Empowered through Labor and Buttressing Their Communities: Mayan Women and Coastal Migration, 1875-1965

Abstract

As indigenous females, Mayan women were among the lowest orders in Guatemala’s hierarchy of material power. Yet paradoxically, for some, the skills associated with their gender and ethnicity provided them both independence and an income that bested Mayan men’s earnings. Examining the history of Mayan molenderas (corn grinders and tortilla makers) reveals the nuanced workings of micropower within systems of domination. More broadly, the diverse experiences of Mayan females who migrated to the coast to work in the coffee economy during the late nineteenth century and twentieth centuries lay bare the threads that connect exploitation and empowerment, as well as the resulting friction. As Guatemala became increasingly integrated into the world market through coffee export production, how did local gender relations and national labor relations change?Mayan labor on the coast was an integral aspect of liberal governments’ development strategies in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century, especially in the coffee export sector along the Pacific piedmont. Women were a smaller, but nevertheless crucial, part of this coastal migration. Many Mayan women migrated to the Pacific Coast to pick and clean coffee; some established entrepreneurial activities, such as preparing food and washing clothes for workers. Although they suffered alongside men during stints of labor on the coast, their diligence and creativity opened spaces for them. Their earnings bolstered their indispensable roles within their communities and at times afforded them increased autonomy.Liberal economic reforms often diminished the role and status of women.2 Anthropologist Lauren Herbenar Bossen argues that female domestic dependency increased (or in some cases began) as a result of unequal gender opportunities in the expanding international capitalist economy.3 For Guatemala, historian David McCreery posits, “If at first coffee provided some women a new source of income, perhaps reinforcing their independence and value within the family, routinization and full development of the crop subordinated women’s labor power to men in a way that traditional subsistence production did not.”4 In contrast, my research indicates that although McCreery’s assertion holds for those who picked coffee, women’s traditional skills — channeled into entrepreneurial activities — could also empower them. Clearly, the coffee economy thrust women into working and living conditions that were deleterious to their health, and in most cases they earned lower wages than men. But some Mayan women improved their position vis-à-vis men by adapting to economic transformations in both mundane and innovative ways.To a large extent, social relations were determined by Mayan women’s labor, both paid and unpaid. As Michelle Rosaldo argues, “Woman’s place in human social life is not in any direct sense a product of the things she does (and even less a function of what, biologically, she is) but of the meaning her activities acquire through concrete social interactions. . . . Gender in all human groups must, then, be understood in political and social terms, with reference not to biological constraints but instead to local and specific forms of social relationship and, in particular, of social inequality.”5 Some women, such as molenderas and merchants, found ways to increase their earning potential beyond that of most men by fulfilling local needs and creating alternative economic opportunities on the coast. Although not overtly recognized by government officials, women’s participation in this economic development was crucial for the state and for coffee finqueros (owners of large landed estates). As Irene Silverblatt argues, analysis that privileges the role of the state in history “blinds us to the human creation of economic and political forms.”6 Despite the political and economic structures that favored men, these women found ways to improve their lot. Even those who earned less than men performing the same tasks alongside them in the groves reinforced their respected and complementary positions by sharing the experience. Likewise, those who stayed behind remained paramount to the survival of their communities; they protected property, took care of farms and livestock, and fulfilled other responsibilities.By looking at the economic activities that Mayan women created and pursued, as Silverblatt suggests, and examining the meanings their “activities acquire through concrete social interactions,” as Rosaldo instructs, we can better understand the role they played in Guatemala’s coffee sector and how the agroexport economy affected their positions within their communities. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues, “The crucial point that is often forgotten is that women are produced through these very [social] relations as well as being implicated in forming these relations.”7 Mayan women’s participation in coastal migration helped to perpetuate the coffee economy and, at the same time, to shape their identity. Mohanty goes on to critique “Western feminist discourse,” which, “by assuming women as a coherent, already constituted group . . . placed in kinship, legal, and other structures, defines third-world women as subjects outside of social relations, instead of looking at the way women are constituted as women through these very structures.”8 Oral histories not only allow Mayan women to explain their role in, and understanding of, coastal migration in the twentieth century; privileging their voices also avoids the tendency that Mohanty warns against: that is, presenting women in developing nations as a monolithic group.9The experience of migration was not uniform among Mayan women; some never left their communities. Distinctions based on ethnicity, class, status, and position influence gender differences. Consequently, while the category “women” is necessary to show how women’s realities and histories are distinct from or parallel to those of men, such categories must also pay attention to the diversity of women’s experiences.10 Women’s labor on the coast was in some ways similar to, and in other ways different from, that of men. But tasks also varied from one woman to another. For instance, female field hands had more in common with the men they worked alongside than they did with their fellow female molenderas. As such, the character of labor, as much as gender and class, affected relations among workers.Because few Mayan men would accept conceding their role as primary providers, women who earned more than men almost had to live independently when they returned to their communities. As Verena Stolcke notes, “Cultural values informing gender hierarchies not only influence available options but also affect subjective responses to these options, because as members of households men and women have relationships, reciprocal responsibilities and claims that are shaped in particular ways.”11 Even women who earned less than men nevertheless disrupted gender relations, as their income bolstered their confidence and autonomy vis-à-vis men. Yet because their community and nation were predicated on hegemonic masculinity (that is, social constructs and practices that perpetuate men’s dominance over women), Kaqchikel women’s empowerment was circumscribed.12The “taunting mix of emancipation and limitation” and “evidence of an uneasy fusion of enfranchisement and exclusion” that Jean and John Comaroff attribute to neoliberal economics were evident in Guatemala’s coffee sector.13 Migrant labor offered highland Maya an opportunity to escape famine and unemployment in their hometowns, but seldom did they return with much cash. Yet even though migrants held subordinate roles in the coffee economy, their labor constrained the economic possibilities of the elites; at times, they made planters painfully aware of this constraint. As well, among Maya the exception of molenderas who often earned enough money to gain autonomy from men may have frustrated male and female field hands who remained impoverished. Thus, molenderas’ financial success, and the relative autonomy this afforded them, may have contributed to a certain form of alienation: they may have felt excluded from their highland communities because, by definition, their independence set them apart not only from men but also from other women. Their success disrupted the already-pliant gender roles in Mayan villages.As the Menchú epigraph intimates, subalterns often have a keen sense of the international, national, and local forces that affect their decisions and lives. Likewise, as scholars have continued to analyze the multiplicity of forces that affect workers and capital, theoretical debates about class relations have become increasingly sophisticated. James Scott’s pathbreaking work inspired much of this literature by focusing on “reciprocal manipulation.”14 Because molenderas provided the very sustenance that energized the workforce, they held a powerful bargaining position with respect to plantation owners and managers. Studying gendered economic strategies reveals that, at least in some cases, women were more effective than men at (to elaborate on Eric Hobsbawm’s observation) “ ‘working the system’ to its . . . minimum disadvantage.”15 Yet their influence should not be overstated. Thanks to their political and economic capital, finqueros enjoyed greater resources and recourses than molenderas. Human agency and oppression both help create and are themselves shaped by larger structures and forces. The dialectic between the micro-and macrophysics of power means that men and women make history, but not under the circumstances of their choosing.16 Only by examining the diverse arenas where power is contested can historical accounts elucidate class relations. How did multiple and mobile power relations between international capital, the Guatemalan state, finqueros, labor contractors, and Mayan migrants evolve on coastal coffee plantations? And how did gender affect these interactions?The intellectual rigor that demands “a synthesis that will reestablish the dialectic between structure and experience” in assessing the past must also be applied to oral histories and the nature of memory.17 Informants’ recollections of events are informed by their personal experience, the community’s collective constructions of the past, and larger political, economic, social, and cultural forces, both at the time of the events and at the time of the telling. Oral histories are not merely a recounting of “facts”; rather, they are attempts by narrators to create texts that make sense of the past, situate themselves in the present, suggest strategies for the future, and perhaps call upon memory’s healing powers. Articulating memories also requires extensive forgetting, both because narrators would be overwhelmed by the vast detail of their experiences and because they want to weave a story with a particular message. Since informants are performers, their stories also vary according to the audience or interviewer.18 Oral histories are vibrant social constructions, not static edicts. Just as historians craft narratives, Mayan raconteurs create views of the past that do not so much “invent tradition” as reinvent the past.19 Because they are so complexly layered, oral histories are ripe with pitfalls and require intense listening and observation; silences are often as revealing as words. Lest historians avoid these primary sources altogether, Charles Joyner assures scholars, “Informants never lie to a good historian (although they may try to); they just reveal the truth in some unique ways.”20 Joyner’s insistence that “lies” often reveal more truth than do facts resonates with Allesandro Portelli’s assertion that “errors, inventions and myths lead us through and beyond facts to their meanings.”21 For these reasons, Daniel James finds oral history especially valuable for labor historians: “Oral testimony is more messy, more paradoxical, more contradiction-laden, and perhaps, because of this, more faithful to the complexity of working-class lives and working-class memory.”22Mayan women’s oral histories are informed by the world around them. Since they are increasingly part of a global economy — through trade, the media, and tourism — that offers financial opportunities but also threatens their livelihoods and lifestyles, histories about Mayan women’s early foray into the international economy permeate their conscience. As anthropologist Terence Turner asserts, “History is not merely a record of concrete events but also . . . a form of social consciousness.”23 To inspire and caution, women share both tales of success and accounts of exploitation in the coffee economy. Oral narratives are influenced by the present, but women tell these stories because the past offers lessons and helps chart a course for the future. In his interviews with an Argentinean meatpacker, James observed, “It was not simply ‘the view from the present’ that shaped her remembering. Any view from the present is already profoundly imbricated with influences from past.”24 At the same time, people use oral histories to reshape the past.The Kaqchikel Maya reside in the central highlands of Guatemala, mainly in the departmentos (states) of Chimaltenango, Sacatepéquez, Sololá, Guatemala, Escuintla, and Suchitepéquez; the approximately 405,000 speakers comprise the third-largest Mayan language group in the country. By their nature, oral histories are emblematic of how Maya view themselves and their place in the past and present. As historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall observes, “We are what we remember, and as memories are reconfigured, identities are redefined.”25 In turn, archival sources — declarations by plantation administrators, internal correspondence from the Ministry of Labor, correspondence to and from Chimaltenango’s jefe político (political boss or governor), census data, and annual reports from Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture — corroborate or contradict oral testimonies, enrich the historical context, and provide new insights. Indeed, these documents buttress much of what Mayan women recount about working and living conditions, pay differentials, and employment options. Relations between the state, finqueros, labor contractors, and Mayan workers were complex; women’s perceptions of the past elucidate ways in which gender both mitigated and exacerbated migrants’ plights.The export economy’s complex factors affected Mayan communities in distinct ways and at different times. As early as the 1850s, coffee expansion disrupted Mayan communities. But these intrusions were minor until the 1870s, because coffee production remained low and conservatives encouraged Maya to produce coffee. Nevertheless, thanks to efforts by José Rafael Carrrera’s second conservative regime (1851 – 65), by 1871 coffee comprised half of Guatemala’s exports. Even so, liberal politicians, under the early leadership of General Justo Rufino Barrios (1873 – 85), sought to transform Guatemala into a coffee nation. To this end, Barrios imposed forced-labor mechanisms and ordered jefes políticos to aid planters’ quest for workers. He also sought to deprive Maya of land by forcing them to obtain individual titles to their lands and usurping communal lands — both means to force them into the export labor force. Despite Barrios’s efforts and finqueros’ association with habilitadores — labor contractors who advanced money to workers in exchange for promises of labor or crops (usually coffee) and used debt peonage to ensnare workers — labor shortages persisted. Nonetheless, coffee exports quintrupled from 1871 to 1884.26Successive liberal leaders expressed concern over Guatemala’s monocultural economy. Both General José María Reyna Barrios (1892 – 98) and Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898 – 1920) advocated diversifying agricultural production by redirecting the economy away from coffee production and toward subsistence agriculture and livestock, but neither administration was successful. Forced-labor mechanisms also were entrenched in Guatemala. It was not until the overthrow of Estrada Cabrera that the state outlawed mandamientos.27 Debt peonage lasted until 1934 (with a two-year grace period), when General Jorge Ubico (1931 – 44) abolished it in favor of a vagrancy law, which required all males to carry work cards to prove they had worked the required number of days (100 or 150, based on their landholdings) for the state or private landowners. Finally, with the election of Dr. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo in 1945, Guatemala became the last country in the Americas to abolish state-sanctioned coerced labor. Under the democratic regimes of Arévalo (1945 – 51) and Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951 – 54), Guatemalans enjoyed free labor.28Coffee expansion did not immediately or universally threaten Mayan communities, however. It was only gradually that the state and habilitadores encroached upon Mayan labor and land. Quetzaltenango, for example, was protected from the deleterious effects of coffee development because its land was at too high an altitude for coffee cultivation and its city too politically important to risk angering its K’ichee’ population.29 Some groups were adept at resisting state and private attempts to coerce their labor. At times, Kaqchikel successfully appealed to higher officials to protect themselves from local authorities, as was the case in 1898, when several Kaqchikel farmers appealed to the Ministry of Agriculture to avoid forced labor on the coast.30 Nonetheless, most Kaqchikel oral histories purport that by the 1920s and 1930s, forced-labor mechanisms did not determine their migration to the coast; rather, a lack of resources and jobs and low agricultural production in their highland towns necessitated their exodus.31 McCreery notes, “In the early 1920’s, it was becoming apparent that under pressure from a growing population and shrinking resources more and more of the inhabitants of the highland villages were not able to survive without finca wages.”32Between 1871 and 1940 Guatemala suffered repeated corn shortages; in fact, until 1930 Guatemala remained dependent on corn imports. One can find correspondence in the 1930s from concerned jefes políticos inquiring about the supply of corn and wheat in highland towns and asking alcaldes (mayors) to limit the sale of maize to two quintals per person and to prevent habilitadores from taking workers to the coast until after they had sown corn and wheat; this hints at the severity of the problem.33 One reason for the shortage of maize was the significant growth of the Mayan population since the late nineteenth century. The populations of the Kaqchikel towns of San Juan Comalapa (henceforth Comalapa), Sumpango, and San Martín Jilotepeque (henceforth San Martín) more than doubled between 1880 and 1950. Likewise, the Kaqchikel towns of Patzicía and Santa María de Jesus experienced population increases of 35 and 43 percent, respectively, during the same period. Population growth was especially dramatic in the middle third of the twentieth century, partially due to increased access to improved biomedicine. Some communities complained they no longer had enough land to support themselves. An increase in seasonal migration from the 1930s to the 1960s further bears out Mayan reactions to diverse pressures. Indeed, coastal migration was so common by the twentieth century that some Kaqchikel used it to hide from personal problems in the highlands, as did Cruz Yancoba Sitán when he wanted to avoid paying child support.34 Liberal policies designed to foment coffee exports combined with population growth, environmental calamities, and decreased agricultural productivity to undermine traditional Mayan livelihoods. Consequently, many Maya became more dependent on the cash economy.35Kaqchikel communities in the department of Chimaltenango were among the earliest affected by Justo Rufino Barrios’s land and labor reforms, as well as his creation of a central land registry (a general land code was not revised until 1894). All land, whether communal or private, had to be registered. The state assumed ownership of all unregistered lands, and persons or groups could petition for them to be auctioned and put in private or communal ownership. Shortly after assuming the presidency in 1873, Barrios transferred a large tract of communal land from Comalapa to ladinos (nonindigenous Guatemalans) who had assisted him in his liberal revolution of 1871.36 In 1889 and 1890, Kaqchikel from Comalapa continued to complain about the loss of their land to ladinos, who were gaining some of the most arable and centrally located land there.37 Competition and divisiveness among Maya also contributed to Barrios’s land-privatization schemes. When denizens of San José Poaquil (henceforth Poaquil) requested their independence from Comalapa, Barrios quickly granted their entreaty under the stipulation that Poaquileños divide and title their landholdings. Kaqchikel leaders from Poaquil gladly complied.38One goal of the liberal encroachment onto Mayan lands was to disrupt their livelihood and thereby increase access to cheap labor. The loss of Mayan land through privatization occurred primarily between 1873 and 1910 in Guatemala. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, for example, a few ladino and Mayan landowners controlled most of the arable land in Comalapa. Furthermore, generally only these landowners had access to manure for fertilizer, which significantly increased their agricultural yield. Most Kaqchikel had to supplement the harvests from their small landholdings by renting land, working on a finca de mozos (agricultural estate that supplied laborers), or migrating to the coast.39 As one Kaqchikel woman from Comalapa explains, “Our people went to the coast because there was an economic crisis here. There was no money here. Even if you wanted to work here, there was none, so people had to go to the coast to look for work.”40 A 62-year-old counterpart from Patzicía adds, “People went to the coast a long time ago because there was no fertilizer, so farming was poor. There was no corn here, so people went to the coast. One time frost hurt our milpa, so people had to migrate, and also because people drank and danced for the fiesta so they had to go to bring back money for the fiesta. That is why they went to the finca.”41Although Kaqchikel oral histories belie reductionist arguments about the causes of coastal migration, large landowners and government officials frequently expressed the belief that indigenous people were indolent and would only work if compelled to do so. Some landowners insisted that Maya would only respond to corporal punishment, so they employed guns, dogs, and beatings to intimidate them. Many landowners constructed jails or stocks on their properties.42 Interestingly, the need to coerce labor attests to finqueros’ level of dependence on workers. When Maya refused to migrate or work, planters’ investments went to waste right along with the coffee berries rotting in the fields — an indication that hegemons were not omnipotent, but rather often at the mercy of subalterns’ decisions.43 Certainly, Maya were cognizant of their crucial role and thus their power. McCreery argues, “The indigenous population had the numbers and an awareness that without their participation the export economy would collapse.”44 Nonetheless, planters’ political and economic resources afforded them more power than workers. Oral histories purport that most Kaqchikel with meager resources welcomed plantation labor as a relief from low agricultural output, drought, famines, and unemployment.45 One female oyonel succinctly states, “You had to look for work on the coast to be able to eat each day.”46 Personal narratives provide information not found in written documentation. Labor contracts generally mention only the males who were contracted to work, not the females who accompanied them and were an essential part of the group.In the last third of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, women were among the permanent workers on coffee fincas. In some cases they outnumbered men; one coffee finca employed only females and children.47 Since finqueros faced chronic labor shortages during the harvest season, they welcomed the influx of not only men but also migrant women and children from the more distant highlands beginning in the early 1870s. The journey was long, arduous, and at times perilous. One man from Poaquil who was migrating to the coast with his two daughters, aged 12 and 14, lost them en route when he got drunk in Patzicía.48 Kaqchikel towns were an important source of migrant labor in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.49 In the department of Sacatepéquez for instance, the jefe político boasted in 1890 that he garnered 6,215 workers for the finqueros, “not including the hordes of women cutters, who voluntarily offered [their services] to this work.”50 As one 65-year-old woman explains, “Men could not earn enough here [Comalapa] to support their families, so they had to go to the coast. We followed the men there and cleaned coffee. It was fun because we could earn money.”51 Except for market vendors and petty merchants, most female labor in the highlands was unpaid. For many women, work on the coast was their first access to wage labor. So even though they were subordinate to planters and the male coffee pickers whom they worked alongside, this income often bolstered women’s confidence and disrupted the gendered balance of power in highland communities.Migrants toiled under miserable and at times injurious conditions. Laborers complained that their clothes disintegrated on their backs due to long hours of physical labor in the rain and humidity. Except on the largest plantations, the cost and availability of mechanized equipment tended to be prohibitive. Consequently, few finqueros incorporated capital goods such as flumes, funiculars, or rail lines; rather, they depended on workers to transport coffee berries on their backs, secured to a tapäl (tumpline).52 “I went to pick coffee with my husband because there was no work here [in Comalapa] in November and December; you couldn’t find any work, so we went to the coast to look for a few cents. Many women carried coffee in sacks; they could carry a quintal. I couldn’t do that,” recalls one 70-year-old woman.53 Women who worked in the fields had to perform the same labor as men, and many were just as productive. One former migrant explains, “You had to carry the coffee [beans] a long distance to where you had to turn them in, and you might fall and twist your ankle, or you might see a snake and have to jump over it. . . . Even though you were a woman, you had to carry the coffee, and you might use a tapäl. You suffered.”54 Coffee groves defied a sexual division of labor; women and men performed the same tasks. Nonetheless, the agro-export economy reflected highland agricultural practices and gender notions, where both men and women farmed, but agriculture was still considered a man’s domain. In general, coffee fincas defined tareas (tasks) by a man’s capacity.Compounding the challenge of heavy physical labor, food provisions were scant. Because meals and wages could account for 50 percent of the cost of coffee production, many owners sought to make their operations more efficient at the workers’ expense. In some cases, owners required workers to bring their own food and prepare their own meals, a duty that almost invariably fell to the women.55 The Villa Alicia coffee finca, which hired about 50 seasonal laborers, never provided rations, nor did it have enough land to allow workers to plant their own crops.56 Many owners did not consider food provision part of their responsibility.57 In contrast, most German-owned fincas in the early 1900s provided maize, beans, salt, lime, and coffee, the cost of which some owners deducted from their workers’ pay.58 “Women went to the coast to harvest coffee. Some took their children with them. My whole family went because my husband went to the coast. You arrive there, and they give you corn and beans, and then you have to make tortillas and food. Then you help with the work. Once the food is prepared, then you go with your basket to harvest coffee,” explains one 68-year-old former migrant.59 When fincas did furnish meals, they tended to be sparse. One woman notes, “They would only give you six or seven tortillas and a small plate of beans at midday, sometimes they would give you greens with chili sauce and six tortillas.”60Because food provisions were so meager, some migrants sought ways to supplement their diet. One female octogenarian recalls, “Finqueros gave families a ration of corn and some lime, and you had to stretch it to make it last for everyone, but it never did. . . . So then you had to think about establishing a business, because otherwise you could not earn your food. So we bought bananas and zapote [sapodilla plum] to sell on the finca.”61 By forcing migrants to supplement their subsistence, parsimonious planters compelled some laborers to become petty merchants. That Kaqchikel migrants acquiesced to this exploitation is a testament to how desperately they needed work.Housing provisions also ranged from undesirable to nonexistent. One 80-year-old woman recalls that when she went as a young girl, the owners provided no housing, so her family made a structure out of banana-tree leaves, which left them exposed to health threats such as mosquitoes.62 Another woman adds, “There were no housing structures where they slept, so people slept in the weeds and made their home out of nylon, which they brought with them.”63 As recently as the 1960s, laborers were sleeping in self-constructed nylon structures on plantations. According to some informants, housing conditions on the finc