Dramatic title, but honestly, if we are talking simply about the system of the production of fruit in Chile, it’s true. The field I work in is called Los Ranchillos (which is actually the name of the neighborhood). It’s huge. Incredibly large. There are the lemons, of course, but also narajas (oranges), almendras (almonds), mandarinas (mandarins), papas (potatoes), paltas (avocadoes/abacate), maybe some other stuff. It fills half of one entire valley, expanding up the sides of the hills around. And it’s still growing.
In one corner of the valley, there is a parcela, a plot of land, with this giant house, the workers call it the chalet. It’s the house of the dueño, the owner of all this land. He’s a farmer, in the medieval sense of the word; only in that he owns land, and makes his profit off of the sale of its produce. I haven’t seen the house myself (I would like to, to complete the picture), but I know quite a bit about it because the man hired Sandro (my host father) and his crew (which includes Sandro’s son Esteban) to repair some things that were damaged during the earthquake. The house (more like a mansion) has a pool and a garden and many floors. The man doesn’t live there, rather living in Santiago. Sandro and his crew have to work quickly because there are plans to film a telenovela in the house, later this spring.
Even today, the system functions like it has throughout the history of Latin American encomiendas. The system is always like this, like one of my co-workers said: the dueño makes millions, while the peons who work for him work there asses off to scrape by. But it’s not a system I’m used to seeing up close. When I return to the US, I want to visit the fruit plantations that exist there, to establish a comparison. It is my impression that most fruit production in the US is owned by companies, rather than individuals, granting a different "flavor" to the business. And I would say that fruit production in the US is more in a more "developed" stage that production in Latin America, on different levels, from the corporate structure of ownership to the machinization of production. It occurs to me, looking at this single example of "the stages of development" that certain questions arise. Talking to people here, I am developing an understanding that the workers, though they realize they are making nothing compared to their counterparts in the US, know that they are filling an essential role in international production, and they take pride in that. Furthermore, for example, the fact that procution here is NOT machinized means that there is a relatively infinite means of employment for the large number of unskilled labor that exists. These people have very little education and few skills. Most are appropriately employed (with a few notable exceptions of underemployment that I have encountered) and all have their own personal motivations, which is one of the most interesting things that I am learning from my conversations with them.
Still, I'm left wondering, in the larger picture of development, what is the better method? I can see that the corporate model of production in the US has its advantages when competing in the international market (or at least it seems it does, although it is difficult to make any judgment call when the situation is complicated by the large agricultural subsidies that exist in the US). But I'm wondering, is it better to arm those means of production in developing countries with the goal to make them equal to their competitors in the US and in other developed countries, or to seek out another, more innovative model of development? I guess what I'm saying is, already, what I have seen is underlining, in my mind, the textbook question, is it better for developing countries to follow a similar route of deveolpment that developed countries took, in this case, complete with corporate production, protectionism and mechanization? Perhaps this is the easiest route to follow although still difficult, due to opposition by the powers at be. But maybe that's just the quick fix, as ironic as that sounds. What I'm saying is, I question that the route of development taken by today's developed countries is the desireable route.
Surely not an original thought, but it occured to me, one day while I was filling my bucket with lemons.
I hope I have clearly presented my thoughts here. It's a bit disorganized.
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