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Agriculture and the Upper Plata: The Tobacco Trade, 1780–1865

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Thomas L. Whigham
Thomas L. Whigham
Affiliation:
Thomas L. Whigham is a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Riverside.
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Abstract

The disintegration of the tobacco trade in the Upper Plata of the 1800s provides a striking example of economic progress hindered by political conflict—a common occurrence in Latin American history. The exportation of tobacco from this interior region created a focus for a coherent and relatively successful commercial infrastructure during the late colonial era. The post-independence regimes could not, however, create the stability necessary for the growth and maintenance of the tobacco trade. In this article, Dr. Whigham analyzes the balance between economic interests and political constraints in the Upper Plata between 1780 and 1865, and demonstrates how these factors interacted to disrupt the potential for a sizable commerce in tobacco.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 59 , Special Issue 4: Business in Latin America , Winter 1985 , pp. 563 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1985

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References

1 See, for example, Brown, Jonathan, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina 1776–1860 (Cambridge, England, 1979).Google Scholar

2 Throughout this article, “Plata” is used to refer to those areas of the eastern Southern Cone nations dominated by the Paraná, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Plate Rivers.

3 Cardozo, Efraím, El Paraguay colonial: las raíces de la nacionalidad (Buenos Aires, 1959), 103—4.Google Scholar Governor Jaime San Just brought Brazilian specialists to Paraguay in the 1750s in an attempt to stimulate tobacco production. One of these men was the father of the future dictator José Gaspar de Francia. Zinny, Antonio, Historia de los gobernantes del Paraguay, 1535–1887 (Buenos Aires, 1887), 179–80.Google Scholar

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6 The terms buena, regular, media, and so on, did not come into official use until the early national era. During colonial times they were grouped together as hoja—large-leafed tobacco. Bourgade, Paraguay, 185–87. See also “Reconocimiento y clasificación del tabaco paraguayo,” Asunción, 17 June 1865, in Arehivo Nacional de Asunción, Sección Histórica [hereafter cited as ANA-SH], vol. 334.

7 Bourgade assigned the following nicotine levels; pito, 2.5 percent; buena, 4 percent; doble, 5 percent; and para, 6 or 7 percent. Bourgade, Paraguay, 185–87. Nicotine levels for Cuban tobacco are given in Ortíz, Fernando, Contrapunto cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Caracas, 1978), 97–100.Google Scholar

8 The landholding system of the Upper Plata in the late colonial era consisted of chacras (small to medium-sized farms), arrendamientos (leaseholds), estancias (ranches), and community-owned Indian holdings. This unique blend of land tenure has yet to be adequately investigated.

9 Wickam, Cam Harlan, “Venezuela's Royal Tobacco Monopoly, 1779–1810: An Economic Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1975), 43–52Google Scholar; Bierck, Harold A., “Tobacco Marketing in Venezuela, 1789–1799: An Aspect of Spanish Mercantilistic Revisionism,” Business History Review 39 (Winter 1965): 489–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fallas, Marco Antonio, La factoriá de tabacos de Costa Rica (San José, 1972), 57–63.Google Scholar

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14 Ibid.; Ardañaz, Daisy Ripodas, Francisco de Paula Sanz. Viaje por el virreinato del Río de la Plata. El camino de tabaco (Buenos Aires, 1977), 5–16, 30–46Google Scholar; Divito, Juan Carlos Arías, “Establecimiento de la Renta de Tabaco y naipes en el virreinato del Río de la Plata, 1778–1781,” Historiografía Rioplatense 1 (1978): 15–26Google Scholar; Divito, Juan Carlos Arías, “Dificultades para establecer la Renta de tabaco en Paraguay,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 33 (1976): 1–17.Google Scholar

15 Paula Sanz was, in fact, a favorite protégé of Gálvez, and in Buenos Aires rumor had it that he was an illegitimate son of the minister. Lynch, John, Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782–1810: The Intendant System in the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata (London, 1958), 298.Google Scholar

16 Decree of Director General Francisco de Paula Sanz, Asunción, 8 May 1779, ANA-SH, vol. 143; the Upper Plata was not alone in such prohibitions. In New Granada, contraband sales were discouraged by restricting the cultivation of tobacco to four small and relatively compact areas that were easy to police. Harrison, John P., “The Evolution of the Colombian Tobacco Trade, to 1875,” Hispanic American Historical Review 32 (May 1952): 165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18 Governor-Intendant Pedro Melo de Portugal to Minister of the Indies José de Gálvez, Asunción, 13 June 1779, ANA-SH, vol. 144; Moreno, Estudio, 1: 61–65. Brazil exported torcido negro to Africa, where it was a barter item in the slave trade. Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, vol. 1: The Structure of Everyday Life, the Limits of the Possible (New York, 1981), 265.Google Scholar

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20 The powers given Renta officials disturbed Governor-Intendant Melo de Portugal. Melo de Portugal to Viceroy Vértiz, Asunción, 13 July 1779, ANA-SH, vol. 144.

21 Aguirre, Juan Francisco de, “Diario del capitán de Fragata …,” Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional (Buenos Aires) 18 (1949): 372–77.Google Scholar

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23 “Estado que manifiesta los efectos y caudales perteneciente a la Real Renta de tabacos …,” Antonio Pablo Morín, Buenos Aires, 24 April 1795, Gondra Manuscript Collection, doc. 16d.

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26 Juan José González to Governor-Intendant Lázaro de Ribera, Asunción, 9 March 1798, ANA-SH, vol. 171.

27 The patrones of the river vessels often misrepresented the number of crew, thus augmenting the ration of tobacco for illegal sale. See letters of 13 Aug. 1779, 25 April and 24 May 1780 in AGPC-DG, libros 21 (1779) and 22 (1780).

28 Maeder, Historia económica de Corrientes, 357.

29 AGPC-DG, libros 31 (1791) and 32 (1792–93). These volumes contain a massive compendium on smuggled tobacco in Corrientes.

30 At only one guardpost near Corrientes, 1,539 arrobas were confiscated in 1809 and another 2,144 a year later. Yet all reports indicate that these seizures were slight when compared with the amount of tobacco that slipped through. AGPC-DG, libro 42 (1809). Cooney argues that the clandestine trade equaled, if it did not exceed, that of the Renta.

31 “Expendiente sobre el excesivo número de los matriculados,” Asunción, 1803, ANA-NE, vol. 3399.

32 Disposition of José Fernández Blanco, Corrientes, 29 May 1801, AGPC-DG, libro 36 (1800–1802); Cooney, “Burocracía, cosechadores, y defensa.”

33 Azara, Félix de, Viajes inéditos (Buenos Aires, 1873), 45.Google Scholar

34 Dispatch of 7 Oct. 1789, Archive General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, room IX, cabinet 3, shelf 4, legajo 1 [hereafter cited as AGN IX.3.4.1].

35 “Informe sobre las factorías y cultivo de tabaco en el Paraguay,” and “Informe sobre los tabacos del Paraguay que surten a la real hacienda en el virreinato de Buenos Aires,” both in Azara, Memoria, 129–32, 154–59.

36 Decree of Congress, Asunción, 22 June 1811, ANA-SH, vol. 214. Regarding the Paraguayan independence movement, see Vittone, Luis, El Paraguay en la lucha por su independencia (Asunción, 1960), passim.Google Scholar

37 Not all of the new Spanish-American regimes immediately abolished the estanco. In Mexico, where the institution endured until the mid-1840s, returns were still very large at the time of independence and only gradually declined thereafter. In Colombia the tobacco monopoly became an important symbolic issue for those favoring free trade, and it was not terminated until 1850. In Cuba and the Philippines, both of which remained under Spanish colonial rule, we see widely divergent developments. In the former, the estanco died an early death in 1817; in the latter, the institution lingered until 1880. Priestly, José de Gálvez, 154; Sierra, Luis F., El tabaco en la economía colombiana del siglo XIX (Mosquera, 1971), 87–99Google Scholar; Rivero Muniz, Tabaco, 2. 229–40; de Jesús, Tobacco Monopoly, 178–96.

38 “Tratado de amistad, unión y límites entre el Paraguay y Buenos Aires,” Asunción, 12 Oct. 1811, in Peña, Benjamín Vargas, Paraguay-Argentina: Correspondencia diplomática, 1810–1840 (Buenos Aires, 1945), 63–66.Google Scholar

39 For relations between Paraguay and Buenos Aires in this era see Chaves, Julio César, Historia de las relaciones entre Buenos Aires y el Paraguay, 1810–1813 (Buenos Aires, 1959)Google Scholar, passim. For the tobacco “war” between Asunción and Buenos Aires see Martinez, Marcela González de, “El tabaco en la guerra económica contra Paraguay y Sante Fe,” Tercer Congreso de Historia Argentina y Regional (Buenos Aires, 1977), 4: 329–36.Google Scholar

40 “Guías de Aduana … 1819,” AGN X.37.1.18.

41 Burgin, Miron, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, 1820–1852 (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 For the trans-Misiones commerce, see “Correspondencia del pueblo de Ytapúa” (1820s–1830s) in ANA-SH, vols. 377–78. Also see Williams, John Hoyt, “Paraguayan Isolation under Dr. Francia: A Reevaluation,” Hispanic American Historical Review 52 (Feb. 1972): 109–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 El Semanario (Asunción), 20 Aug. 1853 claimed a 45,000 arroba-per-year export figure for the 1830s. Demersay, Alfred, Du tabac au Paraguay (Paris, 1851), 24–27Google Scholar, makes the same claim. The source for both appears to be Aimé Bonpland, who depended largely on guesswork to arrive at this figure. Robertson, J. P. and Robertson, W. P., Letters on Paraguay (London, 1838–1839), 3: 216–19Google Scholar, suggests 40,000 arrobas for the year 1816. Although a reasonable guess, it overestimated the total export by nearly 7,000 arrobas. Perhaps the most extreme figure was given by the Brazilian diplomat Antônio Manoel Correia de Câmara after a brief visit to Paraguay in 1829. He asserted that the republic could within two years of being “opened” to foreign trade produce 800,000 arrobas of unprocessed tobacco per year and 300,000 arrobas of cigars. Antônio Manoel Correia de Câmara, “Calculo Aproximado dos Effeitos e Producçōes do Paraguai,” Informe of 1 May 1820. Esteriores, Ministerio das Relaçōes, Anais do Itamarati (Rio de Janiero, 1938), 4: 83–85.Google Scholar

44 See Inventories of Portuguese Smugglers, Asunción, May 1819, ANA Sección Propiedades y Testamentos, vol. 931.

45 Five smugglers had been executed the previous summer. Williams, “Paraguayan Isolation,” 108–1870 (Austin, 1979), 92.

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51 Treaty of 31 July 1841, Asunción, ANA-SH, vol. 245; and “Decreto sobre impuestos a la importatión de tabaco, yerba y aguardiente del Paraguay,” Governor Pedro Ferré, Corrientes, 23 July 1841, El Nacional Correntino (Corrientes), 23 Aug. 1841.

52 Report of George J. R. Gordon to Lord Aberdeen on his visit to Paraguay, 1842. Public Records Office (London), Foreign Office [hereafter cited as PRO-FO], 13/202.

53 Secretary of State James Buchanan to Chargé d'Affaires William A. Harris, Washington, 30 March 1846, in Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Inter-American Affairs, ed. Manning, William R. (Washington, D.C., 1932), 1: 29–32.Google Scholar

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55 Rengger, J. R. and Longchamp, M., The Reign of Doctor Joseph Gaspard Roderick de Francia in Paraguay (London, 1827), 199Google Scholar; and “Manufacture of Tobacco in Paraguay,” Hunt's Merchants Magazine 20 (1849): 353–54.

56 Juan Andrés Gelly to J. A. Gelly y Obes, Asunción, 5 Aug. 1845, in AGN, Documentos de la Biblioteca Nacional [hereafter cited as AGN-DBN], 15060, leg. 756.

57 Lynch, John, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1820–1852 (Oxford, 1981), 149–50.Google Scholar See also Donghi, Tulio Halperin, Guerra y finanzas en los origenes del estado argentino, 1791–1850 (Buenos Aires, 1982), 237–12.Google Scholar

58 “Resumen de exportatión de la República del año de 1845,” ANA-SH, vol. 274.

59 “Frutos extraídos de Pilar,” 20 March 1847 to 30 Sept. 1848, ANA-NE, vol. 866.

60 His first experience of this kind occurred in Jan. 1846 when a large convoy of merchant vessels escorted by the French steamer Fulton dropped anchor at Asunción. As trade began, so did diplomatic soundings, but despite the flattering attentions of European envoys, López remained aloof, arguing that general commercial agreements were impossible without prior recognition of Paraguayan independence. See Hopkins, Edward A., “The Republic of Paraguay since the Death of the Dictator Francia,” The American Review (Sept. 1847), 255–56.Google Scholar

61 Washburn, Charles A., The History of Paraguay (Boston, 1871), 1: 362.Google Scholar

62 Ibid. See also La Libre Navegación de los Rios (Corrientes), 8 July 1853.

63 Hopkins was allowed to transport some 800 arrobas of tobacco out of the country when he departed. Washburn, History of Paraguay, 1:368.

64 Despouy could not interest López in a potential replay of the Hopkins fiasco. Juan Andrés Gelly to J. A. Gelly y Obes, Rio Grande, 17 Aug. 1848, AGN-DBN 15086, leg. 756. See also Gelly, Juan Andrés, El Paraguay: lo que fué, los que es y lo que será (Paris, 1926), 137–38.Google Scholar

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66 Decree of Carlos Antonio López, Asunción, 21 Feb. 1856, ANA-SH, vol. 319. In this respect, the López government arrogated to itself some of the functions of the old estanco.

67 Decree of Carlos Antonio López, Asunción, 16 Jan. 1855, ANA-SH, vol. 314.

68 El Semanario, 3 May 1856.

69 Demersay, Du tabac, 25–27.

70 “A Report of the Trade of Paraguay for the year 1857,” Consul Charles Henderson, Asunción, 20 Jan. 1858, PRO-FO 59/19.

71 “A Report of the Trade of Paraguay for the year 1858,” Consul Charles Hendersen, Asunción, 20 Jan. 1859, PRO-FO, 59/20.

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74 Ibid., no. 23.

75 Consul Ludovico Tenré to Foreign Minister José Berges, Paris, 24 Aug. 1863, ANA-CRB 1–29, 36, 54, no. 1. Notes of Alfredo Du Graty, Brussels, 7 Sept. 1863, ANA-CRB 1–29, 31, 9, nos. 1–2; and John and Alfred Blyth to Minister of War Venancio López, London, 25 March 1864, ANA-CRB 1–30, 2, 18, no. 1.

76 Decree of Carlos Antonio López, Asunción, 6 March 1858, ANA-SH, vol. 324. Another decree, specific to the port of Itapúa (now Encarnación), reinforced the classification system. Disposition of Treasury Minister Mariano González, Asunción, 4 Aug. 1862, ANA-SH, vol. 331.

77 Du Graty, La República del Paraguay, 347.

78 “Razón de los frutos estraídos, año 1855,” El Comercio (Corrientes), 6 Jan. 1856.

79 Regarding colonization efforts in Corrientes, see Du Graty, Alfred Marbais, La Confédération Argentine (Paris, 1858), 278–90Google Scholar; and Brougnes, Augusto, La verdad sobre la colonia San Juan. Provincia de Corrientes (Paraná, 1860).Google Scholar

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81 La Libertad (Corrientes), 14 Aug. 1862.

82 El Progreso (Corrientes), 13 Dec. 1863; 17 Jan. 1864. Argentine recognition of Paraguayan independence in 1852 brought with it a reclassification of Paraguayan tobacco as foreign rather than domestic produce. For an analysis of Correntino tobacco in subsequent years, see Sonzogni, Crístina M., “Evolución de la actividad tabacalera en Corrientes y en Misiones (1870–1940),” Cuadernos de Historia Regional 8(1983): passim.Google Scholar

83 El Semanario, 8 July 1865.

84 Several Bolivian merchants arrived in Asunción in 1867 after having crossed the Altiplano to the Mato Grosso on their way to Paraguay. Tobacco was one of the several products they wished to obtain. El Semanario, 24 Aug. 1867.

85 In this the Paraguayans were relatively successful. Using a much reduced labor force, they planted many thousands of rows of manioc, maize, and beans in the interior between 1865 and the end of the war. Agricultural censuses produced during this period demonstrated an impressive output. de Kostianovsky, Olinda Massare, El vicepresidente Domingo Francisco Sánchez (Asunción, 1972), 85–100, 193–96Google Scholar; and Bertoni, Moises S., “La agricultura en el Paraguay antes de la guerra de 1864–1870. Datos instructivos,” Cuadernos Republicanos 18 (1981): 117–41.Google Scholar