Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America PDF
Preview Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America
Landlord & Peasant in the Making of Latin America Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford, Editors Pitt Latin American Series Agrarian Structure & Political Power landlord & Peasant in the Making of Latin America Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford, Editors UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS Pittsburgh and London Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260 Copyright© 1995, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Eurospan, London Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Agrarian structure and political power : landlord and peasant in the making of Latin America I edited by Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford. p. cm.-(Pitt Latin American series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8229-3880-4 (d) .-ISBN 0-8229-5564-4 (pb) 1. Landowners-Latin America-History-Congresses. 2. Peasantry -Latin America-History-Congresses. 3. Agriculture-Economic aspects-Latin America-Congresses. I. Huber, Evelyne, 1950- II. Safford, Frank, 1935- . III. Series. HD133l.L29A39 1995 333. 33'554' 098-dc20 95-16082 CIP A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents vn Preface and Acknowledgments 3 Introduction Evelyne Huber 21 Landlord and Campesino in the Chilean Road to Democracy Arnold J. Bauer 39 The Buenos Aires Landed Class and the Shape of Argentine Politics (1820-1930) Tulia Halperin Donghi 67 Authoritarianism, Political Culture, and the Formation of the State: Landowners, Agrarian Movements, and the Making of National Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico and Peru Florencia E. Mallon 111 Agrarian Systems and the State: The Case of Colombia Frank Safford 151 Lord and Peasant in the Making of Modern Central America Lowell Gudmundson 177 Applying Moore's Model to Latin America: Some Historians' Observations Frank Safford 183 Conclusion: Agrarian Structure and Political Power in Comparative Perspective Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens 233 Notes on Contributors 235 Index Preface and Acknowledgments The intellectual origins of this book lie in an interdisciplinary seminar on Latin America and the Caribbean for faculty and graduate students that ran over several years at Northwestern University. The seminar sessions were alternately devoted to presentation of the research of participants or to discussion of common readings. The four core members of the seminar were Josef Barton and three of the contributors to this volume, Frank Safford, John Stephens, and Evelyne Huber. Early on we decided to focus our reading on the relationship between agrarian structures and social and political structures and processes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as this focus accommodated our various research interests. The interdisciplinary nature of the seminar gave rise to an interesting and productive division of labor. The two social scientists, Huber and Stephens, were always in search of patterns and generalizations and became the presenters of theses and fourfold tables, whereas the two historians, Barton and Safford, assumed the role of skeptics and defended the diversity of historical experiences from being put into the straitjackets of general models. One of these debates, inspired by Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, centered around the importance of large landowners engaged in labor-intensive agriculture for the problems of democracy in Latin America. Huber and Stephens pressed the relevance and substantial validity of applying to Latin America much of Moore's analysis of the relationship of agrarian structures to forms of political power. Barton and Safford were more skeptical, believing that the categories employed by Moore (landlords, bourgeoisie, labor-repressive agrarian sys tems) were likely to dissolve, or at least become fuzzy, under the close inspection of cases. They also believed that agrarian systems were likely to be quite varied, within a given country, and that the relationships between agrarian systems and the state were also likely to be quite variable among and within the various countries. Thus, we decided to extend the dialogue by inviting other scholars, particularly historians, to present conference papers in which they would examine the applicability of elements of Moore's analysis to Spanish American countries in which they had per formed historical research. The idea was to bring together experts on agrarian structures and political developments in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a vii viii Preface and Acknowledgments number of Latin American countries, and ask them to address a number of specific questions on the topic, in the hope that, if there were any patterns to be found, they would be revealed in a set of comparable studies of a variety of country experiences. The conference took place on April28, 1990, and this volume is the result. Again, the historians explored the specific ways in which agrarian structures influenced political structures and proc esses in the countries they know so well, and the social scientists attempted to tease out of their essays those aspects that fit into systematic patterns of relationships. As expected, some, though not all, of the historians tended in various ways to question (or at least to complicate) the application of Moore's analysis to Spanish America. Nonetheless, as the introduction and conclusion indicate, the social scientists responded to these challenges with 'modifications, resilience, and firmness. No doubt, the discipline-specific preferences among the contributors will be reflected to some extent in the reactions of the readers. However, we hope that the readers will share our experience and find the tension between the two approaches to be fruitful. In the course of organizing this conference, we benefited from the support of many people and institutions. Generous financial support was provided by the Alumnae of Northwestern University and by the Fulcher Fund of the Department of Political Science, administered by Ben Page, Fulcher Professor, and Jay Casper, former chair of the department. The History Department hosted the conference. Theresa Parker of the Depart ment of Political Science provided invaluable logistical support. In addition to the authors of the essays in this volume, several commen tators made important contributions to the conference. Josef Barton, John Coatsworth, Paul Gootenberg, Mark Szuchman, and J. Samuel Valenzuela engaged all of the participants in interesting discussions and forced us to sharpen our arguments. We wish to express our gratitude to all of these people and institutions. Last but not least, the editors want to thank the contributors for being patient about the inevitable delays in bringing an edited volume to publication. Agrarian Structure & Political Power
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