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The Origins of Capitalist Agriculture in the Dominican Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Michiel Baud
Michiel Baud*
Affiliation:
Erasmus University, Rotterdam
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It has been well documented that structural changes in the capitalist world system during the second half of the nineteenth century generated profound consequences for peripheral economies such as those in Latin America and Africa. Improvements in transportation and the increasing demand for tropical consumer goods in the industrializing countries caused unprecedented growth in the production of tropical export crops and a consequent international movement of agricultural commodities. This widespread emergence of export agriculture for Western European and North American markets is the one reason why researchers can still employ a broad concept like the “Third World” to divergent economies and cultures in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Production of such crops as cotton, cocoa, tobacco, and coffee, which had previously been grown in many regions on a limited scale, expanded enormously in the second half of the nineteenth century. The global character of these agrarian changes, however, should not obscure their regional peculiarities. Export agriculture (whether peasant-or plantation-based) arose within existing systems of social and economic relations, which had a decisive influence on the final outcome of this process of change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 1987 , pp. 135 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

This article is based on research in the Dominican Republic made possible by the generous support of the Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericana (CEDLA) in Amsterdam.

References

Notes

1. For example, see Tropical Development, 1880–1913, edited by W. A. Lewis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970); and E. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 11.

2. For instance, see M. L. Moreau Saint-Méry, Descripción de la parte española de Santo Domingo (1796; reprint, Ciudad Trujillo: Editora Montalvo, 1944), 98.

3. The first German merchant ships appeared on the northern coast in 1835. From 1845 on, the two Hamburg mercantile houses of Linck & Jones and Decastro & Petroldt established a regular trading connection with the island. See W. Kresse, Die Fahrgebiete der Hamburger Handelsflotte, 1824–1888 (Hamburg: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1972), 165.

4. For instance, J. R. Abad, La República Dominicana: reseña general geográfico-estadística (1888; reprint, Santo Domingo: Banco Central de la República Dominicana, 1973), 297 and passim.

5. In 1849, French diplomat V. Place wrote: 'The [tobacco] wrapper from Santo Domingo looks more pleasant and rich than any other and offers a perfect elasticity and good resistance.“ Cited in J. Boin and J. Serulle Ramia, El proceso de desarrollo del capitalismo en la República Dominicana, vol. 1, 1844–1875 (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Gramil, 1979), 194.

6. On the German penetration into the Caribbean from St. Thomas, see E. Wiskemann, Hamburg und die Welthandelspolitik von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Hamburg: Friedrichsen, 1929), 117 and passim. Also, J. de J. Domínguez, Economía y política en la República Dominicana, años 1844–1861 (Santo Domingo: Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo [UASD], 1977), 82–83.

7. Boin and Serulle Ramia, Proceso de desarrollo, 80–108.

8. Domínguez, Economía y política, 60.

9. The commercial class of Santiago remained utterly dependent on the credit of the foreign mercantile houses, which were established in Puerto Plata: “With only a few exceptions, commerce in Santiago cannot maintain itself without the help of Puerto Plata. The merchant of the interior cannot move without its assistance.” El Liberal 1, no. 10 (14 Nov. 1878).

10. Eco del Pueblo 3, no. 111 (18 May 1884).

11. H. Hoetink, El pueblo dominicano, 1850–1900: apuntes para su sociología histórica (Santiago de los Caballeros: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1971), 91.

12. The construction of this railroad started in 1881 under the direction of Scottish entrepreneur Allen Howard Crosby. After many delays and intrigues, it reached La Vega in 1887.

13. P. F. Bonó, “Apuntes sobre las clases trabajadoras dominicanas,” an essay written in 1881, in Papeles de Pedro F. Bonó, edited by E. Rodríguez Demorizi (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1964), 194.

14. These prices are mentioned in Boin and Serulle Ramia, Proceso de desarrollo, 196; El Porvenir 1, no. 25 (6 July 1872); and El Mensajero 1, no. 13 (28 Aug. 1887).

15. See the report on the situation in the Dominican Republic in the Dutch tobacco journal De Tabaksplant 10, no. 505 (9 Jan. 1883). During this period, the Dominican newspapers were filled with similar complaints. Producers who could afford not to sell their tobacco often refused to sell it. At the end of the harvest season in 1891, one paper reported that the “remaining tobacco is in the hands of the better-off cultivators, who prefer to store it rather than give away, as is commonly said, what has cost them so much work to harvest.” See “Sobre el tabaco,” Eco del Pueblo 10, no. 300 (19 Sept. 1891) (emphasis in original).

16. “Hundreds, thousands of women make a living in a hard way, but at least eat and live, thanks to the preparation of the tobacco before it is packed,” said Diputado Andrew in the Congreso Nacional, 14 June 1889, cited in Gaceta Oficial 16, no. 797 (30 Nov. 1889).

17. Eco del Pueblo 3, no. 125 (24 Aug. 1884).

18. Eco del Pueblo 1, no. 35 (3 Dec. 1882).

19. Eco del Pueblo 6, no. 225 (1 May 1888).

20. “El Tabaco,” Eco del Pueblo 11, no. 318 (24 July 1892).

21. The Dominican government opened negotiations with the Dutch but apparently to no avail. See “Memoria del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores” for 1889, printed in the Gaceta Oficial 17, no. 813 (22 Mar. 1890). In 1891 the Dominican consul in Hamburg reported that the “experiment with the Dutch markets did not have any results, and the imported loads have been reexported to this city to be sold.” See “Comercio de Hamburgo,” Gaceta Oficial 18, no. 902 (5 Dec. 1891).

22. For a clear appraisal of this active role, see Eco del Pueblo 11, no. 315 (4 June 1892).

23. For instance, “Comisionado especial de Agricultura, Samaná, 3 junio 1876,” Gaceta de Santo Domingo 3, no. 126 (16 June 1876).

24. “Corresponsal de La Vega,” Voz de Santiago 1, no. 12 (13 June 1880).

25. Eco de la Opinión, no. 400 (14 May 1887).

26. El Orden 2, no. 50 (11 Oct. 1888).

27. R. Ciferri, Informe general sobre la industria cacotera de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Imprenta García, 1930), 127.

28. “Memoria que el Gobernador Civil y Militar de Samaná presenta al Ciudadano Ministro de Interior y Policía,” Gaceta Oficial 15, no. 728 (4 Aug. 1888). Later the whole complex was bought by the Swiss company Surchard, which exported the cocoa directly to its own chocolate factory in Switzerland. See Gaceta Oficial 18, no. 856 (17 Jan. 1891).

29. Ciferri, Informe general.

30. Moreau Saint-Méry, Descripción de la parte española, 100–108.

31. For instance, see Eco del Pueblo 1, no. 3 (10 Aug. 1856): “There is an extraordinary consumption of sugar cane; it seems to be the poor man's bread.”

32. J. Del Castillo, “El resurgimiento de la producción azucarera dominicana como sector de explotación: los límites del trapiche,” Inazúcar 5, no. 28 (Nov.–Dec. 1980):41–50.

33. Boletín Oficial 3, no. 176 (8 July 1871).

34. Aggregated figures from the following issues of the Boletín Oficial: 3, no. 192 (28 Oct. 1871); 3, no. 193 (4 Nov. 1871); 3, no. 194 (11 Nov. 1871); and 4, no. 208 (10 Feb. 1872).

35. Compare S. Hazard, Santo Domingo, Past and Present, with a Glance at Hayti (1873; reprint, Santo Domingo: Ed. de Santo Domingo, 1982), 245–46; and J. J. Sánchez, La caña en Santo Domingo (1893; reprint, Santo Domingo: Ediciones Taller, 1976), 24–27.

36. An indication of the level of involvement in Dominican society can perhaps be found in the letter of protest against the sudden devaluation of the Dominican currency by the Santana Government in 1858. The letter was signed by thirteen merchants, many of them of Sephardic Jewish background. The letter, dated 5 May 1859 and written in Santo Domingo, can be found in the Municipal Archive in Willemstad, Curaçao in an unclassified box labeled “Santo Domingo.”

37. “En la elaboración del azúcar está la salvación del país,” Gaceta de Santo Domingo 4, no. 177 (25 June 1877); and continued in the following issues of the Gaceta: 4, no. 178 (1 July 1877); 4, no. 180 (16 July 1877); and 4, no. 182 (2 Aug. 1877).

38. See El Porvenir 1, no. 10 (23 Mar. 1872). See also the letter from C. J. Loynaz to the minister of Interior y Policía, 4 Mar. 1872, in Archivo General de la Nación, Santo Domingo (hereafter referred to as AGN), Correspondencia del Ministerio de Interior y Policía, legajo 16, 1872.

39. El Porvenir 1, no. 11 (30 Mar. 1872).

40. “Yesterday a man stood up who had abandoned the beaten path and fixed his attention on the agriculture of our district, and with daring energy he paved the way, perhaps not to its regeneration, but to waken it out of its agonizing sleep,” El Porvenir 1, no. 19 (25 May 1872).

41. See Sánchez in La caña, 29; and H. Ortiz, “Algunas consideraciones sobre el alza del azúcar en la República Dominicana, 1875–1900,” Revista de Historia (San José, Costa Rica) 1, no. 1 (1975):l-20.

42. Eco de la Opinión 1, no. 13 (20 June 1879).

43. A. R. Lluberes, “The Sugar Industry: Emergence and Development of Capitalism in the Dominican Republic, 1872–1930,” M.A. thesis, George Washington University, 1982.

44. Hoetink, El pueblo dominicano, 22.

45. “The sugarcane plantations, which constitute our agricultural wealth, are mushrooming, to the extent that more than three hundred trapiches, made of wood or iron, are not sufficient to crush the sugarcane produced during the harvest season. These are the mills that work with animal power. There are also two steam mills… .” See “Gobernación civil y militar de la provincia de Azua, 21 de febrero de 1883,” Gaceta Oficial 10, no. 455 (10 Mar. 1883). Also Del Castillo, “El resurgimiento,” 47.

46. More research is needed on the organization and division of labor on these centrales, which were sometimes very large. Above all, the socioeconomic position of the colonos, the sugarcane producers, requires detailed analysis. This short quote from a letter written by an owner of a central will give an idea of the functioning of this system in the Dominican Republic: “At this time this central counts thirty eight colonos, five of whom produce on central land, thirty three on their own land. … In the past harvest, these colonias produced two thousand tons of sugar cane. This year the total will be seven thousand.” Letter of 11 Sept. 1890 from E. Hatton to Secretaría de Estado de Fomento y Obras Públicas, AGN, Correspondencia del Ministerio de Interior y Policía, legajo 123, 1890. The Cuban case is discussed in J. Martínez-Alier, Haciendas, Plantations, and Collective Farms: Agrarian Class Societies (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 96–125.

47. See “Memoria de gobernación civil y militar de la provincia de Azua,” 10 Dec. 1887, in Gaceta Oficial 14, no. 664 (14 May 1887): “Only a few small-scale fincas have been able to bear the costs of the sugarcane processing after the low prices and competition from the ingenios.”

48. This theme dominates most twentieth-century research, which blames the sugar industry for the underdevelopment and dependence of the Dominican Republic. For examples, see F. Báez Evertsz, Azúcar y dependencia en la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: UASD, 1978); W. Lozano, La dominación imperialista en la República Dominicana, 1900–1930 (Santo Domingo: UASD, 1976); also Lluberes, “The Sugar Industry.”

49. J. Del Castillo, “La inmigración de braceros azucareros en la República Dominicana, 1900–1930,” Cuadernos del Cendia 262, no. 7 (1978):6 and passim. This periodical is published by the UASD in Santo Domingo.

50. Sánchez, La caña, 35.

51. Lluberes views 1884 as the crucial year, the end of the “national phase” of the sugar industry. See “The Sugar Industry,” 30 and passim.

52. E. M. Hostos, “Falsas alarmas,” in Hostos en Santo Domingo, edited by E. Rodríguez Demorizi (Ciudad Trujillo: Imprenta García Sucesores, 1939), 1:159–76.

53. Abad, La República Dominicana, 263.

54. According to Sánchez, a hurricane acted as a catalyst in this process: “Emigration to the large haciendas began to empty the countryside of Azua, and the hurricane of September 6, 1883—which destroyed all the cañe fields—sealed the fate of this town.” Sánchez, La caña, 34.

55. “Gobernación civil y militar de la provincia de Azua,” 31 Dec. 1883, Gaceta Oficial 11, no. 501 (6 Mar. 1884).

56. “Memoria de la gobernador civil y militar de la provincia de Azua,” 1886, AGN, collection of provincial reports “Memorias, 1880–1895,” of José A. Pichardo.

57. Letter from the governor of Azua to the minister of Interior y Policía, 23 Aug. 1887, AGN, Correspondencia del Ministerio de Interior y Policía, legajo 107, expediente 1.

58. Eco de la Opinión, no. 526 (12 Oct. 1889).

59. Compare, for example, J. de Galíndez, La era de Trujillo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Americana, 1958), 196–202. See also the novel by T. Prestol Castillo, El masacre se pasa a pie (Santo Domingo: Taller, 1973).

60. U.S. Consul Astwood wrote in 1884, “The Island is hardly capable of producing for its internal consumption, especially in the regions where attention is geared toward sugar-cane.” Cited in Ortiz, “El alza del azúcar,” 14.

61. Hoetink, El pueblo dominicano, 35.

62. Gaceta de Santo Domingo 3, no. 160 (17 Feb. 1877).

63. Eco de la Opinión, no. 274 (9 Oct. 1884). Also Abad, La República Dominicana, 267.

64. Sanchez, La caña, 31.

65. Letter from the governor of Puerto Plata to the minister of Interior y Policía, 4 May 1871, AGN, Correspondencia del Ministerio de Interior y Policía, legajo 13, 1871.

66. See Del Castillo, “La inmigración.”

67. In general, Dominican merchants moved into selling cacao, but they also started producing cacao. In Puerto Plata, for instance, the three largest cacao farms were owned by former tobacco merchants. Some of them also tried their luck at sugarcane production.

68. See P. Peek and G. Standing, State Policies and Migration (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1982), 1 and passim.

69. It can be said that the Sánchez-Samaná railroad offered the first larger-scale opportunity to make a living outside agriculture. At the peak of activity, fifteen hundred men were working on the construction sites.

70. In this respect, compare the aggressive attitude of the tobacco merchants toward the German mercantile houses. For example, when a good tobacco harvest was expected in 1892, it was written: “For this hope to die, it is only necessary that the gentlemen from Hamburg will send us, after they have received the first tobacco and have made a good price, one of these unanimous telegrams, while the second load is already underway, announcing a price drop, in order to obtain in this way the product that has cost so much work for nothing, thus causing the ruin of national commerce… .” Eco del Pueblo 10, no. 313 (13 Apr. 1892).

71. Compare A. Albuquerque, Títulos de terrenos comuneros de la República Dominicana (Ciudad Trujillo: Impresora Dominicana, 1961); also Lluberes, “The Sugar Industry,” 140–48.

72. “Memoria de San Pedro de Macorís,” Feb. 1892, Gaceta Oficial 19, no. 924, 7 May 1892.

73. Cited in P. A. Bryan, “The Transformation of the Dominican Economy,” Ph.D. diss., 149.

74. Letter from the governor of Puerto Plata, 12 July 1895, AGN, Correspondencia del Ministerio de Interior y Policía, legajo 154, expediente 3.

75. The following statement clearly exemplifies the ambiguity of the Dominican elite: “The poor jornalero who, with remarkable regularity, used to earn at his house, day to day, his daily bread and look after the necessities of his family, today walks the streets and cannot find honest work that will provide him with a piece of bread. The idleness makes him nervous, the lack of work eats away his strength.” “De actualidad,” Eco de la Opinión, no. 665 (5 Mar. 1892). For similar opinions, see Hoetink, El pueblo dominicano, 37.

76. Eco de la Opinión, no. 264 (25 July 1884).

77. Diputado Franco in Congreso Nacional, 14 June 1895, Gaceta Oficial 22, no. 1104 (19 Oct. 1895).

78. See C. F. S. Cardoso and H. Brignoli, Historia económica de América Latina, vol. 2, Economías de exportación y desarrollo capitalista (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1979), 7–104. The Guatemalan case is well documented in D. J. McCreery, “Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1876–1936,” Hispanic American Historical Review 63, no. 4 (Nov. 1983):735–59. On Puerto Rico, see L. W. Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). On the ambivalence of the Dominican elite, see M. Baud, “Ideología y campesinado: el pensamiento social de José Ramón López,” Estudios Sociales (Santo Domingo) 19, no. 64 (Apr.–June 1986):63–82.

79. An excellent example of the arrogance of foreign capital is provided by the railroad construction in the Cibao, which occurred completely outside the framework of national control. Later, a British correspondent observed that the Ministro de Guerra was obliged to obtain a loan from some local merchants before the troops could enter the train. See “The Problem of Santo Domingo,” The Times (London), dispatch from the West Indian correspondent, 24 Jan. 1905.

80. Compare J. F. Rippy, “The Initiation of the Custom Receivership in the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 17, no. 4 (Nov. 1937):419–57.

81. M. M. Knight, The Americans in Santo Domingo (1928; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 132–33. Also, V. Garrido, En la ruta de mi vida, 1886–1966 (Santo Domingo: Editora Arte y Cine, 1970), 111–13 and 120.

82. B. J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Occupation of 1916–1924 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), chaps. 5–7.

83. Until now, hard evidence has been lacking. For instance, see B. J. Calder, “Varieties of Resistance to the United States Occupation of the Dominican Republic,” SECOLAS Annals 11 (Mar. 1980):103–19. But the attention given by the Trujillo government to negative aspects of the sugar economy is significant. See correspondence on the “Malestar en la region del Este” in the “Memorandum confidencial al Comisionado Especial del Poder Ejecutivo en el Este,” written by B. Ortiz, 29 May 1935, AGN, Sección de Comercio, legajo 35.