Coffee

doi:10.1017/9781108976367.004

Chapter 3 - Coffee

from Part I - Commodities

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2023

Benjamin S. Johnson

Edited by

Fernando Degiovanni and

Javier Uriarte

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Fernando Degiovanni: Affiliation:
City University of New York
Javier Uriarte: Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

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Summary

The production of coffee for export organized racial capitalism in Brazil and Colombia during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The literary fiction from this period reveals an effort by the intellectuals of these countries to conceptualize their nations in the face of the organization of their national economies around deeply racialized modes of production. This chapter surveys a wide range of this fiction, including texts by José Bento Monteiro Lobato, Fernando González, Mário de Andrade, and José Restrepo Jaramillo. It also puts this fiction in dialogue with nonfictional texts such as essays by the Swiss-French writer Blaise Cendrars and the Colombian economist Alejandro López. The chapter shows that the imbrication of racialization and capitalism is particularly evident after the end of the coffee boom in 1929, when writers became more skeptical of the triumphalist narratives of the coffee industry.

Keywords

coffee boom export age racial capitalism Brazilian literature Colombian literature

Type: Chapter
Information: Latin American Literature in Transition 1870–1930 , pp. 44 - 58

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976367.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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