conjugated oppression: class and ethnicity among Guaymi and Kuna banana workers

This paper discusses the relationship between class and ethnicity—and more broadly between ideology and material reality—by comparing the integration of the Kuna and Guaymi Amerindians into the labor force of a United Fruit Company banana plantation in Central America. Both the occupational/class hierarchy and the ethnic hierarchy of plantation society are analyzed. The most dramatic difference between the two Amerindian peoples in the plantation context is their location in the ethnic hierarchy. The Kuna have mobilized and adapted their “traditional” ethnic and corporate structures to mediate their economic exploitation on the plantation and to exert leverage for superior ethnic status. In contrast, ethnic discrimination and public humiliation suffered by the Guaymi constitute a form of ideological domination that combines or “conjugates” with their economic marginalization and results in a dynamic of institutionalized oppression.