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2 - The Rise of Fedecafé Hegemony in Viejo Caldas
from Case Study #1 - The Rise and Fall of Hegemony in the Coffee Regime of Viejo Caldas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2022
Summary
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.
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- At the Margins of the Global MarketMaking Commodities, Workers, and Crisis in Rural Colombia, pp. 53 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022