Panama Rural Society
Mountainous countryside in Chiriquí Province
Courtesy Organization of American States
The opening of the trans-isthmian railroad in the mid-
nineteenth century and the Panama Canal early in the twentieth
century reinforced the distinctions basic to Panamanian society:
the dichotomies between rural and urban inhabitants; small-scale,
mixed agriculturalists and larger cattle ranchers; the landless and
landowners; and mestizos and whites. By the late 1980s, urban-based
control over rural lands was considerable. The metropolitan elite
not only had substantial rural landholdings, but monopolized
pivotal political posts as well. Wealthy city dwellers also
controlled food-processing and transportation facilities. For the
bulk of the mestizo peasants, though, limited population and ample
reserves of land made elite control of resources less onerous than
it might have been, as did the fact that urban elites tended to
view their holdings less as agricultural enterprises than as
estates in the countryside.
Traditional slash-and-burn agriculture was the basis of rural
livelihood for most human settlement on the isthmus
(see Agriculture
, ch. 3). All able-bodied household members were
expected to contribute to the family's support. The peasant family
was a single production and consumption unit. There was a marked
division of labor by sex, and most of the work associated with
crops and planting was done by men. Mestizos recognized the
significant contribution children made to the agricultural output
of a household. Boys and girls gradually assumed responsibilities
for assisting with the duties deemed appropriate to their gender.
As children, especially boys, grew older, they received part of the
income from the sale of crops or part of a field that was "in their
name."
Agricultural production was geared to the household's
consumption. A family typically kept some livestock and planted a
variety of foodstuffs, of which maize was the principal crop.
Peasants gained temporary access to land by entering an agreement
to clear and maintain cattle pasture for absentee landowners. A
family would agree to clear a stand of forest (ideally secondary
growth) and plant it in crops for one to two years. At the end of
the cycle, they would often seed the plot with grasses before
moving on to a new site. Peasants also owed landowners a minimal
number of days in labor each year. They faced further demands on
their labor to build and maintain communal buildings, such as
churches and schools, and to assist with certain public works
required by the government.
Since the 1950s, however, traditional slash-and-burn farming
and the system of social relations it supports have been in the
throes of change. Increasing population pressure, the rapid
expansion of cattle ranching, and production of a variety of other
cash crops in the interior provinces have put pressure on the land
base necessary to maintain slash-and-burn agriculture while
preserving the tropical forest. Improved transportation has been
accompanied by a rapid expansion in cattle ranching in regions
hitherto inaccessible. The process as a whole has meant an
increasing consolidation of landholdings and displacement of
traditional small-scale farmers engaged in mixed crop and livestock
production. The number of farms classified as family owned and
operated has declined, in favor of larger units worked by
agricultural laborers. This pattern has been accompanied by an
increase in and intensification of land disputes.
The consolidation process has been particularly intense in the
lowlands of the Pacific coast and in Colón Province southwest of
the city of Colón. In these regions, the expansion of the road
network and the increasing number of all-weather roads have given
potential cattle ranchers access to the large urban beef markets in
Colón and Panama City. Cattle ranches grew five-fold in size in the
hinterlands of Colón Province in the 1960s. Similar forces had a
comparable impact on the Pacific coast, where cattle ranching
increased by more than 400 percent from the 1950s through the
1970s, and land values tripled.
The increased demands on the land base affected peasant farmers
on many levels. Growing population pressure and the felling of most
untouched stands of tropical forest meant a decrease of hunting
and, therefore, of animal protein in the family diet. Peccary,
deer, and iguana, once relatively common supplements to the mestizo
diet, were less available. The same process limited the forest
products available for home construction and firewood. Ironically,
the expansion in cattle ranching limited the ability of small-scale
farmers to keep larger livestock. The purchase price of cattle
rose; and, because increased planting meant that animals could not
forage as freely as before, they had to be penned or fenced.
Finally, where drought-resistant pasture grasses were seeded, the
forest itself regenerated much more slowly--limiting still further
the land's ability to support an expanding population of both
cattle ranchers and small farmers.
The decline in the land available for slash-and-burn
agriculture and the increase in cash cropping also drew peasants
more deeply into commercialized agriculture in the 1980s. At the
same time that small farmers faced declining harvests and increased
pressure on the family's subsistence base, they were forced to
compete in markets for cash crops where the price was largely
determined by larger-scale producers. Most of their production of
cash crops was sporadic and in response to unpredictable
situations. Difficulties in marketing placed small producers at a
further disadvantage.
Sugarcane provides an instructive example. Farmers often
planted sugarcane as a second-year crop in the fields they had
cleared. The crop was pressed on the draft-animal presses some
families owned and used for home consumption. As transportation
improved, more small farmers gained access to large-scale,
commercial sugarcane mills and had the option of growing sugarcane
on contract for the mills. Although this opportunity offered the
cultivator a possible source of more reliable income, small farmers
were disadvantaged in a number of ways. Planting cane precludes
using a plot for foodstuffs during the second year of cultivation.
In addition, it requires hired labor, and small-scale producers
were hard pressed to offer wages competitive with those that larger
farmers or the mills themselves could pay. Finally, small farmers
were unable to control the timing of their harvesting, which is
essential for gaining optimal yields, because producers had to cut
and transport their harvest whenever they were able to contract
laborers and truckers for hauling the crop to the mill.
By the late 1980s, peasant families had become vastly more
dependent on the money economy. In many regions, consumer goods
replaced the traditional craft items produced at home, and hired
labor was used in preference to labor exchange among households.
Neighbors previously linked through myriad ties of exchange and
interdependence were now bound by their common link with external
markets. The amount of cash purchases families had to make rose
dramatically: corrugated roofing replaced thatch, metal cookware
replaced gourds and wooden utensils, nails served instead of vines
as fasteners, and, in rare instances, gas stoves were used instead
of wood-burning ranges.
Peasant families had a variety of subsidiary sources of income
at their disposal. Men and women alike had opportunities to earn a
little cash income. Women husked and cleaned rice for neighbors who
could afford to pay, sewed, made hats, cooked, and washed clothes,
while men made furniture. Those fortunate enough to own draft
animals or trucks hauled goods for other farmers. Depending on
location, season, and a variety of other factors, there was
occasional demand for casual laborers. Such options represented a
"safety net" that farmers took advantage of when crops failed or
harvests were short. Nevertheless, nonfarming sources of income did
not represent a viable alternative to agriculture for most
families.
The general increase in cash in circulation affected various
segments of the rural population differently. Younger or more
highly educated and trained workers were able to compete for
better-paying jobs and thus outearn their parents. Despite this,
the impact on family life was cushioned because parents never
counted on controlling their grown children. In one sense, families
were better off because well-employed children were better able to
assist their elderly parents. Where the increased cash purchases
included milled rice, women were spared the arduous task of husking
and milling rice themselves. Educational opportunities benefited
all able to take advantage of them. Women gained in particular from
the increase in employment opportunities for primary-school
teachers.
In addition to peasant farmers and ranchers, Panama had the
core of a rural educated middle class by the mid-twentieth century.
Frequently educated at the teachers' college in Santiago, in the
province of Veraguas, these educated sons and daughters of more
prosperous agriculturalists and small merchants were of marginal
influence in comparison with the urban elite. Long excluded from
any effective role in the nation's politics, they proved a bulwark
of support for the Torrijos regime
(see The Government of Torrijos and the National Guard
, ch. 1).
Land reform legislation drafted under the influence of the
Alliance for Progress in the early 1960s recognized the peasants'
right to land
(see The National Guard in Ascendance
, ch. 1).
Nevertheless, the law's consequences in the countryside were often
unforeseen. The plots allocated under the law were usually too
small to support slash-and-burn agriculture; they did not allow
sufficient land for fallowing. And, for a substantial portion of
peasant families, the cash outlay required to purchase land was
prohibitive. Although the relatively poor were unable to assume
such debts, the more prosperous were. Some of the more successful
emigrants to the city managed to acquire land through land reform
and rented it to farmers under terms equivalent to those previously
available through larger absentee owners.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the government attempted to
model its land reform efforts on a collective farming system
borrowed from Chile
(see Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform
, ch. 3).
The government acquired tax-delinquent properties and set up a
variety of collectively operated agro-enterprises. The collectives
enjoyed mixed success, however. They tended to be heavily
mechanized and dependent on outside infusions of technical
assistance and capital, while they generated only minimal
employment. The most dramatic successes were achieved in regions
like Veraguas Province where small farmers competed with cattle
ranchers for land. Collectives were less successful in areas where
smallholdings predominated.
Where small farmers held title to their lands--an infrequent
pattern in traditional rural Panama--they often sold their lands to
the larger, more heavily capitalized cattle ranches. The numbers of
landless, or nearly landless, cultivators in search of plots to
"borrow" for a season's planting rose. Substantial numbers of these
displaced small farmers chose migration as an alternative.
Mestizo migrants from regions where cattle ranching was
expanding entered the lowlands of the Atlantic coast and the Darién
Peninsula in increasing numbers. Migrants arrived and cleared
forest land (generally away from the rivers favored by the region's
earlier black, Indian, Hispanic Indian, and Hispanic black
settlers). The process then repeated itself: the new settlers
remained for a few years until improved roads brought more cattle
ranchers; the colonos (internal migrants) who originally
cleared the forest then sold their lands and moved yet deeper into
the tropical forest.
Data as of December 1987
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