Chile's rural labor force, mainly mestizos, is…

Chile's rural labor force, mainly mestizos, is a cheap and expanding source of labor in the mid-1800s.

More and more of these laborers become tenant farmers (inquilinos).

For a century hereafter, many workers will remain bound to the haciendas through tradition, lack of alternatives, and landowner collusion and coercion.

Itinerant rural workers and even small landowners will become increasingly dependent on the great estates, whether through part-time or full-time work.

The landed elites will also inhibit industrialization by their preference for free trade and the low wages they paid their workers, which will hinder rural consumers from accumulating disposable income.

For a century, the lack of any significant challenge to this exploitative system will be one of the pillars of the social and political hierarchy.