In a groundbreaking volume, Professor Jackson seeks to discover when and how modernity supplanted the colonial era in Bolivia. The rural economy, structure of land tenure, and hacienda labor arrangements in the Andean region are carefully delineated through a case study of Cochabamba, a key region in the central valley of Bolivia, to trace changes in patterns present since the sixteenth century.

Between 1840 and 1930, shifts in regional markets and changes in government policies resulted in hacienda owners earning less and incuring greater debt, which inevitably led to the insovency of many hacienda owners, resale of colonial-era estates, and an increase in the number of peasant landowners. These changes, in turn, set in motion events leading to the 1953 agrarian reform movement.