This chapter traces the origins of Fedecafé’s hegemonic labor regime in Viejo Caldas. It begins by showing how Colombian coffee producers adapted to a peripheral niche of the world coffee market during the era of British hegemony, with semi-marketized small farmers better able to cope with the volatility of prices in the coffee market than large-scale planters that used various proletarianized labor systems. It then shows how Fedecafé emerged as a parastatal development organization charged with consolidating a profitable export sector based upon smallholding farmers. In doing so, it shows how Fedecafé instituted a regulatory social compact (Pacto Cafetero) that protected farmers from the volatility of the market and thus facilitated their conversion into fully proletarianized (market-dependent) farmers. It ends with a discussion of whether the Pacto Cafetero was effective in generating a hegemonic labor regime in Viejo Caldas into the postwar decades.