Abstract
Since 1945 Latin America’s rural economy and society have been drastically transformed both from outside by the increasing integration of agriculture into the global agro-industrial food regime and from within by state policies ranging from agrarian reform to liberalisation. By the 1990s the once dominant hacienda or large landed estate system had largely vanished. Instead modern capitalist farms and agro-industrial complexes, many of which are linked to or owned by transnational corporations, hold sway over the Latin American countryside. The resulting transformation of agrarian social and technical relations of production has been profound. In the 1960s and 1970s debate raged over whether to characterise the hacienda or latifundio (large landed estate) as feudal or capitalist (Kay, 1977a); current debate is whether the peasantry will survive as a distinct type of household-farm-economy.
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Notes
Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, the four largest agricultural economies in Latin America, contributed 37.5, 17.7, 10.0 and 9.9 per cent respectively to Latin America’s agricultural GDP and collectively they accounted for 75.1 per cent of GDP in 1991 (ECLAC, 1993, p. 187).
2. For useful analyses of the impact of the debt crisis and structural adjustment programmes on Latin America’s agriculture see the various articles in CEPAL Review, No. 33, 1987; Twomey (1989) and Trejos (1992).
3. Brazil’s soybeans output soared 22 per cent a year and increased 18-fold during 1969–1984 (IDB, 1986, p. 73).
As a traditional mineral exporter, Chile’s agricultural exports started from a very low base contributing only 3.2 per cent to total export earnings in 1970. The removal of disincentives and the adoption of agricultural export promotion policies increased agriculture’s share to 17.9 per cent in 1991 (ECLAC, 1993, p. 81).
Under the initiative of the Alliance for Progress the most comprehensive studies on Latin America’s agrarian structure were undertaken during the first half of the 1960s by the Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development (CIDA, in Spanish) which was set up by the Organisation of American States and other international agencies. Voluminous reports on nine countries were written, but only seven were published: Argentina (1965), Brazil (1966), Colombia (1966), Chile (1966), Ecuador (1965), Guatemala (1965) and Peru (1966). Furthermore, a series of accompanying monographs on various aspects of land tenure and rural labour were also published — becoming known as ‘the CIDA Studies’ — and remain the most comprehensive collective research effort into the region’s agrarian structure yet undertaken. These CIDA Studies had a major influence in shaping a certain view of the Latin American agrarian question as well as on policy, especially regarding the design of agrarian reform policies. An excellent summary of these reports was edited by Solon Barraclough (1973) who together with Domike also published a seminal article (1966).
Some of these categories are overlapping due to the multiple occupations of peasants but the data do give a rough overview of the rural labour structure. These data refer to the situation in the 1950s or early 1960s. By the early 1970s a break down of Latin America’s farm population shows that an estimated 37 per cent were wage labourers, 33 per cent smallholders, 28 per cent medium-sized farmers and 2 per cent large landowners. The extreme unequal income distribution is revealed by the fact that wage labourers and smallholders had only a subsistence income, receiving 35 per cent of total agricultural income while forming 70 per cent of the farm population. Medium-sized farmers accounted for 43 per cent and large landowners 22 per cent of total farm income (López, 1982, p. 27).
8. In Brazil, with the return to civilian government in the mid-1980s, hopes that an agrarian reform would be carried out were very high but were soon crushed by strong opposition from landlords. However, the issue is unlikely to disappear given the demand from impoverished peasants and landless rural workers for land redistribution (de Souza Leite, 1994).
These data should be regarded as indicating orders of magnitude as estimates vary between authors. Also some of the data have not been updated for lack of more recent information or otherwise, see Deere (1985, p. 1039); CEPAL/FAO (1986, p. 22); IDB (1986, p. 130); Ghai et al (1988, pp. 10, 14); Thiesenhusen (1989), Wilkie (1990, 52 ff.); Cardoso and Helwege (1992, p. 261); and Dorner (1992, p. 34).
10. For example, in Guatemala the CIA-supported overthrow of Arbenz in 1954 reversed the agrarian reform which resulted in the expropriation of about one-fifth of the country’s arable land and benefited almost a quarter of the peasantry (Brocket, 1988, p. 100).
11. The term ‘entrepreneurial agriculture’ gained prominence with the publication of the influential book by CEPAL (1982) written by Schejtman. Throughout this chapter I use this term synonymously with ‘capitalist farm sector’.
12. This rent income can be either (a) direct or explicit rent income through rents in kind or money obtained from sharecroppers or other tenancy arrangements as well as labour-rents from labour-service tenants (corvée labour) or (b) indirect or implicit rent income (which can also be characterised as a form of surplus value extraction and appropriation) which is obtained through the underpayment of labour from tenants and their household members who have to work for the landlord in return for a ‘small wage’ or ‘reduced wage’. This partial wage is significantly below the average wage rate of rural workers. In return landlords provide these tenant-labourers with housing and a garden plot, and sometimes also access to an additional piece of land and/or pastures. Thus these type of workers are permanently resident on the estate through their attachment to housing and access to land within it. For a discussion of these concepts and issues, see Kay (1974; 1977b).
13. According to Barraclough (1991, p. 55) by the 1980s over half of Latin America’s agricultural workers were by then landless.
14. The criteria of efficiency often made reference to the existence of machinery and the use of wage labour as opposed to tenant labour. Tenancies were particularly frowned upon as they were considered a relic of the past and part of a feudal and oppressive labour regime.
The evidence available on the question of whether these changes have improved or worsened the position of women relative to men is inconclusive, see Wilson (1985), Flora and Santos (1986), Deere and León (1987), Bradshaw (1990), IDB (1990), and Lago (1992).
16. Lara (1992) coins the term ‘agromaquila’, thereby drawing a parallel to the industrial maquilas in the border region with the USA, to characterise the feminisation of rural wage labour in Mexico which is also linked to exports largely to the US market.
17. The debate between the campesinistas and the descampesinistas or proletaristas was particularly intense in Mexico. For key participants in this debate, see Feder (1977a; 1977b; 1978), Paré (1977), Stavenhagen (1978), Esteva (1978; 1983), Warman (1979; 1980), Schejtman (1980) and Bartra (1974; 1993). For excellent analyses of this and other debates in a wider context, see Harris (1978), Crouch and De Janvry (1979), Astori (1981; 1984), Heynig (1982), Hewitt de Alcántara (1984), Reinhardt (1988), Barsky (1990) and Deere (1990).
18. There are intermediate, as well as shifting positions, in this debate between ‘peasantists’ and ‘depeasantists’. In some instances there is even a merging of positions as a consequence of the debate itself, further empirical research and new theoretical reflections. Thus, some Marxists have become influenced by the writings of Chayanov and vice versa, resulting in a marriage between neo-Marxist and neo-Chayanovian positions, such as in the case of ‘Chayanovian-Marxism’ (Lehmann, 1986).
19. For a discussion of the terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ as related to peasantry, peasant enterprises, siege, proletarianisation and peasantisation, see Kay (1971; 1974).
20. High rural outmigration means that the rural population represents a declining share of total population, falling from 59 per cent in 1950 to 28 per cent in 1990 (Ortega, 1992, p. 121). Almost all population growth (94 per cent) between 1960 and 1990 was urban and the rural population may decline in absolute numbers by the next millennium (ibid., p. 134).
21. Expressed in terms of population, instead of households, the percentage of rural poor is slightly higher, in view of their larger family size compared to non-poor rural families, being about 60 per cent during the 1980s (Herrero and Trejos, 1992, p. 405).
22. According to Ortega (1992, p. 131) Latin America’s rural poor as a proportion of the total rural population fell slightly, from 65 per cent to 61 per cent, between 1970 and 1989, although the total number of rural poor continued to rise. However, the level of extreme poverty, indigence, or destitution remained relatively constant during this period.
According to Weeks (see Chapter 3) devaluation rather than liberalisation acted as a stimulus to agricultural exports. Meanwhile Hopkins (see Chapter 2) found that ‘the greater the degree of openness, the lower the expansion of agriculture’ which is related to the fall in the international price of agricultural commodities during the 1980s. This is partly brought about by the fallacy of composition as many indebted countries simultaneously increased their agricultural exports (in quantitative terms) in the hope of augmenting their foreign exchange earnings. However, this proved self-defeating as it contributed to the fall in the international price of agricultural commodities and to their deteriorating terms of trade.
24. In a paradoxical way I again focused attention on the peasant economy by stressing the importance of the hitherto much neglected ‘internal peasantries’ of the hacienda system which only a few others had highlighted previously. But at the same time I was not optimistic about their economic future as I saw them subjected in varying degrees to pressures of proletarianisation and depeasantisation which would eventually lead to their demise as petty commodity producers. The main escape from their fate which I visualised was through major political changes which might give them access to land and support their entrepreneurial development. As for the ‘external peasantries’ I saw their proletarianisation as being a more problematic and lengthier historical process subjected to a protracted process of socio-economic differentiation.
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© 1995 Institute of Latin American Studies
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Kay, C. (1995). Rural Development and Agrarian Issues in Contemporary Latin America. In: Weeks, J. (eds) Structural Adjustment and the Agricultural Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. Institute of Latin American Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24025-8_2
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