This book presents a detailed analysis of the twentieth-century transformation of agrarian relations in Cajamarca, Peru. Carmen Deere divides her account into two broadly defined periods. The first, lasting until the 1940s, was characterized by what she labels feudal relations on haciendas. A dynamic sugar plantation sector on the coast drew Cajamarca into its orbit as estates provided beef, agricultural, and dairy products to coastal markets and highland peasants migrated to the plantations on a seasonal basis. The massive haciendas depended on a resident and nonresident peasant labor force, tied to the estates through a variety of servile labor relations. The second period, beginning in the 1940s, was characterized by what Deere labels capitalist relations. With improved transportation links and the establishment of a Nestlé subsidiary (PERULAC) in Cajamarca, estate owners began to transform their haciendas into dairy enterprises, removing tenants from the best lands, resettling them on marginal lands, and selling the marginal plots to the tenants themselves.
With the establishment of a local dairy industry by this “junker” path, an alternative “farmer” path also became possible, whereby smaller-scale renters and landowners could develop dairy farms. During this period, peasants continued to migrate, especially to the coast, to earn money to pay for land purchased in the highlands. The capitalist transformation of the Cajamarca countryside was dealt a blow by the Agrarian Reform of 1969, which finished off the remnants of the hacienda system but also appropriated new dairy enterprises and created state-managed cooperatives among former wage workers on the farms. The majority of peasant households were locked out of these cooperatives, however, and by the end of the reform a new migration process had emerged, as peasants journeyed to recently opened Amazonian territories with the hope of obtaining lowland farms.
As she examines each of these periods, Deere concentrates on the experience of the peasants, combining a Marxist class analysis that draws on Resnick and Wolff’s model of "fundamental" and "subsumed" class processes with an analysis of "household relations," seeing the household as the principal site for the reproduction of labor power. The examination of interpersonal and intergenerational relations within and among households opens up Deere’s class analysis in important and innovative ways. She sees the household as a site in which a variety of economic, political, and cultural processes commingle; and she brings a variety of sources—from statistical survey to life history—to bear on her analysis. Thus she is able to examine a variety of rationales and motives for migration to the coast or the Amazonian lowland, or for engagement in wage labor. Each is embedded in individual or household histories, which intersect with, but do not simply reflect, fundamental and subsumed class processes. In addition, Deere weaves an examination of gender relations into her analysis of class and household relations more fully and successfully than have most students of peasant life.
Actually, however, her statistical data are more extensive and detailed than her other source materials. Two life and household histories are briefly presented, but a variety of other modes of intra- and inter-household analysis are not pursued. While households are seen as the site of economic, political, and cultural practices, these practices seem to be conceived as demonstrating a decreasing order of dynamism. Yet what remains is the rich detail and the rigorous and sophisticated analysis. We have waited for this book a long time, and it is good to have it.
