Land Privatization and the Differentiation of the Peasantry: Nicaragua's Coffee Revolution, 1850–1920

Abstract The expansion of coffee cultivation in Nicaragua in the 1870s unleashed a social revolution. Previously most land was common property: by 1920 throughout the coffee districts land was privately owned. Influential historians of Nicaragua see this as the capitalist transition. This essay argues that instead of forging a rural proletariat, this social revolution created a differentiated peasantry whose access to land depended on relations of patronage. Peasant resistance to land privatization and the political, as opposed to economic, nature of the process are examined. The essay concludes that this revolution was more incongruent than congruent with a capitalist social order. The relevance of this history for contemporary political debates in Nicaragua is explored.