Those That Live by the Work of Their Hands

Labour, Ethnicity and Nation-State Formation in Nicaragua, 1850-1900

Bibliographic Data

ID3527720
AuthorsJustin Wolfe (Tulane University, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume36
Issue1
Pages57-83
Publication date2004-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-216X • E-ISSN: 1469-767X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022216x03007077
OpenAlexW2154468084
LanguageEN
Citations received5

This study examines the relationship between labour and nation in nineteenth-century Nicaragua by exploring how the state's institutional efforts to control labour coincided with a prevailing discourse of nation that idealised farmers (agricultores) and wage labourers (jornaleros and operarios) at opposite ends of the spectrum of national citizenship. The article focuses on the towns of the ethnically diverse region of the Prefecture of Granada, an area that included the present-day departments of Granada, Carazo and Masaya, and where coffee production first boomed in Nicaragua. It is argued that labour coercion rested not simply on the building of national, regional and municipal institutions of labour control, but also on defining the political and social role of labourers within the national community. At the same time, subaltern communities, especially indigenous ones, contested these efforts not merely through evasion and subterfuge, but by engaging the discourse of nation-state to claim citizenship as farmers and assert independence from landlords

Citizenship · Coercion (linguistics) · Ethnic group · Independence (probability theory) · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Subaltern · Wage · Gender Studies · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Historical Studies in Central America · Law

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