Misión Chardon y la modernización agrícola en el valle geográfico del río Cauca (Colombia)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to establish the relationship of politics, the economy and the environment, based on an analysis of the Chardon Mission (1929), using the material and political focus of environmental history. Agricultural missions involving international experts, mainly from North America, in Colombia and throughout Latin America during the first half of the twentieth centur y led to the design and implementation of modernizing policies intended to include the country in the global production system. New Colombian legislation and partial implementation of the Chardon Mission recommendations for the regional context affected traditional agricultural production in the Cauca Valley. It can be argued that the mission spearheaded the transformation of the methods and techniques that allowed producers to reduce transaction costs while increasing outputs. This in turn contributed to the proletar ization of the workforce in the main sector of regional productivity: the sugar industry. Using pr imary and secondar y sources to study the Chardon Mission, we can better understand how regional agro-industry began the socioecological transition from a state-based solar and organic regime to one dominated by the private sector and the use of fossil fuel.