A Ohio University Press Book
"This is a model monograph of effective argument and impressive research. It takes its place in an emerging interpretation of pre-Somoza rural Nicaragua that sees much of the countryside as, if not a utopia, at least a world of modest possibilities and prosperities for small farmers, an interpretation at odds with an imagined past driven both by class politics and twentieth-century realities."
David McCreery, American Historical Review
Many scholars of Latin America have argued that the introduction of coffee forced most people to become landless proletarians toiling on large plantations. Cultivating Coffee tells a different story: small and medium-sized growers in Nicaragua were a vital part of the economy, constituting the majority of the farmers and holding most of the land.
Alongside these small commercial farmers was a group of subsistence farmers, created by the state’s commitment to supplying municipal lands to communities. These subsistence growers became the workforce for their coffee-growing neighbors, providing harvest labor three months a year. Mostly illiterate, perhaps largely indigenous, they nonetheless learned the functioning of the new political and economic systems and used them to acquire individual plots of land.
Julie Charlip’s Cultivating Coffee joins the growing scholarship on rural Latin America that demonstrates the complexity of the processes of transition to expanded export agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emphasizing the agency of actors at all levels of society. It also sheds new light on the controversy surrounding landholding in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution.
Julie A. Charlip is an associate professor of history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She is co-author of the seventh edition of Latin America: A Concise Interpretive History, originally written by the late E. Bradford Burns. More info →
Retail price:
$32.95 ·
Save 20% ($26.36)
US and Canada only
Availability and price vary according to vendor.
Share 
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Click or tap on a subject heading to sign up to be notified when new related books come out.
Research in International Studies, Latin America Series, № 39
Paperback
978-0-89680-227-8
Retail price: $32.95,
S.
Release date: February 2003
312 pages
·
5½ × 8½ in.
Rights: World
Electronic
978-0-89680-429-6
Release date: February 2003
312 pages
Rights: World
Peasants in Arms
War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994
By Lynn Horton
Drawing on testimonies from contra collaborators and ex-combatants, as well as pro-Sandinista peasants, this book presents a dynamic account of the growing divisions between peasants from the area of Quilalí who took up arms in defense of revolutionary programs and ideals such as land reform and equality and those who opposed the FSLN.Peasants
Latin American History · Latin American Studies · Political Science · International Studies · History · Violence in Society · Nicaragua · Central America · Americas
Organic Coffee
Sustainable Development by Mayan Farmers
By Maria Elena Martinez-Torres
Despite deepening poverty and environmental degradation throughout rural Latin America, Mayan peasant farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, are finding environmental and economic success by growing organic coffee. Organic Coffee: Sustainable Development by Mayan Farmers provides a unique and vivid insight into how this coffee is grown, harvested, processed, and marketed to consumers in Mexico and in the north.Maria
Food Studies · Latin American History · International Studies · Mexico · Latin American Studies
Leaf of Allah
Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Harerge, Ethiopia, 1875–1991
By Ezekiel Gebissa
Khat is a quasi-legal psychoactive shrub, produced and marketed in the province of Harerge, Ethiopia, and widely consumed throughout Northeast Africa. In the late nineteenth century the main cash crop of Harerge was coffee. Leaf of Allah examines why farming families shifted from cultivating coffee and food crops to growing khat.Demographic, market, and political factors facilitated the emergence of khat as Harerge’s leading agricultural commodity.
Food Studies · Political Science · African History · Ethiopia · African Studies
The Fair Trade Scandal
Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich
By Ndongo Sylla
This critical account of the fair trade movement explores the vast gap between the rhetoric of fair trade and its practical results for poor countries, particularly those of Africa. In the Global North, fair trade often is described as a revolutionary tool for transforming the lives of millions across the globe.
Business & Economics | Development Studies · Food Industry · International Studies · Global Issues
Sign up to be notified when new Latin American Studies titles come out.
We will only use your email address to notify you of new titles in the subject area(s) you follow. We will never share your information with third parties.
