«Damned» yerba mate: exploitation of labor in the yerbateras mines of colonial Paraguay

Abstract

This work is a cutting of our doctoral thesis (University of Buenos Aires, 2016), in which we analyze the Yerbatera Regional Economy in Argentina, with special emphasis on the historical labor exploitation that has sustained, throughout 4 centuries of consolidation and expansion, the corporate business «success» of the production and marketing of Yerba Mate. Here, we make a brief historical journey based on historical documents, from the first Spanish settlement in the region, through the Jesuit province of Paraguay, to the first political-institutional definitions of the new American nations that were constituted into the territory. With the intention of revealing a certain «systemic cultural» continuity, in the customary history of labor exploitation of the first indigenous population and the «dispossessed» mestizaje that came after that, in an economic activity that has allowed the building of enormous family and entrepreneurs fortunes of those who had the capitalist capacity to concentrate in their hands the most prosperous factors of the yerbatero business.