also about the larger society andits constituent class groupings, for the peasant acts in an arena which alsocontains allies as well as enemies. This arena is characteristically a field ofpolitical battle.'7

There is much in this statement that bears the marks of the period, overtwenty years ago, in which it was written; there is also much in it that isextraordinarily refreshing in the context of theoretical preoccupationsthat have dominated the literature in the subsequent twenty years.What Wolf was marking out was less a confining set of concepts andhypotheses and more a historical and anthropological attitude, whichhe then took to his six case studies of peasant rebellion. It is in thesecase 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 theformation of indigenous peasant communities during the colonialperiod, their relations to haciendas, cities, and the colonial state; theWar of Independence and the social and political transformations ofthe nineteenth century (the liberal reforms and the expansion ofhaciendas, especially under the Diaz regime); the development ofmining and industry in the north. It was only in this context that he ana-lyzed the various locally focussed Mexican Revolutions and some ofthe initial consequences for regional peasantries of the new Mexicothat emerged. In each of the case studies, an attempt is made to under-stand the formation of a particular peasantry in terms of its internalrelations, forms of landholding and community, its relations withhacendados, merchants, the Church, representatives of the state, etc.,and to examine how this complex of relations changes with, say, thepassage of new land laws in Mexico, the end of one colonialism or theintroduction 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 theconjunction of local and global histories, or to explore the internaliza-tion of the external.



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377Although it might have seemed to some reviewersthat Wolf's casestudiesare "toocomplexandvague"and thathe writesthe "least heo-retically" f the authorswho examinedpeasantrebellions n the 1960sand 70s,80 t should be apparent hat his approach o fieldsof powerisactuallywell informedby theory.Likewise,the examinationof coffeeeconomies in this essaycomes out of a certain theoreticalunderstand-ing, one thatorganizesour account of the differentsocial and culturalcontexts n whichcoffeeeconomiesdevelopedin a certainway.Toeachof the regionsconsidered,I take a set of questionsthat fit comfortablywithina historicalmaterialist ramework: he occupationof space andthe transformation f landedproperty, he mobilizationand reproduc-tionof labor,and(ina discussionto be presentedelsewhere) heorgan-izationand capitalizationof markets,and the politicaland ideologicalprocesses associated with state formation and the emergence ofhegemonicblocs.In addressing hese questions,I have tried to avoid the temptationoffillingstructural oxes,by locatingwithineach theme realproblems hatconfrontedhistoricalactors- obtaining itle to land,or resistinga landsurvey,recruiting labor forceby experimentingwithvariousformsofcompensation,pressing he stateto payfor thetransportof one'slabor-ers,or agitating or marketcontrol in a depressionandfindingthatthecontrol scheme results in greater foreign domination. It is throughattention o theseproblems, heirvarying ocalsolutions,and theprob-lemscreatedby thosesolutions that we can sketchthestructureof classrelations n Sao Pauloor Antioquiain a waythatpaysattentionto theaction of humansubjectsand to the contradictoryorms andresultsofsuchactions.

Notes1. 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 presentessay concentrates on questions of land and labor, the longer introduction exploresthese questions in a wider range of countries and also treats questions of coffee

processing, commercialization and trade, as well as class formation and politics, allof which are necessary for the comparative interpretation suggested here. Theintroduction, in turn, depends upon and was inspired by the essays by MichaelJimenez, Lowell Gudmundson, Mario Samper, Hector Perez, Marco Palacios, Fer-nando Pic6, David McCreery, Verena Stolcke, and Mauricio Font gathered in thevolume. The conference that led to the volume was generously funded by the Uni-versidad Nacional de Colombia and the Social Science Research Council, withfunds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.



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3782. G.Marcus,"ImaginingheWhole,"Critique f Anthropology, (3, 1989), 7.3. G. Marcus,"Contemporary roblems of Ethnographyn.the Modem WorldSys-tem," n J. Cliffordand G.Marcus,editors, WritingCulture:ThePoeticsandPoliticsof EthnographyBerkeley,Universityof CaliforniaPress,1986), 165-193.4. F. H. Cardoso and E. Faletto, Dependencyand Development n 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,Centre for Agri-culturalPublishing ndDocumentation,1986), 26.8. U.S. Departmentof Commerce,Business and Defense ServicesAdministration,CoffeeConsumptionn the UnitedStates,1920-1965(Washington,D.C.,1961), 5.9. M. Palacios,El Cafeen Colombia,1850-1970,2nd ed. (MexicoCity,El ColegiodeMexico, 1983), 178.10. K.Marx,Capital,vol. 3. (NewYork,International, 967 [1984]),791.11. I.Wallerstein,TheModernWorld-SystemII:TheSecond Eraof GreatExpansionofthe CapitalistWorld-Economy, 730s-1840 (San Diego, Academic Press, 1989),152-153.

12. See L. Gudmundson,"Peasant,Farmer,Proletarian:Class Formation n a Small-holder Coffee Economy, 1850-1950," HispanicAmericanHistoricalReview,69(2, 1989), 221-258; M. Samper,"Enfrentamiento Conciliaci6n:ComentariosaProp6sitode las Relaciones entre Productoresy Beneficiadoresde Cafe,"Revistade Historia,NumeroEspecial(1985), 207-212.13. S. Stein, Vassouras,A BrazilianCoffeeCounty,1850-1900: The Roleof PlanterandSlave n a PlantationSociety,2nd ed. (Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress,1985);W.Dean, Rio Claro:A BrazilianPlantationSystem,1820-1920(Stanford,StanfordUniversityPress, 1976);T. Holloway, Immigrants n the Land:Coffeeand Societyin Sdo Paulo, 1886-1934(ChapelHill:Universityof North CarolinaPress, 1980);V. Stolcke, CoffeePlanters,Workers, nd Wives:ClassConflictand 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 newforms of tenancythattheyhad recentlyadopted.Machadouses the articlesas evi-dence of particularorms of sharecropping, uttheyare also interesting s elite dis-courses,as planterssimultaneouslyryingto presentthemselves o each otherin aparticularwayand trying publicly) o resolveincreasinglyntractableproblemsastheirtenants eft the farmsand worked on publicworksprojects. A. Machado,ElCafe:De laAparceria l Capitalismo,Bogota,Puntade Lanza,19771179-199.)15. See L. Bergad,Coffeeand the Growthof AgrarianCapitalismn NineteenthCenturyPuertoRico(Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress,1982), 38.16. With the depression of the 1930s and the closure of the European market in WorldWarII,the United Statesand 14 producingcountriessignedthe InternationalCof-fee Agreementof 1940, settingexportquotasfor thevariouscountries.The agree-ment was the first of a series of international ontrol schemes thatstabilizedthemarket and facilitated a dramaticpost-war price increase. It also correspondedwith(indeedrequired) he formationof nationalcoffee-marketing oards,markingthe effective end of the free-trademodel of coffee marketing. omeof theseboardshad been formed earlier,duringthe depression,or, in Brazil, to administer hevalorization chemes.

17. M. Arango, Cafe e Industria, 1850-1930 (Bogota, Carlos Valencia Editores, 1977),



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379184.The analogy,whilesuggestive, s inexact.Coffee is subject o a grading ystem,at firstdevelopedby traders n consumingcountriesand in recent decadesdevel-oped by marketingboardsin producingcountriesas well. It has never been asso-ciated with the sort of politicallyand commerciallychargeddesignationof landsthatproducegrapes hat canbe processed nto wines with certainappellations,andwithinappellations,designationof grapes and the lands that produce them intogrand,premier,and lessercrus,nor can it be. That a discourseof qualitycangivetoa coffeeprocessora controlanalogous o that exercisedby,say,a winenegociant s,nonetheless,aninterestingpossibility.18. Stein, Vassouras, 3; Dean, Rio Claro, 1-23; C. Hall, El Cafe y el DesarrolloHist6rico-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:UniversidadCentral, 1969); W. Roseberry, CoffeeandCapitalism in the Venezuelan Andes (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1983),passim.19. Palacios, El Cafe en Colombia, 294.20. The classicaccountforRio is Stein, Vassouras.21. An excellentgeneral reatmentof landpolicyis in E. ViottidaCosta,TheBrazilianEmpire:Mythsand Histories Chicago,Universityof ChicagoPress,1985), 78-93.For treatmentsof the conflicts betweensquattersandgrantholdersn Rio and SaoPaulo,see Stein,Vassouras, 0-17; Dean,Rio Claro,11-20; Holloway,Immigrantson 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 History of Brazil,2nd ed, (New York, ColumbiaUniversityPress,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 dependedon descriptions n 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 elDesarrollo Hist6rico-Geogrdfico. See as well idem, Costa Rica: A GeographicalInterpretationin Historical Perspective (Boulder, Westview Press, 1985).39. L. Gudmundson, Costa Rica before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of theExport Boom (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1986).40. Hall, El Cafey el Desarrollo Hist6rico-Geogrdfico, 35-37.41. J. A. Salas Viquez, "La Btsqueda de Soluciones al Problema de la Escasez de



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380Tierraen la FronteraAgricola:Aproximaci6nal Estudio del ReformismoAgrarioen Costa Rica, 1880-1940." Revista de Historia,Nimero Especial (1985), 97-160.42. Hall,El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico,2-101.43. See as wellM.SamperKutschbach, LaEspecializaci6nMercantilCampesina n elNoroeste del Valle Central: 1850-1900. Elementos Microanaliticospara unModelo."RevistadeHistoriaNdmeroEspecial(1985), 49-98.44. M. Seligson, Peasants in Costa Rica (Madison, Universityof Wisconsin Press,1980), 8.45. Gudmundson,CostaRicabeforeCoffee,57.46. M. Seligson,Peasants n CostaRica;E. Fonseca, Costa Rica Colonial(San Jose,EDUCA, 1983);C.Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico.47. For the firstview,see Seligson,Peasants n CostaRica; or the second,see Hall, ElCafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico.48. Hall,El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico,5-87.49. L.Gudmundson,"Peasant,armer,proletarian."50. See the Introduction, ited in note 1, as well as Hall, El Cafey el DesarrolloHis-t6rico-Geogrdfico,7-49; G. Peters Solorzano,"La formaci6n territorialde lasgrandesfincas de cafe en la MesetaCentral:Estudiode la firmaTouron (1877-1955)," Revistade Historia(9-10, 1980), 81-167; V. H. Acufia Ortega,"Clasessocialesy conflictosocial en la economiacafetalera ostarricense: roductores on-tra beneficiadores:1932-1936." Revista de Historia(Ntmero especial, 1985),181-212.51. Gudmundson,CostaRicaBeforeCoffee,152.52. C. F. S. Cardoso,'The formationof the coffee estate in nineteenth-centuryCostaRica," n Land and Laborin LatinAmerica,ed. K. Duncan and I. Rutledge, Cam-bridge,CambridgeUniversityPress,1977), 194.53. Hall,El Cafey el DesarrolloHist6rico-Geogrdfico,7.54. Ibid.All the moreinteresting, hen,the famous muraldepictingCostaRican econ-omyandsocietyin San Jose'sNationalTheater.The romanticizedpictureof coffeeand banana

la falta de brazos tierra y trabajo en las economias cafetaleras del siglo xix en america latina

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