Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of a crew. I worked very little. Most of the time I just shouted at people.''
He attributed his good fortune to the fact that he came recommended.
82
José María Lara's chance to climb up a rung on the plantation social
ladder came through a combination of luck and talent. His first oppor-
tunity to supervise came on a day in 1952 when a drunken capataz failed
to dispatch his crew to a job site. Lara was placed in charge of twenty
men whowere replanting a field. Later, amandadornamed Luís Fasquelle
asked Lara to repair a badly damaged irrigation pipe. A few days after
successfully completing that assignment, Lara was promoted to capataz.
His starting salary was 60 dollars per month (the company deducted two
percent for medical care). The company also provided him with a small
house. Lara did not consider the starting pay to be a major incentive (''the
only thing that changed was the work'') but the combination of prestige,
better housing, and liberation from taxing physical labor must have been
hardtoturndown.
83
Interestingly,Lara'spromotioncameafterhislengthy
hiatus as a guerrilla in Guatemala—presumably not the sort of sabbatical
experience favored by United Fruit's North American managers.
As Ramón Vallecillo's reminiscences suggest, foremen bore the re-
sponsibilityof reprimanding laborers who loafed on the job and/or failed
to follow company procedures. Many ex-workers recalled being taken to
task for a variety of infractions, such as over-loading pack mules, failing
to properly protect fruit, or applying Bordeaux spray haphazardly. José
MaríaLararecalledthatconfrontingslackerscouldbeadiceyproposition:
I used to check all of the stakes [for a drainage ditch] and if I found
that they had been tampered with, I'd call the worker over and ask
''why did you raise this stake?'' It was humorous, but at times risky too,
because many workers would become angry and want to fight. But
things always worked themselves out.
84
The mixture of humor and fear described by Lara reflected the beneath-
the-surface tension that marked the daily relations between field workers
and their immediate bosses. These tensions resulted not only from the
awkwardsocialpositionofcapataces like Lara who at times found them-
selves exercising authorityover formercoworkers, but also from the orga-
nization of plantation space. Maintaining control over a work crew was
a tenuous proposition on large plantations where help was not always
around the corner.
85
Firearms were carried openly by North American
managers,capataces,contractors, and many workers. Small daggers could
be purchased in company stores, along with the ubiquitous machete. Al-
