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Coffee and Rural Proletarianization: A Comment on Bergad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Tom Brass
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Extract

In a recent article in this journal, Dr Bergad argues that the production of coffee for the export economy in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico was accompanied by the emergence of a rural proletariat, and suggests that the latter process in fact predated the development of a sugar plantation economy in the twentieth century, with which capitalist free wage labour is commonly associated. This characterization of the coffee hacienda workforce raises definitional problems on which I would like to comment. This characterization of the coffee hacienda workforce raises definitional problems on which I would like to comment. Illustrating with examples from coffee-producing areas in Latin America and sugar-producing areas in the Caribbean, I shall argue that the increased demand for labour-power arising from the expansion of an export-oriented yet labour-intensive capitalist agriculture in a location where labour is scarce is met not by free wage labour but rather by recourse to unfree labour. In these circumstances, competition for labour-power results paradoxically in the attempt by capitalists to restrict the free movement of labour and the consequent formation of a free labour market.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 1984 , pp. 143 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Laird, W. Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization in Puerto Rico, 1840–1898’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 15, part 1 (05 1983), pp. 83–100.Google Scholar

2 Hence the observation that ‘…a large sector of the labor force utilized by the Puerto Rican planters of the late nineteenth century was not encumbered by traditional institutions limiting mobility, but rather was highly mobile, a clear pre-requisite to the development of a modern labor force… All of the internal factors of production, land, labor, and capital, responded to changes in market conditions. Above all, labor organization in highland regions shifted as coffee spread.’ Bergad, op. cit., pp. 98, 100.

3 To argue that a workforce is ‘free’ because it has been separated from means of production – principally land – would necessitate the inclusion of chattel slaves within this category.

4 ‘People stop at nothing to take labourers away from a neighbour.’ Malcom Deas, ‘A Colombian coffee estate: Santa Bérbara, Cundinamarca, 1870–1912’, in Duncan, K., Rutledge, I. and Harding, C. (eds.), Land and Labour in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 281.Google Scholar

5 Marcos, Palacios, Coffee in Colombia 1850–1970 (Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 97, 145, 151.Google Scholar

6 Warren, Dean, Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System 1820–1920 (Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 83–4.Google Scholar

7 Cf., Robin Shoemaker, The Peasants of El Dorado: Conflict and Contradiction in a Peruvian Frontier Settlement (Cornell University Press, 1981);Google ScholarTom, Brass, ‘Class Formation and Class Struggle in La Convención, Peru’, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 7, no. 4 (07 1980), pp. 427–57, and ‘Agrarian Reform and the Struggle for Labour-power’, Journal of Development Studies, vol. 19, no. 3 (04 1983), pp. 368–89.Google Scholar

8 Deas, loc. cit.

9 Palacios, op. cit., p. 151.

10 Dean, op. cit., p. 123. For very much the same reasons, sugar planters in Guyana imported indentured workers from India following the first successful strike by African free labour in 1841. It was because the latter began to act as a proletariat that planters turned once more to unfree labour. Cf., Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881–1905 (London, Heinemann, 1981).Google Scholar

11 See Brass, ‘Class Formation and Class Struggle’, p. 438; and Shoemaker, op. cit., pp. 95, 123–4.

12 Deas, op. cit., pp. 280–81.

13 Palacios, op. cit., p. 98.

14 As Dean points out, these powers stimulated proprietorial attitudes towards indentured workers similar to those expressed by coffee planters towards their slaves. One planter, to whom a group of indentured workers had been transferred, informed them that ‘I bought you from Senator Vergueiro; you belong to me’. The fact that planters counted the debts incurred by indentured labourers as collateral for the purpose of mortgage agreements further testifies the extent to which indentured workers continued to be regarded as chattel slaves. Cf. Dean, op. cit., pp. 94–6, 114.

15 Brass, , ‘Agrarian Reform and the Struggle for Labour-power’, pp. 383 ff.;Google Scholar and Shoemaker, op. cit., pp. 95–6.

16 Cf., Peter L. Eisenberg, ‘The consequences of modernization for Brazil's sugar plantations in the nineteenth century’, in Duncan, , Rutledge, and Harding, (eds.), op. cit., pp. 345–67.Google Scholar

17 Between 1811 and 1870 Cuba imported 550,000 slaves compared with only 55,000 imported into Puerto Rico. Cf., Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, The Univeriity of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 234.Google Scholar The high ratio of males to females, the resultant low level of reproduction and the high mortality rate meant that the slave population could only be renewed by continuous outside supplies. A recent study of Puerto Rican slavery just before abolition in 1873 concludes that due to this failure to reproduce itself, the slave population on the island would have ceased to exist by 1900. See James, W. Wessman, ‘The Demographic Structure of Slavery in Puerto Rico: Some Aspects of Agrarian Capitalism in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12, no. 2 (11 1980), pp. 271–89.Google Scholar With regard to the import on indentured labour into the British West Indies, British Guiana received a total of 238,000, Trinidad 145,000 and Jamaica 21,500 in the period from 1838 until 1917. Cf., Eric Williams, From Colombus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492–1969 (London, Andre Deutsch, 1970), p. 348,Google Scholar and Hugh, Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830–1920 (Oxford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

18 For similar competition between sugar and coffee planters in Cuba during the mid-1830s and the mid-1840s, see David, Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 242;Google Scholar and Manuel, Moreno Fraginals, The Sugarmill: The Socioeconomic Complex of Sugar in Cuba 1760–1860 (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 133.Google Scholar

19 For the clearest description of the ways in which anti-vagrancy laws were used by planters to impede migration by their workforce in search of better-paid work elsewhere and/or withholding labour in order to obtain payment, see Willemina, Kloosterboer, Involuntary Labour Since the Abolition of Slavery (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1960).Google Scholar She observes that ‘the regulations against “vagrancy”…were a common feature in most colonies etc., in the immediate post-abolition period… when strictly applied such regulations amounted to nothing less than the imposition of widespread compulsory labour’ (Kloosterboer, op. cit., p. 198). In the post-emancipation Southern States of America, where the labour supply declined to between one-third and one-quarter of antebellum levels, cotton planters introduced the Black Codes, the object of this anti-vagrancy legislation being ‘protection from competition of other employers through the passage of laws that restricted the mobility of the Negro… A major goal of these Acts was to restrict black mobility and to weaken the impact of competition in the labor market’. Cf., Roger L. Ransom and Richard, Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The economic consequences of emancipation (Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 66, 232.Google Scholar

20 Cf., Sidney W. Mintz, ‘The So-Called World System: Local Initiative and Local Response’, Dialectical Anthopology, vol. 2, no.4 (11 1977), p. 262. In explaining the reasons for the promulgation of the 1849 anti-vagrancy legislation, Mintz overemphasizes external imperatives (in the form of foreign markets and capital) at the expense of internal exigencies (in the form of competing domestic sugar and coffee interests).Google Scholar

21 Bergad, , ‘Toward Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares: Coffee, Social Stratification, and Class Conflicts, 1828–1868’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 60, no. 4 (11 1980), p. 635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 See Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, pp. 90–1; and ‘Towards Puerto Rico's Grito de lares’, pp. 634–5. Mintz reports that ‘slaves and landless freemen alike could not leave the plantation without permission’. Cf., Sidney W. Mintz, ‘Labor and Sugar in Puerto Rico and in Jamaica, 1800–1850’, in Laura, Foner and Eugene, D.Genovese (eds.), Slavery in the New World (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 175.Google Scholar

23 Coffee and Rural Proletarianization, pp. 93–6.

24 Bergad, op. cit., p. 91.

25 Bergad, op. cit., p. 94.

26 For the differential payments see Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, p. 94, and ‘Toward Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares’, p. 634. Since he is the one who sets the amount of labour-service to be performed by a debtor cancelling a cash debt, the creditor-landowner thereby possesses the power to fix the ‘wage’ rate at which the debt is paid off well below the prevailing free market rate. Indebtedness thus permits a landowner to undercut free-market wage levels, a situation which challenges Bergad's view that ‘salaries continued to be closely tied to market forces rather than any arbitrary decision made by planters’. Cf. ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, p. 98.

27 Cf., Angel G. Quintero Rivera, ‘Background to the Emergence of Imperialist Capitalism in Puerto Rico’, in Adalberto, López and James, Petras (eds.) Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans: Studies in History and Society (New York, Halsted Press, 1974), pp. 87–117.Google Scholar

28 See, for example, Keith, R. Aufhauser, ‘Slavery and Scientific Management’ Journal of Economic History, vol. 33, no. 4 (12 1973), pp. 811–24;Google ScholarPete, Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana, Illinois, 1972);Google ScholarJan, Breman, Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujerat, India (University of California, Los Angeles, 1974);Google Scholar and Philip, Corrigan, ‘Feudal Relics or Capitalist Monuments? Notes on the Sociology of Unfree Labour’, Sociology, vol. 11 (1977), pp. 435–63.Google Scholar