Arbeitsmarkt und Herrschaftsapparat in Guatemala 1920 1940 Methodically researched study examines the activities of the state which depended on highly labor intensive coffee production and export in the proletarianization of the indigenous population. Peasants practicing subsistence agriculture and minifundistas lost their land or access to land and moved from the traditional patronage system through a period of debt peonage to labor recruitment utilizing vagrancy laws. Concludes that the exploitative character of labor relations was a response to external market factors internal ethnic segregation and monopoly of power during the covered period. Noting that the highland peasant population had developed an actual culture of resistance at least on local levels observes that the peasants never managed to organize politically. From colonialism and patronage to the modern liberal economic model and the freedom of the labor market the Guatemalan peasants lot did not improve Handbook of Latin American Studies v. 58