The Sweat of Their Brow: A History of Work in Latin America (review)

Two commonly asked questions about Latin America are, why are the working people so poor? And how does one explain the persistence of a grotesque class system? These questions are not asked, of course, by people in Bangladesh or the Sudan but by observers in the Western industrial countries or the relatively new economic tigers of the Pacific for whom a fairly well-off work force seems normal and even natural. David McCreery, whose book, Rural Guatemala (Stanford, 1994), made a fine contribution to understanding the two question in that particular place, now takes up the daunting task of explaining the history of work over five centuries across the Latin American board in a small book about a large subject.

How might one organize such a study? The author muses aloud in the early pages about the difficulties of a chronological study since African slavery, encomienda Indians, statute wages and free workers can all exist simultaneously, while dealing with specific circumstances in particular places might lead to an incomprehensible clutter of cases. In the end, McCreery chose a conventional scheme of Iberian background, the colonial system of encomienda and the various repartimientos, the rise of urban work (ca. 1750-1850), the impact on workers of the export economies in the Liberal epoch; and the modern industrial era from the 1930s to the present. McCreery discusses many different kinds of effort including women's work, antisanal labor, and industrial workers, and so we have an informed, rather grass-hoppery descriptive account, an overview, of the work experience of men and women in several times and places in Latin America.

The last chapter endeavors to theorize, that is, to explain, the long-term changes in work and work relations. McCreery begins with the remark that Latin America, and for that matter, all of the New World, was always characterized by "scarcity of labor," and particularly by low ratios of people to land, which should "tend to drive up the cost of labor" (pp. 182-3). Now, it is, of course, difficult to pull even two or three shiny fish out of this vast, murky ocean of data. But these statements, whether valid or not—and it depends when and where one is talking about— look at the problem from the supply side. Rural wages will not be driven up regardless of the extent of land if there is no market for the owner's produce. And can one claim that there was always a scarcity of labor? Did not the "Prebisch thesis," which became orthodoxy for most Latin American economists in the 1950s and '60s, diagnose the problem of underdevelopment as a surplus of rural workers that would have to be absorbed by new industries if Latin American wages were to be driven up?

No one can doubt the various mechanisms that were used by employers from Potosí's mita to modern Guatemala's mandamiento to obtain workers at less than the market wage but it may be that McCreery is too inclined to dwell on coercion. "For most of Latin America's history," he tells us, "most labor outside the peasant sector [why outside the peasant sector?] has been coerced work, paid or not" (p. 182). Perhaps a discussion of labor market relations, however imperfect they may have been, would have provided a more analytically effective point of departure to explain worker relations. When the market does not function, as it often didn't, then at least one has a framework for examining why it doesn't.

In such a large and bold survey as this, anyone can quibble about detail and interpretation. Surely David McCreery wanted to provoke thought about large issues rather than provide definitive answers. In this he has no doubt succeeded.