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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the social, economic, and political landscape of Peru was transformed profoundly. Within a decade of the country’s disastrous defeat by Chile during the War of the Pacific, the export economy was recovering on the strength of a variety of agricultural and mineral products. The sugar industry played a pivotal role in this process and produced wealthy and socially ambitious families who became prominent political leaders on the national level.

This study, based primarily on previously unavailable private records of sugarcane plantations, examines the external and internal dynamics of the sugar industry. It offers new insights into the process of land consolidation, the economics of sugar technology and production, the formation of the coastal elite, and the organization, recruitment, and control of labor. By focusing on the plantation Cayalti within a regional context, Gonzales presents one of the richest descriptions of the modern plantation for any region of Latin America. The book is a vivid social history of laborers from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, from Chinese to Peruvians of Indian, mestizo, and black heritage.

The recent unprecedented growth of Nicaragua’s sugarcane industry has brought promises of more jobs, better health care, and cleaner energy. But these promises have been overshadowed by an epidemic of chronic kidney disease of nontraditional causes (CKDnt). Unknown before the late 1990s, this disease has sickened and killed thousands of sugarcane plantation workers. Scientific studies link the disease to rises in mean average annual temperatures, chronic water scarcity, and the overuse of toxic agrochemicals. CKDnt is now understood as a consequence of global climate change. In The Kidney and the Cane, Alex M. Nading situates this epidemic within a deeper history of sugarcane plantation violence, arguing that CKDnt is not a result of climate change: it is climate change. Outlining a place-based approach to planetary health, Nading follows activists, scientists, and residents in the sugarcane zone wrestling with the consequences of plantation life. Along the way, he raises critical questions about the capacity of corporations and states to care for people and ecosystems; the ability of citizens and experts to regulate toxic substances; and the future of work on a warming planet.