ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that many anthropologists have been too ready to accept global views of peasant communities and social relations without proper consideration of the interplay between local and global processes. It shows not only how capitalist expansion affected one small local system, but also how local institutions interacted with externally imposed forces to create a particular dynamic that affected capitalist expansion itself. A typical global account of the colonial period in Guatemala would make the following points: The Spanish conquest forcibly integrated Guatemala into an expanding capitalist world-system, but left the area's internal structures pre-capitalist. Several institutions were important for preserving a peasant community in western Guatemala. The preservation of the indigenous community represented the greatest barrier to capitalist development throughout Guatemalan history. Capitalist interests did triumph in Guatemala, and coffee plantations had transformed the national and local economies profoundly by the end of the nineteenth century.
