3
1. Hacienda system
– cultivation of small plots for subsistence by a peasantry under the lord’s
supervision, where the peasants have little interest in political issues, because their pattern of
life is very little dependent on market prices. Therefore, the political upper-classes are active
and competent, confronting a backward and apathetic peasantry;
2. Family-size tenancy
– the family operates the agriculture, but the property rights of land
are in the hands of the renter capitalists. This system is known for its land high productivity
and high market price, highly labor-intensive, non-mechanized agricultural production, cheap
labor, and a period of crop production of less than 1 year. This system often causes political
instability and tension and ends with a war or revolution. The peasantry in this system is
politically sensitive, and many radical populist movements start from it;
3. Family small-holding
– Similar to the family tenancy, but with the relevant difference that
the returns of the productivity go to the farmer
’s class. Labor is free, the family does not pay
rent to the lord, but actually owns its land. The family claims around price markets of
products they produce, but are not of a radical character;
4. Plantation agriculture
– This is a labor-intensive method of producing crops requiring
many years for maturation, such as coffee, rubber, or fruit trees, and which employs either
wage labor or slave labor. Plantation agriculture is characterized by low participation in local
government and lack of education of laborers. The domination of the government by
landlords tends to prevent the colonization of new land by smallholders. The labor force is
economically underprivileged, but when mobilized by revolutionary governments, it tends to
be extremist;
5. The ranch
– Culture of wool and beef, employing wage labor that is not oppressed.
Ranchers are usually alienated and with no discipline to political mobilization (Stinchcombe
1961, pp.165-176).
Instead of following a chronological discussion, I continue with Paige
’s arguments,
which are compatible in many ways with those of Stinchcombe.
Paige (1975) viewed the different types of social movement organizations as the result
of the interaction between the political behavior associated with the main source of income of
the upper and lower agricultural classes. For him, specific forms of social movements are
connected with particular types of agricultural organization. His model can be summarized by
the Table 2.
A combination of non-cultivators (upper classes) dependent on income from land and
cultivators (lower classes) dependent on income from salaries leads to violence, revolution
and civil war. This is typical of sharecroppers and migratory labors
’ system. The
revolutionary movements claim the redistribution of land through the seizure of the state.
Guerrilla warfare is used as a strategy to achieve their success. While communist ideology is
used by the sharecroppers, migratory laborers use nationalist ideas of liberation (colonialism).
A level less (but still) violent typical of commercial haciendas is when there is a
combination of both non-cultivators and cultivators dependent on land as the main source of
income, which leads to agrarian revolt. When this occurs, the demand is for land
redistribution, but there are no greater political objectives as the system changes, and rebels
use land invasions as their tactic. This kind of violent practice is characteristic when a
socialist or reform party has weakened the large landowners
’ control of the political system
and has build a link to those cultivators dependent on land, who otherwise would not organize
themselves.
The third kind of combination is of non-cultivators dependent on income from capital
and cultivators dependent on income from salaries, which leads to a reform labor movement
typical of plantations. What the workers want in this case are better salaries and working
Convention