Credit, coercion and workforce loyalty in a border agricultural exporter: Montes de María (Colombia), 1850-1914

Abstract

The emergence of agricultural export regions in Latin America during the second half of the nineteenth century often involved the use of credit as a central mechanism in the organisation of production and marketing. This article presents an analysis of the operation of credit in the tobacco export economy that existed in the Colombian Caribbean during that period. The particularity of this case is that it was a region with plenty of free land available for the peasantry. The question is tackled on whether, even in an agrarian structure of this kind, credit to farmers implied the coercive labour relations. It is concluded that credit was the mechanism by which traders could push farmers to produce tobacco, but that this relationship went beyond the mere logic of exploitation, and also included elements of paternalism, “cronyism”, and friendship.