Abstract

This work aims to analyze the work of Ramiro Guerra (Latifundia, slavery and economic dependence), one of his main works dealing with the region of Barbados located in the Lesser Antilles in Central America. Thus, the analysis shows how Ramiro Guerra demystifies a whole theory regarding the substitution of the work of the small owner for the cheap labor of the slave. The same author emphasizes that this substitution was not due to a question of races or of climate or even of the superiority of the human will. But due to a purely social and economic cause: the destruction of small property by the sugar estates and the consequent emigration of a social class that would be expelled in a "voluntary" way due to lack of work. Thus, according to Guerra's analysis, the analysis emphasizes that it was not the Antillean climate that drove out the white servants but the capitalist sugar company that would settle in the region, annihilating the small property and eliminating the independent cultivator and converting the robust communities with their own lives in mere low-wage workshops, all for the benefit of metropolises. And also the consequences of this sugar trade in Cuba with the same consequences of the destruction of small-scale agriculture.

JEL Classification: Q1.