Labour contractors (enganchadores) were key figures in capitalist modernisation in northern Peru after 1880. Via overlapping networks of monetary, moral and coercive mechanisms, they shaped circuits of accumulation by linking highland labour to coastal sugar plantations. The reliance of coastal sugar planters on highland enganchadores for guaranteeing labour supply highlights the failure of an independent national state to consolidate in this period beyond local and regional hegemonies. Therefore, an examination of enganchadores and the hybrid markets they embodied challenges both linear narratives about the rise of modern economies and conceptual binaries between market and non-market, state and non-state and centre and periphery in Peru and globally.
