The legacy of traditional rice cultivation by descendants of Indian contract laborers in Suriname

Background Some 35,000 indentured laborers from India were recruited to work on plantations in Suriname between 1868 and 1916. It is likely that most were familiar with farming before they were shipped to this former Dutch colony in the Caribbean. Around 1900, those who did not return received a piece of land where most of them started growing rice as a staple crop. Agronomists characterized their traditional landraces as inferior and infested with weedy rice and started to ‘purify’ these landraces. No research has been done on whether these ancient rice varieties still exist. We aimed to document the rice varieties (both landraces and more modern cultivars) grown currently or in the recent past by (descendants of) Hindustani smallholders in Suriname, their origin, morphological and agronomic characters, local uses and cultural and spiritual relevance. Given the rapid decline in small-scale rice cultivation in the past 40 years, we wanted to know why people continued or abandoned rice farming and what aspects of traditional practices still survived. Methods We interviewed 26 (former) small-scale Hindustani farmers and asked about the varieties they cultivated and traditional agricultural practices. We collected seed samples, local names and associated information, and compared these to information from agricultural reports from the colonial period. We also interviewed 11 Maroons, one Javanese farmer, and three persons of mixed ethnicity, who were somehow involved in the cultivation of East Indian rice varieties. Results and discussion Hindustani smallholders in Suriname largely lost their traditional rice landraces. Most of the interviewed farmers grew modern cultivars, developed after 2000. Some cultivars from the 1950s were still planted for fodder, but these were heavily mixed with weedy rice and other weeds. Maroon farmers in the interior, however, still actively cultivated varieties with names like ‘coolie rice’, which probably descend from landraces introduced by the Indian contract laborers, although this needs to be confirmed by molecular research. Although traditional cultivation practices seem to have been lost, smallholders still retain pleasant memories of the manual planting, harvesting, and processing of rice, as well as the gender-based practices and beliefs associated with the cultivation of the crop. The oral history of former rice farmers and traditional rice varieties (possibly obtained from Maroon fields) could play a role in museum settings as living vehicles for memories of the descendants of Asian contract labourers in Suriname and Guyana.

Memories of traditional rice cultivation by descendants of Indian contract laborers in Suriname

Some 35,000 indentured laborers from India were recruited to work on plantations in Suriname after 1863. Many of them started to grow rice for their subsistence, but were stimulated to replace their traditional landraces for improved cultivars. Few Hindostani smallholders still cultivate rice today, and little is known on their varieties or motivations to continue or abandon this crop. We interviewed 30 persons currently or formerly involved in small-scale Hindostani rice farming, collected rice varieties and documented people’s personal memories and motivation for rice cultivation. In the historic literature, ca. 16 varieties were mentioned to be grown by Indian contract laborers, of which nine were remembered by our interviewees. We recorded 55 variety names, their agronomical and culinary characteristics, geographic origin, and (former) cultivation localities. Most active smallholders grew cultivars developed after 2000, but one landrace (Raymoen) and some old cultivars developed in the 1930-1950s (Rexora and Dima) were still grown for fodder, although heavily adulterated with weedy rice. Maroon farmers in the interior, however, cultivated several varieties of ‘coolie rice’ that they obtained from Hindostani farmers in the past, although this needs to be confirmed by molecular research. Small-scale rice farming in Suriname is declining due to competition with large-scale cultivators, urbanization, better education prospects and migration to the Netherlands. The vivid memories of the (former) rice farmers on traditional practices, gender-based labor division and how rice farming is integrated in the system of beliefs, as well as the few remaining varieties that potentially originated in India, deserve to be better safeguarded and shared with the public than they are today.

Freedmen’s Bureau Sub-assistant Commissioner

The documents address Delany’s accomplishments as a Freedmen’s Bureau official in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and his views on how to ensure that freedmen had the resources to fully explore the benefits of freedom. They underline the challenges freedmen confronted, and Delany’s success in creating a functional working relationship between ex-slaves and ex-slave owners. His Bureau reports highlighted the advances made by, and challenges confronting, freedmen. He envisioned every black family attaining economic self-sufficiency through land-ownership, and published a series of articles underlining the industrious capacities of blacks and the benefits of making land available to them. However, Delany also realized that land-redistribution would be a challenge, and that freedmen would have no choice but work as contract laborers. He devised a “Triple Alliance” contract system designed to prevent previously unrestricted practice of uncompensated exploitation of black labor. He urged blacks to deemphasize political rights and prioritize instead economic elevation.

Pathways to Legalization: Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in the US/Mexico Borderlands, 1942–1956

In the 1940s, curbing undocumented Mexican immigrant entry into the United States became a US government priority because of an alleged immigration surge, which was blamed for the unemployment of an estimated 252,000 US domestic agricultural laborers. Publicly committed to asserting its control of undocumented Mexican immigrant entry, the US government used Operation Wetback, a binational INS border-enforcement operation, to strike a delicate balance between satisfying US growers’ unending demands for surplus Mexican immigrant labor and responding to the jobs lost by US domestic agricultural laborers. Yet Operation Wetback would also unintentionally and unexpectedly fuel a distinctly transnational pathway to legalization, marriage, and extended family formation for some Mexican immigrants.On July 12, 1951, US president Harry S. Truman’s signing of Public Law 78 initiated such a pathway for an estimated 125,000 undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers throughout the United States. This law was an extension the Bracero Program, a labor agreement between the Mexican and US governments that authorized the temporary contracting of braceros (male Mexican contract laborers) for labor in agricultural production and railroad maintenance. It was formative to undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers’ transnational pursuit of decisively personal goals in both Mexico and the United States.Section 501 of this law, which allowed employers to sponsor certain undocumented laborers, became a transnational pathway toward formalizing extended family relationships between braceros and Mexican American women. This article seeks to begin a discussion on how Operation Wetback unwittingly inspired a distinctly transnational approach to personal extended family relationships in Mexico and the United States among individuals of Mexican descent and varying legal statuses, a social matrix that remains relatively unexplored.

Bound for California: Chilean Contract Laborers and "Patrones" in the California Gold Rush, 1848-1852

Hired Chilean laborers who ventured to California during the early years of the gold rush rarely appear in the historical record. However, notarized contracts signed in the cities of Valparaíso and Santiago between 1848 and 1852 illuminate how hired laborers, mostly illiterate peons, actively shaped companies and expeditions bound for California. By reading these for evidence of what the Latin Americanist Arnold Bauer has identified as a "system" of "give and take, choice and accommodation,"¹ we can better understand how even the most marginalized workers made the transnational spaces of the North American West and the Pacific world comprehensible within their own schemas and patterns. This paper proposes that hired laborers were central to the organization of Chileans' emigration patterns in the California gold rush; that their relations were far more complex than the "free" or "unfree" binary representations supposed; that they actively mapped the relations of production they expected to deploy in California's physical and social spaces; and that by turning to alternative archival sources, U.S.-based historians can better link the histories of the Pacific world to those of the North American West.

Opium and Social Control: Coolies on the Plantations of Peru and Cuba

The place of opium in the history of the Chinese diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean has received scant attention. This article is a preliminary attempt to look into this history, based on fragmentary evidence available. From 1847 to l874, as many as 225,000 Chinese indentured or contract laborers (coolies), almost all men, were sent to Cuba, still a Spanish colony, and newly independent Peru. Both the human trade itself, as well as work and life on the plantations, closely resembled slavery; indeed, the coolies in Cuba worked alongside African slaves. Opium was part of the coolie trade from its inception, distributed in the holding pens in South China ports, on the long, arduous voyages across the Pacific or Atlantic, as well as on the plantations. Cuban and Peruvian planters permitted, even encouraged, the sale, barter and consumption of opium by their coolies, in effect creating a mechanism of social control by alternately distributing and withholding this very addictive substance to desperate men. But this cynical use of opium might also have backfired on them, as sustained and massive ingestion lowered productivity, caused premature death (often by suicide), and resulted in high absenteeism.

A Passage to Suriname? The Migration of Modes of Resistance by Asian Contract Laborers

When, on June 5, 1873, the Lalla Rookh docked in Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, Suriname, 399 indentured British Indian immigrants had almost reached their destination: the colonial plantations. The timing was no coincidence. On July 1, 1863, the Dutch government had abolished slavery in its Caribean colonies. During a ten-year transition period the former slave were to work for employers of their own choice under the supervision of the state.Three weeks before this mandatory “apprenticeship” period was over, the Lalla Rookh arrived. The immigrants aboard had signed a contract obliging them to work for five years on a plantation in Suriname yet to be assigned. The labor contract and additional local ordinances specified the rights and duties of the indentured workers and forced them to commit their labor power to the unspecified demands of their employers at specified times. Fundamental to the system was the penal sanction, which gave employers the right to press criminal charges against indentured workers who, according to them, neglected their duty or refused to work. Thus the penal sanction allowed planters to impose their own conception of work discipline.