Labor Exploitation on Pre-1952 Haciendas in the Lower Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia

The Journai of Developing Areas 11 (Jan. 1977): 227-244 Labor Exploitation on Pre-1952 Haciendas in the Lower Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia STEPHEN M. SMITH In the latifundia-minifundia1 agrarian societies characterized by huge estates and tiny subsistence plots that predominate in much of Latin Amer- ica, the large majority of farmers are in the subsistence sector. A subgroup of these farmers is made up of the resident workers on the large farms (latifundos or haciendas). This institution somewhat resembles the Euro- pean manorial system with a landlord demesne, separate plots of land for the serfs, and labor obligations imposed on the serfs.2 This particular structure is most characteristic of the Andean and Central American highlands, with variations found throughout Latin America. Service has suggested the prevalence of three general types of agrarian institutions in Latin America, based on the differences in native cultures which the Spanish and Portu- guese colonists encountered. Outwardly, the economic, political, and reli- gious system* that existed in the highlands more closely resembled those of Spain than did the societies in the lowlands and plains areas. Thus, the Spanish colonists had their greatest success in establishing the feudal form of labor exploitation in these areas.3 The purpose of this paper is to examine Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Idaho; has worked in Bolivia and Chile. Funding for field research was provided by the Land Tenure Center/Bolivia, directed by Ronald J. Clark. The author gratefully acknowledges the indispensable field assistance of Ricardo Luj&n as well as the comments and sugges- tions of William C. Thiesenhusen, Don Kanel, Hem&n Zeballos H., Joseph Dorsey, Marion Brown, and the referees of the JDA. 1 Spanish terms will be italicized only when they first appear. 3 For a discussion of the European manorial system and its Latin American counter- part, see Cristobal Kay, "Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System," Journal of Peasant Studies 2 (October 1974): 69-98. 3 Elman R. Service, "Indian-European Relations in Colonial Latin America," American Anthropologist 57 (1955): 411-25. 238 Stephen 11. Smith this classic hacienda form of labor exploitation in an area where previous study has been limited. The system to be examined is that which existed in the Lower Cochabamba Valley in Bolivia before the revolution and agrarian reform of 1952-53.4 While latifundismo was essentially eliminated in Bolvia some 25 years ago, the system is still firmly entrenched in much of Latin America,6 and has even gained ground in recent years at the expense of the peasants.6 Those living under the system obtain access to land, consisting merely of usufruct rights, only by assuming a series of labor obligations on the hacienda. The obligations are so heavy that the peasant family perpetually lives on the margin of bare subsistence. These people are among those receiving the lowest average remuneration, including payments in land, of any significant sector of Latin American society.7 According to Feder, the latifundio system "seems to represent the most important single obstacle 4 There are very few studies of the overall agrarian system, either before or after the agrarian reform, and of the prereform hacienda system in the Cochabamba Valley. This lack of data exists in spite of the preeminent role of the Cochabamba Valley peasants in the 1952-53 agrarian reform. Dandier laments this fact in his important study of the origins of the peasant movement in Cochabamba. He points out that those studies which do exist for the region either emphasize certain size distinctions of the haciendas or different tenancy forms, without giving examples or descriptions of specific haciendas, and/or consider only one or two scattered cases. See Jorge Dandier H., El Sindicalismo Campesino en Bolivia (Mexico, D.F.: Institute Indigenista Interamericano, 1969), p. 40. As examples of the former type of study see: George McCutchen McBride, Agrarian Indian Communities of Highland Bolivia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921); Octavio Salamanca, El Socialisms en Bolivia (Cochabamba, Bolivia: Imprenta Rejas, 1931); and David Weeks, "Land Tenure in Bolivia," Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 23 (1947): 321-36. Examples of the scattered case study type are: Carlos Camacho Saa, "Minifundia, Productivity, and Land Reform in Cochabamba" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1966); Evelyn Kiatipoff Clark, "Agrarian Reform and Developmental Change in Parotani, Bolivia" (Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, 1970); Olen E. Leonard, "Canton Chullpas: A Socioeconomic Study of the Cochabamba Valley of Bolivia," Foreign Agricultural Economics Report 27 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. De- partment of Agriculture, 1948); Joseph P. Dorsey, "A Case Study of the Lower Cocha- bamba Valley: Ex-Hacienda"! Parotani and Carrtmarra," T and Tenure Center Research Paper 64 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, June 1975); and also Dorsey s A Case Study of Ex-Hacienda Toralapa in the Tiraque Region of the Upper Cochabamba Val- ley," Land Tenure Center Research Paper 65 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, June 1975). 5 Ernest Feder, The Rape of the Peasantry (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1971), p. ix; and Peter Dorner and Don Kanel, 'The Economic Case for Land Reform" in Land Reform in Latin America, ed. Peter Domer, Land Economics Monographs 3 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1971), p. 43. 6 An example of the system's gaining at the expense of the peasants is the increasing number of landless families. This is a consequence of workers leaving to escape onerous living conditions and to look for greater freedom and opportunity in the cities, plus workers being forced out of their jobs or having land rights taken away as landowners increasingly mechanize and convert from traditional in-kind payment to money wages in order to simplify labor problems and gain greater production control over their land. Not only are rural employment and poverty aggravated through this process, but much of Latin America's increasing urban unemployment, poverty, and spreading slum problems have their source in the agrarian structures. However, consideration of these issues is beyond the scope of this paper. 7 Ernest Feder, "La Mano de Obra Agricola en el Latifundismo," app. 5, Monografias sobre algunos aspectos de la Tenencia de la Tierra y el Desarrollo Rural en America Latina (Washington, D.C.: Comite Inter-Americano de Desarrollo Agricola [CIDA], 1970), p. 24. Labor Exploitation oil Pre-1952 Haciendas in Cochabamba, Bolivia 229 to rapid economic, social and political development" in Latin America today.8 However, the statistics which verify the extent and degree of this con- tinuing exploitation do not adequately reflect the economic, social, and psychological squalor under which the population tied to the large haciendas lives.9 Such data does, nevertheless, provide an aggregate indication of the skewed agricultural resource distribution in Latin America, and of the resulting control over economic, social, and political opportunities of the mass of rural residents by the landlords. But Feder concludes that complete comprehension of the totality of this control can only come from detailed, farm-level investigations of the employer-worker relationships, and the institutions which govern these relationships.10 Barraclough concurs with this assessment. He believes that those who study agrarian reform are in almost complete agreement that the relationships of greatest importance between agrarian reform and development cannot be solely determined by means of economic and socioeconomic indices. However, he points out that when these specialists are pressed to elaborate on those unquantifiable relationships, they are able to answer with only general references to individual freedom and dignity.11 The major purpose of this paper is to present a detailed farm-level investigation of hacienda labor exploitation, and thereby to provide the basis for understanding the landlords' "totality of control," and to give greater substance to the "individual freedom and dignity" arguments for 8 Feder, Rape of the Peasantry, p. ix. For a similar interpretation, see Jacques Lambert, Latin America, Social Structure and Political Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 9 For example, in the mid-1960s after the extensive reforms in Mexico, Bolivia and Cuba, and midway through the decade when the United States and the Alliance for Progress were advocating agrarian reform, 60 to 65 percent of the land in Latin America was still in large estates. In 18 Latin American countries, 7.6 percent of the farms occupied 84 percent of the land. See: Lambert, Latin America, Social Structure, p. 62; Eric R. Wolf and Edward C. Hansen, The Human Condition in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 148, citing data from the Statistical Abstract of Latin America 1967 (Los Angeles: University of California, Latin American Center, 1968), pp. 190-91; and Magnus Morner, "Tenant Labour in Andean South America Since the Eighteenth Century" (Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, Central Department of Oriental Literature, 1970), p. 1. Also in the mid-1960s, in the seven CIDA countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colom- bia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru) the large latifundia had at their service, directly or indirectly, 37 percent of the contracted agricultural work force. Considering the minifundia residents who depend on the latifundia for work, the latifundos controlled fully 45 percent of those contracted to work in agricultural pursuits. According to Feder ("La Mano de Obra Agricola," p. 9) if the medium-size, but still larger-than-family farms are included, this proportion rises to 76 percent. Since the mid-1960s, only two significant changes in this agrarian structure have occurred—in Peru and Chile. Thus, it can still be said that semifeudal conditions exist or predominate in the majority of Latin American countries, and that the social structure shaped by the latifundio system embraces a large part of the population, and in some places the majority.

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