New Terrain for Rural Politics
Fox, Jonathan
THE LATIN AMERICAN LEFT HAS LONG BEEN an active ally of peasants and rural workers in their struggle for survival. But urban-based leftist parties have traditionally viewed peasants as unreliable...
...2(Spring 1992).12...
...Neil Harvey, "The New Agrarian Movement in Mexico 1979-1990," University of London: Institute of Latin American Studies ResearchPaper 23 (1990...
...In Mexico, by contrast, new kinds of rural organizations are on the rise-ones that lack urban allies and electoral possibiliPeasants plant corn In Oaxaca, Mexico...
...1991 & Feb...
...Luis Serra, "Limitadoporla guerra...
...2, No...
...But taking on a clear political identity usually means declaring opposition to the government, which may entail sacrificing access to political elites and the resources they control...
...8 Agrarian reform and alternative agricultural policies, however, are not top priorities for the national CUT leadership (nor its ally the Workers Party...
...Peasant movements in turn criticize political parties for using them for their own electoral ends...
...Sometimes this lack of autonomous political clout leads to tragic consequences, as in Nicaragua where thousands of peasants took up arms against the revolution...
...Cadernos do CEDI,No...
...26, No...
...Veteran political leaders may lack economic management skills, while capable administrators may not be sensitive to grassroots political dynamics...
...No Latin American country has a farmworker movement powerful enough to set a minimum standard for wages or working conditions...
...257 (May 1991...
...For an especially sensitive exception, see Jeffrey Gould's To Lead asEquals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicara-gua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990...
...Indeed, govern-ment pressure on peasant leaders to fall in line was intense, straining leadershiprelations with the rank and file.5...
...others seek land...
...ties, but better represent peasant interests...
...Any effort to combine unity with diversity faces tradeoffs between breadth and depth...
...Regional networks, in particular, have found new ways to link otherwise dispersed communities, and to advance peasants' struggle for political freedom and economic development...
...A good example is the Coalici6n de Ejidos de la Costa Grande, basedaround Atoyac, Guerrero, one of Mexico's most consolidated, democratic andautonomous regional organizations...
...Regional civic protest movements in Colombia and Mexico, for example, combine political demands for accountable, representative government with economic demands for regional development investment...
...For an especially striking analysis of political and cultural differencesbetweenNGOandindigenouspeasantperceptions, seeSilviaRiveraCusicanqui,"Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy: The Case of Northern Potosf,Bolivia," Journal of Development Studies, Vol...
...4 (July1990...
...The CUTestimates its affiliates account for 14%-20% of the rural unions in Brazil...
...Vivid memories of past repression make union organizers hesitant to step up their efforts...
...In electoral democracies, peasant organizations must make political choices...
...The CUT rural base is strongest among smallholdersof the far South and parts of the North, and is growing among farmworkers inSlo Paulo and the Northeast, especially in the sugar industry...
...For example, Mexico's autonomous, peasant-based National Network of Coffee Organizations (CNOC) skillfully combines mass mobilization for concrete policy proposals with sophisticated economic projects...
...Brazil's diverse anti-dam movements have developed sophisticatedregional, national and international networks...
...See Gonzalo Falabella, "Organizarse y sobrevivir en Santa Maria.Democracia social en un sindicato de temporeros y temporeras," presented at47th International Congress of Americanists, Tulane University, July 1991.8...
...When peasant organizations play an overt political role, however, they risk subordinating their long-term social and economic goals to short-term exigencies...
...and "Pros, contras y asegunes de la apropriaci6n delproceso productivo," El Cotidiano, No...
...1 (Oct...
...In the more indigenous regions of the South, there is a UNORCA-stylenational network of small-scale coffee producers, the Coordinadora Nacionalde Organizaciones Cafetaleras (CNOC...
...For participants, however, the main attraction may well be the truck that comes every Sunday to bring otherwise dispersed community leaders together to a meeting where they will be relatively safe...
...UNORCA and CNOC sponsored the first tri-national social movementdiscussion of agricultural trade issues...
...Some socially important economic activities, such as basic food distribution in low-income regions, will always require state subsidies...
...Proposta, No...
...42 (Oct...
...But peasants and rural workers had few external allies to choose from, and at least revolutionaries offered the promise of land, if not democracy...
...9 The first such network to emerge was the "Plan de Ayala" National Coordinating Council (CNPA), based primarily among indigenous and sub-subsistence peasants...
...The amendment creates an easyprivatization option and opens land-ownership to corporations...
...However, peasant movements are less and less subservient to their urban political allies...
...and Luis Hemrndez and David Bray, "Mexico:Campesinos and Coffee," Hemisphere (Summer 1991).11...
...After a long, drawn-out conflict, a compromise PRI candidate wasnamed to lead a pluralistic municipal council, but the most authoritarianelements in the ruling party struck back again...
...With the transition to democracy, one might think that political parties would intensify their appeals to peasants and farmworkers...
...Brazil's rural poor have a national political alternative, the Workers Party, which has a powerful voice, but offers peasants few innovative policy alternatives tailored to their specific needs...
...The trend toward elected civilian rule over the past decade has altered the terrain for both peasants and the Left...
...2 The trade-offs peasant organizations face are rarely of their own choosing...
...pendiente a futuro...
...SeeLynn Stephen, "The Gender Dynamics of Rural Democratization: Brazil,Chile and Mexico," presented at International Congress of Americanists,Tulane University, July 1991...
...Small-holders make up about half the rural CUT membership, and therest are wage workers, sharecroppers, rubber-tappers and homesteaders (some-times known as "squatters...
...Moreover, from the peasants' viewpoint, PRI domination of Congressmade the amendment's approval a foregone conclusion...
...Formal electoral competition should be understood as one of several possible means for leaders to gain power and for members to hold them accountable...
...But the physical risk taken in challenging the enemies of the rural poor remains high in many regions of both countries...
...The movement has a partially overlapping, sometimes uneasy working relationship with the CUT Rural Department...
...23, No...
...Note also regular coverage in the International Rivers Network'sWorld Rivers Review.17...
...andZander Navarro, "Democracy, Citizenship and Representation: Rural SocialMovements in Southern Brazil, 1978-1990," presented at the 47th Interna-tional Congress of Americanists, Tulane University, July 1991...
...The differences between these approaches was especially notable in late1991, during the national debate over the President's proposal to amend theconstitution's land reform provisions...
...1989).14...
...See also, David Kaimowitz, "Nicaragua's Experience with AgriculturalPlanning: From State-Centered Accumulation to the Strategic Alliance withthe Peasantry,"JournalofDevelopment Studies, Vol.24, No.2 (Jan...
...Peasant movements are no exception...
...These pro-agribusiness measures are justified by a pro-autonomy, anti-bureaucraticdiscourse which promises to get government off the backs of peasants...
...1987...
...Today UNORCA is one of the nation's principal interlocutors for peasants, representing primarily small producers in the Center and North.' 0 Remarkably, it held up under the strain of representing both pro-Cardenas and pro-Salinas groups as well as diverse tactical positions on how to protect basic grains in the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement...
...CUT/CRAB, Oct...
...In the mid-1980s a different kind of national network, the National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations (UNORCA), coalesced...
...3 Mexico's left opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has been less than sympathetic to this dilemma...
...26, No...
...Sandwiched between the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement and the partial privatization of the agrarianreform, peasants have little political space for agitation...
...First, depending on local political demography,electoral pressures may lead to a blurring of important class, ethnic and genderconflicts, weakening the social organization's capacity to represent its originalbase...
...National political parties aspire to the state's "commanding heights," and rarely emphasize the democratization of the public arenas of greatest immediate importance to the rural poor-the municipality, the police and the rural branches of central government agencies...
...The next step was to assume that political "consciousness" had to be brought to them by intellectuals and proletarians...
...Where open politics is possible, peasant movements have followed very different paths...
...The Cuban experience shows that revolutionary states can produce greater economic equality without political democracy...
...Participants may already know they are oppressed, and may even have their own organizing skills, but they often lack the resources and political freedom to bring people together from distant communities on a regular basis.' 5 POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE LONG ACCUSED peasant movements of focusing only on local issues...
...T HE"FREE MARKET"WAVESWEEPING LATIN America is dismantling the wide range of populist and technocratic government agencies that have traditionally been the targets of peasant protest...
...Most of the academic literature on social movements sidesteps thequestion of the degree to which they are actually democratic...
...7 Brazil's trade union movement leads perhaps the most ambitious national effort to combine "unity with diversity" in representing the interests of the rural poor...
...And the policy space for redistributive rural development policy remains extremely narrow...
...The PRD responsecame primarily from national leaders who came out of the populist wing of theruling party...
...Most of the Mexican Left ignored this movement, since it emerged around mere "consumption" demands, rather than "production...
...Chile's new laborlegislation excludes the country's largely female seasonal farm labor force, under the ostensible assumption that the small, predominantly male minority of farmworkers employed year-round represent seasonal workers adequately...
...It broke with the traditional dichotomy between official and independent groups in peasant politics...
...Launched in 1979, these councils deliberately encouraged autonomous mass participation in the management of a new rural food distribution network in Mexico' s most impoverished regions...
...political and economic changes of the late 1980s, however, the Left and broader social movements have begun to rethink their relationships with one another...
...The UNORCA defined itself as "autonomous" to leave the door open to tactical alliances with potentially combative but nominally official peasant organizations, and to distance itself from opposition political parties whose peasant branches often lacked autonomy...
...Trabahladores rurais, Fazer nossa a politicaagricola...
...26, No...
...1992).2...
...For peasants and farmworkers, the issue is not whether to ally with political parties, but on what terms...
...IljaLuciak, "Popular Democracy in the New Nicaragua, the Case of a Rural MassOrganization," Comparative Politics, Vol...
...In many regions, the councils began to take on a life of their own, refusing to limit themselves to "proper channels" in their struggle for accountable rural development policy...
...Indeed a lesson on how to democratize the peasant movement as awhole can be learned from heeding the example of rural women's movementsin Brazil, Chile and Mexico...
...Autonomta y los nuevos sujetos deldesarrollo rural (Mexico: Siglo XXI/CEHAM, forthcoming).10...
...20, No...
...The state police commandertook over the town hall, proclaiming "Aquitraigo milhombrespara dialogar...
...They asserted that the ejido system works fine, and all it needs ismore funding...
...In many groups, disputes are not resolved through open competition for leadership but rather through a more delicate and indirect process of building community consensus.14 External actors often play a crucial role in providing the transportation and political space essential to create horizontal region-wide linkages and bring village representatives together...
...Proposta, No...
...In other words, the question of who participates in decision-making is less important than who benefits in the end...
...I ney nave nelpea to shape the terms of debate about rural development policy and provided real vehicles for change in some regions...
...In many countries conservative rural political machines still have national clout, keeping peasant problems off the agenda...
...After the collapse in international coffee prices in 1989, CNOC'sfuture may well depend on sheer political clout...
...There are many parallels in the politics of ethnic, racial and genderdifferences...
...1990...
...Even if they abstain from elections but actively denounce officially-sanctioned electoral fraud, peasants in Mexico still put at risk their limited access to government funding for self-managed economic development...
...Such was the case with Colombia's National Association of Peasant Users (ANUC) and Mexico's Community Food Councils...
...See especially Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Moreover, as organizations become larger, the distance between leaders and base inevitably grows...
...The gulf between those with and those without land looms large...
...For a detailed analysis of CUT representation, see Retrato daoCUT(SAo Paulo: CUT, 1991).9...
...PRD leaders, especially those who split from the ruling party (PRI), favor the more traditional route of creating a "peasant branch" of the party, rather than developing alliances with the autonomous forces in the peasant movement...
...4 (July 1990...
...effort to oversee the government food company...
...See Jonathan Fox, "Agriculture and thePolitics of the North American Trade Debate," LASA Forum, Vol...
...The Brazilian experience shows that broad inclusive organizations can offer a national forum and improved electoral possibilities, but often do not adequately address the diverse needs of the rural poor...
...In Brazil, for example, peasants united across class and ethnic boundaries in protest against planned hydroelectric dams.' 6 Even government anti-poverty programs can create regional opportunities for radical mass organizing...
...1990...
...CNPA's radical direct action tactics on land and human rights issues brought it briefly to national prominence in the early 1980s...
...6 Even Chile, with its long tradition of trade unionism and its booming export agribusiness sector, has few farmworker unions...
...104 (Nov.-Dec...
...It took several years of patient internal debate within the existing CUT rural unions, the MSTand the anti-dam movements for peasant women activists to convince theircompanheiros of the legitimacy of creating an autonomous organization...
...3 and 4(Dec...
...A recent comparison of the four most importantmovements in one of Brazil's best-organized rural regions found that thepeasant women's movement was clearly the most democratic...
...4 The Left's traditional disdain for peasant autonomy is tied up in the belief that political process is less important than economic outcome...
...2 (April 1992).15...
...Often the landless are left with at best "indirect" representation by slightly better-off smallholders...
...Eschewing the traditional party-linked pyramids of the Left and the Right known as centrales, Mexican peasants are organizing horizontally-structured national networks...
...In Mexico's 1988 presidential race, rural districts gave Carlos Salinas his official REPORT ON THE AMERICASmajority...
...Second, electoral politics may permit social organization leaders to "takeoff' from their bases and, with the help ofnew national allies, pursue individualambitions while leaving their original constituency under-represented...
...Bloody assaults continue in Peru, Guatemala and Haiti...
...39 (Jan.-Feb...
...Regional organizations-acting as resistance leagues, development agencies, lobbying offices or local political parties -- can often bridge this gap between national and local politics...
...Participaci6n y organizaci6n popular en Nicara-gua," Nueva Sociedad, No...
...In Mexico, by contrast, autonomous peasant movements have emerged-perhaps due to the Left's failure to reach out, combined with the state's skulled divdle-and-conquer tactics...
...On the ANUC, see Leon Zamosc, The Agrarian Question and thePeasantMovement in Colombia (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986);and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, The Politics and Ideology of the ColombianPeasant Movement: The Case of ANUC (Geneva: UNRISD, 1987...
...The Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST) stepped into the political vacuum left by CUT's limited emphasis on organizing the landless...
...The old A orazlllan peasant...
...46(Sept...
...Rank-and-file Cardenista sentiment expressed itselfagainin the 1989 muncipal elections, which led to months of broad-based anti-fraudprotests...
...Or they can define a public political identity either by allying with an established party or by fielding candidates of their own...
...But urban-based leftist parties have traditionally viewed peasants as unreliable partners in the worker-peasant alliance that would eventually bring a revolutionary vanguard to power...
...They can act as an interest group, pursuing their economic interests by playing parties off against one another...
...On Cuban peasant cooperatives,see Jean Stubbs, Cuba: The Test of Time (London: Latin America Bureau,1989).7...
...New Terrain for Rural PoliticsThanks very much to Martin Diskin, Mark Fried, Zander Navarro, Ram6nVera, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward for their comments.1...
...Foroverviews, see Candido Grzybowski, "Rural Workers and Democratisation inBrazil," Journal of Development Studies, Vol...
...During the Sandinista government's first years, land distributionexcluded individual families, most investment went to the state sector, and themarketing of peasant harvests was governed by coercive, urban-biased poli-cies...
...44 (May 1990...
...See Gabriela Ejea and Luis Hemrindez,(eds...
...XXV, Nos...
...231 (June 1988...
...1988...
...The Lett's traditional disdain for peasant autonomy is rooted in the belief that the demo- cratic process is less Important than the economic outcome of policy decisions...
...PRD leaders further charged that all peasant leaders who criticized some aspects while supporting others were sell-outs...
...With respect to representing the economic interests of peasants, Brazil's CUT is a broader coalition, while Mexico's UNORCA has greater depth...
...Since the dramatic Political scientist Jonathan Fox teaches at MIT and is a member of NACLA's Editorial Board...
...Indeed even when "social sector" economic activities are profitable for an organized minority, the majority who lack an effective voice risk being left out.19 The rural poor are on the defensive almost everywhere in Latin America, with the open-ended exceptions of El Salvador and Ecuador...
...Mexico' s more consolidated regional peasant movements, for example, can gain access to government resources often only if they renounce their right to participate actively in opposition politics...
...3 (1991...
...Nevertheless, thou-sands of Mexican peasants, for the first time, intervened in the foreigneconomic policy-making process, protesting the government's anti-producerpositions in the International Coffee Organization.19...
...Whether they are church groups, government, political parties or NGOs, these outside groups often see their key contribution as bringing awareness and organizing skills to the oppressed...
...1-2 (1989), and LuisSerra, El movimiento campesino (Managua: UCA, 1991).6...
...Third,political party competition may introduce ideological divisions into organiza-tions previously united by social and economic demands...
...While most "participatory" programs are limited to providing cheap manual labor for construction projects, the councils brought representatives of dozens of villages together at the regional level, often for the first time, in a common "The land belongs to those who work it...
...Peasants were not involved in formulating national policies and had tobehave according to the state's ideologically-driven rules to get land or credit.The popular organizations early on experienced relative autonomy, but by1982 wartime discipline and the political institutionalization process sappedtheir vitality...
...4 (July 1990).16...
...Questao agraria, diversidadee abrangencia," Tempo e Presenca, No...
...1989...
...Luis Hernmdndez, "Doce tesis sobre el nuevoliderazgo campesino en Mexico: Notas sobre la UNORCA," in Julio Moguel,Carlota Botey and Luis Hernadez, (eds...
...The public appearance of active membership may actually be driven by economic incentives, common enemies or coercive "micro-political" pressures...
...The movement aspires to bring together smallholders, and urban and rural wage workers...
...The election of national civilian governments does not necessarily change the micro-politics of local power relations...
...Contested elections may be more the result than the cause (or guarantee) of internal democracy...
...The CUT labor federation is well known for its militant industrial base, but one third of its membership is in fact rural, and those on the dangerous front lines of the struggle for agrarian reform, which peaked in the mid-1980s, usually identify with the CUT...
...For important discussions of these dilemmas, see Armando Bartra,"Modernidad, miseria extrema y productores organizados," El Cotidiano, No.36 (July-Aug...
...More generally, there are inherent conflicts between social and politicalrepresentation for the rural poor...
...Yet relatively few democratic peasant organizations are sufficiently consolidated to "scale up" to such large operations...
...Estado eterra," Tempo e Presenca, No...
...In Brazil's historic 1989 presidential race, for example, Lula and the Workers Party won the big cities but Collor clinched victory with the support of the hinterland...
...Zander Navarro, "Democracy, Citizenship andRepresentation," and Gonzalo Falabella, "Organizarse y sobrevivir en SantaMaria...
...Graciela Flores Ltia, Luisa Par6 and Sergio Sarmiento, Lasvoces del campo: movimiento campesino y polftica agraria, 1976-1984(Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988...
...During the initial phase of democratization, political attention focused almost exclusively on party politics in the national capitals...
...The relative absence of national political parties in many rural areas has led to the rise of civic movements which have thrust peasants into politics in new ways...
...CNOC markets several varieties of coffee directly in the United States (under the brand "Aztec Harvests") and participates in the administration of formerly state-owned processing installations, winning official accolades for efficiency.' This "modem" economic clout can often bring political power...
...HarvestofWant: StrugglesforFoodSecurity in CentralAmerica andMexico (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991...
...The leadership, concerned about the long-termsurvival of their self-managed economic development project, chose to remainnon-partisan, knowing the government's unforgiving attitude toward openpolitical opposition...
...UNORCA members united around the shared goal of democratizing the rural development policy process, even though each member organization had different policy concerns: some member groups produce wheat, corn, sorghum, timber or coffee...
...As of mid-1991, only several hundred Chilean farmworkers were unionized out of a national farm labor force of between 300,000 and 400,000...
...Sindicalismo no Campo, Osdesafios da organizaqao," Tempo e Presenca, No...
...See Marvin Ortega, "The State, the Peasantry and theSandinista Revolution," Journal ofDevelopment Studies, Vol...
...His book, The Political Dynamics of Reform: State Power and Food Policy in Mexico, will be published this year by Cornell University Press...
...More often, such formal procedures ratify decisions made previously through subtle informal debates and pressures...
...For furtherdiscussion of the internal democracy issue, see Jonathan Fox, "DemocraticRural Development: Leadership Accountability in Regional Peasant Organi-zations," Development and Change, Vol...
...The political space opened from above was often occupied by mobilization from below...
...1989).See also "Barragens, QuestAo ambiental e luta pela terra," Proposta, No...
...After all, peasant and farmworker votes can matter even in countries with large urban majorities...
...Theproposal and its "handlers" divided peasant organizations across the politicalspectrum, including the smaller far left groups, in part because most agree thatthe heavily state-regulated ejido does require institutional change of somekind...
...Now on the table is the extension of effective citizenship rights to the entire population, including the poorest of the poor, who still tend to be disproportionately rural...
...For the results of the firstnational meeting see "Terra Sim, Barragens Nio...
...Rural unionists formed their own department within the federation to ensure their concerns were heard, but are still frustrated by lack of autonomy and support from the rest of CUT...
...With an organized base of up to several hundred thousand, the MST claims to be the main representative of Brazil's millions of landless peasants...
...At times, regional movements emerge in areas defined by such external factors as the diocese of a progressive bishop, the scope of a reformist rural development program, a climatic disaster such as a drought or a flood, or the prospect of displacement by a public or private sector mega-project...
...OnMexico's Consejos Comunitarios de Abasto, see Jonathan Fox, "PopularParticipation and Access to Food: Mexico's Community Food Councils" inScott Whiteford and Ann Ferguson (eds...
...5 RURAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS MUST represent diverse economic, ethnic and gender interests...
...The UNORCA faces the challenge of bridging other deep gaps as well: between mestizos and indigenous peoples, between Mexico's North and South, and between grain producers and consumers...
...Mexico's Alternative Politicalfutures kLta J oa: U nversity oi kaliiollia, aanl iego/ienter rot Ua-MexicanStudies, 1989...
...1991...
...Fourth, as socialorganizations get involved in electoral politics they may endanger theirautonomy vis-a-vis political parties even if those parties are their allies.3...
...But as Fidel Castro's abrupt shutdown of farmers' markets in the mid-1980s demonstrated, unless peasants have the political power and autonomy to hold governments accountable, chances are they will lose out in the long run...
...For recentmovement discussions, see"Assalariadosrurais,paraonde vaiaorganizaqgo...
...More frequently, however, key concerns of the landless, such as land reform and labor rights, simply go un-voiced...
...More challenging still are the questions of how to incorporate autonomous spaces for ethnic and I REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40 gender difference, and guarantee democratic participation.1 2 Although mass assemblies can be democratic, any organizer knows that a minority can easily manipulate both information and process...
...Meanwhile, PRD leaders bypassed the Coalici6n in their own closed-doornegotiations with the government...
...Luis Serraand Veronica Frenkel, "The Peasantry and Development in Nicaragua,"Annual Review of Nicaraguan Sociology, Vol...
...If nothing else, it has shown that the Left's traditional dichotomous view that democracy is either "real" or nonexistent leaves out most of the ways people are represented most of the time...
...Cafetaleros: La construcci6n de la autonomia," Cuadernos desarrollode base, No...
...20 (1989...
...After decades of subordination to their political allies, Latin American peasant movements today are in the midst of a strategic turn toward greater autonomy...
...By the late 1980s, the MST assumed a leading role in radical direct action for land reform...
...243 (July 1989...
...some have credit problems or want higher crop prices...
...and some represent organized consumers in corn-deficit areas...
...In the Nicaraguan revolution, for example, especially after the war erupted, much of what observers called active grassroots participation was really state-induced mobilization.13 Within communities, informal means of consultation, reproach, and decision-making can help to compensate for weaknesses in "public" channels for participation...
...But internal cleavages between party-aligned groups and more ethnic- and local-oriented members soon crippled the organization...
...This process has led to the emergence of separate autonomous movements of farmworkers and smallholders in Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico and Chile...
...Even if more peasants were able to take advantage of international market niches, this is no panacea...
...Cuba may be an exception, but I do not know of recent studies of theconditions of rural wage labor in the 1980s...
...While official and opposition party elitespushed the group to define its political allegiance, the Coalici6n insisted thatonly by remaining nonpartisan could it defend both its radical economicdevelopment project and electoral democracy.4...
...While the leftist parties by and large have rejected so-called privatization, regional peasant organizations have begun to take over economic tasks, especially marketing and agro-industrial processing, which the state or the private sector previously controlled...
...and"Notes on Peasant Consciousness and Revolutionary Politics in Nicaragua1955-1990,"RadicalHistory Review, No.48(1990...
...Because UNORCA respected the diverse affiliations of its regional members, groups from across the political spectrum participated...
...23, No...
...Only rarely do local village organizations actually make major decisions in mass meetings or through voting...
...See, among others, Jonathan Fox and Gustavo Gordillo, "Between Stateand Market: The Campesinos' Quest for Autonomy," in Wayne Cornelius,Judith Gentleman and Peter Smith (eds...
...Most of the rank and file supportedCirdenas forpresident in 1988...
...The Left pays scant attention to democratizing the arenas of greatest Interest to the rural poor: the municipality, the police, and the rural branches of government agencies...
...Only when faced with the steady expansion of the Contras' socialbase among the rural poor did the Sandinistas begin to redistribute landmassively in 1985...
...Leaders who manage to combine these skills still face powerful structural constraints...
...Pragmatic peasant politics, known for its synthesis of mass direct action with alternative economic institution-building, often fails to mesh with the tactics of an opposition party geared to winning elections...
...andThe Political Dynamics of Reform, State Power and Food Policy in Mexico(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, forthcoming).18...
...Viewing the conventional repertoire of protest as inherently limited, the network chose to combine mass mobilization and pragmatic negotiations with the state...
...Positioning itself outside the "mainstream" of Workers Party politics, the firmly Leninist MST zealously defends its autonomy...
...Moreover, many on the Left have sought to frustrate peasant demands for local autonomy, perhaps the most persistent theme of peasant politics over the centuries.' Many leftists long thought that peasants' near-universal demand for land was "petty-bourgeois," reflecting individualistic desires to become property-owners...
Vol. 25 • May 1992 • No. 5
