Cultivating Coffee: The Farmers of Carazo, Nicaragua, 1880–1930 (Volume 39)

by Julie A. Charlip

Many scholars of Latin America have argued that the introduction of coffee forced most people to become landless proletarians toiling on large plantations. Cultivating Coffee tells a different small and medium-sized growers in Nicaragua were a vital part of the economy, constituting the majority of the farmers and holding most of the land. Alongside these small commercial farmers was a group of subsistence farmers, created by the state’s commitment to supplying municipal lands to communities. These subsistence growers became the workforce for their coffee-growing neighbors, providing harvest labor three months a year. Mostly illiterate, perhaps largely indigenous, they nonetheless learned the functioning of the new political and economic systems and used them to acquire individual plots of land. Julie Charlip’s Cultivating Coffee joins the growing scholarship on rural Latin America that demonstrates the complexity of the processes of transition to expanded export agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing the agency of actors at all levels of society. It also sheds new light on the controversy surrounding landholding in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution.

312 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2003

Reviews

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book convincingly argues that - contrary to the party line in 1979 - Nicaraguan rural populations were NOT fully immersed in a landless proletarian society. The author demonstrates that deep into the 20th century, Caraceño farmers really were farmers. They owned land, borrowed, lent, hired workers, arranged market agreements, voted, sued, and participated in civic life. The process of dispossession did not really begin until the Great Depression, meaning that by the 1970s many Nicaraguans still had an unrealized longing to return to yeoman status. This contradicted the Sandinista belief that all peasants were proletarians who longed for stable work, producing conflict during the mid-1980s.

I love the use of statistics, tables, and numerous sources to triangulate such details as how law suits turned out, the size of farms, debts owed, interest rates, etc. This is a very readable book with great data.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well researched, deep dive into the agrarian history of Nicaragua, with a focus on the coffee growing region of Carazo. Nicaragua's location, tierra, and relatively small indigenous population limited its commercial prospects which were further dampened by political unrest in the 1900s. This reality however has sustained small and family-owned farm ownership, which makes up an important part of the fabric of the Nicaraguan coffee trade.