Introduction

The postwar agrarian transition reformulated social relations in Buguias. In the old days, commoners acquired livestock from their wealthy confreres by entering a pastol contract. When these same commoners switched to vegetable growing after the war, their capital requirements ballooned. Now they needed cash both to purchase agricultural inputs and increasingly to buy subsistence goods imported from the lowlands. To meet this demand, new forms of credit emerged to take their place alongside the old.

Labor recruitment was also transformed in the poastwar period. Previously, most commoners had relied largely on family labor, augmented with reciprocal labor exchange (ogbo) for the occasional heavy task. The elite, for their part, could also entice workers through the payment of meat (dangas). After the war, the bases of both ogbo and dangas eroded. Commoners now found themselves needing additional hands regularly, but no longer could they readily promise their own labor in return. For related reasons, the elite found their meat offerings inadequate to attract as many workers as they required. Both parties now had to pay cash wages.

Class and gender relations in Buguias responded to the new economy's pressures with subtle and overt adjustments. The preexisting class structure, although temporarily upset, soon restabilized more or less as before, with one critical difference: for the first time, a handful of regional vegetable merchants and farmers transcended the local economy and established themselves as provincial elites. Relations between the sexes changed even more dramatically. In the new economy, women and men suddenly carried the same tools and toiled at the same jobs. Moreover, a small set of women traders emerged as wealthy entrepreneurs, an unprecedented development.