Imagining the Midwest in Latin America

US Advisors and the Envisioning of an Agricultural Middle Class in Colombia's Cauca Valley, 1943-1946

Bibliographic Data

ID5780429
AuthorsTimothy W Lorek (0009-0005-0163-8836, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume75
Issue2
Pages283-305
Publication date2013-05-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorian (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2370 • E-ISSN: 1540-6563
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/hisn.12008
OpenAlexW2139813051
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited10

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. T. Lynn Smith, "Observations on the Middle Classes in Colombia," undated, T. Lynn Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 26, 9 (Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico). All following citations of the T. Lynn Smith Papers refer to this collection and will be indicated as "Smith Papers" below.2. In my dissertation (to be defended at Yale University), a more thorough analysis will be made of Cauca Valley agricultural development in the 1940s, including the perspectives and experiences of Colombian government officials and farmers.3. "Minutes of the Conference to Develop Further United States-Colombia Collaboration in Agriculture," 3 June 1943, Smith Papers, Box 10, Folder 30.4. T. Lynn Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," Talk given at unknown conference, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 17, 16. Smith eventually read this paper in modified form as "As It Passed Before My Eyes: A Narrative with Accompanying Documents of Some of the More Significant Developments in Man-Land Relationships in Colombia since 1940," delivered at the conference "Modern Colombia: The Challenges of Regional Diversity," University of Alabama, 11-13 March 1974, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 42.5. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 17.6. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 22.7. T. Lynn Smith, The Sociology of Rural Life, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1940. Smith had traveled extensively through Latin America prior to 1943 but had only passed through Colombia en route to other countries. At the time of the Colombian delegation to Washington, Smith was engaged in ongoing rural sociology projects focused on Brazil (Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 22).8. Letter from G. Howland Shaw, Assistant Secretary for the Secretary of State, to T. Lynn Smith, 26 August 1943, Smith Papers, Box 10, Folder 30. The Department of State also assigned Smith to serve in El Salvador during this time.9. Mark T. Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Americas 1898-1990, Bloomington, IN: Taylor & Francis, 1995, 70.10. J. Lloyd Mecham, A Survey of United States-Latin American Relations, Boston, MA: Taylor & Francis, 1965, as quoted inBerger, Under Northern Eyes, 66.11. Berger, Under Northern Eyes, 73.12. Ibid., 50.13. Ricardo D. Salvatore, "The Enterprise of Knowledge: Representational Machines of Informal Empire," in Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine Legrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds, Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of US-Latin American Relations, Durham, NC: Taylor & Francis, 1998, 69-104: 92.14. T. Lynn Smith, "Colonization and Settlement in Colombia," undated paper, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 24, 3.15. Raymond E. Crist, The Cauca Valley, Colombia: Land Tenure and Land Use, Baltimore, MD: Taylor & Francis, 1952, 9. Crist would become a colleague of Smith's after Smith took a position at the University of Florida in 1949.16. I use the term "peasant" in this essay as it was used by researchers and policy advisors in the 1940s, referring to rural smallholders of plots amounting to less than approximately ten acres and landless farm laborers.17. Crist, The Cauca Valley, 28.18. Michael A. Heller, "The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets," Harvard Law Review 3, 1998, 621-688.This situation continues in the Cauca Valley, as federal land policies favoring large landowners have encouraged the narco-bourgeoisie to use investment in land and cattle as an effective money laundering technique (seeNazih Richani, "The Agrarian Rentier Political Economy: Land Concentration and Food Insecurity in Colombia," Latin American Research Review 2, 2012, 51-78).19. Crist, The Cauca Valley, 14.20. Michael Taussig, "Peasant Economics and the Development of Capitalist Agriculture in the Cauca Valley, Colombia," Latin American Perspectives 3, 1978, 62-91: 67; see furtherJames E. Sanders, Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth Century Colombia, Durham, NC: Taylor & Francis, 2004; andRichard P. Hyland, "A Fragile Prosperity: Credit and Agrarian Structure in the Cauca Valley, Colombia, 1851-87," Hispanic American Historical Review 3, 1982, 369-406.21. Smith's field notes, 10 November 1943, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 44.22. Taussig, "Peasant Economics," 72.23. López Pumarejo served twice as Colombian president, from 1934 to 1938 and 1942 to 1945.24. Crist, The Cauca Valley, 36. Taussig notes that cocoa trees took approximately five years to mature.Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, Chapel Hill, NC: Taylor & Francis, 1980, 79.25. On the early activity of the Palmira Agricultural Experiment Station, see Tulio Raffo, Palmira Historica, Taylor & Francis: Imp. Departamental, 1954.26. The report of the Puerto Rican mission was compiled as "Reconocimiento Agro-Pecuario del Valle del Cauca," Report of the Puerto Rican Agricultural Mission, Directed by Carlos E. Chardón, and Presented to the Governor of the Department of the Valley in Colombia, San Juan, 1930.27. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 4-5.28. Ibid., 6.29. Letter from Jackson Davis of Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board to T. Lynn Smith, 6 April 1944, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 17.30. Letter from T. Lynn Smith to Jackson Davis of Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board, 10 April 1944, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 17.31. Marcos Cueto, ed., Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America, Bloomington, IN: Taylor & Francis, 1994, xiv.32. Ibid., xi.33. Ibid., xiv.34. Salvatore, "Enterprise of Knowledge," 94.35. Steven Palmer makes a similar argument in "Central American Encounters with Rockefeller Public Health, 1914-1921," in Joseph et al., eds, Close Encounters of Empire, 311-332.36. William Roseberry, "Social Fields and Cultural Encounters," in Joseph et al., eds, Close Encounters of Empire, 515-524: 521.37. Joseph Cotter, "The Rockefeller Foundation's Mexican Agricultural Project: A Cross-Cultural Encounter, 1943-1949," in Cueto, ed., Missionaries of Science, 97-125.38. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 2;Crist, The Cauca Valley, dedication.39. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 5;Crist, The Cauca Valley, 74.40. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 5.41. New York Times, 26 September 1953, 17.42. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 14.43. "Minutes to the Conference."44. Smith's field notes, 13 November 1943, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 44.45. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 11-12;Crist, The Cauca Valley, 90.46. This would become the basis of the 1961 Land Reform; see Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America, Baltimore, MD: Taylor & Francis, 1981, 208.47. "Minutes of the Conference."48. Deborah Fitzgerald, "Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943-1953," in Cueto, ed., Missionaries of Science, 72-96.49. T. Lynn Smith, "How I Became a Rural Sociologist," draft for a paper to be published in the journal Sociological Abstracts, 1973, Smith Papers, Box 2, Folder 61, 3-4.50. Ibid., 6.51. T. Lynn Smith, "C.V.," Smith Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.52. Smith, "How I Became a Rural Sociologist," 31.53. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 1.54. T. Lynn Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization and Subdivision of Estates in Colombia," Bogotá, 29 August 1944, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 24.55. Berger, Under Northern Eyes, 66.56. Ibid., 77.57. This would, of course, become the backbone of programs such as the Alliance for Progress, adopted in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution and its perceived threat to the rest of the region.58. Smith, "Colonization and Settlement in Colombia," 3.59. Ibid.60. Smith, "Colombia: Narrative," 30.61. Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization."62. T. Lynn Smith and Justo Díaz Rodríguez, "Proyecto de ley sobre regimen de los baldios," August 1944, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 24.63. de Janvry, Agrarian Question, 107.64. Ibid.65. Ibid., 84.66. Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization."67. Smith's field notes, 10 and 13 November 1943, Smith Papers, Box 9, Folder 44.68. Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization."69. Ibid.70. Smith, "Observations on the Middle Classes in Colombia," 9.71. Ibid.72. Ibid, 9-11.The notion of well-to-do young people in the developing world returning to the countryside to escape demographic and economic pressures has been explored in other contexts. See, for example, Iftekhar Iqbal's assessment of the Bhadralok (Iftekhar Iqbal, The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943, Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis, 2010).73. Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization."74. Smith, "Observations on the Middle Classes in Colombia," 11.75. Smith, "Memorandum on Colonization."76. For an introduction to eugenics in Latin America, see Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Taylor & Francis, 1991).77. This abandoning of immigration in order to instead reorganize Colombia's classes from within did not necessarily mean likewise rejecting foreign technologies and expertise as the presence of Smith and the above discussion of the Rockefeller Foundation should make clear.78. Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, "Notes on Social Stratification in Colombia (A Reply to T. Lynn Smith)," Bogotá, July 1951, Smith Papers, Box 11, Folder 1.79. Charles Bergquist, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia, Stanford, CA: Taylor & Francis, 1986, 314. Also see,Charles Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia, 1886-1910, Durham, NC: Taylor & Francis, 1978.80. Crist, The Cauca Valley, 28.81. Smith, "As it Passed Before My Eyes," 38.82. Ibid.83. Ibid.84. Letter from T. Lynn Smith to Eduardo Sanchez Sanchez, 27 November 1944, Smith Papers, Box 10, Folder 31.85. Smith, "As it Passed Before My Eyes," 39.86. Ibid., 37.87. New York Times, 26 September 1953.88. Taussig, "Peasant Economics," 68.89. Ibid., 66.90. Ibid., 68.91. 7.5 plazas in 1933, 0.5 plazas in 1967. One plaza equals 0.64 hectares, one hectare equals 10,000 square meters or roughly 2.5 acres (seeibid., 69).92. Ibid., 68.93. The value share of these crops increased 191% between the period of 1950-55 and 1971-76, most of the increase taking place on 100+ hectare farms. Further, the land area devoted to each of these monocrops (except soy) increased over 100% during this time, while the land area devoted to peasant crops such as plantains, mixed peasant and capitalist crops such as corn, and coffee all increased less than 100% (see de Janvry, Agrarian Question, 133-134).94. Crist, The Cauca Valley, 98.95. Or did it parallel the Midwest? The reader may perhaps note the irony that the US Midwest and its mythic small family farms also experienced a harsh and transformative shift toward capital-intensive, large scale, monocrop agriculture in the decades following the Second World War. Michael Bell, like Smith a rural sociologist, has more recently explored the effects of this agricultural modernity on myth, class, and community among Iowa farmers (Michael Mayerfeld Bell, Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability, State College, PA: Taylor & Francis, 2004).Additional informationNotes on contributorsTimothy W. LorekTimothy W. Lorek is a doctoral student in Latin American History at Yale University. He received his MA from the University of New Mexico in 2011. His research focuses on U.S.-Latin American relations and the twentieth century environmental and agrarian history of Colombia's Cauca Valley

History and Politics in Latin America · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Politics and Society in Latin America

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