What is peonage?

Peonage is a system of unfree labor that was used primarily in Latin America and the southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Under peonage, workers were tied to a specific employer, typically a landowner or farmer, and forced to work off their debts. Often, these debts were inflated or fraudulent, meaning that workers were essentially enslaved to their employers.

Peonage was particularly prevalent in the American South after the Civil War, when many freed slaves were forced to work as sharecroppers under conditions of debt peonage. The system was ultimately outlawed in the United States in 1867, but continued in practice for several decades thereafter, particularly in rural areas with large populations of African American workers.

Peonage was also used extensively in Latin America, and was a key part of the hacienda system that dominated large parts of Mexico, Central America, and South America for hundreds of years. Like in the American South, workers in Latin America were often subjected to brutal labor conditions in exchange for meager wages and little mobility. While peonage has largely been abolished in Latin America, it continues to be a problem in some rural areas, particularly in countries with weak labor protections and high levels of poverty.