RURAL LATIN AMERICA Wrestling with the Global Economy
In the global capitalist economy, the worst fate nations can suffer is to become expendable. In their desperate struggle against the threat of expendability, many Latin American elites are...
...Instead, as this issue's interviews with Central American peasant organizers reveal, small farmers are fighting not only to preserve their traditions, but also to adapt to the changing political economy, and above all, to have a hand in the shaping of a more equitable future...
...One of the most disturbing social effects of the transformation of most Latin Americans into city dwellers has been the severing of the connection between people and the land...
...Given this state of affairs, there is a tendency to idealize the rural past with its organic peasant communities, the eternal corn cycle, and deep-rooted cultural traditions...
...Foreign investors, transnational food corporations and some domestic-owned enterprises have reaped big profits, while the land's direct producers have borne the brunt of the costs...
...The consumption of food imports-from Cheerios to Kentucky Fried chicken to corn from Kansas-is skyrocketing...
...With land reform off the agenda, peasants must put up a fierce struggle just to hold on to the land they have...
...As a result, age-old peasant communities and the ways of life they represent are rapidly disappearing...
...But we should heed the peasants themselves, who are neither resurrecting the past nor passively letting the forces of history run roughshod over them...
...Yet once pushed off the land by "modernizing policies", peasants migrate to cities that are ill-prepared to absorb them...
...In their desperate struggle against the threat of expendability, many Latin American elites are relegating a large segment of their population-the peasantry-to precisely this fate...
...As their economies grow ever more dependent on Northern-dominated markets, countries have given up any pretentions of food self-sufficiency...
...As Peter Rosset points out, conventional modern agriculture is ecologically suspect, with soil erosion, over-irrigation and pesticide resistance leading to higher costs and stagnating yields...
...The environmental sustainability of the current model is also open to question...
...To explore the two faces of this seismic demographic shift, NACLA is putting together a two-part series, "The Countryside and the City...
...Communal-and even latifundia-land is being transformed into real estate...
...And with rare exceptions, they don't have access to the technology, capital and credit required to compete effectively in the global market...
...Upheaval in the countryside has thus gone hand-in-hand with upheaval in the cities...
...The subsistence farmer is considered by many to be a relic of the past, engaging in unproductive work and occupying land that could be put to better use...
...Agro-exports, especially nontraditional products such as mangos, roses and snow peas, are being actively promoted both by regional governments and foreignaid organizations...
...Peasants are being squeezed on all sides-by foreign and domestic capital eager to snap up the best farm land, by protracted political violence and repression, and by the withdrawal of most government-sponsored supports for the poor...
...The rural crisis is widely felt as the emptying out of the countryside, while the urban crisis is felt as an inexorable flood into overcrowded cities in what is already the most urbanized region in the underdeveloped world...
...These changes have produced clear winners and losers, reinforcing existing class relations...
...This issue's rural report will be followed by a report on the city in our upcoming January/Febuary 1995 issue...
...In this issue, we examine the plight of the peasantry which in the context of the region's growing insertion into the global capitalist economy, which now penetrates nearly all aspects of social and economic life...
...Land-the institution that organizes and gives coherence to daily life in the countryside-has been turned into just one more commodity...
Vol. 28 • November 1994 • No. 3
