Introduction

In the mid-1890s, the nascent coffee industry of Chiapas, Mexico, was in crisis. Encouraged by high prices on world markets, by the Mexican government's offer of vast extensions of fertile land for as little as two pesos a hectare, and by the promise of abundant cheap labor, Mexican and foreign entrepreneurs had planted more than four million coffee trees in the state between the late 1880s and 1895, most of them after 1892. By 1895, some 1.1 million were already in production, with 3.2 million more scheduled to begin bearing by 1899. Millions more were in seedbeds and nurseries, guaranteeing that Chiapas's productive capacity would double by the end of the century, and continue increasing well into the 1900s.

The problem was that this sudden increase in production required a similarly rapid growth in the work force. Most of the new fincas, however, had been planted in the lightly populated mountains of Chiapas's southern Pacific coast, the Soconusco, far from an adequate source of workers. Even so, the planters and their backers, knowing they had five to seven years before their trees matured, had been confident they would be able to mobilize the large, seasonal labor forces they would need well before their first harvests. From the beginning it had been assumed that the necessary workers could be drawn from the densely populated Maya communities of Chiapas's undeveloped Central Highlands.