Perhaps because of the prevalence of slavery and forced Indian labour during the colonial period, Latin American landowners were reluctant to pay higher wages, preferring continued coercion. There was a profusion of different forms of servitude associated with the haciendas or large estates. Indeed, the desire to gain control of labour, rather than the accumulation of land itself, was probably the main factor driving the expansion of haciendas at the expense of communal landholdings in the nineteenth century. These patterns in land and labour markets discouraged both innovation and the growth
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