Seeing like an indigenous community: the World Bank's Agriculture for DevelopmentReport read from the perspective of postwar rural Guatemala (original) (raw)
Related papers
Agroecology on the periphery: A case from the Maya-Achí territory, Guatemala
Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systemas, 2019
In this paper we examine processes of scaling agroecological practices in the Maya-Achí territory of Guatemala. We compare the Achí case to other examples documented in the literature and the key factors, or“drivers,”reported as important if not essential for scaling to occur. We find that the Achí scase is complex with regard to these drivers. Factors such as constructivist learning/teaching methods, favorable public policies, and strong social fabric appear to be weak, absent, or even negative. This is due in part to the violence and repression of the 1980s, which resulted in the assassination of 20 percent of the population by the military and paramilitaries, leaving the territory socially fragmented. Projects incorporating agroecology (revalorization of ancestral practices, seed saving, elimination of external inputs, strengthening soil health, increasing/guarding agrobiodiversity) are viewed as a potential strategy to aid in community recovery, and are promoted by local associations as well as by international institutions and NGOs. While social and cultural recuperation were initially hypothesized as primary causes for the adoption of practices, we encounter a range of additional and complex factors, such as the expectation of economic benefits and the presence of aid and development organizations. By analyzing these drivers and barriers we contribute to the ongoing debate over how agroecological practices may be scaled-out, particularly in regions exhibiting less than ideal conditions.
In this paper we examine processes of scaling agroecological practices in the Maya-Achí territory of Guatemala. We compare the Achí case to other examples documented in the literature and the key factors, or "drivers," reported as important if not essential for scaling to occur. We find that the Achí scase is complex with regard to these drivers. Factors such as constructivist learning/teaching methods, favorable public policies, and strong social fabric appear to be weak, absent, or even negative. This is due in part to the violence and repression of the 1980s, which resulted in the assassination of 20 percent of the population by the military and paramilitaries, leaving the territory socially fragmented. Projects incorporating agroecology (revalorization of ancestral practices, seed saving, elimination of external inputs, strengthening soil health, increasing/guarding agrobiodiversity) are viewed as a potential strategy to aid in community recovery, and are promoted by local associations as well as by international institutions and NGOs. While social and cultural recuperation were initially hypothesized as primary causes for the adoption of practices, we encounter a range of additional and complex factors, such as the expectation of economic benefits and the presence of aid and development organizations. By analyzing these drivers and barriers we contribute to the ongoing debate over how agroecological practices may be scaled-out, particularly in regions exhibiting less than ideal conditions.
Social and Economic Development and Change in 4 Guatemalan Villages Over a Half Century
Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 2020
This article describes nearly 50 years of social and economic development and changes that have occurred in the 4 villages of the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) Longitudinal Study (1969-1977). In doing so, it contextualizes the changes in health and nutrition for the study population over that period. Since the start of the INCAP Longitudinal Study, the original 4 villages, like their home country, have undergone tremendous demographic, social, and economic change. Originally rather isolated, road and transportation access for the villages has improved steadily and substantially. The population in the villages has more than doubled. Schooling access and outcomes have also improved substantially, with average grades of schooling tripling and literacy doubling, reaching levels currently on par with national averages. Occupations have also changed over the course of a generation. Early on, subsistence farming and agriculture in general were dominant but ar...
2011
This dissertation examines the production of rural struggle in Guatemala' indigenous eastern highlands, a place where after decades of silence, 36 years of civil war and two centuries of marginalization, the seemingly unthinkable--organized resistance and alternative proposals--became palpable. In the face of crisis, attempts to turn rural producers, into neoliberal subjects of credit resurrected the historical specter of dispossession and catalyzed an unlikely alliance to oppose unjust agrarian debt that transformed into a vibrant movement for defense of Maya-Ch'orti' territory. Yet, the contours of that alliance, its limits, and possibilities, its concrete splits and expansion are deeply linked to both place-based histories and memories of racialized dispossession, specific reworkings of 1990s discourses and practices of development and peace -making, and the concrete practice of starting from common sense . I sieve a total of 26 months of participant-action research t...
Since the turn of the 21st century, the establishment and subsequent expansion of three (agro)extractive industries-sugarcane, oil palm, and nickel mining-in the Polochic valley lowlands of northern Guatemala has reduced local indigenous Q'eqchi' campesino (peasant) communities' access to farmland. Over the years, campesino groups and their allies have engaged in various forms of political contestation in "defence of territory". In 2015, Chabil Utzaj, the sugarcane company, ceased operations following a second mass occupation of its plantations. As a result, over 800 campesino households now each have access to around 3.5 ha of farmland. In this dissertation, I employ an extended livelihoods approach consisting of archival research, oral histories, key informant interviews, and household surveys grounded in agrarian political economy to explore how the struggle for defence of territory has contested this latest wave of territorialisation driven by (agro)extractive industries
Journal of Peasant Studies, 2015
Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of agrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as the financialized and flexible agrarian extractivist project. Meanwhile, Maya-Q´eqchi´ residents of the northern lowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agroecosystem that the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their subsistence in multiple and unfamiliar ways. Indeed, growing difficulties in dealing with (vital) grievances is leading many, even those who initially welcomed the corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations, to transform their unrest into a practice of resistance. Elaborating on what is presented here as a multiple politics perspective, this contribution discusses the nature and character of such contemporary political dynamics of agrarian change. The forms, strategies and practices of the two main and most antagonistic repertoires of contention are explored here: the one in ‘defense of territory’ and the one in the promotion of the ‘agrarian extractivist project’. The tensions across and within multiple corporate, state and social actors who are pushing for, resisting, complying with or operating at the most violent margins of the agrarian extractivist project are also examined. By assessing continuities and ruptures between current and previous cycles of contention around the control of land, water and other natural resources, this paper stresses the often forgotten lesson about trajectories of agrarian change not being a story foretold, but the product of multiple and dynamic politics.
Regarding development: governing Indian advancement in revolutionary Guatemala
Market rationality was promoted in Guatemala’s indigenous communities in the 1970s through agrarian modernization programmes as part of a Cold War counterinsurgency strategy. Why did rural villagers adopt these forms and to what effect? Using oral history interviews conducted in the town of San Pedro Necta, this paper compares local development brokers’ narratives of the DIGESA programme with village level perceptions and reactions. In order to deepen understandings of how governing assemblages gain traction in postcolonial contexts, I draw on theories that view development as a governing assemblage that operates by inciting a will to improve and as an entanglement between heterogeneous social worlds, and bring these into dialogue with theories about strategic subaltern appropriations of development. I then critically examine these perspectives in light of events in San Pedro. I describe how indigenous villagers adopted assimilationist market-oriented development as an alternative to racism, poverty and authoritarianism, and how this produced contradictory effects on grassroots political imaginaries, organizational practices and community solidarity. I argue that ‘Indian advancement’ wove together local empowerment with the formation of market subjectivities and the privatization of politics and social life.
Journal of Latin American Geography, 2020
For centuries the indigenous people of Guatemala have sought ways to preserve identity and defend their communities under repression and systemic inequality and racism. Since the official end of the thirty-six-year armed conflict in the late 1990s, a number of local organizations and political platforms have taken root, with the objective to bring about development that represents local needs and worldviews. In this paper we illustrate the critical work of indigenous organizations in the Maya-Achí territory of Baja Verapaz, in their attempt to carry out development from within. Specifically, we explore the relationships between this form of endogenous development and agroecology, as well as local perspectives of well-being, known as utziil k’asleem. Centered on ancestral principles that include sustainable agricultural production and consumption, reciprocity, commitment to Mother Earth, and contentment with one’s work and family, utziil k’asleem provides inspiration to leaders, as well as a path to development focused on cultural recovery and improving quality of life. By analyzing this work, we aim to highlight its importance and transformative potential, while also situating it in the present neoliberal moment.