American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934

7. The Twentieth-Century Plantation

• The Twentieth-Century Plantation The occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico by the United States in 1898 and the gradual expansion ofimperial influence over the Dominican Republic culminating in the occupation ofthat island by U.S. Marines in 1916-24 led to an impressive expansion ofsugar production across the Spanish Caribbean. Sugar production for export was not new to the islands. Was the extension ofmonocultural sugar production across the Spanish Caribbean an entirely new phenomenon attributable to U.S. colonialism, or was it a continuation oftrends already in place before 1898? How did the internal class structure ofthe u.S.-owned plantations that developed after 1898, and particularly the relations between the mills and the cane farmers, differ from that ofthe plantations that had already developed across the islands after the abolition ofslavery but before 1898? How did the plantations of the American Sugar Kingdom compare with the postemancipation plantations of Cuba and Puerto Rico or with the plantations that developed in the Dominican Republic after 1870? Did United States colonialism and the presence ofthe imperial state contribute merely to the continuation of secular economic trends, or did it drastically alter the conditions for capital accumulation in the sugar industry? Had the transition to a plantation system based on wage labor been completed in the islands in 1898? How was this transition IS-4 TWENTIETH·CENTURY PLANTATION affected by the entrance of the United States into the region in the Spanish· American War of 1898? These questions have direct relevance to the study of underdevelopment by outlining how local conditions, local differences in class structure, and preexisting divergent patterns ofownership ofland affect the degree ofcontrol which absentee capital can acquire. The economic forces emanating from the empire were uniform across the different regions of the American Sugar Kingdom, but the local class structures varied considerably from one region to another. The history of the American Sugar Kingdom is a product ofthe interaction of the two, which means that much ofthe raw material that went into the making of the plantations ofthe Caribbean was oflocal origin. The study of European and U.S. imperialism in the colonial world too often emphasizes the metropolitan side ofthe process of underdevelopment at the expense of local social actors. Underdevelopment then appears as an inevitable, unchangeable course determined exclusively by the will and social agency of metropolitan forces. Social transformation promoted by colonial actors appears impossible because only the wider forces of the world market seem to have any bearing on the course of development. Preexisting classes and social structures appear as irrelevant, and even the classes created by the process ofcapital accumulation-tenant farmers, the agricultural proletariatappear merely as pawns in a game created entirely by metropolitan capitalists. If, on the contrary, the making of underdevelopment is regarded as a complex process ofinteraction between metropolitan and colonial social classes, social change promoted by local social forces emerges as a possibility. The imperial construction appears as something that was created jointly with local allies and can therefore be undone or at least refashioned in favor of colonial peoples by local social actors. Development and underdevelopment acquire historical specificity. In the Spanish Caribbean in 1898, the social classes-local mill owners, colonos, and the agricultural proletariat-were the product of the transformation of the plantations after abolition. The abolition ofslavery produced dramatic changes in tropical agriculture and tilted the balance in favor of the production of beet sugar in temperate climates. From 1870 to 1900 European sugar beet production developed swiftly and outpaced the tropical cane sugar regions in total output, so that by the year 1900 beet sugar made up 60 percent oftotal world output while cane sugar accounted for 40 percent. The crisis of tropical plantation agriculture, however, did not mean the end of the plantation but rather its transformation. This chapter examines the transformation of tropical sugar production in the three islands of the Spanish Caribbean by looking at the transition from the system of ingenios, which pre- TWENTIETH-CENTURY PLANTATION 185 vailed during the slave regime, to the system ofcentral sugar mills, which replaced these ingenios. The transformation from one type ofplantation system to another encompassed changes in the relations between classes, changes in the relation between industry and agriculture, and changes within the planter class itself. The transformation of the slaves into an agricultural proletariat, the exceptions to the process of proletarianization, and the increase of the agricultural proletariat...