To what extent were conditions of work in Latin America determined by the needs of the owners of the means of production? To what extent, by the cultural preferences of the working class? Recently, historians have been finding the relationship between the world market and proletarianization to he quite complex.1 They concede that proletarianization involves more than the conversion of independent producers into sellers of labor power—more than the separation of workers from the means of subsistence. It also requires a transformation of culture, including changes in life-styles, work habits, and conceptions of time, work, and leisure. Many scholars now recognize the tenacity of precapitalist workers in preserving social and cultural traditions that may delay or halt their conversion into wage earners.
To study empirically the process of proletarianization in the periphery, one must consider the implications of its incorporation into the world economy. The rise of Latin America as a primary producer for the international market renders the region susceptible to fluctuations in world demand. To survive economically, the productive system must show a certain flexibility in its production and employment. Fluctuations in the world market, above all, require a flexible pattern of employment, which actually may hinder the process of proletarianization to the extent that it preserves the work habits and life-styles of the people drawn into the labor market. One might hypothesize, further, that when production for the world market develops under conditions of both labor scarcity and workers’ resistance to cultural change, the expansion of exports will not necessarily speed up the process of proletarianization.
The livestock economy of the Banda Oriental in the 1790s constitutes an appropriate case study of the relationship between commercial cycles, employment, and work habits. For one thing, the economy of this part of the periphery fluctuated according to the trade disruptions of the European wars. Estancias administered by absentee landowners produced hides for export with a labor force of waged peons, among them numerous gauchos who had managed to preserve a high degree of independence and mobility. As historians of the region have recognized, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries formed an age of incipient rural capitalist development and proletarianization in the Río de la Plata.2
The extensive wage records and account books of a large cattle ranch on the Banda Oriental, the Estancia de las Vacas, extant for the period from 1791 to 1805, provide the basis for this analysis. Admittedly, these are records of the owners, but by inference they reveal the habits and attitudes of workers. The wealth and unusual character of the estancia’s records, despite some severe limitations, merit attention because of how much they reveal about the relationship between market, employer, and worker. Among the extensive accounts and correspondence are paybooks recording the employees’ names, dates of employment, pay rates, type of pay (cash and goods), job position, and job location. The records are more complete for the years 1791 to 1799 and less complete from 1800 to 1805. In all, the payroll data comprise 1,252 separate entries. Irregularity and the short duration of the data frustrate the methodical researcher. Yet analysis of the paybooks justifies drawing conclusions that, in fact, corroborate the descriptions of colonial gauchos found in qualitative sources such as travelers’ accounts. Our data suggest that: (1) the flexible pattern of employment in estancias easily accommodated the short-term fluctuations in hide exports; (2) the work habits of gauchos contributed in part to shape their peculiar patterns of employment; and (3) the first two factors combined to prevent hacendados from challenging the relative autonomy and cultural traditions of the rural workers.
Commercial Cycles, Wages, and Employment
Comprising a large but unknown extent of scrubland and prairie, the Estancia de las Vacas began its productive existence as a minor Jesuit cattle estate on the banks of the Uruguay River near the junction of the Río de la Plata estuary. The Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits in 1767, and this property came into the possession of the Hermandad de la Caridad, a lay brotherhood made up of civil servants, lawyers, priests, notaries, and merchants in Buenos Aires.3 In principle, the Hermandad was to manage Las Vacas in order to support its charitable works, a hospital and an orphanage for girls. In reality, the merchants who controlled the Hermandad treated the estancia’s operation as a capitalistic endeavor. Acting as absentee landowners, these porteño merchants hired peons for wages and sold the estate’s products in local and international markets. Their instructions reveal that they tried to maximize profits and to reinvest them in the estate and in other productive activities.
Products from Las Vacas entered both domestic and export markets. For this purpose, the administrator maintained cattle herds numbering at least 16,000 head, 2,000 breeding mares, 92 oxen, and 700 burros. Still existing within the confines of the ranch were an estimated 42,000 head of wild cattle, hunted for their hides and rounded up to increase the size of domesticated herds. The estate was divided into nine subestancias, each with its own ranchos, corrals, and specific open-range areas (puestos) for the separate herds. Besides hides, the estancia produced grease, tallow, firewood, lime, wheat, and fresh and salted meat. The labor force consisted of 7 to 10 foremen, approximately 25 slaves, and a large number of temporary, wage-earning gauchos native to rural Banda Oriental, the Mesopotamian provinces, and Paraguay.4 The estancia’s corporate management was unique for the late eighteenth century. Most ranchers lived on their estates and personally directed the work of family members and the hired help. Yet our data on labor turnover suggest that the gauchos of this generation probably resisted paternalistic arrangements of employment based on compadrazgo and clientelism. Such mechanisms of social control signify considerably less autonomy of the rural working class than we have discovered.
During the 1790s, producers in the Río de la Plata faced a highly volatile international demand for hides. Their major official market, Spain, afflicted by wars and blockades, became a very irregular purchaser in the first half of the decade, and almost vanished in the second half. Spain’s total imports from Spanish America, after a peak in 1791, declined in 1792-93 due to the outbreak of war with France. Recovery rose to a peak in 1796. The subsequent British blockade of Cádiz precipitated the commercial collapse of the remaining years of the eighteenth century.5 The Treaty of Tilset (1801) stimulated another recovery of Spain’s trade with its colonies, but in 1805 war in Europe again plunged international commerce into a severe trough (see Graph 1).
Exports of hides from Buenos Aires reflect these fluctuations in international demand. Available estimates show a high volume of hide exports—averaging 1.2 million hides a year—between 1789 and 1791. In the next five years, there was a substantial reduction of exports to 758,000 hide’s annually.6 Unfortunately, the statistics for Buenos Aires are not precise enough to show the turning point of the cycle (probably 1794); nor does information exist for the period 1797-1805. However, trade statistics for Montevideo show a decline in exports from 1.28 million hides per year between 1802 and 1804 to 415,000 hides in 1805 and 1806.7
At this time, Spain and continental Europe constituted the principal destination for the River Plate’s hides. According to official records, 45 percent of River Plate hides in 1803 went to Spain and 26 percent to the continent; Great Britain apparently was receiving few bullhides from Buenos Aires.8 But the collapse of the Spanish-American trade created the opportunities for a renewed contraband trade with markets outside the Spanish empire. Following 1797, an increasing proportion of Río de la Plata exports of hides must have reached Britain and its colonies, mainly through Brazil, the Antilles, or directly from Buenos Aires and Montevideo at the time of the British invasions.
Sales at the Estancia de las Vacas clearly show the instability of the international market for hides. Hides were the most important source of revenue for the estancia and its only link to the world market. Other products, destined for domestic markets, gave the estancia some cushion from fluctuations in the world market, but their proportion was so limited that hide exports determined the ranch’s cycle of revenues (see Table I). After all, hides accounted for approximately 65 percent of the estancia’s sales. Therefore, changes in the hide market—governed by economic and political conditions external to the River Plate area—determined the ups and downs of sales and production at Las Vacas. Graph 2 shows the presence of three cycles in the estancia’s sales: one in 1790-94, a second in 1795-1800, and a third (which is insinuated) in 1801-1805. These cycles reflect the trade interruptions caused by the French war (1793-95) and, with a one-year shipping lag, Spains war against Britain (1797-1801).
Due to fluctuations in demand, wages and employment at Las Vacas also exhibit a markedly cyclical behavior. Employment varied according to the international demand for hides. The total number of man-days spent at Las Vacas declined from 1791 to 1794. Then it went up to a peak in 1798, only to fall again towards 1800 (see Table II). The correspondence between these cycles and those of the estancia’s sales is striking, underlining the hacendado’s response to fluctuations in demand. The estancia’s administrator hired more peons during the upswing of the commercial cycle and let some leave during the downswing. Since the supply of labor was not perfectly elastic, these fluctuations in demand also caused fluctuations in wages. Data from the Las Vacas account books show that average money wages followed three major cycles between 1791 and 1805.9 After a small increase in 1791-92, wages fell to a trough in 1794. Then they rose to a peak in 1797 and in 1800 (see Graph 3 and Table III). Although we lack pay records for the years of commercial revival following 1801, wages appear to have risen to another peak in 1805, after which they may have begun yet another downswing.10 Again, there is a close covariation between wages and sales at the estancia.
As our statistics demonstrate, fluctuations in employment were more pronounced than those in wages, indicating that the labor supply was at least sufficiently elastic to accommodate the year-to-year variations in demand. Gauchos’ opportunities outside the estancia and their geographical mobility contributed to this labor elasticity. When exports and wages were on the rise, gauchos came to the estancia in larger numbers. When wages were declining, they went into cattle rustling and contraband, reducing the supply of labor to estancias. Laborers also responded to upswings of the commercial cycle by extending the period of employment. Without surrendering their wandering style of life, they might work two or three additional months during the upswing. Higher wages significantly augmented their cash incomes; the rate of wages reflected the attitudes and preferences of the footloose working class as much as the conditions of export markets.
The supply of labor, nevertheless, was not so flexible in the short term. Workers’ refusal to work permanently or for long periods of time made the supply fall temporarily short of demand, particularly in periods of expanding hide exports. This phenomenon created a pattern of recurrent labor scarcity that forced the administrator at Las Vacas to delay productive tasks until new laborers were recruited, often resulting in losses of assets and sales. A report on estancia conditions in 1795 stated that the lack of workers prevented the roundup and branding of cattle so that domesticated animals were escaping to the wilds or to neighbors’ herds. In 1799, again having too few laborers, the administrator was unable to fill existing contracts for tallow and grease.11 Changes in estate management did not seem to correct the labor problems. José Posadas replaced Florencio García as administrator in 1794, but García returned to the ranch’s administration a year later. Both blamed labor scarcity for their inability to raise production significantly.12 Francisco Wright took over the estate’s administration in 1800 only to face the same dilemma. All but 15 peons had abandoned Las Vacas, and those remaining were unwilling to work until four months of back wages had been paid. The workers’ refusal to work on credit cost the estancia dearly: the new manager had to delay deliveries of cattle until the Hermandad had sent out workers from Buenos Aires.13
To avoid total dependence on the gaucho, the estancia resorted to three supplementary sources of labor: slaves, agregados, and itinerants from Buenos Aires. The Hermandad purchased slaves for Las Vacas in 1794 and 1799, yet the number of slaves on the estancia dwindled. Between 1795 and 1799, 1 slave ran away, 3 died, and 3 others were recalled to Buenos Aires. Slaves fluctuated in number between 19 and 31 in the last decade of the century, fulfilling but a small portion of the total labor needs.14 At least their permanence gave slaves a small measure of authority at Las Vacas; several became foremen, nominally supervising teams of free peons.
Hiring agregados, squatters, and subsistence farmers in the vicinity, provided no solution to the labor shortage either. A list of the neighbors of one of the subestancias, Arroyo las Víboras, indicates that in 1802 approximately 75 persons resided nearby. Thirteen were called don and the rest were poor residents—including 10 Indians, 3 mulattoes, and 10 blacks—all of whom made their living as farmers on the fringes of the estancia. 15 Their presence may not have been so advantageous to the estancia, since agregados occasionally helped themselves to cattle from Las Vacas. Besides, as the administrator reported in 1800, these men proved unavailable when the estancia most needed their labor. During harvest time, they attended their own plots first and even hired peons from the estancia to help them. “All men leave for the harvest,” reported manager García.16
That the administrator had to bring workers by boat from Buenos Aires underscores the extent of labor scarcity in the Banda Oriental. When peons abandoned their jobs, García recomposed work teams at the puestos with “men from Buenos Aires.” In 1793, for instance, two boatloads containing 31 peons arrived from Buenos Aires, so that the manager could undertake the slaughter of 2,000 bulls which had been delayed for the lack of men.17 Many of these itinerants had come from the interior (Santiagueños), yet they did not constitute a cheap source of labor. Their wages equaled those of the rural inhabitants of the East Bank, and they demanded to be paid in silver.18 Given the extra cost of boat transport, these workers from Buenos Aires must have posed an extreme solution to labor scarcity. Moreover, the administrator of Las Vacas was unable to turn the slaves, agregados, and Buenos Aires workers into a dependable, “captive” work force to replace the errant gauchos of the East Bank. Yet, in the context of a cyclically fluctuating demand for hides, the organization of the Estancia de las Vacas proved flexible enough. Its labor force, despite short-term shortages, contracted and expanded according to the changes in the world market.
Occasional Employment and Gauchos’ Work Habits
Production at the Estancia de las Vacas was able to respond to the fluctuations in international demand partly because the majority of its labor force worked on a short-term basis only. Permanent workers made up only a small portion of the estancia’s laborers. Indeed, the records of Las Vacas show with impressive clarity the prevalence of temporary, occasional labor. Between 1791 and 1799, 77 percent of all wage earners labored less than three months. Those who worked the entire year accounted for only 7 percent of the sample (see Table IV).
These employment figures, derived from the administrator’s pay vouchers, speak of a high rate of turnover at the Banda Oriental estancia. As each wage-earning peon worked an average of 95 to 110 days a year, the whole estate’s labor force had to be replaced at least three times a year.19 More importantly, temporary workers seldom returned from one term of employment to the next. An analysis of the names of workers in the data set shows 903 different names out of a total of 1,252 recorded wage payments between 1791 and 1805. Temporary workers simply quit their jobs and left after receiving their first pay. Of the 903 names, only 143 (16 percent) appeared on the payrolls in more than one year—and not necessarily in consecutive years. Even though the records are far from complete, these figures cast serious doubt on a picture of cattle ranches attended by a small nucleus of workers. Instead, they show that important numbers of workers circulated in and out of estancias at a rapid rate. Mayordomos and capataces (foremen) were unable to rehire the same workers year after year, or even from one quarter to the next.
The Estancia de las Vacas, being an unusual conglomerate of nine distinct estancias, permits a glimpse of how easily workers moved from one estancia to another. The 1795 data set illustrates this phenomenon. From January to April, Felipe Bracamonte worked in Estancia Altolaguirre first in the harvest, then as peon (duties unspecified), and later in faenas extraordinarias, or occasional tasks. In May, he moved to Cerro de las Armas, worked for two months as a peon, and left. Peon José Estanislao served in July at Estancia las Rabonas and in October at Estancia Migueletes. The pay records show Félix González at Las Rabonas in July and August, reappearing in October at Estancia Sarandí. Even a foreman, Matías Palacios, worked on two different estancias during an eight-month term. These workers, whose names appear twice in the same year, actually represent a minority. Most gauchos probably wandered to other estates—not belonging to the Hermandad—or more likely to the open prairies, where they had no boss.
Workers also changed occupations with surprising facility, responding to the varying needs of ranch production. In 1795, Mariano Cabrera for a month performed occasional tasks like skinning cattle and repairing ranchos (rude houses). He next became a peón carretero (teamster) for two months and a peon for his remaining three months. Three men named Lobo—probably of the same family—labored for six days in the wheat harvest and later stayed as carreteros for less than three months. They all left at the same time. Such occupational mobility was also common among those few who returned in other years. In three consecutive years (1795-97), Manuel Matos worked as peon, as foreman, and as teamster leader, serving on three different estancias within Las Vacas. Pablo Sánchez changed his occupation at least three times: in 1795 he was first engaged in faenas extraordinarias and worked later as teamster. In 1796, he moved to La Chácara to perform agricultural labor. In the two following years, he worked only two months, mainly in occasional tasks.
Again and again, the records show the flexible nature of occupations and locations of work as well as the limited amount of time that gauchos devoted to wage labor. Work seemed relatively unspecialized. Any gaucho was able to perform the various tasks—from breaking horses to reaping wheat. But workers were unattached to the estancia. Only a minority of the wage earners such as the administrator, foremen, and an artisan remained permanently; all others belonged to the highly mobile and numerous force whose relationship to the ranch was unstable and brief. Gauchos resisted forming the kinds of clientelistic relationships with the administrator and the foremen that may have characterized estate labor elsewhere in Latin America and even for later periods in the Río de la Plata.
Why did high turnover, constant circulation of different persons, and casual employment characterize the relations between capital and labor at the estancia? Did they arise from the needs of ranch production? Or from the life-styles and work habits of gauchos themselves?20 Presumably, a closer look at the seasonal fluctuations of employment should offer some clue to the answer.
Quite surprisingly, the evidence shows no stable pattern of seasonality in employment on this agricultural enterprise. Table V indicates that the seasonal distribution of employment varied greatly from one year to the next. Over the seven years selected for the analysis, the second quarter of each year appears the busiest time, and the first and fourth quarters fall below average levels of employment. Yet, year-to-year variations are too large to warrant any generalization. For instance, how does one account for the fact that employment peaked in the second quarters of 1791 and 1795 and not in 1793 and 1797? Part of the explanation, we believe, lies in the nature of production.
Estancia de las Vacas had a diversified production, serving foreign, domestic, and subsistence needs. It produced wheat for porteño consumers and maize and other foodstuffs principally for its slaves. The slaughter of cattle provided the estate’s principal export product, hides, and yielded tallow, grease, and beef—all of which required some kind of elemental processing at the estancia. Las Vacas also produced lumber and firewood for the Buenos Aires market, and additional activities included mule breeding, soap making, and lime extraction. The tasks required in this diversity of production succeeded and overlapped one another throughout the year, without any particular concentration. Although a year-round activity, hide production intensified in the last months of the year in anticipation of the shipping season. Ranch account books indicate that deliveries of hides to Buenos Aires increased from November through January.21
A portion of the estate’s hides still came from vaquerías, mounted cattle hunts organized by foremen or contracted with third parties. The timing of the actual production of hides, therefore, depended on market demand, the movement of wild cattle, and the availability of workers— variables difficult to control. As for the domesticated herds, roundups had to be held on a regular basis in order to accustom the cattle to the unfenced boundaries of the estancia’s pastures. But branding could be done in April as well as in July. The slaughter of cattle for beef was also sporadic, varying with the demand from neighboring consumers, from prison inmates at Martín García Island, and from militia troops.22 Production of firewood occurred most of the year, increasing somewhat during winter. Wheat cultivation was more intensive in summer. From March through July, 2 to 5 men plowed, planted, and fenced, and 10 to 25 men harvested the wheat in January. Capital improvements to the estate’s properties demanded as much labor as wheat cultivation. From 5 to 7 men per month were engaged in cutting wood for posts, in repairing ranchos, in erecting corrals, and in digging ditches—tasks that could be accomplished at any time. Other chores like the hunting of wild dogs from horseback also were not particularly seasonal.
The foregoing suggests that seasonality of production was not at the root of temporary employment. Because many jobs on the cattle ranch could be postponed, the actual seasonality of work corresponded not only to production needs and market demand but also to the availability of workers. The three factors, working in different ratios each year, produced a highly irregular seasonal distribution of employment. Therefore, in order to explain the prevalence of occasional employment and high labor turnover, one must turn to the work habits and life-styles of gauchos.
We believe that the gauchos’ refusal to work for longer periods greatly influenced the pattern of employment on estancias. Indeed, our statistical data tend to corroborate the vision of gauchos depicted by travelers to the Río de la Plata and other contemporary observers, who often commented on the unwillingness of rural residents to work for long periods of time. John Mawe considered the changadores (a synonym for gauchos) of Banda Oriental “so fickle and dissolute that nobody can count on their services for a whole week”; they often abandoned their jobs soon after receiving their first wage.23 Others attributed the decadence of the region to the gauchos’ refusal to hire themselves for the daily tasks of ranch work. Colonial authorities in Buenos Aires also complained that hacendados were unable to find peons willing to work for more than a few months at a time—peons often accepted employment only on short-term, cattle-chasing expeditions.24 As production on the colonial estancia passed from cattle hunting to cattle raising, owners found themselves constrained by the refusal of gauchos to engage in wage labor for longer periods of time.
A preference for leisure was pervasive among native workers—a problem hacendados were unable to change on either side of the River Plate. In 1782, the Buenos Aires cabildo resorted to compulsory recruitment of harvest labor, because “most of the men in charge of these tasks are loitering about [andan vagando] in the countryside without doing anything.” Félix de Azara reported, with some exaggeration, that people living on the prairies of the Banda Oriental refused to work or to serve anybody for any motive or price. When Azara offered a man a job, he replied insolently, “I am also looking for someone to serve me; do you want to work for me?”25 Gauchos carried this disinclination for work onto the estancias, transforming their jobs into a combination of work and leisure. Their tasks occupied only a small proportion of time. “Out of the little time left after each meal,” complained Peter Schmitmeyer, “drinking maté, smoking, and sleeping consumed the larger part of the twenty-four hours.”26
Gauchos grew up in an environment where submission to discipline was absent. They knew no clock and received no formal schooling or religious instruction; their sense of time was pastoral and relaxed, dysfunctional to the needs of capitalist production. Considering any activity to be postponable, gauchos felt little need to increase their pace of work. Observers often reported that delays, lack of punctuality, and slowness characterized all their activities. Gauchos acted as if “they have already passed into eternal life, and the days, no longer important, do not need to be counted.”27
The relationship between work and need explains the work attitudes of rural residents in the Río de la Plata. The gaucho was an errant hunter who hired himself out only to satisfy an immediate need. Food and dwelling were not among his major preoccupations, for he easily appropriated beef from cattle roaming the prairies and found room in every rancho or estancia he passed. His most important market demands consisted of clothes and “vices” such as yerba maté, tobacco, and liquor.28 He exhibited a pattern of consumption that did not warrant the gaucho’s continuous surrender to the cash nexus of wage labor.
Two basic traditions, freedom and illegality, formed the essence of the gauchos wandering style of life. Contemporary observers noted the acute sense of freedom among the country people of the Río de la Plata. “Gauchos have enjoyed from time immemorial a degree of individual liberty not to be seen perhaps among any other people,” General Miller reported. “Thinly sprinkled over immeasurable plains, they were scarcely within the control of a local magistracy, and they set at open defiance the viceregal authority whenever they [sic] trenched upon personal freedom.”29 The life of wandering motivated frequent changes of residence. Gauchos moved often from rancho to rancho and among the pulperías, or rural taverns. A tradition of living by means of appropriating alien cattle also shaped the gauchos’ attitudes toward work. From the mideighteenth century, when the gratuitous taking of cattle and hides became a crime, gauchos moved back and forth between legal and illegal activities—between estancia work and cattle theft. Rural residents always had hunted cattle for consumption and for hides to sell. Direct appropriation was a way of life and a necessity to country people. Viceregal authorities, on the other hand, considered cattle theft to be a crime and tried to differentiate between peones and pastores, regarded as honest persons, and changadores and guarderíos, equated as cattle thieves and smugglers.30 Actually, these two groups were one and the same. Rural residents easily shifted from one category to the other with little regard for the border of legality. To hacendados, the appropriation of cattle represented both a crime and a form of production. Landowners bought stolen hides and sometimes, after the operation, offered the “thieves” employment in their ranches.31 The landowners’ ambiguous attitude toward cattle theft created opportunities for rural residents in both legal and illegal activities. Not surprisingly, the gaucho identified his subsistence with appropriation and not with wage labor. Illegality provided him with an alternative to work and made him more independent in his relations with hacendados.
The late eighteenth-century estancia, therefore, came to embody two types of labor force: a sedentary group composed of permanent peons and slaves and a vagabond group made up of squatters and gauchos. This second group formed the largest portion of the labor force. When the administrator of the Estancia de las Vacas needed labor for regular or extraordinary activities, he resorted to squatters, sent foremen to look for itinerants in Buenos Aires, or waited to contract a group of passing changadores. From such workers, he could not expect a long-term commitment or a high intensity of work. The administrator had to accept gauchos’ attitudes toward work if he was to obtain any labor at all.
Although temporary employment and high turnover continued to prevail until the end of our period (1805), the workers over time actually increased their stay at the estancia. The average duration of employment increased from 86 days per year in 1791-95 to 133 days per year in 1796-99. In 1791, only 8 percent of the work force stayed longer than six months, but by 1799 that figure had risen to 40 percent of the workers.32 Was this a strategy of the merchants who owned Las Vacas? Or were longer employment commitments the result of workers’ preferences?
The owners of the estate did not concern themselves with extending the duration of employment or with replacing temporary workers with permanent ones. Back in Buenos Aires, the principals of the Hermandad de la Caridad apparently believed that permanent employment already was the normal state of affairs. On visits to the estancia, they listed workers as if they were attached irrevocably to the puestos and, without considering the high turnover rates, complained that the administrator hired too many peons. They instructed the administrator to increase work intensity and efficiency rather than the duration of employment.
Displaying little understanding of the problem of labor turnover, the absentee landowners of Las Vacas devised no mechanisms for retaining workers. Instead, they instructed the administrator to induce the workers to spend more of their earnings at the estancia’s pulpería. Francisco Cabrera suggested in 1791 that when peons came to the chapel for mass, the foremen should lure them into buying clothes and other commodities on credit.33 But, given the fact that the principals of the Hermandad were merchants, one should not conclude that debt peonage was the objective of these recommendations: profits from the sale of goods and the reduction of real wages must have been their motivation.34 Moreover, even if the hacendados had so wanted, attempts to book the workers by way of indebtedness would not have succeeded. Las Vacas accounts indicate that the estancia used payments-in-kind in periods of recession—but seldom in trade booms. In the trade decline of 1792-94, 63 percent of total wages took the form of efectos distributed at the estancia store.35 Workers seem to have accepted payments-in-kind rather than cash when payments fell into arrears during periods of downswing. During upswings, however, workers insisted on cash, a demand that continued even after the bonanza had ended (see Table VI).
Neither was the wage structure used to create a more permanent work force. Wages, for which rates were determined in part by the Hermandad in Buenos Aires and in part by the administrator on the spot, were the same for short-term as for longer-term peons, a strategy clearly not encouraging of labor stability. Only day laborers who worked less than a month received considerably higher wages. Those staying longer than nine months also earned better wages, but this small minority consisted of foremen, the artisan, the administrator, and his assistant. The administrator’s policy toward employment and wages seems to have been a reaction to the commercial cycle. When demand increased, he paid higher wages and employed more workers. When depression set in, he cut pay and hired fewer workers—mainly because the estancia received smaller amounts of silver to pay wages.
If hacendados were not trying to create a more permanent work force, how does one explain the extension of average duration of employment? The answer presumably lies in the response of the workers themselves to the commercial cycle. During the upswing of 1794-97, wages increased. Work at the estancia now seemed to the gauchos more attractive than the theft of hides, so they extended their term of employment for a few months. But during the downswing (after 1797), as wages declined, workers did not immediately cut back on their labor for the estancia; instead, they apparently attempted to avoid a drastic reduction of income by continuing their employment. Indeed, the estancia’s sudden lack of cash gave the peons a motive to remain at least until the pay arrived. Besides, gauchos had more difficulty finding buyers of stolen hides during trade recessions. The average length of employment increased from 79 days per year in 1794 to 144 days in 1797, and remained higher than 140 days per year even into the trough of 1800.
The increase in the duration of employment from 1791 to 1799 did not substantially change the basic nature of employment at the estate. Occasional work and high turnover continued to be prevalent to 1805—when our records end. Still in 1799, at the bottom of the downturn, 56 percent of the work force stayed six months or less. Quitting jobs, appropriating cattle, and wandering were pervasive cultural traits very difficult to change. They gave gauchos yet another advantage in their relations with hacendados: a defense against the imposition of labor discipline.
Labor Discipline and Gauchos’ Autonomy
The owners of Estancia de las Vacas on numerous occasions issued instructions aimed at the increase of work intensity and efficiency. Once again, the problem of representativeness of this estancia confronts the researchers. The Hermandad as estanciero may have been more motivated than resident owners by a constant flow of profits to support its charities. Be that as it may, we discern four objectives of the instructions, the first being an attempt to establish work routines. The 1790 instrucciones ordered the administrator to have peons round up cattle each morning, devoting the afternoons to horse breaking and extracting hides “in order that they do not remain idle.” Less frequently, workers were to brand cattle, repair corrals, and lure wild cattle to the puestos.36 When not driving their teams, carreteros were to cut firewood because, as the instructions stated, “it would not be just that they were idle and earning their wages.”37 Apparently, the owners wanted the peons working as long and as regularly as possible in order to break their preference for leisure.
Secondly, the instructions of the Hermandad attempted to impose productivity standards as a means of increasing work intensity. In 1790, each peon was to extract at least one hide per day—a standard said to be common in the area.38 In the production of firewood and posts, a cutter had to produce three carts of wood per week or 150 carts per year. The administrator each week was to count the number of carts, “measuring them himself in order to make sure that they have the length, height, and size of wood [palo] prescribed.”39
Thirdly, the instructions aimed to keep labor costs within certain limits. Francisco Cabrera of the Hermandad de la Caridad, for example, tried to save on wage labor by reallocating tasks among slaves. Older slaves were to work in the construction of the chapel and houses “to save some peons.” Cabrera ordered four young slaves to the puestos to “save an equal number of peons, who at seven pesos per month amount to three hundred and thirty-six per year.” The administrator ultimately fired the blacksmith, the warehouseman (barraquero), and the orchard keeper (hortelano), because their cost amounted to 400 pesos per year, and replaced them with slaves.40 Additionally, the instructions established limits on the number of workers and on levels of wages. The 1790 instructions ordered the administrator not to hire more than two foremen and 25 peons. They set the limits on the wages of the foremen, semiskilled workers, and peons. In the following year, the Hermandad removed the administrator’s authority to increase the number of laborers and their wages without the owners’ consent.41
As a final disciplinary objective, the instructions sought to minimize waste, ensuring that each possible product was extracted and delivered. Not only were peons to skin slaughtered cattle for their hides, but also they were supposed to cut and salt the meat and tongues. Those who butchered cattle for the prisoners of Martín García Island and who killed cattle for their own consumption were to save the hides, grease, and tallow. The estancia owners even expected the peons to salvage the skins of wild dogs killed in the hunts. Control of waste extended to prohibitions on woodcutters using hides to build their ranchos and on slaves wasting time growing their own crops.42
The common concerns of the landowners’ instructions to the administrator—keeping workers occupied, achieving minimum productivity standards, saving labor costs, and minimizing waste—underscore the hacendados’ capitalist mentality. The porteño merchants of the Hermandad constantly calculated expected profits. They preoccupied themselves with saving time. For instance, according to the 1790 instruction, the administrator was to keep separate accounts for each activity so that the owners might review the expenses and revenues of each product.43 This logic of capitalism dictated that only profitable branches of production be pursued. The hacendados, therefore, demanded detailed descriptions of accounting procedures, control of production and money, and accuracy in reporting. Although task-oriented production required a preindustrial organization of time, the ranch owners were aware of the prime dictum of industrial capitalism: time is money. For example, the workers were to maintain six oxcarts in operable condition at all times, so that “days were not lost” in collecting wood. They also were to have 54 cartloads of wood at the river landing at all times, so that river boats did not have to put in longer than the two days necessary to load. In order to save additional time and money, the foremen were to release the peons immediately at the conclusion of the faenas extraordinarias. To command was simple; to enforce, quite the contrary.
Owners and administrators in the ranches of colonial Río de la Plata simply lacked the means to enforce the mechanisms of control devised to achieve the desired standards. These mechanisms were supposed to consist of the administrator’s periodic visits to the puestos, counting and measuring of production, surveillance by trustworthy people (usually slaves), and a combination of incentives and penalties. The administrator was to visit puestos monthly in order to instruct foremen. To stimulate their performance, he was to distribute extra rations of yerba, tobacco, and clothes, “distinguishing those [foremen] who work better and make more economies in avoiding waste.” Workers in woodcutting labored under the piece-rate system, and the administrator, going to the monte (the bush) every Saturday, was to count the number of carts they had filled. In addition, either a peón de confianza or a slave had the task of delivering hides, tallow, and grease from cattle that the woodcutters had killed for consumption.44 Material penalties were assessed to enforce productivity standards: a peon was to lose 1.5 reales for each missing hide from his weekly quota of three.45 The spatial distribution of buildings involved a somewhat different means of control. Ranchos on which peons lived at the Estancia Principal were located near the chapel, so that they could attend mass and “for the foreman to be able to watch more frequently their conduct and to solve any disorder.”46
Owners devised stricter controls for slaves. Unlike peons, black slaves were subject to restrictions on their locations, residence, activities, and use of free time. To prevent escapes and “unhealthy” mingling with gauchos, the owners mandated that slaves reside at the main house of the estancia, although slaves themselves preferred to live on outlying ranchos. The hermano mayor of the brotherhood ordered these ranchos burned in 1791. Once at the big house, slaves were locked up each night following the Ave María. Each slave had a particular activity and location: six worked in the orchard, four traveled to the puestos each morning to act as foremen, others remained to work the chácara (farm), one worked at the hide warehouse, another raised pigs, and the last took care of the chapel. Some had two jobs. As the most permanent and dependent of all workers, the slaves served frequently as supervisors of the gauchos (how effective could this have been?) and as collectors of hides and other products. The owners also attempted to restrict the slaves from cultivating their own patches, ostensibly because they had been neglecting the production of foodstuffs for the orphanage at Buenos Aires. In 1791, the Hermandad ordered an increase in the slaves’ food rations in order to rebut any rationale for growing their own.47 These instructions leave the impression that the hacendados attempted to manage their personnel in a way that minimized waste and maximized profits. But were they successful?
These mechanisms of control did not increase productivity or labor intensity, and the directors of the Hermandad acknowledged their failure. The hermano mayor upbraided the administrator because neither the peons showed any proclivity for work nor did the administrator himself demonstrate that he was complying with instructions. During his visit, Cabrera discovered that no one at the estancia had rounded up cattle for two months. The latter should have been accomplished once a day; the administrator had not even bothered to criticize his foremen for the oversight. In practice, the capataces supervised the peons with little direct intervention from the administrator, each foreman delivering hides and other products for his puesto. Yet foremen had not carried out the mandatory branding of the wild cattle, and peons had neglected to produce their quota of hides and to break horses. Nor had wild cattle been rounded up and brought into the domesticated herds. The hermano mayor reluctantly reduced each peon’s quota for hides from six to three per week, “so that [peons might] not have any reason not to comply.”48 The low productivity of woodcutters threatened profits as well. Cabrera questioned the cost-efficiency of conchavados, woodcutters who received a monthly wage as opposed to peons who worked on piece rates. At a wage of seven pesos monthly, the conchavado delivered only seven cartloads per month— producing at twice the cost of the piece worker. Needing woodcutters all year long, the estancia however found no workers who would sell their labor for less.49 Landowners blamed administrators for these breaches, but much more was at stake.
The ingrained gaucho habits of refusing to obey orders or to follow work routines resisted work discipline. Oriented to the satisfaction of limited needs, the rural resident did not comprehend the necessity of working “every day” or of producing a given amount of wood and hides. The gaucho’s freedom of movement prevented the administrator from demanding his compliance to standards. Moreover, on the expansive Estancia de las Vacas, gauchos and slaves had learned to tolerate each other to such a degree that instructions from the absentee owners met a united resistance in the field.
The hacendados’ failure to enforce productivity standards and work discipline meant that expanded production simply required more workers—a fact of life in the Río de la Plata that owners found difficult to accept. The men of the Hermandad continued to blame the ranch’s administrator for hiring more peons than prescribed and for spending too much money on labor costs. They complained that, contrary to the instructions limiting the number of wage-earning peons at Las Vacas to 25, the administrator in 1791 had “paid many more men during the year without taking into account those employed in occasional tasks.”50 However, the administrator in the field knew what the merchant-hacendados in the city did not: production increases necessitated a larger labor force. To compensate for the lack of worker productivity and high labor turnover, the administrator had to hire three times the “prescribed” number of workers.
If the imposition of work discipline proved impossible, so did the effort to break the tradition of illegality among gauchos. Scarcely a year passed that the administrator did not lament the theft of hides and cattle. In 1782, gaucho employees had rustled cattle while driving them to Puerto las Vacas, and three peons were caught with hides they had stolen while loading them at the estancia.51 Two peons who had stolen hides in 1794 were sent to the presidio of Colonia. During the following year, the administrator accused his neighbors of stealing hides from the estancia, and sent for the comandante to prosecute the criminals.52 Asencio Riquelme, a former peon, was apprehended in 1796 for stealing horses and sent to Colonia for trial.53 In all cases, the offenders were former employees, nearby agregados, or wandering gauchos. As they left the employ of Las Vacas, the peons perhaps were compensating for their loss of income. Helping themselves to products of the estancia served as a suitable transition to their life of appropriating the surplus value in the prairies.
For neighbors, stealing cattle was a form of subsistence. In 1791, Cabrera ordered the eviction of a Paraguayan agregado who, on the pretext of paying a rent of four fanegas (approximately 410 kilograms) of wheat a year, had stolen 500 to 600 head of cattle.54 Other independent squatters throughout the ranch stole 365 bulls, and the administrator took a more lackadaisical attitude toward the problem than the Hermandad would have liked. To curtail hide robberies, the Hermandad ordered the construction of a brick warehouse and assigned a slave to guard it.55 But, considering the extension of the estancia, the warehouse served as a small deterrent, for the problem was enormous. Cabrera reported that in one year alone, the estancia was missing 966 head of cattle, 121 horses, and 32 oxen.56 The power of the gaucho on the prairies of the Banda Oriental was great enough to defy the economic impositions of those prophets of capitalism, the hacendados.
Conclusions
Let us summarize our conclusions so far:
The organization of the estancia in the 1790s proved flexible to the fluctuations in international demand for hides. Labor conditions such as temporary employment, high labor turnover, and malleable job descriptions account for much of this flexibility.
Patterns of rural employment, although linked to the market, cannot be understood except in relation to the life-styles and work habits of gauchos. These habits included spatial mobility, a preference for leisure, and subsistence by means of direct appropriation of alien cattle.
Gauchos succeeded in preserving their social and cultural preferences in regard to the duration of employment and labor discipline. Their preservation of relative autonomy reflects the inability of the hacendados, confronted with both fluctuating markets and workers’ resistance, to alter the work habits of the rural population. (Although not a part of this analysis, the interests of the viceregal authorities in some respects diverged from those of the landowners, thereby increasing the autonomy of the rural laborers.57)
If the fragmentary labor records of the Estancia de las Vacas imply anything at all about labor conditions during the period of growing pastoral production in the late eighteenth century, they show the extent of gauchos’ resistance to proletarianization and their preservation of cultural traditions. In particular, gauchos retained their traditions of freedom and illegality. Their mode of life—always wandering and never attached to place or job—created high rates of turnover for which the owning class had to compensate. The attitudes of gauchos toward work—their relaxed sense of time, preference for leisure, and avoidance of regular wage labor—forced hacendados to respond to economic expansion within the parameters of temporary employment and abundant theft of their properties. Workers resisted the demands created by economic growth. They refused to stay on the productive estates long enough for their attitudes and work habits to be transformed. They provoked delays in production and sales and ignored the hacendados’ efforts to impose work routines and productivity standards. They compelled ranch administrators to hire more workers in order to increase production. Indeed, the very reluctance of gauchos to hire themselves out permanently accounts for the labor scarcity that plagued hacendados in the Río de la Plata region. Even the increased term of employment in the late 1790s was in accordance with the decisions of the workers themselves and not those of hacendados. That owners and estancias, nonetheless, were capable of responding to the stimulus of a very fickle international market testifies to the flexibility of this preindustrial society to accommodate both increased production and local traditions.
Moreover, workers’ resistance to proletarianization at the Estancia de las Vacas speaks to larger issues. Did the peculiar development of capitalism in the periphery determine the work conditions of the laborers? Or were workers able to impose their own demands on the way that capitalism developed? The case of Las Vacas is suggestive of the extraordinary ability of the rural working class—in the late eighteenth-century Banda Oriental at least—to preserve its social and cultural preferences. The gauchos of the Banda Oriental capably resisted the imposition of new work standards and forced the owners themselves to make concessions toward age-old workers’ traditions. Laborers at the Estancia de las Vacas appear to have been not only rustic but also resilient.
Among others, see William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, 1979); Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Lahor in Potosí, 1545-1650 (Albuquerque, 1984); Arnold J. Bauer, “Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression,” HAHR, 59:1 (Feb. 1979), 34-63; Floreneia Mallon, The Defense of Community in Peru’s Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860-1940 (Princeton, 1983); John Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1910 (Princeton, 1987); Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920 (Stanford, 1983); and Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society Under Colonial Ride: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, 1984).
Studies of the region’s rural production and workers include Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln, 1983); Carlos A. Mayo, “Estancia y peonaje en la región pampeana en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” Desarrollo Económico, 23:92 (1984), 609-616; Tulio Halperín Donghi, “Una estancia en la campaña de Buenos Aires, F0ntezuelas, 1757-1809,” in Haciendas, latifundios y plantaciones en América Latina, Enrique Florescano, coord. (Mexico City, 1979), 464-485; Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “Las actividades agropecuarias en el marco de la vida económica del Pueblo de Indios de Nuestra Señora de los Santos Reyes Magos de Yapeyú, 1768-1806,” in Florescano, Haciendas, latifundios y plantaciones, 447-463; Jorge Balan, Urbanización regional y producción agraria en Argentina: Un análisis comparativo (Buenos Aires, 1979); Halperín Donghi, “La expansión ganadera en la campaña de Buenos Aires (1810-1852),” Desarrollo Económico, 3:1-2 (1963), 57-110; Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho (Buenos Aires, 1968); Fernando Assunção, El gaucho, su espacio y su tiempo (Montevideo, 1969); Diana Hernando (Balmori), “Casa y Familia: Spatial Biographies in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1973); Jonathan C. Brown, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (Cambridge, 1979); Brown, “A Nineteenth-Century Cattle Empire in Argentina,” Agricultural History, 52:1 (1978), 160-78; Hilda Sábato, “Trabajar para vivir o vivir para trabajar; Empleo ocasional y escasez de mano de obra en Buenos Aires, ciudad y campaña, 1850-1880” (Buenos Aires, 1983); William R. Svec, “A Study of the Socio-Economic Development of the Modern Argentine Estancia, 1852-1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1966); Carl Solberg, “Farm Workers and the Myth of Export-led Development in Argentina,” The Americas, 31:2 (1974), 121-38; Donna J. Guy, “The Rural Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Argentina; Forced Plantation Labor in Tucumán,” Latin American Research Review, 13:1 (1978), 135-45; César A. García Belsunce, dir., Buenos Aires, 1800-1830, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1976-77); Roberto Cortés Conde, El progreso argentino, 1880-1914 (Buenos Aires, 1979); and Ricardo Salvatore, “Labor Control and Discrimination: The Contratista System in Mendoza, Argentina, 1880-1920,” Agricultural History, 60:3 (1986), 52-80.
On Jesuit estates, see Nicholas P. Cushner, Jesuit Ranches and the Agrarian Development of Colonial Argentina, 1650-1767 (Albany, 1983). For details on the Hermandad, see Susan Socolow, The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778-1810: Family and Commerce (Cambridge, 1978), 95-100.
For the business operations of Las Vacas, see Brown, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 41-46. On the itinerant peon of the age, see Thomas Lyle Whigham, “The Politics of River Commerce in The Upper Plata, 1780-1865” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1985), 277.
John Fisher, “The Imperial Response to Free Trade: Spanish Imports from Spanish America, 1778-1796,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 17:1 (May 1985), 35-78. See also Socolow, Merchants of Buenos Aires, 163-68; and Brown, “Outpost to Entrepôt: Trade and Commerce at Colonial Buenos Aires,” in Buenos Aires: 40o Years, Stanley Ross and Thomas McCann, eds. (Austin, 1982), 12-13.
Emilio Ravignani, “El volumen del comercio del Río de la Plata a comienzos del Virreinato (1779-1781),” Boletín del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 15:54 (1932), 561; Emanuel Soares Garcia, Buenos Aires e Cadiz: Contribuição ao estudo do comércio livre, 1789-1791 (São Paulo, 1974), 64; Sergio Villalobos, Comercio y contrabando en el Río de la Plata y Chile, 1700-1811 (Buenos Aires, 1965), 97; Manuel de Lavardén, Nuevo aspecto del comercio en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires, 1955), intro.; and Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “Economic Growth and Regional Differentiation: The River Plate Region at the End of the Eighteenth Century,” HAHR, 65:1 (Feb. 1985), 51-89.
Javier Cuenca Esteban, “Statistics of Spain’s Colonial Trade, 1792-1820,” HAHR, 61:3 (Aug. 1981), 381-428.
Lavardén, Nuevo aspecto del comercio, 10; Ralph Davies, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester, 1979), 110-125.
Our data differ from those of Rodríguez Molas and, for a later period, from those of Slatta. In his study of the account books of the Bethlehemite estancia at Arrecifes in Buenos Aires province, Rodríguez Molas concludes that peon wages remained constant at six pesos monthly from 1755 to 1798. Slatta’s wage figures for the 1840s indicate a seasonal fluctuation we do not notice in our 1790s wage data. Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho, 179; Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 36-37.
The monthly wage of peons varied between a high of 7.6 pesos in 1797 and a low of 6.1 pesos in 1800.
“Estancia de Las Vacas: Expediente sobre propuestas del administrador Florencio García para continuar en el cargo” (1799), Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Sala 9 (hereafter AGN Sala 9), 37-5-4 (E. 19); and “Hermandad de la Caridad” (1799-1800), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-5.
“Hermandad de la Caridad” (1794-1796), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-3.
“El Hermano Mayor de la Santa Caridad” (1793), AGN Sala 9, 37-5-4 (E.20); and “Hermandad de la Caridad” (1801-1802), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-6.
“Hermandad de la Caridad” (1799-1800). Our data show dwindling numbers of slaves on Las Vacas, although studies of other colonial estancias note the hacendados’ increasing reliance on slave labor. Halperín Donghi, “Una estancia,” 456-457; Cushner, Jesuit Ranches, 84, 94.
“Expediente promovido que el Cura Vicario de las Víboras don Casimiro José de la Fuente …” (1809), AGN Sala 9, 9-7-9.
“Hermandad de la Caridad” (1799-1800); “Instrucciones que forma don Martín José de Altolaguirre …” (June 4, 1790), AGN Sala 9, 9-7-9.
“El Hermano Mayor de la Santa Caridad” (1793).
“Hermandad de la Caridad” (1794-1796).
The rate of turnover at Las Vacas for the period 1791-1799 was 360 percent per annum. Our statistics indicate a higher turnover rate than Slatta’s estimate for Rosas’s ranches in the early 1840s (160 percent per year, or 40 percent per quarter). Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 32-33. But Mayo, “Estancia y peonaje,” 610—611, 616, also notes a high rate of labor turnover for the late eighteenth century.
Slatta finds that the gaucho’s world of the late nineteenth century was also shaped by “the legal and political structures imposed by the ranching elite.” Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 16. In this article, we do not deal with the formal mechanisms of social control (see n. 57), which frankly did not seem to greatly affect the labor relations at Las Vacas. Our information shows that market conditions, gaucho work habits, and the owners response to both explain work relations at the estancia.
Monthly production varied from 150 to 250 hides throughout most of 1796, but reached 1,330 hides in November. “Libro de cargo y data y géneros remitidos de los producidos por esta estancia” (1796), AGN Sala 9, 37-5-4 (E.9); “Estancia de las Vacas, Libros de cargo y data de efectos y caudales" (1796), AGN Sala 9, 37-5-4 (E. 13); “Hermandad de la Caridad” (1778-1809), AGN Sala 9, 6-9-2.
In 1792, branding occured in July at Rabonas and Las Tunas. In 1800, the administrator noted the need for more workers from Buenos Aires during branding time in April. "Hermandad de la Caridad” (1778-1804), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-2; and “El Hermano Mayor de la Santa Caridad sobre que se obligue al administrador de la Estancia de las Bacas i entrega al nombrado Dn. Francisco Wrigth [sic]” (1800), AGN Sala 9, 37-5-4(E. 20).
John Mawe, Viagens ao interior do Brasil (Belo Horizonte, 1978), 47.
Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho, 74-81. Slatta notes that gauchos continued to prefer higher-paying, peak-demand jobs rather than long-term employment even into the midnineteenth century. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 36-37.
Rómulo Zabala and Enrique de Gandía, Historia de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 4 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1937), II, 341; Félix de Azara, Viajes por la América Meridional, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1923), II, 184. Other testimonials to the gauchos’ poor work habits are found in Alexander Caldcleugh, Viajes por América del Sur (Buenos Aires, 1949), 61; and John Miller, Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru (reprint of 1829 edition; New York, 1973), 152.
Peter Schmitmeyer, Viaje a Chile a través de los Andes (Buenos Aires, 1947), 177; and Azara, Viajes por América Meridional, II, 174.
Azara, Memoria sobre el estado rural del Río de la Plata y otros informes (Buenos Aires, 1943), IV, 180. Scholars describe the criollo’s later outlook (c. 1900) as “present-oriented,” indicating the tenacity with which the rural folk of the region preserved their cultural traditions. Kristin Ruggiero, “Gringo and Creole: Foreign and Native Values in a Rural Argentine Community,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 24:2 (1982), 165; Salvatore, “Labor Control and Discrimination.”
Assunção, El gaucho, 161, 195; Francis Bond Head, Journeys Across the Pampas and Among the Andes (Carbondale, IL, 1967), 14.
Miller, Memoirs of General Miller, 152-153. Also see Head, Journey Across the Pampas, 14 and Assunção, El gaucho, 201.
On the attitude of the elites toward the gauchos, see Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 10.
Assungáo, El gaucho, 162-163, 187; Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho, 75. On the ambivalent attitude of the estanciero toward theft in the nineteenth century, see Slatta, “Pulperías and Contraband Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires Province,” The Americas, 38:3 (Jan. 1982), 347-362; and García Belsunce, Buenos Aires, II, 193.
See the sources for Table IV.
Francisco de Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de la leña de la Estancia de las Vacas,” July 31, 1791, AGN Sala 9, 6-8-1.
This is not a speculative point. The ranch accounts clearly show that the markup on items sold at the pulpería amounted to 30 percent. See Brown, A Socioeconomic History, 45.
Of 8,390 pesos in wages from 1792 too 1794, 5,312 pesos were paid in kind and 3,078 in silver. “Cuenta de data que don José Posadas …” (1792), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-3. Mayo found that the salary of peons at two estancias of the second half of the eighteenth century consisted equally of goods and silver. See “Estancias y peonaje,” 612.
"Instrucciones del Hno. Mayor Martín José Altolaguirre para el gobierno de esta Estancia de las Vacas” (June 10, 1790), AGN Sala 9, 6-7-9. These instructions are very similar to the more famous ones issued by Juan Manuel de Rosas in the 1820s and indicate that the genre was an old one in the Río de la Plata. See Rosas, Instrucciones a los mayordomos de estancia (Buenos Aires, 1951).
Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de la leña.”
Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de cueros de la Estancia de las Vacas” (July 31, 1791), AGN, Sala 9, 6-8-1.
Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de la leña.”
Cabrera, “Pliego de prevenciones en treinta artículos para el gobierno del administrador de la Estancia de las Vacas,” July 31, 1791, AGN Sala 9, 6-8-1.
Ibid.
Ibid.; Cabrera, “Instrucciones del Hno. Mayor,” 1790.
Cabrera, “Instrucciones del Hno. Mayor,” 1790.
Ibid.
Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de cueros.”
Cabrera, “Pliego de prevenciones.”
Ibid.
Cabrera, “Pliego de 31 cargos al administrador de esta estancia Dn. Florencio García,” July 31, 1791, AGN Sala 9, 6-8-1; Cabrera, “Instrucción para el ramo de cueros.”
Cabrera, “Instrucciones para el ramo de la leña.”
Cabrera, “Pliego de 31 cargos.”
Francisco García to Hermandad, Sept. 1, 1782, AGN Sala 9, 37-5-4 (E. 19); “Cueros. Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad” (1786-1789), AGN Sala 9, 33-4-2 (E. 970).
José de Posadas, “Cuenta general de cargo y data de la administración de la Estancia de las Vacas,” Feb. 20, 1795, AGN Sala 9, 6-8-4.
“Hermandad de la Caridad” (1796-1798), AGN Sala 9, 6-8-4.
Cabrera, “Pliego de prevenciones.”
Ibid.
Cabrera, “Pliego de 31 cargos.” Such losses and thievery continued into the next century. See Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 121.
We cannot deal here with the impact of viceregal political authority on labor relations in the Banda Oriental. But research by Salvatore suggests that official efforts at social control were ineffective. Both gauchos and landowners resisted. See Salvatore, “Class Struggle and International Trade: Río de la Plata’s Commerce and the Atlantic Proletariat, 1790-1850” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1986).
Author notes
Brown did the archival research for this study in Argentina on a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Grant in 1974. Salvatore applied both quantitative and qualitative analysis to the data and completed research on work habits and trade cycles. The authors are indebted to Lynore Brown, who painstakingly recorded the payroll data that provide the basis for many of the article’s conclusions, and to Patrick Carroll, who critiqued the methods and focus.
