From primitive accumulation to accumulation by despossession: labour super- exploitation in the yerba mate harvest of the Argentinean northwest (1870-2018)

Abstract

Instead staying limited to an ‘originary’ or ‘primitive’ stage, accumulation by dispossession and its diverse ways of labour super exploitation constitute a permanent and important force of the historic geography of capital. Considering such premise, this paper analyses the course of the practices of semi-slavery, violence, fraud, labour superexploitation and cutting and seizure of rights suffered by the yerba mate harvesters of the provinces of Misiones and Corrientes (Argentina) from the middle of the XIX Century to nowadays. In order to do this, five categories of analysis were considered: the regimes of recruitment, precarization and discipline of the workforce, which are linked with the loss and violation of workers’ rights; the intensity and duration of the labour workday; wages and frauds; child labour and the dispossession of the right to health; and the state complicity. The results show that the old ways of labour exploitation do not only were initial mechanisms of accumulation of capital at regional scale, but were reorganized to become structural features of a secular pattern where the relations between capital and workforce have been mostly based in looting.