Peasant Identity, Worker Identity: Multiple Modes of Rural Consciousness in Highland Ecuador.

Abstract

On December 30, 1930, agricultural workers on the Pesillo hacienda in the canton of Cayambe, in the northern Ecuador highlands, rose up in protest against abuses they faced at the hands of their bosses. Local governmental officials reported that no one was working as the strike spread across the hacienda and threatened to engulf neighboring properties. Pesillo's newly formed peasant union El Inca, as well as Tierra Libre from the neighboring Moyurco hacienda, presented a list of 17 demands which focused almost exclusively on issues of working conditions, indebtedness, and salaries. They demanded that the patrones (bosses) fire mayordomos (overseers) who mistreated workers, raise their daily salary to forty centavos, recognize an eight-hour work day, pay women for their labor, and establish a school for their children.