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Operation PBSUCCESS – The United States and Guatemala 1952 – 1954 By Nicholas Cullather

https://archive.org/details/PBSUCCESS/Guat01/page/n7/mode/2up The descendants of Spanish colonizers planted coffee of large estates, fincas, worked by Indian laborers. Coffee linked Guatemala to a world market in which Latin American, African, and Indonesian producers competed to supply buyers in Europe and the United States with low-priced beans. Success depended on the availability of low-paid or unpaid labor, and after 1900 Guatemala’s rules structured society to secure finqueros a cheap supply of Indian workers. The Army enforced vagrancy laws, debt bondage, and other forms of involuntary servitude and became the guarantor of social peace.


https://archive.org/details/PBSUCCESS/Guat01/page/n7/mode/2up

The descendants of Spanish colonizers planted coffee of large estates, fincas, worked by Indian laborers. Coffee linked Guatemala to a world market in which Latin American, African, and Indonesian producers competed to supply buyers in Europe and the United States with low-priced beans. Success depended on the availability of low-paid or unpaid labor, and after 1900 Guatemala’s rules structured society to secure finqueros a cheap supply of Indian workers. The Army enforced vagrancy laws, debt bondage, and other forms of involuntary servitude and became the guarantor of social peace.

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