Debt Peonage Reconsidered: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Zacatecas, Mexico

Abstract

Against the widely accepted view of the nineteenth-century Mexican peon as a hapless individual caught in perpetual debt bondage to the “company store” of the hacienda on which he spent his short life of drudgery, Dr. Cross places some unique hard evidence drawn from the account books of one such hacienda. He finds that, in this case at least, the number of peons in debt at any one time was very small and the debt well within their ability to repay, thanks in no small part to a system of payment of a large part of their wages in kind. The exceptions reflected in most cases debts incurred either to pay the local priest's stiff fees for administering such sacraments as baptism and marriage, or for funds to invest in the peasant's own agricultural enterprises.