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" The political and economical roles of the cocoa leaf during the Peruvian transition towards agrarian capitalism "
Woods, J. Craig
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Latin Dissertation
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1098350
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TLets539571
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Woods, J. Craig
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| Title & Author
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The political and economical roles of the cocoa leaf during the Peruvian transition towards agrarian capitalism\ Woods, J. Craig
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| College
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University of Liverpool
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2011
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2011
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis attempts to demonstrate that the transition towards agrarian capitalism,whereupon small peasant farmers are relegated to the dustbin of history either through socialdifferentiation (capitalism from below) or widespread dispossession (capitalism fromabove), cannot be considered as a process that occurs in a manner as determined as iscommonly supposed. To exemplify this malaise in the theoretical literature concerning the'agrarian question', the various historical and contemporary relations of productionsurrounding only one crop have been chosen as the object of focus. The coca leaf is theperfect exemplar of the redundancy of economic determinism.During the early colonial period there was no crop cultivated in the whole of SouthAmerica that g~nerated anywhere near the same levels of profit as the coca leaf, and forwhich indigenous people in the mountains would risk their lives by descending to thedisease infested lower altitudes on the eastern Andes to join the labour force engaged in itscultivation on large estates. Furthermore, to an almost unrecognised degree, indigenouscommunities would also rapidly expand their own independent levels of production so as toparticipate in the colonial coca 'boom'. Additionally, miners in Potosi and elsewhere eagerlyparted with their share of ore in exchange for coca. As such, no other crop acted as a bettermedium for the introduction of indigenous peoples in South America to a monetaryeconomy and the initial stages towards agrarian capitalism. This 'boom' came to an end inthe seventeenth century on account of the abhorrent levels of depopulation, overproductionand the depletion of the mines.The second coca 'boom' occurred in the late nineteenth century on account of theindustrially developed world's sudden fascination for the medicinal properties of cocainehydrochloride following its isolation from the leaf in the mid nineteenth century. In acountry that was suffering from the ravages of a very recently lost war with Chile, manypeople placed their hopes on cocaine to act as a means by which Peru could begin to produceand export a widely sought value-added product and thereby modernise the economy. Again,independent peasant farmers rapidly flocked to areas where markets for coca were emergingbut unfortunately for them, and those engaged in the later stages of cocaine hydrochloride'sproduction process, this second coca boom was short lived. Nevertheless, where coca wasbeing cultivated for the traditional market on the feudal haciendas in La Convenci6n(Cuzco), employing a unique hybridization of feudal labour relations, coca came to form thepredominant economic basis upon which a rural petty bourgeois emerged that were nolonger willing to have their economic interests constrained by these feudal obligations.After the serfs of La Convenci6n had successfully revolted, it was less than a decadebefore agrarian reforms were implemented throughout the country, thereby bringing an endto feudalism. As such, coca did eventually serve as the basis upon which the Peruvianeconomy modernised, although not in the manner that had been originally envisaged by thecoastal elites. Thus, just when it appeared that Peru was following some strange variant ofeastern and western European 'paths' to agrarian capitalism, coca played adisproportionately important role in confounding the classical preconceptions of politicaleconomists.Following the expropriation of the haciendas of La Convenci6n, and their unequaldistribution among the erstwhile serfs, the stage appeared to be set for the initiation of the'capitalism from below' type of transition towards agrarian capitalism. However, rather thana minority of wealthy farmers emerging at the expense of a gradually proletarianizedlandless mass, the coca producers in La Convenci6n reverted to the utilisation of precapitalisticreciprocal labour relations that is only supported by waged labour when no otheroption is available. Meanwhile, for producers of coca operating within the illegal economy,not only has the cultivation of coca emerged as something of a last bastion of peasantfarming but the full development of the 'capitalism from below' path is circumscribed by theinability of farmers to reinvest profits to expand production beyond a certain level.Therefore again, the cultivation of coca serves as an anomaly among classical conceptions oftransitions towards agrarian capitalism.
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University of Liverpool
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