Peasants and Petty Capitalists in Southern Oaxacan Sugar Cane Production and Processing, 1930–1980
The documented history of Mexican sugar in the twentieth century begins with the introduction of vacuum-pan technology between 1880 and 1910, subsequently chronicling the progressive expansion and concentration of the industry, and the creeping State intervention which eventually resulted in the nationalisation of most private sugar mills during the 1960s and 1970s. 1 Small-scale, labour-intensive rural trapiches producing panela (an unrefined form of semi-crystalline sugar) have largely been left out of this history, despite the fact that trapiches were often predecessors to modern sugar mills and in many areas survived displacement by them. Surveying Oaxaca's Isthmus of Tehuantepec region in 1940, for example, Ybarra recorded three industrialised mills and 37 small, motorised, panela- producing trapiches . 2 In 1947, according to Aragon Calvo and Vargas Comargo, panela accounted for an estimated 25% of Mexican sugar production overall, and consumption of panela exceeded that of refined sugar in the states of Veracruz and Guerrero. 3 Panela continues to be produced and consumed in Mexico today — albeit in reduced quantities. In Panama, Colombia, India and other nations, panela (or the local equivalent) is an even more important sugar source than in Mexico. 4 Nationally the labour-intensive panela industry pales into insignificance next to the modern sugar sector. However, in particular regions and communities, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, it has been an important source of employment and capital, providing rural dwellers with their first experience of disciplined factory work and numerous small entrepreneurs with profits that were invested back into the communities to expand control over local land and businesses.