Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1876-1936

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2836615
AutoresDavid Mccreery (autor correspondente)
Ano1983
Volume63
Fascículo4
Páginas735
Data de publicação1983-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2514903
OpenAlexW4249129410
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas49

R ecent revisionist studies have called into question the role and importance in turn-of-the-century Latin America of servitude, long a staple horror of travelers' accounts, novels, and histories. Of the once-fearsome debt slavery we are now told: Most of the new research is concerted in its rejection of as a controlling feature of labor.' Whatever the evidence from other areas, and most of the new work has focused on Peru and northern and central Mexico, this is plainly not true for Mesoamerica. Debt peonage flourished in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala,2 a consequence of rapidly expanding demand for raw materials in the industrial North Atlantic states.3 For the planters of Guatemala, servitude proved a stable and effective means to mobilize large numbers of workers at relatively low cost. The state cooperated actively with landowners to force the majority of the indigenous rural population into one

Archaeology · Business · Debt · Development economics · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Financial system · Geography · Indigenous · Latin Americans · Mesoamerica · Political science · Population · Sociology · State (computer science) · Work (physics) · Cuban History and Society · Demography · Finance · History · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America