This book is about car workers in Mexico. Before beginning a detailed analysis of the material, however, it would be as well to situate this study in terms of the larger theoretical debate about Latin American workers and their insertion in the political systems of those countries.

After a brief discussion of these theoretical controversies, this chapter examines what may conveniently be described as the standard account of the historical development of the labour movement in Latin America and, particularly, Mexico. This analysis, which is widely accepted by social scientists, sees Mexican trade unions as more or less passive instruments of an authoritarian state. The corporatist control over labour, it is argued, results in the co-optation or repression of rank-and-file insurgency, and what might otherwise be a potential challenge to the stability of the political system is turned into a bastion of support for the regime. The argument presented in this book is that this ‘standard account’ is defective in a number of important areas and that, consequently, our understanding of the dynamics of the Mexican political system is in need of substantial modification.

The ‘standard account’ argues that the subordination of organized labour to the state has deep historical roots, and one of the aims of this chapter will be to provide a brief survey of the history of organized labour in Mexico, indicating on the contrary just how problematic state control over working-class mobilization has been.

Chapter 2 presented a number of hypotheses about unions in the Mexican automobile industry. The point of departure was an interest in the question of whether there were systematic differences in union behaviour between the new ‘independent’ unions and the old-style ‘official’ unions. A number of different dimensions of union behaviour – militancy, control over work processes, internal democracy, representation of workers in the labour courts, etc. – were examined in subsequent chapters. The present chapter will tie together the results of previous chapters in order to clear the way for a discussion (in chapter 10) of the implications of the findings of this research for political processes in Mexico.

The first dimension of union behaviour which was examined was union militancy, defined here as strike-proneness. The hypothesis that the three independent unions would be more strike-prone than the six official unions received only qualified support. The three independent unions (Nissan–Cuernavaca, VW and DINA) were, indeed, among the most strike-prone in the industry. However, two of the official unions (GM–DF and Ford) were also strike-prone. It was therefore decided to amend the original hypotheses, and see whether the dichotomy militant–conservative was a better predictor of union behaviour than the dichotomy independent–official.

As the available evidence on the various dimensions of union behaviour was reviewed in chapters 4 to 8, a strikingly consistent pattern of intercorrelations emerged.

Research design

In chapter 1, I argued that the history of labour in Mexico illustrated a continual conflict between militant initiatives on the part of the rank and file and the desire by conservative union leaders and government officials to avoid strikes and ‘excessive’ wage increases. Control by the state over the union movement was, I argued, much more problematic than might be inferred from the ‘standard account’ of the history of Mexican labour. In the 1970s rank-and-file militancy increasingly took the form of breakaway movements from the official union confederations and the establishment of ‘independent’ unions. This development raised the question of whether such unions would be more radical than the official unions, and whether growth in the independent union sector would alter the existing role played by Mexican unionism in supporting political stability and economic growth. It was in the light of these general questions that the research presented in this book was designed. The most general aim of the research was to see whether there were, indeed, important differences in union behaviour between the independent and the official union sectors, and to consider further whether such difference might have implications for political realignments in Mexico.

With this in mind, a decision was taken to focus on the automobile industry. Given the presence of both types of union in that industry, and given the relatively homogeneous structure of the industry (this will be qualified later), it was felt that a study of the automobile industry would yield results which might, with certain qualifications, be generalized to other sectors of industry.

This volume is the second of two that bring together the main findings of field research carried out in the central highlands of Peru between August 1970 and December 1972. The project was financed by a British Social Science Research Council (SSRC) grant made to Norman Long and Bryan Roberts of the University of Manchester. Its aim was to undertake a regional study of social change and development in an economically diversified area of highland Peru.

We were joined in the project by two contributors to this volume, Julian Lake and Gavin Alderson-Smith, both of whom were independently financed, the former by the SSRC and the latter by the Canada Council. Subsequently, Norman Long continued with his research in the central highlands and, in 1980, was awarded, together with Jorge Dandier, a further SSRC grant to extend the themes of the original project to include the Peruvian Department of Huancavelica and the Cochabamba region of Bolivia. Some of the preliminary findings of the latter research have been incorporated into the present volume, allowing us to update the material of the early 1970s.

Throughout the earlier research we were ably assisted by Teófilo Altamirano who, following his appointment to the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, continued with work in the central highlands but broadened it to cover regional associations in Lima, the results of which are reported in this volume. The research effort was also aided by two Chilean anthropologists, Pilar Campafia and Rigoberto Rivera, whose investigations among highland puna communities are likewise contained in this book. They were based at the Universidad Catolica and later studied with Norman Long and Jorge Dandier at the University of Durham.

From the early twentieth century, the central highlands became an integral part of Peru's expanding export economy, being the principal location of the mining industry and an important contributor to the development of wool production and, through the supply of seasonal labour, to the operation of the coastal cotton estates. The impact of the export sector on the economy of the central highlands was, as we shall show, substantial both in terms of the wages spent locally and in terms of the linkages that developed between the export sector, agriculture, commerce, transport and local manufacturing industry. These linkages did not result, however, in a significant regional accumulation of capital in agriculture and industry. Such an accumulation, in terms of industrial plant and infrastructure, of the consolidation and modernization of farms and of the linkages between these sectors, could have provided the basis for a pattern of self-sustained regional development. Why such a development failed to materialize is the focus of this chapter.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the central highlands region had the resources needed for growth. The largest deposits of silver, copper, lead, zinc and coal known in Peru were located in the Department of Junín. Timber was available from the tropical lowlands, while there was extensive arable and livestock farming in the valleys and surrounding puna. Junín was, at this time, the single most important national source of barley, potatoes and wheat and, after Puno, was one of the major national centres of wool production.

Introduction

The intention of this chapter is to analyse how capitalist expansion in the central highlands has led to increased socio-economic differentiation within the villages of the Mantaro valley, examining closely the role which migration has played in this process. The hypothesis that capitalist expansion in the countryside results in increasing socio-economic differentiation has been much debated. Analysing the Russian experience, Lenin (1967) first argued that capitalism spread amongst the peasantry due to pressures from both external sources, acting through imbalanced exchanges, and internal sources, stemming from the accumulation of capital in the rural sector. As capitalist relations expanded so polarization occurred between richer peasants and landless labourers. Challenging this view, Chayanov (1966) maintained that the differentiation observed by Lenin in the rural areas was due to processes internal to the peasant economy and that this economy was highly resistant to capitalist penetration. This debate has continued with reference to both the Russian case and the experience of underdeveloped countries today (Goodman and Redcliff, 1981).

Integral to the differentiation debate is the concept of the peasant economy, distinguishable from the capitalist economy by its units of combined production and consumption, household labour and lack of market valuations (Shanin, 1973). The resilience of the peasant household and extended family, plus the mutual aid practices found amongst peasants, ranging from household exchanges to communal co-operation, result in a dogged resistance by peasants to the polarization process. It is this resilience that I examine in the following pages showing, however, that peasants become economically differentiated and yet absorbed within the capitalist economy in a variety of ways.

This chapter focusses on the specific forms of what McGee (1979) has called ‘making out’, which evolved among a group of Peruvian people whose livelihoods were both rural and urban and both agricultural and nonagricultural. The evidence suggests that the uneven and volatile nature of the capitalist economy led, in this case, to a complex series of linkages between households across space (not merely between the city and the country, but also within the city itself). This spread of livelihood pursuits across space was a reflection of the households' involvement in a variety of economic activities within the context of a very uncertain economic environment.

This dispersed nature of livelihood pursuits affected the character of fieldwork design in two ways. Firstly, working from one or other end of the rural-urban migration process, or on one area within the city, would make it difficult to examine the precise effects of the livelihood pursuits of a household in one location on the livelihood pursuits of households linked to it, but in another location. In this particular case, fieldwork was undertaken first in a specific rural area and then linkages were followed through to various locations until, eventually, the project itself was moved to the Lima barriadas and slums, while continuing to focus on people coming from our original community rather than on any one location in the city (cf. Mitchell, 1966; Philpott, 1973).

Secondly, the dispersion of livelihood pursuits, combined with the flexible nature of household composition as people move in pursuit of their various interests, can make the use of statistical data gathered at any one moment extremely distorting.

Decline in the economic significance of the mining sector has not been compensated by the development of agriculture. Despite increasing urban concentration, the rural population has continued to grow, increasing pressure on existing land resources. Using the census definition of'rural’ locations (less than 5,000), there has been an increase in the rural population of Junin in the intercensal years from 1961 to 1972 from 265,458 to 281,890. And by 1980, it was estimated that this rural population had increased to 349,176. (Indicadores estadtsticos, 1981: Tables 27, 28). Urban growth was more rapid, but many of these ‘urban’ places were large villages in which a majority of the population still farmed as their major economic activity. The average landholding in 1972 was 2.4 hectares, but this figure concealed significant inequalities in the distribution of land with 38 per cent of farms in the Mantaro valley zone possessing less than half a hectare (Long and Roberts, 1978: 11). The agrarian reform office estimated that the amount of land needed for basic household subsistence was three hectares; yet about half the households in Junin had less than this minimum holding (Huancayo Plan Director, 1976: 36).

Increased demographic pressure was not accompanied by an increase in agricultural production. Agricultural statistics show no evidence of significant improvements between the 1950s and the 1970s, either in levels of production or in productivity of the four main food crops: potatoes, maize, wheat and barley. In the highlands of Junin, the total amount of cultivated land had probably reached its limits by the 1970s and the major new sources of cultivated land were located in the tropical lowlands.

Introduction

This book explores a controversial issue in the analysis of development – whether integration into the international capitalist economy entails relative stagnation for underdeveloped economies or the possibility of sustained economic growth and diversification. We focus upon one provincial region of Peru – the central highlands – whose economic and social structure has been shaped by involvement in the international economy from the latter half of the sixteenth century and which, in recent years, has become peripheral to the more dynamic growth pole of Lima.

Our conclusion is that significant growth and diversification has taken place in the region and that this is directly attributable to capitalist expansion. Throughout our analysis we emphasize the social and political dimensions of this process since the local dynamic of capitalism has involved important changes in class relationships consequent upon the emergence of a wage labour force and new entrepreneurial groupings

This conclusion is particularly significant since the economy of the central highlands has been closely linked in this century to the fortunes of large-scale, foreign-owned mining enterprise. At first sight, the mining complex had the characteristics of an economic enclave with few dynamic linkages with the area's economy. This is precisely the situation that is supposed to prevent economic growth at the periphery. However, we will seek to show that such an interpretation fails to take account of the significant but small-scale processes of accumulation resulting from the exchanges between the enclave and a peasant population which, for centuries, had been involved in labour and commodity markets.

In this chapter, we outline the major social and economic processes that created a regional system in the central highlands. Our main interest will be to examine the linkages that developed between the mines and the agrarian sector during the colonial period and into the nineteenth century. An important part of this process was the strengthening of village institutions and the consolidation of small-scale economic enterprise in trade and agriculture. The expansion of local economic enterprise prior to the twentieth century and the class interests to which this gave rise show some important continuities with the effects of large-scale modern mining which we analyse in the next chapter.

The colonial economy of the central highlands

Almost from the beginning of Spanish colonial rule, mining shaped the social and economic organization of the central highlands. From the seventeenth century, the Cerro de Pasco area developed as an important producer of silver and fry the late eighteenth century it was the major South American source, replacing Potosí (Fisher, n.d.: 21). In addition, the Santa Barbara mine at Huancavelica, to the immediate south of the area, was the primary American source of mercury, which was essential to the amalgamation process of silver extraction. The central highlands and especially the Mantaro valley provided labour, fodder, foodstuffs and timber for these mining complexes.

The relationship between mining and agriculture in the Peruvian Andes developed differently from the system of production that Palerm (1976) describes for colonial Mexico. The Mexican system was essentially based on large-scale mining enterprises which were serviced by haciendas, often owned by the mine owners, which in turn depended on the skills, labour and land reserves of the Indian communities.

In this chapter, we aim to place the foregoing accounts within a broader framework of analysis by exploring the usefulness of a regional focus for understanding processes of development in Latin America. In particular, we examine how far the central highlands region has retained its identity and economic vitality in the face of the continuing centralization of the Peruvian economy.

In chapter one, we argued for adopting a production rather than a marketing and exchange approach to regional analysis. From the case materials presented it should now be clear why we chose to do so. The business class of the city of Huancayo did not depend significantly in any historical period upon its ability to control local markets. Its members made little attempt, for example, to monopolize trade in agricultural or craft products. Rather, their main source of wealth derived from the services they provided the mining economy, their investments in enterprises and, to a lesser extent, their monopolies on the sale of imported manufactures. A similar process occurred at village level, since the main source of capital for local entrepreneurship was savings from work in the mining or plantation economy.

Consequently, the development of a periodic market system in the area cannot be interpreted simply as the outcome of widespread and locally based commercial development and a resulting increase in intra-regional specialization. This market system was consolidated in the 1920s and 1930s, with itinerant traders circulating between markets held in different places on different days of the week (Arguedas, 1957).