The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

Owners and Fences 75
wanted it. If you didn't want it then someone else could have
it. Life was more than easy. You would arrive at whatever
place and they would serve you food and give you hospitality
and ask you to stay. The only thing we bought here was salt,
and sometimes clothes, something to cover yourself in. From
here to there was nothing else because the peasant produced
all. You never bought food. Soap was made from ashes and
tallow. Candles were made in the home. Animals, like horses?
If you needed one it was lent. Little exploitation there was at
that time; people loaned everything. I needed your bull to reproduce
cow's milk; you would lend it. You needed my horse. I
would lend it, and so on, successively.
He adds, "God gave the land in common to all the people. Why was
it necessary that one or two or three thieves became owners of enormous
quantities while there were other people that also needed
land?"
The Holguin family, whose sons thrice assumed the presidency of
the republic, returned to reassume their domain in 1913 —"to dominate
the Negroes and expand their hacienda" inherited from the Arboledas.
Maria Cruz Zappe, daughter of Juan Zappe, a general famous
for his exploits as a guerrilla chief in the War of One Thousand
Days, saw it all.
They began to get rid of the peasant farms. Right up to the
banks of the Cauca was in cocoa. They cut it all down, quit,
quit, thus, no more owners. They came with their peons and
planted grass all around the house and cut down the farm and
as the Conservative government of Caloto came to protect
them there was no law for us. They wanted to widen themselves,
to make pastures. There were blacks with pasture and
they were all thrown off. They had their pastures for their cattle
and they had their farms and they were all thrown off. That
place they call Palito. That was a little village by the side of
the river. They tore it all down without recognition of anything,
without paying even one cent. They put pasture right
into our beds because Popayan would not help the race. Caloto
neither. They were against us.
Where they could not or did not want to dislodge peasants, the
Holguins levied rents, first on the land and then on each cocoa tree.
The bandit Cenecio Mina assumed the leadership of the groups that
formed the resistance. "For example," continues Zappe, "there was
a struggle against the Cambindos in Barragan. They were opposed