Peasants, Entrepreneurs, and Social Change: Frontier Development in Lowland Bolivia by Lesley Gill

Author:Lesley Gill [Gill, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, General
ISBN: 9780813373393
Google: Hb6LAAAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 1560465
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1987-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

The central government has tried unsuccessfully since 1959 to develop a system of marketing rice that could benefit the interests of both producers and consumers, but its success has been limited, and intermediaries, rather than rice growers, often have benefited the most. In 1973 the government formed the Empresa Nacional de Arroz (ENA) after the failure of four previous institutions. Its objectives included the regulation of prices at the level of the producer and consumer, the purchase and sale of rice, the organization of rice transportation, and the sale of rice surpluses on the international market.

The ENA tried on several occasions to monopolize the rice market by establishing an official price and acting as the principal buyer. These attempts failed because of financial difficulties, and the ENA never purchased more than a quarter of the total marketable production. Nor did it ever represent a viable alternative to the intermediaries. Purchases often began after the harvest, which undermined the small growers, who had to prepare the next year's planting and could not wait long to be paid. Moreover, because of distance and poor road conditions, peasants often had no other choice but to sell their rice to intermediaries. The intermediaries then took advantage of prices in the towns where the ENA silos were located.

This relationship between rice growers and middlemen was possible only because the settlers did not completely control the means of production. Although they still retained a certain degree of control over decisions affecting a range of activities associated with rice production--land clearing, planting, weeding, and harvesting--they were forced to turn to middlemen for financial assistance. The middlemen, in turn, avoided the risks associated with agriculture. To increase output they expanded their ties with settlers--frequently through the creation of compadrazgo relationships, debt ties, and familial connections--rather than increase productivity through investments in machinery and other technical inputs. The intermediaries did not always develop these relationships for tradition's sake: they were the most effective way to generate a profit, and business associations based on real or fictive kinship blurred the unequal and exploitative nature of these relationships.

Rice growers were not alone in their exploitation; middlemen also developed similar relationships with banana and cassava producers. With these crops, however, they used somewhat different labor relations, combining the domestic labor of the direct producer with more purely free wage labor. Cassava and bananas could not be harvested in advance and stored as easily as rice. Thus, the middlemen contracted laborers to accompany them to a specified community, where together with the direct producer and his family members, they harvested the crop. It was then piled high on a truck and taken directly to market.

In the case of sugarcane, intermediaries with a quota--usually other growers--bought cane from planters below the market price when bad weather or flooded fields interfered with their own harvest and precluded the completion of their sugarcane quota in the mills. They also took advantage of periods when the mills temporarily suspended the quota system and allowed unrestricted shipments to acquire cane from other growers.

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