Preliminary Programme

African slavery was only one of many forms of bonded labour to which a considerable part of the indigenous and afrodescendent population in Spanish Americas was subject. This paper explains the different forms of colonial obligations which limited the freedom of the indigenous population. It compares the situation in the viceroyalties of New Spain (Mexico) and Peru, with a special focus on two types of unfree labourers: laboríos in New Spain and yanaconas in Peru. Although the origin of both categorizations was different, they were functionally comparable. Both generally worked in Spanish enterprises, such as haciendas, cattle farms, textile or sugar mills. It has been argued that by migrating to their work place, they cut ties with their communities of origin; a hypothesis that often, but not always was true. It will be shown that both categorizations could be temporary as well as permanent and hereditary. On occasions, people could change to other, “neighbouring” categorizations, such as “sedentary” indigenous people living in indigenous communities or free mulattos. To explain these phenomena and highlight the agency of the colonial population, the paper draws on legislation, petitions to change the category and data from general inspections and censuses. Many of the sources analyzed come from Cajamarca in northern Peru and Michoacán in western Mexico; both regions outside the traditional mining centers for which bonded labour has been most often analyzed in the respective viceroyalties. (Show less)

Starting in February 1942, anti-Axis demonstrations began to spread in Brazil, mostly in reaction to the sinking of Brazilian ships by German and Italian submarines. By August 18th, tens of thousands took the streets all over the country after six vessels were attacked by a single U-boat, killing more than 600 passengers and crew members, whose bodies reached the beaches of the Northeastern state of Sergipe. Although those were by far the largest mass demonstrations after the establishment of the Getulio Vargas "New State" dictatorship, in 1937, they have been largely ignored in the decades-long debates on the origins and character of Brazilian populism. The main reason, I argue, is the predominance, in the fields of labor and political history of a narrative self-contained in the national space, in which the impact of World War II, which was reshaping social and political relations in all corners of the world, is grossly underestimated. By examining sources as diverse as the press, foreign diplomatic and intelligence reports, oral history, published memoirs, and literature among others, I state that the dynamics of popular participation in the political process until the 1964 military coup were forged in a great measure in the streets in the early 1940s. That process involved a great diversity of social and political actors, acting under the general umbrella of antifascism and the support for the United Nations, whose actions defied the previous top-down approach of the Vargas regime. That process also entailed great contradictions. It was a mass nationalistic movement, in which undercover communists activists played a decisive role, that presented itself in support of Vargas at the same time that pressured him to get rid of the pro-Axis elements in the government and to issue a war declaration. It was also a movement that fomented anti-imperialist feelings against the German, Italian and Japanese-Brazilian communities, but that also expressed a strong solidarity to the Unites States, even as tensions emerged related to the concession of air and naval bases to the Americans. The conclusions reached through this integration between national and global, social and foreign relations dimensions of the historical process may prove fruitful in opening space for new understandings about Brazilian (in particular) and Latin American (more broadly) trajectories in the second half of the 20th Century. (Show less)

This paper explores the development of mechanisation in the sugar cane industry in Cauca Valley, Colombia, and its direct relation with workers’ protest and contestation. The sugar cane agribusiness represents one of the most dynamic and strong capitalist sectors in Colombia, with important clusters which have expanded to other industries and the financial sector. However, in spite of the dynamism and the enormous returns of this industry, which is one of the leading sectors of the Colombian economy, the bulk of workers in the industry were historically kept deliberately in pre-modern conditions of labour: sugar cane cutters, temporary workers (iguazos), etc. all lacked formal contracts, welfare and services according to the national law, and other benefits traditionally associated to mature capitalism.

Notwithstanding the fact that mechanisation was implemented in many areas of the sugar industry, the cutting of the cane was not significantly mechanised until recently, although talks of its mechanisation were on the table since the 1970s. When the sugar cane-cutters start a cycle of protests and strikes which peaked in the period 2005-2008, questioning the forms of exploitation which they endured and looking for a formalisation of their relation with the companies, the sugar industry enters a process of quick mechanisation as a response to the collective power of the workers, and in a record space of five years, they almost finished the presence of manual cutters in the industry.

We will discuss notions of the neutrality of technology in the workplace, placing the debate not in the relationship between the human being and the machine, but between human beings in a society based upon class contradictions. This example will explore ways in which mechanisation is deliberately used to put a limit on the collective power of workers, displacing class struggle in to a desperate struggle for survival. It will explore the ways in which mechanisation facilitates to the capitalists in the sector the preservation of the only thing that matters to the capitalist organisation of labour: maintaining the highest possible returns even at the cost of making the population redundant in the process. (Show less)