Agrarian Puerto Rico: Reconsidering Rural Economy and Society, 1899–1940

Abstract

Agrarian Puerto Rico is a sound and solid investigation that launches a strongly documented and provocative denial of the premise that following the US invasion in 1898 untold Puerto Ricans lost massive amounts of farm property, becoming proletarianized as a result. Influential political figures and leading intellectuals have widely accepted these narratives of landlessness and proletarianization.The book starts with a critique of a widespread but related narrative that Puerto Rico had been a haven for a “legion of proprietors” before the invasion. This narrative seems to have been more salient during the Great Depression but less appealing in later decades. The authors point out that Pedro Albizu Campos made it a central theme of his discourse during the 1930s. The Liberal Party followed suit, with a roster of luminaries voicing this narrative, including the notable Union Republican Party essayist Francisco M. Zeno, political independence leader Gilberto Concepción de Gracia, and Popular Democratic Party founder Luis Muñoz Marín.Agrarian Puerto Rico identifies but does not expand on the magnitude of the dramatic consolidation of already large holdings after the invasion. For instance, the average farm size in Santa Isabel, the municipality with the highest concentration of land, was 130 and 133 cuerdas in 1925 and 1935, respectively (pp. 69, 78). Compare this to the 22,269 cuerdas owned and 17,000 cuerdas leased by the Aguirre Sugar Company over several municipalities in 1929 to the sugar hacienda Potala, one of the largest on the south coast and which held 1,790 cuerdas in 1880 (p. 82). In time, the Potala hacienda became just another sugarcane field owned by the Aguirre Sugar Company. The absence of examples like this means that the book fails to convey the extent of the concentration.César Ayala and Laird Bergad command an arresting array of research techniques that privilege the quantitative to document the concentration of land as well as why they reject the narrative that this resulted in landlessness. Specifically, they constructed a massive database from rural property tax assessments for ten municipalities during four periods between 1905 and 1935. They also relied heavily on publicly available population samples, known as the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), which are drawn from the 1910, 1920, and 1930 US censuses of the island. Using IPUMS samples, Ayala and Bergad also analyze the race, sex, and occupations of the rural population. Finally, they used statistics to interpret the printed census publications.The book consists of nine chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. The introduction, conclusion, and first chapters focus on the landlessness and proletarianization narratives. Chapters 2 through 4 present overviews of coffee and sugar from their introduction on the island and tobacco agriculture from the Spanish conquest while paying special attention to the first decades of the twentieth century. These chapters identify the spatial distribution of these commodities within the island, their main export markets, and the use of credit to finance production.Chapter 5 follows the effects of economic change on the population through an analysis of the IPUMS samples. The expansion of commerce, manufacture, and government activities led to migration to the urban areas. Among the areas focused on agricultural export, population growth was slowest in the coffee regions whereas the tobacco and sugar regions experienced considerable population increases.Chapters 6 through 8 present a compelling critique of the landlessness and proletarianization narratives through various statistical techniques. Ayala and Bergad lean heavily on the rural property tax database in order to find the narratives wanting. Relying on census publications, they posit a 20 percent rise in the number of farms in Puerto Rico between 1899 and 1935, with only a marginal increase in landlessness, from 72 to 75 percent (pp. 167–68). These chapters explain away the paradox of increased land fragmentation as landed property became more concentrated by arguing that small farms suffered divisions through inheritance and partial sales, whereas big landed estates experienced consolidation into ever larger units.Chapter 9 takes issue with Puerto Rican historiography for its focus on the major export staples of sugar, coffee, and tobacco at the expense of other agricultural pursuits. The chapter offers a welcome balance to this skewed focus by considering food crops intended for the local market and for the subsistence of the farmer's family. This labor-intensive small-time farming activity occupied more land than any of the major export staples. This last chapter also considers idle land and land dedicated to pasture.The merits and contribution of this volume overshadow the limited discussion of the consolidation of the largest estates. The breadth and scope of Ayala and Bergad's scholarship are formidable. Agrarian Puerto Rico provides a provocative reappraisal of the impact of the US invasion in 1898 on local agriculture. It will become an obligatory reference for scholars addressing the island's farming sector.