Cacao and Violence: Consequences of Money in Colonial Guatemala

• Kathryn E. Sampeck ^[1]
  1. [1] Department of Sociology and Anthropology,Illinois State University,Normal,U.S.A.
• Localización: Historical Archaeology, ISSN 0440-9213, Vol. 53, Nº. 3-4, 2019, págs. 535-558
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article investigates the meeting of two monetized economies and how producing a “commodity money” nurtured forms of violence. This case presents an opportunity to rethink why economies monetize and how that relation fits into coercive, violent foundations of an emerging capitalist system. Money is important for understanding early capitalism, as Marx suggested that money is the first form of the appearance of capital. Money masks the social nature of labor, a fiction that not only creates conditions for capitalism, but is violent by wrenching the self from social bonds. Archaeological examples illustrate relationships of money with corporeal and social violence in the Izalcos region of colonial Guatemala, part of today’s western El Salvador. The early colonial market relied on exploiting inequalities as well as the predictability of native production. A stable currency based on cacao as small coin buffered the awkwardness and unpredictability of a volatile economy.