COERCED LABOR IN VENEZUELA, 1880-1936

PETER LINDER

ATIN AMERICAN agricultural historians have long focused on the L importance of coercive systems of labor mobilization. However, recent historical studies recogniz that very different productive relations charac- terized distinct regions and that, within a single region, several labor systems often coexisted. Because specific local conditions along with the workers’ values and beliefs played important roles in shaping the relations of production, the question of labor coercion should be studied from a regional perspective. The history of agricultural production in Venezuela requires investigation on this level. Most studies of Venezuelan agriculture and rural society focus on the nation as a whole and stress coercion and debt in landowner-worker relationships. Regional studies that link the organization of agricultural labor to local conditions and workers’ attitudes can provide a clearer understanding of what has determined the form of productive relations in Venezuela.

The rich agricultural region of the Sur del Lago zuliano, in western Venezuela, is an appropriate area for regional study. Landowners in the isolated but fertile agricultural districts south of Lake Maracaibo faced a shortage of rural workers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and developed institutions and practices to cope with this problem. These included authentic debt servitude, de fact0 enslavement of Guajiro Indians, and recruitment of black contract workers from the Caribbean. Although landowners attempted to attract laborers with ”capitalist” incentives, they relied heavily on coercion to keep them working. The lot of the Guajiro Indians was particularly hard and remained so at least until 1936. Agricultural workers resisted the coercive actions of landowners and government to the best of their abilities, while state authorities increasingly sought to regulate the social relations of agricultural production. However, these efforts remained limited in scope and effect. Labor mobilization in the Sur del Lago zuliano continued to rely on coercion and force.

Peter Limier is a visiting professor of histoy at Bates College.

44 THE HISTORIAN

Historians have proposed various explanations for the development of forced labor systems in agricultural societies. Early theorists asserted that a scarcity of labor relative to available land, coupled with governmental intervention on behalf of large landholders, made slavery or "agricultural serfdom" more likely. When labor became scarce, landowners attempted to avoid competition and higher wages by importing labor, rewriting labor laws to restrict mobility, and using force. One theorist argues that modem unfree agricultural labor systems are a distinct mode of production created by strong demand for agricultural pducts, a class of politically powerful landholders, a shortage of labor relative to available land, and primitive agricultural technology. These conditions do not of themselves ensure a servile labor system since "political" or "ecological" factors may prevent it. The theory assumes that all "servile labor systems" are oppressive and coercive in nature, and that rural workers took no initiative in shaping the working conditions.'

Historians have kqy.m to reexamine the roles of debt and coercion by demonstrating that the relations of production were far more complex than traditionally portrayed and did not necessarily involve debt and coercion. One scholar states that rural workers helped shape the relations of pro- duction and that the importance of debt and coercion in Latin American rural labor has been exaggerated, except in certain "extreme cases." Rural workers usually manipulated labor systems to their own advantage while frequently enjoying considerable economic power and freedom of movement. Debt servitude was not the only strategy for labor mobilization available to landowners in Latin America. Those in the Argentine Pampas used law codes so effectively as to render a system of debt servitude superfluous. One historian writes: "Vagrancy and conscription laws and internal passports proved successful enough that other types of labor controls, like debt peonage, were unnecessary." Thus, while legal coercion played an integral part in the m a t i o n of agricultural production on the Pampas, debt did not.2

Evsey D. Domar, "The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis," Journal of Economic History 30 (1970): 20-21; Daniel Chirot, "The Growth of the Market and Service Labor Systems in Agriculture," Journal of Social History 8 (1974): 674,R.

Frederich Katz, "Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies," Hispanic Ametican Historical Review 54, no. 1 (February 1974): 20-21; Arnold J. Bauer, "Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression," Hispanic American Historical Rm'ew 59, no. 1 (February 1979): 37; Brian Loveman, "Critique of Arnold J. Bauer's 'Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression'," Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 3 (August 1979): 478-485; David McCreery, "Debt Servitude in Rural Guatemala, 1876-1936," Hispanic American Historical Rm'm 63, no. 4 (November 1983): 735-737; Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln, 1983), 108.

COERCED LABOR 45

Landholders also used immigration to promote control over their workers. Planters in the British Caribbean imported indentured workers from India after the nineteenth-century abolition of slavery. Coffee planters in SBo Paulo, Brazil and wine producers in Mendoza, Argentina encouraged European immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to flood the labor market and reduce the bargaining power of the labor force which kept both landowner competition and wages 10w.3

Control over land represents yet another possible mechanism for labor control in rural Latin America. Landowners and land speculators in various regions sought to gain legal title of public lands already occupied by peasants. Such entrepreneurs then gave the occupants the choice of vacating their farms or signing tenancy contracts and paying rent with their labor. In areas with a self-sufficient peasantry reluctant to work on large estates, the privatization of public lands represented a means of mobilizing and controlling a rural labor force.4

Recent studies indicate that race, culture, and access to outside as- sistance played key roles in determining how workers were treated by landowners. Workers deemed to be of an inferior race or culture were usually accorded extremely harsh treatment by their employers. In the sugar industry of coastal Peru, a significant number of Chinese indentured workers worked alongside highland Indians and mestizos from urban areas on sugar plantations. Landowners kept their Chinese workers under especially harsh discipline and justified their methods by alleging their supposed racial and cultural inferiority. Because the Chinese were readily identifiable within a predominately Indian and mestizo population, they would have found it especially difficult to flee and hide5

Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy (Baton Rouge, 1983), 22-23; Kush Haraksingh, "Labour, Technology and the Sugar Estates in Trinidad, 1870-1914," in Crisis and Change in the International Sugar Economy, ed. Bill Albert and Adrian Graves (Norwich, 1984), 22-23; George Reid A n d m s , "Black and White Wrkers in SBo Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928," Hispanic American Historical Review 68, no. 3 (August 1988): 494; Ricardo Salvatore, "Labor Control and Discrimination: The Contratisfa System in Mendoza, Argentina, 1880-1920," Agricultural H i s t o y 60, no. 3 (Summer 1986): 69.

Catherine Mrand, The Expansion of the Colombian Frontier, 1830-1 936 (Albuquerque, 1986), 38-39; Douglas Kent Yamngton, "Dunca in the Age of Coffee: Land, Society, and Politics in a Venezuelan District, 1830-1936" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1992), 194-284.

5Michael J. Gonzales, "Capitalist Agriculture and Labour Contracting in Northern Peru, 1880-1905," loud of Latin Americnn Studies 12, no. 2 (August 1980): 291-315; Idem, Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875-1933 (Austin, 1985), 96, 191-192.

46 THE HISTORIAN

Indians from tribal societies were particularly vulnerable to systems of forced labor in Latin America. In the sugar industry in Tucumh, Argentina, in addition to Hispanic workers attracted by advance payments in cash and liquor, planters exploited Indians captured in the “conquest of the desert!’ and held under special contracts as ”apprentices.” Indians, because of both their lack of political power and the Hispanics’ racist attitudes, received much worse treatment than their Europeanized counterparts. Franciscan missionaries working in the Chiriguano Indian region of southeastern Bolivia became in effect labor brokers, contracting the Indians out to local hacendados. This was a grave risk to the autonomy of the Indians as landowners usually treated them badly and sought to convert them into debt peons. One historian writes that: “Despite the missionaries‘ vigi- lance, labor conditions for their charges in regional haciendas were poor and the pay low. As evidenced in the judicial records, settlers frequently relied on violence to coerce Indian laborers to do their bidding.” The Chiriguanos did not accept their lot passively. Unlike the Chinese, many simply fled to the sugar fields of Jujuy in nearby Argentina.6

Some scholars, stressing variability and the intimate relationship between regional and local conditions and labor practices, argue that very different systems of labor mobilization all involve worker debt. Some have seen three forms of labor mobilization: ”proletarian” debt peonage, essentially free wage labor with cash advances; ”traditional” debt peo- nage, which involves both coercion and “capitalist” incentives; “classic” debt peonage, which routinely involves harsh coercion sanctioned by law. “Classic” peonage required specific local conditions and “developed where strong demand, virgin land and a powerful landed class existed, juxtaposed to a recalcitrant local (or ‘peri-local’) peasantry.” Mexican examples of such systems include the Yucatin and the Valle Nacional during the late nineteenth century.7

Despite advances in the study of rural labor systems elsewhere in Latin America, most historians of Venezuela‘s history continue to portray rural society as divided into two fundamentally opposed classes: a handful of powerful landowners and a mass of peons mobilized and

Donna J. Guy, ‘The Rural Working Class of Nineteenth Century Argentina: Forced Plantation Labor in Tucudn,” Latin American ResaPrch Review 13, no.1 (1978): 136-137; Erick D. Langer, “Franciscan Missions and Chiriguano Workers: Colonization, Acculturation and Indian Labor in Southeastern Bolivia,” The Am& 43, no. 3 (January 1987): 309,317-319.

7Alan Knight, “Mexican Peonage: What Was It and Why Was It?” Iournal of Latin Amm’can Studies 18 (1986): 46,55,61-70.

COERCED LABOR 47

controlled through debt. Recent works perpetuate these stereotypes of Venezuelan rural society. Since most historians focus on the national situation, regional studies can provide clarification.8

The region encompassed by the distritos of Col6n and Sucre in the western Venezuelan state of Zulia lacked workers for the haciendas which constrained agricultural activities from the colonial period. Although similar problems existed in many parts of Venezuela, which until quite recently has been a nation of relatively few inhabitants, Venezuela’s labor shortage was more acute in the lowlands of southern Zulia than elsewhere due to endemic malaria and yellow fever that slowed population growth. Great expanses of national lands, or tierras baldfhs, also contributed to the labor difficulties of the hacienda owners. These lands were available for colonization and freed the sparse rural population from the necessity of working on large estates?

Given a low population and land available for settlement, large landowners had difficulty mobilizing sufficient labor for crop production. Their problems became more serious in the second half of the nineteenth century as demand for the region’s agricultural products increased. With the assistance of regional and local authorities, the landowners of the Sur del h g o zuliano developed institutions and practices to control the supply of rural labor. They sought to impose a system of debt peonage on local workers. They also imported Indian labor from the Guajira Peninsula virtually as slaves, and contracted additional workers from the cities of central Venezuela and from the islands of the Caribbean.

Debt peonage as a system became important in Venezuela during the nineteenth century, especially after the formal abolition of slavery in 1854. One historian explains how the system functioned during the last century as follows:

After receiving an advance of some fifty to one hundred pesos in cash and merchandise, the worker signed a contract that committed him to remain at work for the hacendndo until he had complied with his

Miguel Acosta Saignes, Latifundio (M6xico, 1938), 15; Federico Brito Figueroa, Historiu d l y econhica de Venezuela D.F. (Caracas, 1966), 244-253, 2 379415; Gast6n Carvallo and J ~ M Rios de Hernindez, T m de la Venezuela agroexpotfudom (Caracas, 1984) 140-142. See also J ~ s e f i ~ Rios de Herrdndez, La hucienda aenezolana: Una oisi6n a tmuh de la historiu mul (Caracas, 1988), 1741.

9Rios de Herniindez, La hacienda uenezolana, 19; Federico Brito Figueroa, “La estructura social y de clases en Venezuela posguerra Federal,” Reoisfu de Ciencius Socials de la Region Centro-Occidenful 1, no. 1 (January-April 1986): 14-15; Luis P6rez Carmito, Datos clinicos a c m de In DM(M y la uiruela (Valencia, 1898), 65. A dis t i to , or district, is an administrative unit larger than a county.

48 THE HISTORIAN

obligations. The laws prohibited the contraction of peons with outstanding debts, for which a ticket or notebook served as proof for the work completed.1°

In the state of Zulia, the laws of personal service and police codes that defined the relationship between worker and landowner established the legal basis for debt peonage. The laws regulated labor contracts and demanded that workers comply exactly with contractual commitments and treat their employers with respect; the laws ordered just and benevolent treatment by hacendados for peons; state and local police authorities were legally responsible for enforcement. As might be expected, reality departed considerably from the ideals mandated by law. Because landowners often held police and administrative posts at the district and municipal level, they could use extralegal coercion with impunity to increase their control over their workers. Informal means of control included corporal punishment, falsification of workers' accounts to increase their debts, and refusal to provide documents certifying workers' freedom from debt. Local landowners were free to act in an arbitrary way partly because of the area's isolation from the more populous northern part of the state. These practices effectively neutralized the paternalistic aspects of laws regulating the relations of production.11

The precise dimensions of debt peonage are difficult to establish. It is not known how many people worked on hacienrtaS in the Sur del Zap zuliano during this period, what proportion were indebted, or the average amount of their debt. Yet we have various indicators of worker indebtedness, an important though ambiguous measure of the severity of debt peonage. In 1898, Rindn Hermanos, a large Maracaibo agricultural firm with extensive holdings in Col6n district, turned over several haciendas to Christen and Company, a German mercantile concern, in payment of outstanding debts. The accounts of forty-three peons made up part of this cession. The workers involved had a combined debt of some Boltmres 10,549.70, or an average personal debt of Bs. 245.34. Only seven of the peons had debts of less than Bs. 100.00; eighteen owed more than Bs. 300.00. Since the average

lo Robert Paul Matthews, Violencia rural en Venezuela, 1840-1858: Antecedentes s o c i o e c o ~ i c o s de la Guerra Federal (Caracas, 19m, 40-41.

l1 See for example the Cdigo de Policih of 1895, A c m Histo'rico del Estado Zulia, bound documents (hereinafter abbreviated as AHEZ), 1895, t. 8, leg. 12; Z,ey sobre Iormlms y Sirvienfffi of 1894, AHEZ, 1894, t. 5, leg. 26; Albert0 de Jes~is Giierere, Biografi del distrito Colo'n (€stud0 Zulia) (Maracaibo, 1951), 85; List of arrests, San Carlos de Zulia: 31 May 1928, AHEZ, 1928, t. 6, leg. 1; Telegram, Sec. Gen. to Civil Chief, Coldn District, Maracaibo: 18 September 1928, AHEZ, 1928, t. 4, leg. 1; C. Garmendia Becerro to State President, San Carlos de Zulia: 30 November 1911, AHEZ, 1911, t. 13, leg. 8., Manuel Matos Romero, Derecho civil y penal guujim: El pupchipti (Maracaibo, 1975), 98.

COERCED LABOR 49

daily wage for a peon in agriculture in the Sur del Lago during this time was between one and two Bolivares per day, an obligation of this magni- tude represented years of work.12

While employing much of the region’s scanty population as indebted peons, the hacendados of the Sur del Lago relied heavily upon workers brought from other areas. Indians from the Guajira Peninsula, two hundred miles north of the region, worked in Zulian agriculture as virtual slaves until 1936. The Guajiros fell into bondage in several ways. The Indians them- selves had for centuries used prisoners seized during internecine warfare as servants or slaves. In the nineteenth century when the most powerful indigenous clans of the peninsula discovered that such captives brought high prices from Maracaibo’s visiting merchants, they exchanged captives for rum, corn, and other trade goods, while redoubling their efforts to obtain victims for sale. One Indian leader, with the Spanish name Luis Femhdez, engaged in slaving as a business. He attacked Indians of other lineages, took them captive, and sold them to merchants bound for the Sur del ~ago.13

Many other Guajiros found themselves enslaved through trickery. Unscrupulous white and mestizo Venezuelans offered Indians the oppor- tunity to travel to the Spanish settlements for visits or lucrative temporary employment; instead the Indians found themselves aboard ship and bound for slavery on Sur del Lago haciendas. The Guajiros’ strong oral tradition regarding this practice suggests that it was a common occur- rence. Private individuals and military detachments from border garrisons also raided Indian settlements for captives to seU.14

12Regisfm Principal del Estudo Zulia, distrito Col6n, 1898, pmfocolo 1, frimesfre 3, nlimem 2,folios 1-8. The archives of the state of Zulia have suffered an almost catastrophic loss of documents relating to labor questions, and to date it has not been possible to locate the books in which were registered the employment contracts for the region.

l3 Manuel Matos Romero, Wfiiusus Wolimuin: (la sedienfu guajim) (Maracaibo, 1975), 116; Idem, Iuifufuy luyri, (la Gwjim su importuncia) (Caracas, 1971). 202-203; Manuel GonzAlez C., Relacih de Trabajos Diarios, Distrito PPez, August 1903, Sinamaica: 3 September 1903; AHEZ, Tomos Vieios, 1902-1904, t. 4, Interior Distrito Piez, f. 940; Manuel GonZalez C., Relaa6n de Trabajos Diarios, Distrito Piez, September 1903, Sinamaica: 30 September 1903; AHEZ, Tomos Viejos, 1902-1904, t. 4, Interior Distrito PPez, f. 948-951; Alfonso Snchez (Colombian Consul, Maracaibo) to JOE& Maria Garcia, Maracaibo: 29 January 1916; AHEZ, 1916, t. 3, leg. 13.

l4 Romero, Wiiinsus Wolimnin, 116; Idem, Iuitafay luytf, 199; Salvador Montiel FemPndez, interview by author, Sinamaica, PPez, Edo. Zulia., 23 August 1986, notes taken; Folk Liferuturn offhe Guajim Indians, eds. Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau (Los Angeles, 1986), 1: 302-308; Matos Romero, Derecho civil, 97; Alejandm Montiel to Sec. Gen. State, Maracaibo: 24 April 1920, AHEZ, 1919, t. 4, leg. 5; J o d Antonio Sempnin to Sec. Gen. State, Maracaibo: 24 April 1920, AHEZ, 1919, t. 4, leg. 5.

50 THE HISTORIAN

The traffic in Guajiro slaves formed part of a highly developed commerial system. The village of Castilletes on the coast of the Guajira Peninsula became the center of the "trata de indios," as this illicit commerce was known. Sellers brought their victims to the port and turned them over to merchants in exchange for cash or goods. The buyers put the Indians on large sailing vessels bound for Maracaibo where the captives transferred to smaller craft for the voyage to the principal pork of the Sur del Lago. In the t o m of Santa Bikbara, Encontrados, Bobures, and Gibraltar, merchants tumed the Indians over to contractors or sold them from the docks directly to hacienda owners. The price received depended on their age, sex, and physical conditiom a young, healthy male might bring from Bs. 400 to Bs. 1,000 on delivery in the Sur del Lago. In order to establish the presence of these unfortunates on their estates, the hcendados usually falsified employment contracts for the Indians and gave them huge imaginary advances, perhaps even the cost of their purchase. The process obviously q u k d the cooperation of authorities both in the Guajira and the Sur del Lag0?5

Some historians view this commerce in human beiigs as the result of a sudden labor shortage mat& by the oil boom of the early twentieth century. However, available evidence indicates that the traffic in Indian slaves had already been fully developed by the mid nineteenth centmy Throughout the colonial period, Spanish actions in the Lake Maracaibo area had as its chief object the enslavement of Indians for sale in the Antilles. In the late eighteenth century, the custom of enslaving Indian prisoners of war captured during expeditions into frontier areas continued. By the nineteenth century, the use of Guajiro slaves was generalized throughout the state of Zulia. In 1867, for example, the state president of Zulia mived complaints about Indians being kidnapped and enslaved. He promptly issued numerous futile proclamations condemning and forbidding the practice as illegal and unconstitutional.16

l5 Manuel Matos Romero, Apuntacwnes historiogr@xs a c m de algunos de los segundos coZonos de Za Guajira (Maracaibo, 1978), 110; Nemesio Montiel FemQndez, "Nociones histbricas de 10s guajiros," unpublished paper, University of Zulia, n.d., 14; Guerere, Sbgrafi, 82; Salvador Montiel Fe-dez, interview; Manuel Matos Romm, interview by author, Maracaib, Edo. Zulia, 11 February 1987, tape recording; Matos Romem, D m h o civil, S98; for literary descriptions of the trade see R6mulo Gallegos, Sobre la mirma t k r a (Caracas, 1985), 54-56; Antonio J. Up, Los dolors de UM ram (Maracaibo, 1957),54-55.

l6 Montiel Fedndez, "xiones histdricas," 17; Upez, Dolores, 48-49; Celio Upez Cierra to Don Pedro Mesia, Rio Hacha:1764, in Materiales p m el estudio de las mlaciones inter-itnicas en la Guajira, sigZo XVIII: Documentos y mapas, P. Jo~efina Moreno y Albert0 Tarazona, eds. (Caracas, 19W, 124-125; Mam Audio Vila, La ge~economih de la Venezuela del sigh XVI (Caracas, 1978), 7-8; Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas, Antipas formas y moa'os de produccibn aenezolanos (Caracas, 1974) 229-231; Federico Brito Figueroa, La estructum econdmica de Venezuela colonial, 2d. ed. (Caracas, 1983), 6142,302; J.R lbarra to the State President, Sinamaica: 28 April 1867, AHEZ, 1867, t. 5, leg. 24; Decree of State Mident, Maracaibo: 19 June 1867, AHEZ, 1867, t. 5, leg. 24.

COERCED LABOR 51

In 1881, the U.S. consul in Maracaibo described the slave trade in a communique to the State Department. E. H. Plumacher reported that, having established trade relations with the tribes of the peninsula, Venezuelan merchants exchanged “rum, blankets, and other articles most eagerly sought after by the Indians” for ”batches of young Goajira boys and girls at a specified value per head.” Brought to Maracaibo, the young Indians were sold door-to-door at prices ranging from $50 to $150 each. Plumacher indicated that the Indians were employed as agricultural workers in the Sur del Lago or as domestic servants in the city of Maracaibo; some may even have been exported to Cuba.17

By the late nineteenth century, Guajiro Indians formed the mainstay of the agricultural labor force in the Sur del Lago. An 1891 article in the magazine El Zulia llustrudo stated that ‘The laboring peons in Col6n District are mostly of [the] Indian race.” Clearly, the traffic in Guajiro slaves flourished long before the petroleum boom. Nevertheless, because demand for labor increased during the initial phase of petroleum development, the trade may have been expanded and prolonged.18

As with debt peonage, the use of Indian forced labor is difficult to quantify. Despite wholesale involvement of civil and military officials in the trade, it remained illegal. As a result, official information about this involuntary migration remains limited. Some indicators of the level of the traffic do deserve mention. According to the governor of PAez District, in Guajira some 266 Indians embarked for the Sur del Lago during January and February 1915. The population of Indians on the haciendas of the Sur del Lago also appears to have been high; in a telegram relating to the slave trade, Col6n District’s governor notified the state government in December 1926 that 361 Indians, 257 of them male, worked on just three of the haciendas in the Encontrados municipality. Perhaps not all the Indians of the area were de facto slaves, but these examples indicate that an important indigenous presence existed throughout this peri0d.l9

Although Indian slaves and local inhabitants provided most of the labor on area haciendas, the foundation of modem sugar miUs in Sum District in the 1910s generated a demand for labor that was met by importing yet more

17Plumacher to Hunter, N O 90, Maracaibo: 9 June 1881, Records of the Department of State, (hereinafter abbreviated as RDS), Despatches from US. Consulate, Maracaibo, 1823-1906 (Microcopy T-62), reel 6; see also Franklin W. Knight, S h e Society in Cuba during the Ninefeenth Century (Madison, 1970), 116.

18 EZ ZUZG Ilustrudo, facsimile edition (Caracas, I%), 263.

l9 Relation of daily tasks for January of 1915, Jefatura Civil, PAez District, AHEZ, 1915, t. 6, leg. 2; Telegram, E. Gonzales to State Sec. Gen., Zulia: 5 December 1926, AHEZ, 1926, t. 8, leg. 2.

52 THE HISTORIAN

people. Accordingly, in 1917, the region's largest sugar producer, the Central Venezuela, sent representatives to Caracas, La Guaira, and Puerto Cabello to hire workers for the cane fields. Since producers r e q ~ additional workers, including those skilled in cane cultivation and processing, labor contractors also visited many of the Caribbean islands. In 1916, Carlos Torres, a grower connected with the Central Venezuela, traveled to Puerto Rico and contracted 24 workers there. In subsequent years additional workers arrived from Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Santa Lucia, Jamaica, and other islands to work for the company Black workers from the Caribbean formed a significant part of the labor force in the region throughout the 1920s and 1930~.~

Many such workers came or were brought to the Sur del Lago zuliano. In August 1926, the U.S. consul in Martinique reported that the Central Venezuela had contracted some 500 workers from Martinique; over 100 had already embarked from Fort-de-France en route to Bobures, in the Sur del Lago. In February 1929, the Central Venezuela received permission from the Ministry of the Interior to import another 500 rnartiniquefios who were already contracted and standing by. However, the Venezuelan government did not see the blacks as desirable immigrants. In order to introduce workers from Martinique the company had to guarantee their repatriation once their contracts had expired. Soon the G6mez regime considered even this restriction insufficient. Concerned by the massive influx of Trinidadians into northern Zulia to work in the oil industry, the Venezuelan government issued a proclamation in October 1929 prohibiting even the temporary entry of foreign blacks into Venezuela. The prohibition remained in force despite repeated complaints from the oil companies and the Central Venezuela. Strictly enforced, this prohibition prevented wholesale, permanent settlement of West Indians in the Sur del Lago and limited their overall importance in the labor market2'

2o Brito Figuema, Historia social y econhica, t. 2,4114113; Luis Bosc6n to State Sec. Gen., Bobures: 20 June 1916, no. 74, AHEZ, 1916, t. 3, leg. 2; "La otra cara de la moneda: Hambm y miseria en El Batey," E l Colonis 1, no. 4 (31 July 197lk 1; Estado Zulia, Memoria y cuenta que el Secretario General de Gobierno presenta a la Asambla Legislatim deJ Estado Zulia en su mnibn de 2933 (Maracaibo, 1933), 103,106 (ac ibn politics); Zacarias Ballesteros, interview by author, El Batey, Dtto. Sucre, Edo. Zulia, 11 October 1986, tape recording.

21 Walter S. Reineck (U.S. Consul, Martinique), "Martinique Laboms for Venezuela," 7 August 1926, RDS, Documents relating to the Internal Affairs of Venezuela: 1920-1929 (Microcopy M-366), 831.5551B/Orig., reel 21; Telegram, Pedro M. Arcaya to Vicencio P 6 z Soto, Caracas: 12 February 1929, no. 232, AHEZ, 1929, t. 7, leg. 13; State Sec. Gen. to Governor, Maracaibo District, Maracaibo: 25 February 1929, no. 102, AHEZ, 1929, t. 20, leg. 3. Venezuela, Ministerio de Relaciones Interiores, Memoria y Cuenta, 1930/1931 (Caracas, 1931), 104-107; Win G. Loren (U.S. Consul, Maracaibo), "Monthly Economic Review-Maracaibo Consular District," 31 May 1946, National M v e s , Record Group 84, Consular Post Records (hereafter abbreviated as NA RG 84), Maracaibo, Box 79,1946, Volume 9, Decimal File Number 850.0.

COERCED LABOR 53

Rural workers, despite the efforts of landowners to control them, refused to accept their lot. Many fled from the estates on which they worked; others simply refused to work or requested outside intervention for relief from their plight. Nonetheless, resistance among rural workers in the Sur del Lago had no guarantee of success and did not represent a fundamental challenge to the existing social order.

Flight was the form of resistance that caused the most problems for hacienda owners and local police authorities. Without individual hacienda records it is impossible to determine the precise number of workers fleeing, but reports from local officials demonstrate that the flight of peons posed a serious problem. In attempting to escape, workers had several options. Many fugitives sought to enter the neighboring Andean states to the south. If they managed to reach Mbrida, Tkchira, or Tmjillo, their freedom was usually assured. Jealous of their sovereignty, these neighboring states would not allow those pursuing wayward peons to cross their borders. Official appeals for the return of such fugitives produced few results. Many peons also escaped to other parts of Zulia while some returned to their homes. Others simply fled the estate and found employment on another hacienda.22

Workers also sought to fight employers’ demands and coercion by requesting the intervention of local or state authorities. Petitions for government assistance normally involved either appeals for clemency or accusations that workers’ legal rights were being violated. However, a work stoppage or petition to the authorities normally produced little result and could also invite reprisals. In 1907, a Maracaibo family with minor children working as peons on a hacienda in Colh District solicited the assistance of the state president in a conflict with the owner of the property. The family’s representatives claimed that the manager kept the boys on the hacienda by falsifying their accounts. The family did not repudiate their children’s debt, but asked only that the accounts of their sons be reviewed by officials and that unjustified charges be removed.

Some appeals for intervention involved other governments, especially in the cases involving Caribbean workers. In 1916 some of the Puerto Ricans working for the Central Venezuela stopped work and asked the U.S. consul to intervene on their behalf. They maintained that the labor contractor had promised them free passage to Venezuela and high wages. On arrival they found that the cost of their tickets had been charged against their accounts, which gave them a sizable debt to pay off before they could return home. They also complained that they were paid

22 J o g Trinidad BriMs, interview by author, Santa Birbara del Zulia, 9 September 1986, tape recording; Hugo Graterol, interview by author, Hacienda Gran Via, Dtto. Sucre, Edo. Zulia, 15 October 1986, tape recording.

54 THE HISTORIAN

substantially less than promised, that the company forced them to perform all types of disagreeable tasks, and that they had been prevented by force from taking better-paying jobs elsewhere. The consul promptly secured the aid of the state government. The state president demanded of the company a full account of the matter while ordering the workers to return to work. Eventually the company released the unfortunate workers who remained stranded and penniless.=

Every form of resistance posed risks. Flight was both difficult and dangerous. The Sur del Lago was isolated from the more populous parts of Zulia and from surrounding states. The only dependable routes out of the region were by rail toward the Andean states or by boat to Maracaibo and other lake ports, but peons were legally forbidden to book passage by rail or by boat without a passport signed by the district governor. In addition, the cost of such passage usually exceeded the peon's resources. Even if workers managed to escape, their troubles were not over. Landowners and police authorities throughout the state sought to recapture fugitive peons and return them to their masters. For example, the Central Venezuela often sent representatives as far as Maracaibo and the Guajira Peninsula to capture and retrieve fugitive peons at gun point. In case of capture by the authorities, workers could expect several days of imprisonment or forced labor on municipal roads before being returned to their master. Back in the hands of the hacendado or estate manager, workers often received physical punishment. In many documented cases, runaways were put in stocks and shackles and some received floggings for attempting to escape. Hacendados also commonly charged the expenses of pursuit and capture to runaway peons' accounts with the estate, which increased their indebtedness24

The success or failure of worker resistance depended to some extent on origins and ethnicity. Though despised and deemed inferior by the local

23 Declaration of Crist6bal Moronta and Pedro Rojas, Maracaibo: 21 January 1907, AHEZ, 1907, t. 2, leg. 5. Accusations of unfair tmahnent we^ often made by fomign and domestic rural workers in the sugar industry, especially against the "Central Venezuela." See for example: Brito Figuema, Hisforin efondmica, t. 2,411412; Luis Boxfin to State Sec. Gen., Bobures: 20 June 1916, no. 74, AHEZ, 1916, t. 3, leg. 18; Antonio Antonetyet al., to U.S. Consul, Maracaibo, Bobures: 4 June 1916, NA RG 84, Maracaih, Series 0.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Donald to Jo& Maria Garcia, Maracaibo: 9 June 1916, NA RG 84, 0.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Garcia to Donald, Maracaib 12 June 1916; NA RG 84, 0.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Garcia to Donald, Maracaibo: 1 July 1916, nQ 660, NA RG 84, C8.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320.

24Vincencio Perez Soto to Juan Vicente G6mez, Memorandum NQ 11, 26 June 1926, Bolefi'n del Archim Hisfo'rico de Mirapores (hereafter abbreviated as BAHM) 13, no. 70 (January-April 1971): 321; H. Gonzales Pachecu to State Sec. Gen., San Carlos de Zulia: 14 January 1927, no. 362, AHEZ, 1927, t. 12, leg. 1; Declaration of Crist6bal Moronta and Pedro Rojas, Maracaibo 21 January 1907, AHEZ, 1907, t. 2, leg. 5; Matthews, Violencia Rural, 41-42.

COERCED LABOR 55

population and Venezuelan government officials, black workers from the Caribbean enjoyed at least some degree of autonomy. Their skills in sugar production and refining were in demand in the region. In addition, they had the experience and sophistication to use their status as foreign nationals to advantage, as shown by the appeal of F'uerto Rican w0rkers.U

In contrast, resistance was especially fraught with peril for the unfortunate Guajiro Indians, who found it difficult to escape. First, they did not know the geography of the area, having been imported from long distances. If they ran away from a hacienda, they might become lost, falling prey to hunger, disease, or the jaguars common in the region's forests. They were also ethnically and culturally distinct from the region's small Hispanic population. Few spoke Spanish and were noticeable in any town or village, except perhaps for Maracaibo, and easy prey for slave hunters sent out by their "owners."

The Indians' best hope of rescue was a petition, preferably from a Spanish- speaking relative or friend, to state or national authorities. Because most of the Guajira Peninsula was under the control of Colombia, the families of enslaved Indians were sometimes able to enlist the aid of a neighboring government. Periodidly the Colombian Embassy in Caracas complained formally of the enslavement and marketing of its citizens by Venezuelans. In May 1912, for example, the Colombian ambassador contacted the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Relations about the trade in Guajiro Indians from Colombia. O n some occasions, such protests won the freedom of individual Indiansz6

25 Copy, Juan Paris to Carlos Torres, Maracaibo, 2 June 1916; NA, RG 84, Maracaibo, Series 0 . 6 , file nQ 800,1916, v. 2, ff. 958-959; Luis BoscPn to State Sec. Gen., Bobures, 20 June 1916, no. 74, AHEZ, 1916, t. 3, 1. 18; Antonio Antonety et al., to U. S. Consul, Maracaibo, Bobums, 4 June 1916, NA, RG 84, Maracaibo, Series C8.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Donald to Jo.4 Maria Gam'a, Maracaibo: 9 June 1916, NA, RG 84, C8.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Garcia to Donald, Maracaibo: 12 June 1916; NA, RG 84, C8.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320; Garcia to Donald, Maracaibo: 1 July 1916, no 660, NA, RG 84, C8.6,1916, v. 1, file nQ 320.

26 Copy, communique from Colombian Legation to Ministerio de Relaaones Exteriores, Caracas: 25 May 1912; AHEZ, 1912, t. 5, leg. 18; C. Zumeta to Presidente del Estado Zulia, Caracas: 27 May 1912, Np 181; Ministerio de Relaciones Interiores, Memoria que p m t a el Ministerio de Reladones Interioms al Congeso Nacional en 1913, 2 t. (Caracas, 1913), t. 2, 3G265; C. Zumeta to Presidente del Estado Zulia, Caracas: 1 June 1912; Ministerio de Reladones Interiores, Monoria, 1913, t 2,366; see also, Copy, Communique from Colombian Legation to Ignacio Andrade, Ministm de Relaciones Exteriores, Caracas: 30 October 1915, Np 55; AHEZ, 1915, t. 7, leg. 6; Pedro M. Arcaya, Ministm de Relaciones Interioms to W d e n t e del Estado Zulia, Caracas: 4 November 1915, Np 1555; AHEZ, 1915, t 7, leg. 6; Folk Lifemture, eds. Wilbert and Simoneau, v. 1,302-308. C. Rodriguez to SeavWio General del Estado, San Carlos del Zulia: 22 October 1909, Np 322; AHEZ, 1909, t. 2, leg. 4; Alejandm Andrade to Jefe Civil, Municipio Valderramas [Encontradosl, Maracaibo: 17 April 1885, Np494; AHEZ, 1885, t. 15, leg. 11; Gobernador Politico, M 6 n Zulia to Gobemador, Tenitorio Goajpra, Maracaibo: 22 May 1885, Np 185; AHEZ, 1885, t. 15, leg. 11; Alejandro Andrade to Jefe Civil, Muniapio Valderramas [Encontradosl, Maracaibo: 22 May 1885, Np 653; AHEZ, 1885, t. 15, leg. 11.

56 THE HISTORIAN

Such resistance represented no challenge to the existing system but did ameliorate certain abuses within existing structures. A slave who ran from a hacendudo sought to escape from a personally disagreeable or dangerous situation, not to end the institutions of slavery or peonage. Fugitive peons often had to find other employers in the region to protect them from their original masters or to assume responsibility for their debts. Those who solicited assistance from the authorities were not defying the existing social system; they asked for clemency or the rights guaranteed them under existing laws.27

The state government p v e d important in the maintenance of the rural social system. It participated officially through the laws established to regulate rural work and informally through the involvement of officials in abuses of rural workers and in the commerce in Guajiro slaves. Under other circumstances, government officials tried to help workers. During the presidency of Wcencio Perez Soto (1926-36), certain elements within the Zulian government attempted to eliminate the worst abuses of the system. Although the president's motivation remains unclear, he may have been trying to create a quasi-populist power base for national political ambitions. Alternatively he might have been concerned about foreign or domestic popular opinion or even about the injustice inherent in the system. The efforts initiated by Perez Soto remained strictly reformist and lacked scope. They, too, failed to attack the fundamental bases of the system.

The Perez Soto regime, taking aim at the illicit slave trade in 1926, ordered the Col6n District governor to eliminate the traffic once and for all. P6rez Soto took action where his predecessors had not by removing the sheriff and the secretary of the port of Castilletes from their posts when they were implicated in the sale of Indians. Even wealthy landowners of the area began to suffer penalties in case of flagrant abuses. In 1927 the state government fined one hacendado, Eduardo Contreras, some Bs. 1,000 as a repeat offender in buying Indians for his hacienda in Col6n District. The Indians he had bought were freed and then allowed to return to the Guajira Peninsula.%

P h Soto's government also began to intervene in the management of hacienda labor forces. Rather than trying to eliminate debt servitude, the P6rez Soto administration sought to eliminate the worst excesses of landowners and establish local officials as intermediaries and arbiters in labor relations.

27 Misael Mhdez, interview by author, Cuatro Esquinas, Dtto. Col6n, Edo. Zulia: 8 September 1986, tape recording Registro Principal del Estado Zulia, Col6n, 1885, prot. 1, trim. 2, no. 39.

28 Leonte Olivo to Governor, Col6n, Maracaibo, n.d.; AHEZ, 1926, t. 4, leg. 35; H. Gonzales Pacheco to State Sec. Gen., San Carlos de Zulia: 14 January 1927, no. 362, AHEZ, 1927, t. 12, leg. 1.

COERCED LABOR 57

labor relations. Official declrees forbade the use of stocks, chains, and private jails in punishing errant workers and ordered a halt to the fining of workers designed to increase indebtedness-for real or imagined failings. The authorities sought to substitute uniform penalties of arrest in municipal jails for lapses in worker discipline. They also attempted to end the employment of armed private "commissions" for the apprehension of escaped laborers. Mindful of abuses and sensitive to any threat to his government's authority, Pbrez Soto decreed that while landowners could send representatives to locate fugitive workers, the state government had responsibility for their apprehension. This measure was designed to prevent abuses perpetrated by bounty hunters while eliminating the need for armed men on Mendas.

Because of the political and economic power of the hac&os and their frequent direct participation in local government, efforts to curtail their power had limited success. Local officials often resisted the implementation of P6rez Soto's dorm measures and backed landowners' efforts to keep workers under their control. Also, General Juan Vicente G6mez, ruler of Venezuela from 1908 to 1935, possessed extensive cattle ranches in the m a as well as shares in local sugar mills, so any attempts to alter the status quo were doomed as long as he was alive.

After G6mez died in December 1935, the harshest features of the system begin to disappear. In 1936, General Eleazar L6pez Contreras, G6mez's successor, decreed the freedom of "indentured" Indians and debt peons and sent a new governor to Maracaibo to oversee the change. Overtly coercive labor systems and dependence on Guajiro Indian labor declined markedly after 1936, although vestiges existed until the 1 9 5 0 ~ . ~

In the Sur del Lago zuliano the shortage of agricultural workers remained a chronic problem from the nineteenth century onwards. Growing demand for the region's products and the resulting need for more labor led local hacendados and authorities to adopt mechanisms designed to obtain and control rural workers. They relied on a system of debt servitude that was formalized by police codes and laws of personal service and enforced by the

29 State Sec. Gen. to Teodoro Mhdez, Maracaibo: 18 September 1928, AHEZ, 1928, t. 4, leg. 1; List of Arrests, Col6n; San Carlos de Zulia: 31 May 1928, AH=, 1928, t. 6, leg. 1; Estado Zulia, C d i g o de PoliCia del Estado Zulia, 1928 (Maracaibo, 1928),64-65; Phz Sot0 to G6mez, Maracaibo: 26 June 1926, Memorandum Np 11, BAHM 1370 (January-April 1971): 321.

30 "Sugar Workers Granted Wage Demands," Win G. Loren (U. S. Consul, Maracaibo), Maracaibo: 14 January 1947, no 2, NA RG 84, Box 86, 1947, v. 8, file nQ 850.4; Matos Romero, interview; Pablo Perales Frigols, Geogmfi Econhicn del Estado Zulia (Maracaibo, 1957), I: 268., Zulia, Compil& de leyffi y d m t o s orgdnicos del Estado Zulin (Maracaibo: Imprenta del Estado Zulia, 1944), 513.

58 THE HISTORIAN

landowners’ local police power and the region‘s isolation. Finding the local population too small to meet their labor needs, the region’s landowners drew laborers both from other regions of Venezuela and even the Caribbean. Guajiro Indians formed the mainstay of the region’s work force and remained in a system of slavery harsher than that imposed on their Hispanic counterparts. Although the workers enmeshed in the system did not accept their plight passively resistance remained limited in its scope and effects. For Guajim workers, their lack of knowledge about local conditions and their lack of fluency in Spanish made them very dependent on the hacendados. During the last years of the G6mez era, the state governor also attempted to regularize the relations between worker and landowner in order to eliminate private abuses, but the intervention of authorities was limited in its scope and effectiveness.

Certain similarities between the labor systems of the Sur del h g o zuliano and other rural areas in Venezuela and Latin America seem clear. Forced labor systems tended to occur in regions undergoing economic expansion based on growing demand for primary products; areas geographically and administratively isolated from regional centers of population and political power; areas of low population, marked by shortages of labor. The landowners of such regions imported workers from outside, sometimes by force and sometimes by offering attractive wages and benefits. The areas were characterized by a variety of labor systems, ranging from slavery to free wage labor, and the treatment of workers varied with their ability to resist. Unacculturated, non-Spanish-speaking workers were perceived as racially inferior and unprotected diplomatically. They received the harshest treatment. The Sur del Lago zuliano demonstrates the survival, until quite recently of precapitalist social relations of production, in an area of close proximity to a modem oil industry. It also gives an added dimension to an important, but little-explod aspect of Venezuelan history.