Peasants on Plantations : Duke University Press : 9780822322467 : 0822322463 : 01 Apr 1999 : After the 1854 abolition of slavery in Peru, a new generation of plantation owners turned to a system of peasant tenantry to maintain cotton production through the use of cheap labor. In Peasants on Plantations Vincent C. Peloso analyzes the changing social and economic relationships governing the production of cotton in the Pisco Valley, a little-studied area of Peru's south coast. Challenging widely held assumptions about the system of relations that tied peasants to the land, Peloso's work examines the interdependence of the planters, managers, and peasants?and the various strategies used by peasants in their struggle to resist control by the owners. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of subaltern studies and drawing on an extremely complete archive of landed estates that includes detailed regular reports by plantation managers on all aspects of farming life, Peasants on Plantations r