A large estate is a large agricultural holding characterized by the use of salaried labor, poor optimization of resources, low investment in technological means and the absence of the owner of the land, who delegates to a foreman.
Although the size of a large estate can vary considerably, the rest of the characteristics tend to remain constant. In general, the conditions of the workers are very precarious, there is a significant percentage of land that is not exploited or its yields are far from its maximum exploitation and the owner has no more contact with the exploitation than dealing with his foreman .
This set of circumstances usually gives rise to the appearance of social tensions when the conditions of the population become of a high degree of need. In these situations, it is very common to demand the distribution of underused lands in order to produce more food and thus be able to satisfy the basic livelihood of the people.
Large estates as a model of social domination
The existence of large estates cannot be analyzed only from the productive or agricultural perspective, since the large estates generate a series of dependent social relations that are of great importance in the communities where these types of farms exist.
In this way, the owners of the land are the ones who control access to work and production, with all the impact that this entails on the populations in which they are found. They are the ones that determine the level of income of a worker and the prices at which the products that are extracted from the land are sold.
In addition, the fact that the relationships between landowners and workers take place in a rural environment supposes the lack of alternatives for the population, which internalizes that their livelihood depends exclusively on the will of the landowner.
There is therefore a type of social relationship in which some own the land, wealth and control and others only provide the labor force. And even though this is essential for the exploitation of large estates to be profitable, each individual separately is easily replaceable. This generates a relationship of enormous inequality, dependence, and domination by an oligarchy over the general population that maintains a relationship with the sphere closest to the latifundia.
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