Insecure Labor, Insecure Debt: Building a Workforce for Coffee in the Soconusco, Chiapas

Abstract

Between 1870 and 1920, the department of the Soconusco in Chiapas, Mexico, became the country's largest exporter of coffee to global markets. The expansion of this economy required the mobilization of an ever larger workforce in the service of international commerce. Yet, as this article argues, global demand could only remake social and economic relations within the parameters of entrenched local structures. In the Soconusco, the development and endurance of incentivized contracts as opposed to coercive debt peonage were the result of tapping into a dispersed and diversified labor pool. By looking at the history of finca San Juan las Chicharras, this article explores both the day-to-day functioning of coffee plantations and the ways in which workers, planters, and politicians alike grappled with the redirection of their output toward ever more lucrative export production.

Un/Settlement: Counter-Memories of Migration and Railways in Southern Mexico

“…Land routes from the highlands to the coastal plains of the Soconusco were limited, and the 8-day trek by foot was long and arduous for indigenous agricultural workers, who moved seasonally and as a group from one hacienda to another. Furthermore, as newcomers and 'outsiders' in the region, coffee plantation owners did not have the political networks to access this labour supply, which was tightly controlled through longstanding customary and colonial relations of debt peonage between communities of indigenous workers and the highland elites in and around the city of San Cristobal de las Casas (Lurtz 2016;Washbrook 2007).…”

“…According to Lurtz (2016), plantation owners responded to the labor scarcity by using their own funds and resources to improve the roads and facilitate the movement of workers between the Chiapanecan highlands and the coffee plantations (Lurtz 2016: 313). Owners also drew on their international networks to bring in workers from overseas in the 1890s and early 1900s.…”

“…Within a year 180 of them had died from small pox (Lurtz 2016). German plantation owners also offered employment to young migrants newly arriving from their home country, community or family (Choy et al 2014).…”

“…German plantation owners also offered employment to young migrants newly arriving from their home country, community or family (Choy et al 2014). Sometimes, they would borrow workers from a neighbouring plantation for a few days if the situation became serious (Lurtz 2016).…”