2 - The Rise of Fedecafé Hegemony in Viejo Caldas

Summary

This chapter traces the origins of Fedecafé’s hegemonic labor regime in Viejo Caldas. It begins by showing how Colombian coffee producers adapted to a peripheral niche of the world coffee market during the era of British hegemony, with semi-marketized small farmers better able to cope with the volatility of prices in the coffee market than large-scale planters that used various proletarianized labor systems. It then shows how Fedecafé emerged as a parastatal development organization charged with consolidating a profitable export sector based upon smallholding farmers. In doing so, it shows how Fedecafé instituted a regulatory social compact (Pacto Cafetero) that protected farmers from the volatility of the market and thus facilitated their conversion into fully proletarianized (market-dependent) farmers. It ends with a discussion of whether the Pacto Cafetero was effective in generating a hegemonic labor regime in Viejo Caldas into the postwar decades.