The author of this well-written, remarkably jargon-free monograph is an economist who has also done the field research of an anthropologist and the library research of a good historian. Nor is history included perfunctorily as background: it becomes an integral part of the analysis, which proceeds from the specific assumption that the essential characteristics of small-scale peasant or family farming can only be seen in long-term perspective. Reinhardt traces the development of the community of El Palmar, in the Cordillera Occidental between Cali and the Pacific, from the arrival of the first peasant families around the turn of the century. She thus shows—for example—that “semiproletarianization” in the form of part-time wage labor has been present from the beginning and thus cannot be simply construed today (as some would have it) to prove that family farmers are being squeezed out by the relentless advance of capitalist agribusiness.
Reinhardt writes as comprometida, and as one fully aware of the hardships faced by family farmers in Colombia and other Latin American countries. Yet she spends no time in hand wringing over the extent of social injustice in Latin America, for she is too intent on underscoring the vitality of the peasant producers and the viability (so far) of their mode of production even in the face of the advance of large-scale commercial agriculture. She likewise points out that, from the standpoint of those whose struggle she depicts, the action of the state and of such quasi-official entities as the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros has not been wholly negative. Some of the discussion of family and farm sizes, price fluctuations, and labor inputs may at times seem tedious, even repetitious. But Reinhardt’s total immersion in, and identification with, her topic carry the reader along to the end.
