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Agricultural Autonomy: The Rural Poor as a Force for Sustainable Development in Guatemala's Western Highlands Item Type Electronic Thesis; text Authors Percival, Abigail Vera Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 15:07:39 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/144920 Abigail Percival · 1 · ABSTRACT: In Guatemala’s Western Highlands, conservation and development are inextricable goals because poor people generally depend on nature for their entire livelihood. Ironically, the cultivation practices of the country’s poorest farmers pose one of the greatest threats to the environment even though these campesinos are among the most vulnerable to its degradation. This study seeks to analyze the historical roots of this paradigm and show how barriers to agricultural autonomy, imposed in various ways since the Spanish conquest in 1524, have created oppression, inequality, and ecologically unsustainable techniques. I will argue that sustainable rural development demands that these barriers be reduced or eliminated and describe the individual roles of the state, NGOs, and farmers in this essential process. Abigail Percival · 2 · AGRICULTURAL AUTONOMY: THE RURAL POOR AS A FORCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN GUATEMALA’S WESTERN HIGHLANDS PREFACE: AUTONOMY UNDER FIRE “Oh would that this Eden might be reclaimed, the swords beaten into plough-shares, and the generals and other officers turn their wasted energies to agriculture…!” – William T. Brigham1 In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan military tortured, exiled, and killed a group of Kaqchikel farmers as part of a scorched-earth warfare policy in the highland town of Chimaltenango.2 These smallholders had been receiving supplies from outsiders, forming organizations, and digging ditches – dangerously subversive activities given the atmosphere of anti-guerilla paranoia that was sweeping violently through the countryside. The victims, however, were not actually combatants but rather members of a growing movement of participatory agricultural development begun by the NGOs World Neighbors and Oxfam in the seventies. These “outsiders” had recognized the pressing need for sustainable innovations that would reduce highland farmers’ vulnerability to natural disasters, increase yields, and prevent the degradation of the soils. In the wake of a devastating 1976 earthquake, the practices they taught became all the more relevant and began to spread organically from farm to farm. The ditches were, in reality, designed for soil conservation and the prevention of erosion, not hiding places for guerillas as had been supposed. Nor were the groups of farmers gathering to 1 William T. Brigham, Guatemala: The Land of the Quetzal, First ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887), 19. Mr. Brigham, an American geologist, botanist, and ethnographer, traveled through Guatemala in the latter half of the 19th century. Many of his observations of the country continue to ring true today. 2 Eric Holt-Giménez, Movimiento Campesino a Campesino: Voice from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2006). The following story is adapted from first hand accounts pp. 1-7, 44-56. Abigail Percival · 3 · share communist ideology per se, but rather the kuchub’al shared the burden of labor and helped one another cultivate their land and provide for their families. The NGOs were supplying seeds and agricultural extension, not ammunition. The persecutors felt no need to make any distinction between communism and conservation because the real threat was empowered farmers. The successes of these “people centered” development projects had led to increased crop production, higher incomes, and increased solidarity among peasant farmers – all of which promised to topple a status quo favoring an elite group of large landowners. Indeed, the coffee growers in the area were able to maintain their own operations precisely because of the landless desperation of the poorer class. Their economic subjugation ensured a cheap and abundant labor source and little competition for land or markets. And so, in what the farmers perceived as a direct retaliation to their newfound success, they were “disappeared.” In light of the violence and intimidation the conservation ditches were filled in, working groups dissolved and thus the progress made by the development agencies in the 1970s screeched to a halt. The ditches, and their farmer proponents, would remain hidden until the end of the war 1996… Abigail Percival · 4 · I. INTRODUCTION: DEFINING AGRICULTURAL AUTONOMY IN THE RURAL DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT au·ton·o·my (noun) – 1.the quality or state of being self-governing; especially the right of self governance; 2. Self-directing freedom and especially moral independence. In agriculture farmers must often identify limiting factors – the soil conditions, nutrient deficiencies or other inputs that inhibit production. In thinking about and striving for development there is an equivalent need to identify the roots of poverty in order to achieve human flourishing. As the prologue story of Chimaltenango illustrates, the Kaqchikel farmers shared a limiting factor of autonomy. That is, they were prevented from doing sustainable agriculture by the constraints of society that inhibited self-governance. While this violence was of course an isolated event and is in no way intended to diminish the complexities of Guatemala’s armed conflict or imply that guerilla resistance was a myth, the story highlights a historically powerful motivation for the rich to keep the poor in their place, at the expense of the health of the environment. Their tale, like many other rural communities of Guatemala’s Western Highlands, is one of poverty and repression – one that finds its answers in the elimination of barriers to agricultural autonomy. For the purposes of this study, agricultural autonomy is defined as a theoretical condition of independence and self-government applied to the cultivation practices of resource poor farmers in Guatemala. The concepts of economic, political, and social autonomy will create a framework in which development in Guatemala’s poorest highland communities can be discussed, understood, and aided in a way that is suitable and humane. I will argue that farmers who have a sustainable livelihood will not exploit natural resources and these resources, in turn, Abigail Percival · 5 · represent sources of wealth for their development and wellbeing. Agricultural autonomy, then, is a way to achieve this by entrusting the burden of conservation with the poor farmers themselves. Though not a method in and of itself, agricultural autonomy is a goal of development that by definition requires a “bottom-up” approach with extremely localized, if not individualistic, strategies. It is a rejection of the “Big Push” development plans of economists like Jeffrey Saachs but also of any approach that promotes dependence on outsiders, even on beneficial NGOs. Rather it turns Eurocentric notions of “progress” inside out and holds to the idea that farmers, locals, or communities know best how to deal with their individual problems.3 The underlying concepts are not new and have been expressed by many development practitioners who have worked in agricultural improvement. The ideas of participation and farmer-to-farmer development espoused by Eric Holt-Giménez, Roland Bunch, and Robert Chambers, in particular will inform the final section concerning what can and should be done for Guatemalan farmers. As I will show, obstacles to agricultural autonomy are far deeper than just single acts of violence – they are the social, economic, and political underpinnings of Guatemalan society. Barriers to economic autonomy include the various forms of debt peonage and of financial dependence on expensive inputs such as fertilizer and patent seeds. Political autonomy includes issues of land tenure, distribution and resource management as well as the freedom to decide for oneself the type of agriculture to practice without fear of oppression. Social or cultural autonomy refers to the recognition of indigenous capacity to innovate, respond, and teach agricultural methods within their own communities as well as a respect for the agricultural heritage of Mayan 3 Robert Chambers, "Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose Reality Counts?" Environment and Ubranization 7, no. 1 (1995), 173-204, http://eau.sagepub.com/content/7/1/173. Abigail Percival · 6 · cultivation. Autonomy, therefore, is as much a moral imperative as a practical one. In the words of economist Amartya Sen, “development is freedom.”4 II. IN THEIR OWN HANDS: HOW POOR FARMERS REPRESENT THE GREATEST THREAT AND THE MOST PROMISING SAVIOR OF AGRICULTURE IN GUATEMALA “… if improvement is going to begin anywhere, it will have to begin out in the country and in the country towns. This is not because of any intrinsic virtue that can be ascribed to rural people, but because of their circumstances. Rural people are living, and have lived for a very long time, at the site of the trouble. They see all around them, every day, the marks and scars of an exploitative national economy.” – Wendell Berry5 Throughout Guatemala, the extraordinary natural beauty of the landscape

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