Henderson, Thomas Paul (2015) Food Sovereignty and the Via Campesina in Mexico and Ecuador: Class Dynamics, Struggles for Autonomy and the Politics of Resistance
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Henderson, Thomas Paul (2015) Food Sovereignty and the Via Campesina in Mexico and Ecuador: Class Dynamics, Struggles for Autonomy and the Politics of Resistance . PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/22778 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Food Sovereignty and the Via Campesina in Mexico and Ecuador: Class Dynamics, Struggles for Autonomy and the Politics of Resistance Thomas Paul Henderson Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2015 Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London 1 Declaration for SOAS PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: 4 November 2015__ 2 Abstract This thesis analyses the class dynamics, politics, and ideology of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador. It argues that engagement with class dynamics within the Via Campesina, the world’s preeminent transnational agrarian movement struggling for food sovereignty, is essential for the construction of ‘unity in diversity’ necessary to challenge the neoliberal food regime. It interrogates the claim made by the movement and its proponents of a ‘unified people of the land’ to show that the food sovereignty project currently under- represents rural labour and producers of cash crops. It also shows that struggles of the landed peasantry for autonomy from and within the market can successfully resist the accelerated forces of proletarianisation, dispossession and immiseration that characterise much of the rural South in the neoliberal era. Autonomous struggles are the foundation of peasant production and reproduction strategies in Mexico and Ecuador today and are the basis from which food sovereignty’s productive, political and ideological alternatives to neoliberalism must be developed. However, state-peasant movement relations are central to the construction of counter-hegemony. So too are peasant organisations’ internal structures, their modes of representation between leaders and bases, and alliance building and conflict with other subaltern groups. These factors are critical in determining whether, and to what extent, the food sovereignty movement is able to transform neoliberal food and agricultural policies in favour of sustainable, small-scale peasant production guided by concerns for social and environmental justice rather than those of capital accumulation. 3 Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 10 Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 1. From Agrarian Reform to Food Sovereignty: CIOAC, FENOCIN and Peasant Movements in Mexico and Ecuador .................................................................................... 28 1.1 Mexico’s agrarian reform ................................................................................... 29 1.2 Ecuador’s agrarian reform ................................................................................. 33 1.3 The scaling back of agrarian reform in Mexico .................................................. 42 1.4 The scaling back of agrarian reform in Ecuador ................................................. 48 1.5 Neoliberalism and the rise of food sovereignty .................................................. 51 Chapter 2. A Class Based Analysis of Food Sovereignty ................................................... 64 2.1 Class and the food sovereignty movement ........................................................ 64 2.2 Interpreting class in the food sovereignty movement ....................................... 68 2.3 Class origins and shifting class bases of CIOAC and FENOCIN ............................ 70 2.4 CIOAC’s class origins ........................................................................................... 71 2.5 CIOAC in the mountains of Guerrero .................................................................. 73 2.6 CIOAC in Chiapas ................................................................................................. 78 2.7 CIOAC and food sovereignty .............................................................................. 83 2.8 FENOCIN on the Ecuadorian coast and Andes .................................................... 86 2.9 FENOCIN’s diverging class base from the land reform era ................................. 87 2.10 FENOCIN and food sovereignty ......................................................................... 93 2.11 Class representation within CIOAC and FENOCIN ............................................ 96 2.12 CIOAC, FENOCIN and the Via Campesina: Class bases, collaboration and conflict .................................................................................................................... 101 2.13 Concluding comments .................................................................................... 106 Chapter 3. Autonomy and the Market: Peasant Production and Reproduction Strategies under Neoliberalism ................................................................................................... 110 3.1 Peasant autonomy ............................................................................................ 110 4 3.2 Land as autonomy ............................................................................................. 112 3.3 Property relations and autonomy ..................................................................... 115 3.4 Historical dynamics of coffee and cacao sectors in Mexico and Ecuador ........ 117 3.5 The struggle for autonomy of CIOAC’s coffee producers ................................. 121 3.6 The struggles for autonomy of FENOCIN’s cacao producers ........................... 132 3.7 The search for alternatives in the neoliberal era .............................................. 136 3.8 Struggles for autonomy in the neoliberal era ................................................... 141 3.9 Cash crops and food sovereignty ...................................................................... 152 3.10 TNE-producer relations in Mexico and Ecuador’s coffee and cacao sectors .. 156 3.11 Longer-term projections ................................................................................. 165 3.12 Concluding comments .................................................................................... 172 Chapter 4. Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony, and the Politics of Food Sovereignty .......... 174 4.1 The state and hegemony .................................................................................. 176 4.2 Neoliberal transition and state-peasant movement relations in Mexico and Ecuador ................................................................................................................... 178 4.3 The food sovereignty movement in Mexico and Ecuador: A counter-hegemonic movement? ............................................................................................................ 186 4.4 Organisational structures and counter-hegemony in Mexico’s food sovereignty movement ............................................................................................................... 188 4.5 ‘El Campo No Aguanta Mas’.............................................................................. 200 4.6 Organisational structures and counter-hegemony in Ecuador’s food sovereignty movement ............................................................................................................... 210 4.7 Correa’s ‘agrarian debt’: Bypassing social movements .................................... 224 4.8 Concluding comments ...................................................................................... 233 Chapter 5. Conclusion.................................................................................................. 239 References ................................................................................................................. 258 Appendix 1. Interview Template for Production and Reproduction Strategies ............... 274 Appendix 2. Interview Template for Political and Social Issues ..................................... 276 5 Figures Figure 1. Total number of hectares legalised and total number of beneficiaries annually in Ecuador under agrarian reform ............................................................................................