Lesley Gill received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. She was a visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia in 1984-1985 and is currently affiliated with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in La Paz, Bolivia.

• Introduction -- From Latifundia to Agricultural Enterprise -- The Expansion of Capitalist Agriculture -- Frontier Settlement and Proletarianization -- Proletarianization and the Peasant Household -- Settlers Become Entrepreneurs -- Agricultural Cooperatives and Rural Development -- The Agro-Industrial Bourgeoisie, Economic Crisis, and the Cocaine Trade -- Economic Crisis and Social Change in the 1980s -- Conclusion