On Miners, Mining Firms and Technology
From the Barretero to Anaconda and Kennecott
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3816673 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David E Hojman (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1983 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 123 |
| Publication date | 1983-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of Latin American Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0261-3050 • E-ISSN: 1470-9856 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3338105 |
| OpenAlex | W2326525235 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
In an extremely stimulating paper, Ian Rutledge (1983) discusses mining in Latin America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and concludes that political protest during this period resulted from, among other things, the refusal of faceworkers (barreteros) to accept new technologies, and related work conditions, such as substitution of day wages for piece rates. In this note we shall argue that it is more appropriate to analogize colonial barreteros to modern mining firms, than to analogize them to modern mineworkers. In this sense, the barreteros' attitudes to work and political protest during the colonial period could be considered as antecedent to modern mining firms' strategies of protecting themselves against wild market fluctuations, against competition by rival and more technically advanced firms, and against potentially negative financial scrutiny of their operating practices, rather than as antecedent to the conventional militant practices of modern mineworkers. In Marxist terminology, barreteros were not engaged in proper capitalist production, but rather in commodity production by free individuals
Business · Commerce · Industrial organization · Mining and Resource Management
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |