Sugar Cane Production

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Sugar Cane Production

• From Personalized Patronage Relations
• Skilled Work
• to
• Corporate Ownership New Solidarities
• (Political activity, Union organizing, and
  Religious conversion)

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Some key dates in Puerto Rican History

• 1508 Spanish colonization of the island
• Transition to sugar monoculture, 18th century
• Abolition of slave trade in the Atlantic, 1807
• End of slavery, 1874
• Spanish-American war, 1898 US gained dominion
  over Cuba and Puerto Rico

• A Wisconsin troop arriving in PR

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The Triangular Trade
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Slaves cutting sugar cane, 1823

• Approximately 10 million people taken from Africa
  over 400 years
• 5.5 million taken in the 100 years of the 18th
  century
• Decade of the highest number 1780s

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Capitalist Agriculture Sugar Plantations

• Dependent on unfree (slave) labor which was
  imported from Africa
• Product was a commodity (grown to be sold for
  cash)
• Product was exported important for the caloric
  needs of the working-classes in Europe who
  themselves had lost access to the land
• Sugar is not really a source of food and
  nutrition people can go hungry
• Sugar cane required vast inputs of labor
  planting, plowing (p. 58-59), harvesting,
  irrigating, processing/burning into sugar and rum
• Monocrop agriculture lack of diversification in
  the economy which makes it more vulnerable to
  shifts in the world economy

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Sugar cane plantations after slavery

• Personal relations of domination and control
• Sugar cane plantations owned by a family who
  lived near the land (case of Pastor Diaz) who
  functioned paternalistically and sometimes
  brutally
• Foremen (mayordomos) were sought after as
  compadres (p. 159-160)
• Some laborers were resident on the plantations
  and others were not (p. 169-170)
• Explain piecework p. 70, 131, 136, 137
• Skilled (palero digging) and unskilled jobs, p.
  135
• Children worked on the land at a young age (when
  did Don Taso begin working? Compare to Nisa.)
• People supplemented their income by growing their
  own crops on unused land (p.159).

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The landowners had political as well as economic
control. What did they do to maintain their
political power, particularly when challenged by
other parties?
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How did Don Taso survive his blacklisting?
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Changes in Sugar Cane Agriculturein Don Tasos
lifetime

• US investment went into sugar cane plantations
• US corporations (Aguirre) owned by US banks
  bought up or rented land from the landowning
  families
• Aguirre controlled 95 of the land in the
  municipality of Barrio Jauca
• They also took the common land which people were
  using to keep cows or grow food, so people were
  more dependent on a cash wage
• The landowning families moved to the cities or to
  the US or Europe (p. 207) Don Pastor Diazs
  family went to San Juan
• Loss of personal relations (one could not curry
  favor with a company in the way one could with a
  family over generations)

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Changes in Sugar Cane Agriculture in Don Tasos
lifetime

• Corporations introduced new techniques new
  mills with increased grinding capacities,
  internal railroad networks, electrification, and
  internal combustion engines.
• Skilled labor less necessary now all workers
  were the same

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Stratified Societies
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Changes in Sugar Cane Agriculture results in
Political Class-based Solidarities

• Conversion from social stratification based on
  personal relations to a class system based on
  relations to the mode of production
• Workers were now completely a rural proletariat
  poor, landless, wage-earning, buying all their
  goods from the stores.
• Because there was now more identification between
  them, they began to organize themselves and feel
  themselves to be a social class of
  workers---Socialist and Popular parties gained
  power and unions were formed.

• Translation Celebrate Labor Day. The day workers
  are respected. Long live Santiago Iglesias Pantin
  (labor leader).

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After World War II

• US investment in light industries, where women
  worked pharmaceutical, textile
• US encouragement of Puerto Rican migration, first
  as seasonal farm workers
• Widespread emigration to the US
• Puerto Rican poverty

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Current Political Status of Puerto Rico

• Puerto Rico is not an independent country.
• It is a non incorporated territory. According
  to the United States Supreme Court, an
  unincorporated territory is a territory
  appurtenant and belonging to the United States,
  but not a part of the United States.
• Its current powers are delegated by the US
  Congress and are not fully protected by the US
  Constitution.
• The Federal Relations Act of 1950 and the
  Constitution of 1952 gave Puerto Rico
  substantially more authority to regulate local
  affairs.
• Otherwise its laws are those of federal laws.
• Puerto Rico is not a state of the Union and has
  no voting representative in the United States
  Congress.
• The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 gave US
  citizenship to Puerto Ricans.