78 TUCUMAN AND MENDOZA 



plantations in this region. Their first market was the 

 region of the tableland and the valleys, where they 

 chiefly sold brandy : a traffic of long standing, which 

 one always finds round the cold districts of the Andes, 

 from Colombia to the north of Argentina. The modern 

 refineries of Ledesma and San Pedro took the place 

 of the primitive mills as soon as the railway approached 

 Jujuy, and even before it entered the valley of the 

 Rio Grande. They then sent their sugar by waggon 

 in November and December, between the close of the 

 sugar season and the commencement of the rains, 

 which spoil the roads. 



The sugar district of Jujuy now has a very different 

 economic and social organization from that of Tucuman. 

 Here there are no farmer-proprietors. Each centre is 

 a large estate, in the midst of the forest, where the 

 workers are lodged and fed by the works that employs 

 them. The contractors who clear the ground for them 

 are obliged by the terms of their contract to import 

 their workers directly from the south, so that they will 

 not take any away from the farming. There is no 

 available labour, no free market, on the spot. Since 

 the completion of the Quebrada de Humahuaca line, 

 however, there has been a good deal of immigration, to 

 settle or temporarily, of the mountaineers of the table- 

 land. The sphere of influence of San Pedro now extends 

 as far as Bolivia. For the harvest, which, like that of 

 Tucuman, requires a good deal of additional manual 

 labour, the works look to the wild Indians of the Chaco. 

 This curious stream of seasonal migration, which the 

 sugar campaign of Jujuy provokes every winter outside 

 the zone of white colonization, is of very old date, 

 going back more than sixty years. Belmar notices it 

 about the middle of the nineteenth century. The 

 recruiting agents of San Pedro and Ledesma set out 

 from Embarcacion, where the railway ends, and enter 

 the Chaco, from which each of them brings a troop 

 of some hundreds of natives between March and June. 



