As in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Africa, land policies after 1871 were also designed to undermine the subsistence economy of the indigenous peoples, to force them to work for low wages. The repartimiento lasted until the 1920s; the libreta system and the full gamut of vagrancy laws were in effect until 1945, when Guatemala experienced its first brief flowering of democracy. Just as before 1871, the Guatemalan elite ruled via military strongmen. They continued to do so after the coffee boom took off.
