Sugar, Cacao, and Cocaine

Mary Ann Mahony in her article on Bahia’s Cacao production tells us that commodity chain theory is useful in helping us understand why planters in Bahia chose to grow cacao by looking at the the worldwide linkages between producers and consumers in the nineteenth century.  But Mahony is quick to note the weaknesses of commodity chain theory. Its focus is often too narrow, she writes, in investigating only one crop during a limited time frame, even as it follows the crop on its full cycle of production to consumption.  And the theory often can’t explain why this crop (as opposed to a competing commodity) and why it was favored at this particular time.   Her article, I thought, was the most straightforward in looking at factors like ecosystem concerns (soil fertility, forest shade, temperature, etc…) that show us why lack of enthusiasm for cacao in Bahia could have been due to more than a failure on the part of the farmers to understand the plant and its processes.  The increase of logging (despite government restrictions) for jungle hardwoods meant that farmers had some cleared land on which they often planted a lucrative crop like sugar.  But the international repression of the slave trade after 1830 meant that the young male slaves often used for labor-intensive sugar cane harvests and replanting weren’t available.  Coffee was tedious to pick, and so eventually the choice to plant cacao won out, so much so that it became Bahia’s most important crop.  Mahony doesn’t tell us that she intends to address those questions that she says the commodity chain cannot explain, but she seems to go a long way toward doing so.  In comparing cacao with other important commodities of the place and time like coffee, sugar, and manioc she seems to be explaining why this crop as opposed to others in an attempt to broaden the usually narrow focus of commodity chain approaches.

From Mahony’s article, and others by Crespo on sugar and Gootenberg on cocaine, I learned about the issue of intentions.  Individual countries will go to great lengths to ensure that their trade networks and systems are as safe and lucrative as possible whether it be through stubborn adherence to a principle like the free market or implementation of tariffs, quotas, cartels and syndicates, direct subsidies, etc…, in the case of beet sugar.  One lesson I took from Crespo and Mahony is that when nations and even international bodies like the League of Nations made commodity trade deals, compliance was very hard to come by.  The various carefully-negotiated acts and agreements regarding beet sugar production often fell apart quickly as one player or another disagreed with the terms or simply ignored them altogether  (157, 158, 159, 160, 163). Some agreements were, in fact, ratified, but the arrival of WW II suspended them (164, 167).  This is also true of national laws like the 1850 law requiring permits for logging hardwoods in Bahia which Mahony tells us had no chance of being widely enforced (180).  Often these agreements, regulations, and restrictions are intended to be beneficial to the country proposing them and their current allies, however in the case of cocaine, unintended consequences rule the day.  WW II ended the trade networks through Germany and Japan, and possibly redirected them to North America.  Much of cocaine trade was initially for medicinal reasons, but recreational use began to grow.  Restrictions created by worldwide prohibition of cocaine, a movement mostly led by the United States, have had the result of guaranteeing a premium price for the commodity through a flourishing and extensive underground trade network.  Half of the world’s regular cocaine users are North Americans (346).  Gootenberg tells us that cocaine is “the most valuable single commodity chain in world history” (346), and he ends with the fitting query of why it is that Latin America’s main commodity success story is found in illicit commerce.  A question that we may consider in future assigned readings.