246 CHAPTER 11 THE TRIUMPH OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE, 1870–1900
applies to the system under which political deport-
ees and captured native rebels were sent by Mexi-
can authorities to labor in unspeakable conditions
on the coffee, tobacco, and henequen plantations
of southern Mexico.
More modern systems of agricultural labor
and farm tenantry arose only in such regions as
southern Brazil and Argentina, whose critical labor
shortage required the offer of greater incentives to
the millions of European immigrants who poured
into those countries between 1870 and 1910.
Labor conditions were little better in the min-
ing industry and in the factories that arose in some
countries after 1890. Typical conditions were a
workday of twelve to fourteen hours, miserable
wages frequently paid in vouchers redeemable only
at the company store, and arbitrary, abusive treat-
ment by employers and foremen. Latin American
law codes usually prohibited strikes and other organ-
ized efforts to improve working conditions, and po-
lice and the armed forces were commonly employed
to break strikes, sometimes with heavy loss of life.
FOREIGN CONTROL OF RESOURCES
The rise of the neocolonial order was accompanied
by a steady growth of foreign corporate control
over the natural and human-made resources of
the continent. The process went through stages. In
1870 foreign investment was still largely concen-
trated in trade, shipping, railways, public utilities,
and government loans; at that date, British capi-
tal enjoyed an undisputed hegemony in the Latin
American investment fi eld. By 1914 foreign cor-
porate ownership had expanded to include most
of the mining industry and had deeply penetrated
real estate, ranching, plantation agriculture, and
manufacturing; by that date, Great Britain’s rivals
had effectively challenged its domination in Latin
America. Of these rivals, the most spectacular ad-
vance was made by the United States, whose Latin
American investments had risen from a negligible
amount in 1870 to over $1.6 billion by the end of
1914 (still well below the nearly $5 billion invest-
ment of Great Britain).
Foreign economic penetration went hand in
hand with a growth of political infl uence and even
armed intervention. The youthful U.S. imperial-
ism proved to be the most aggressive of all. In the
years after 1898, a combination of “dollar diplo-
macy” and armed intervention transformed the
Caribbean into an “American lake” and reduced
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and several Cen-
tral American states to the status of dependencies
and protectorates of the United States.THE POLITICS OF ACQUISITION
The new economy demanded new politics. Conser-
vatives and liberals, fascinated by the atmosphere
of prosperity created by the export boom, the rise
in land values, the fl ood of foreign loans, and the
growth of government revenues, put aside their
ideological differences and joined in the pursuit of
wealth. The positivist slogan “Order and Progress”
now became the watchword of Latin America’s rul-
ing classes. The social Darwinist idea of the strug-
gle for survival of the fi ttest and Herbert Spencer’s
doctrine of “inferior races,” frequently used to sup-
port racist claims of the inherent inferiority of the
native, black, mestizo, and mulatto masses, also
entered the upper-class ideological arsenal.
The growing domination of national econo-
mies by the export sectors and the development of a
consensus between the old landed aristocracy and
more capitalist-oriented groups caused political is-
sues like the federalist-centralist confl ict and the
liberal-conservative cleavage to lose much of their
meaning; in some countries, the old party lines dis-
solved or became extremely tenuous. A new type
of liberal caudillo—Porfi rio Díaz in Mexico, Rafael
Núñez in Colombia, Justo Rufi no Barrios in Guate-
mala, and Antonio Guzmán Blanco in Venezuela—
symbolized the politics of acquisition.
As the century drew to a close, dissatisfi ed ur-
ban middle-class, immigrant, and entrepreneurial
groups in some countries combined to form par-
ties, called Radical or Democratic, that challenged
the traditional domination of politics by the creole
landed aristocracy. They demanded political, so-
cial, and educational reforms that would give more
weight to the new middle sectors. But these middle
sectors—manufacturers, shopkeepers, profession-
als, and the like—were in large part a creation of