| In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the Costa Rican Province of Limon stood at the confluence of migratory currents that linked Jamaica, Panama, Cuba and Nicaragua. Cyclical export booms---first of bananas, then manila hemp and cacao, all exported by the United Fruit Company---brought tens of thousands of workers to and through Limon. Women's labor, structured by kinship or by cash, provided the hot meals, clean clothes, sex, and companionship that sustained the export workforce. Women working as prostitutes risked disease and male violence, but earned decent money and claimed significant autonomy. Social networks guided migrants' travels and provided crucial assistance in times of need. Steady male work partners ( companeros) traveled and labored together over the course of months or years. Migrants of all origins in Limon made eager use of the judicial system in the course of conflicts with neighbors, lovers and kin. They manipulated patron-client ties and took advantage of elite rivalries. Plantation labor fostered a confrontational masculinity that found expression in knife duels and payday brawls as well as labor struggles. Patterns in intimate violence reflected men's and women's divergent understanding of authority, jealousy, and the obligations of conjugal life.;The stories of the people of Limon make it clear that sex can be both a weapon of domination and a strategy by which women seek autonomy; that state intervention in domestic lives can be the result of actors' initiatives and not simply a repressive project from above; that claims about gendered honor can be used to justify the status quo, or to challenge it. The same stories testify to an ongoing link between the personal and the political. Hierarchies of gender pervaded the practice of everyday life, not only distinguishing women from men but distinguishing between women and between men. In doing so they shaped the terms of public debate for everyone from aggrieved mothers to striking workers to feuding politicians. |
