Anuario Centro de Investigación y Estudios Políticos

Review of "The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power" by Andrés León Araya

2024-11-27T23:03:41-06:00

What would happen if the reason of the current turn towards authoritarism in Central American was not the rejection of representative democracy reestablished in the 1990s, but a consequence of the efforts to reestablish it? This is one of the most insightful questions that lingered on me after reading The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power in Honduras, by Andrés León Araya and published by Georgia University Press. This book is an interesting study of the interaction between agrarian movements and the historical process of state formation in Honduras, explained through the perspective of a small, and apparently marginalized region of that country and its nevertheless, crucial role for explaining the origins of the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya Rosales. Put differently, the book offers an in-depth look to the agrarian and political economic origins of this coup through an unusual case study. One of the objectives being to criticize the dominant narrative of democratization for explaining the coup, by demonstrating how the pacification of Honduras led to the consolidation of neoliberal exploitation without dealing with the social contradictions that provoked the social conflicts of the past, which are now resurgent amidst a return to autocracy, populism, state capture, extractivism and social exclusion.

Regularization as a racialized process of land transfer in Guatemala

2024-04-04T12:54:12-06:00

This article discusses the process of regularization of land tenure of Maya Q'eqchi' communities in the Northern Lowlands (NL) of Guatemala, in the departments of Petén, Alta Verapaz and Izabal, in the last 23 years since the creation of the Land Fund in 1999, at the end of the internal armed conflict that lasted 35 years (1961-1996). This process was a commitment of the State after the signing of the peace agreement in 1996, which has not yet been completed. In its course over time, the process of regularization has characteristics that allow it to be characterized as "racializing", insofar as the conceptions and practices or omissions of the state contribute to the reproduction of the hegemonic power relations that have accompanied the history of the creation of agrarian property in the country. This has happened since the colony and the liberal reform of the late nineteenth century, which has reinforced state and social racism against indigenous communities. The author reviews the actions of the agrarian institution that should lead and carry out the regularization process, its results and its significance in the long process of construction of agrarian property in the country. It investigates the impacts that it has had – and continues to have – in particular for the Q'eqchi' communities in the NL, for their forms of community organization, their relationship with land and natural resources, and the governance of the territory.

Pesticide registration, capital and the state in Costa Rica: regulating through impasse

2024-08-30T11:00:49-06:00

Costa Rica’s prodigious use of pesticides and the burgeoning plantation sector that these agrochemicals support exacerbates the tensions between extraction and preservation at the heart of the country’s development model. We explore these tensions through a study of the country’s pesticide registry, the regulatory process to approve active ingredients and formulations for use. After nearly two decades of reform efforts, the registry is widely recognized to be non-functioning: most of the country’s pesticides exist in administrative limbo and relatively few new compounds have been approved. Based on extensive interviews and in-depth policy analysis, we construct four phases of reform and use a strategic-relational approach to the state to analyze this process. We conceptualize the registry’s gridlock as a form of governance that we term regulation by impasse, an arrangement reproduced through disputes within and between the cognizant ministries, juridical bodies and other regulating authorities, in relation to the shifting strategies and contexts of political economic and wider social forces. We argue that hegemony is tenuously maintained through the registry dispute itself, while revealing the deeply frayed condition of the Costa Rican development model.

Do the deputies we vote legislate? Analizing the proportionality of the Costa Rican electoral system in the legislative elections (2002 – 2022)

2023-10-23T10:18:45-06:00

This article quantifies the disproportionality in the Costa Rican legislative elections of 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. In other words, evaluates the distribution of seats according to the votes won by each political party (Lijphart 1994, Shugart and Taagepera 2018) that took part of the legislative ballot in this temporal delimitation. Based on the disaggregation of the data by electoral districts in each electoral process, this article analyzes the main features of the electoral system and their influence on the disproportionality index.

A mere formalism? The institutional origins of environmental impacto assessments in Costa Rica

2023-08-22T08:22:51-06:00

This article analyzes how the political conflict surrounding sustainable environmental regulation by the State has influenced the institutional design of the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA) and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), studying the political process of the creation of SETENA. The research was based on political ecology as a 'macro-theory' and historical institutionalism as a theory of medium scope. An exploratory and qualitative approach was used. The analysis was carried out through research techniques such as situational analysis, semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. Finally, the research concluded that, during the study period, certain groups were privileged in terms of their participation in the spaces where the functioning of SETENA and the EIA system in Costa Rica has been defined. The way in which this institution and the EIA system were designed reflect the tensions inherent in the defining of environmental usage and sustainable development.

Family planning in Costa Rica: discussions, polarization and the population conference in Cairo, 1978-1994

2024-01-25T22:17:37-06:00

Family planning services began to be officially developed in Costa Rica at the end of the 1960s; during their first years of existence, they were promoted by private organizations in conjunction with state institutions. With the government of Rodrigo Carazo starting in 1978, the program was criticized within the framework of the formulation of a population policy. During the 1980s, family planning was the subject of public debate, where the media were configured into platforms that allowed the exchange of opinions for and against it. This article aims to analyze the discursive deployment that occurred in those years, based on journalistic sources and state documents. Among the main criticisms of these services was the idea that an anti-natalist policy was being consolidated in the country, which followed the guidelines of foreign organizations, while the sectors that supported family planning emphasized that it was always a right and a voluntary service. The discussions were transformed in 1994 when the International Conference on Population was held in Cairo, highlighting positions for and against its Action Plan. The axes of the global debate on population turned towards other aspects such as reproductive rights and same sex relationships. It is concluded that, to understand the coordinates of the current debates around the self-proclaimed “pro-life” sectors and the struggles for the self-determination of bodies, it is necessary to have a historical vision that considers these antecedents.

"Save the country!" The protests of the National Rescue Movement of 2020 in Costa Rica

2023-05-21T19:57:44-06:00

Through the combination of the Analysis of the Situation (ADC) and the Analysis of Protest Events (AEP) this work focuses on understanding the dynamics of the mobilizations undertaken by the National Rescue Movement (MRN) during the period from July 22 to November 18, 2020. The analysis focuses on the first place in capturing the development of the situation from the main actors, events, scenarios and correlations of forces; and, on second place in reconstructing the day of mobilizations from the demanding actors, the defendant actors, the repertoires of action and the different demands. Among the main results, it concludes the emergence of a new actor with radical tendencies must be understood from the context of exception provided for by COVID-19.

Borders and margins in focus: spatial contradictions in Central America and Mexico

2024-10-15T05:12:56-06:00

This thematic section employs a diverse panorama of empirical cases with the intention to offer evidence of the strategic character of borders and margins, along which biophysical (land, water and jungles) and human resources (work, knowledge and livelihoods) are incorporated into specific forms of capital accumulation. Simultaneously, situated knowledges allow the authors to highlight the forms of dispossession, exclusion and/or subordination, as well as the production of the social and environmental vulnerabilities related to the agrarian and socioenvironmental changes and transitions of the 20th and 21st centuries, which often grant the frontier and the peripheries, its marginal character.

Unravelling the Central American borders through geography: interview with Lucile Medina

2024-07-30T21:08:02-06:00

This is an interview made by Dr. Tania Rodríguez to Dr. Lucile Medina, a french geography expert and researcher on border dymanics. In this manuscipt, Dr. Medina discusses about her academic background and how her research was redirected towards the Central American territory. The interviewee emphasizes the importance of expand the geographical border definition beyond the geometric delineation by considering a more interpretative point of view, where borders are more than divisions and incoporate multidisciplinary perspectives. In essence, for Dr. Medina, the traditional border definition falls short to explain the multiple dynamics unfolding in the nearby territories, which are constantly transforming and suffer of highly porous interactions. Lastly, she concludes with an evaluation of the current border dynamics and how what once was characterized by an opening of borders through community collaboration is now transforming into a negative cooperation towards closure due to the involvement of the governments.

Agrarian frontiers in the 21th Century: analytical notes from two regions between Mexico and Guatemala

2024-02-04T20:00:23-06:00

Contemporary forms of capitalist expansion have placed the territorial question at the center of academic debates, promoting the actualization of old concerns, as well as the opening of new horizons of discussion. For this article, it is of interest to reflect on what these discussions contribute to the study of the so-called agrarian frontiers. That is, those spaces classically considered as spaces of opportunity for the deployment of projects of capitalist expansion and territorial control. It is undeniable that this type of spatial production has been constitutive of regional configurations (subnational, but also cross-border), as well as the heterogeneous processes of state formation throughout Latin America. Currently, a large part of the agrarian frontiers present notable social, environmental and infrastructural transformations, and even lack “free lands.” However, far from being oblivious to global economic-political transformations, they are once again in the spotlight. In this sense, it is pertinent to ask: How have agrarian frontiers been transforming at the beginning of the 21st century? Since it is convenient to consider these questions in a situated manner, the article reflects in the light of two agrarian borders that share the same line of international division, without being formally constituted as a cross-border zone. Thus, taking into account their common aspects and their respective specificities, the question previously formulated is answered and useful analytical notes are offered for similar contexts in Latin America.

Between the production of non-timber forest resources and internal migration: different responses to the neoliberalization process in two indigenous localities of the Veracruz isthmus

2024-01-31T09:30:49-06:00

The central proposition of this article is that the restructuring of agricultural and rural spaces in the neoliberal context is a varied, dynamic and multidimensional process, which can acquire very different characteristics even within the same region and in neighbouring localities. This paper analyses the diverse ways in which neoliberal policies have transformed the livelihoods of two contiguous indigenous localities located in the south of the state of Veracruz (Mexico) over the course of three decades. It emphasises the importance of actions derived from local and extra-local institutions in confronting such policies. In one of the study localities, its insertion in a Natural Protected Area (NPA), plus the persistence of a communal access modality to ejido lands that prevailed until the beginning of the land titling process promoted by the Agrarian Law of 1992, allowed its producers to move from harvesting to the cultivation of camedor palm to cope with the deregulation of the coffee market. In the other locality, located in the same region but mainly dedicated to small-scale cattle farming, their only option to face the recurrent economic crises that have occurred since the 1980s has been internal migration to join the labour markets of the maquiladora industry for export on the northern border of the country and the capitalist agricultural fields of northwest Mexico. The conclusions reflect on the role that local agrarian and productive history has played in the development of responses to neoliberal policies in each of the study localities.

Mining in the margins: between the strategy of state integration and the process of territorial fragmentation in the Atlantic region of Panama

2023-11-30T12:43:11-06:00

In this paper, we describe the multifaceted dynamics of the Cobre Panama mining project in the local space by questioning the modalities of construction of a new extraction territory organized by and for the exploitation of mining resources. To do this, we place the development of mining activities in the Panamanian Atlantic region within a broader process of desire for territorial and political integration of a space until then in a marginal situation vis-à-vis the national territory. This demonstrates how mining can be mobilized in a political strategy of territorial reorganization and full exercise of national sovereignty over an area.

The example of the development of the Cobre Panama mine in the Panamanian Atlantic region demonstrates the complexity of the territorial processes induced by the insertion of extractive activities. On the one hand, the design of Cobre Panama's mining infrastructure responds to a logic of isolation and immunization with respect to its host territory, seeking through different mechanisms to protect itself from its threats and dangers.

Beyond this observation, we show that modifications to the different governance frameworks, i.e. the evolution of the political-administrative framework and the frameworks for managing community relations, are one of the modalities of territorial integration. These integration dynamics are notably the result of a privatization of local governance through the establishment by the company of specific mechanisms for supervising community relations.

Value and extraction of labor in a Central American monoculture: rural reconfigurations and socio-territorial production of difference in Costa Rican pineapple plantations

2024-02-21T16:20:16-06:00

The north of Costa Rica, as a marginal region, an agricultural frontier and a zone of opportunity for agroindustrial capital investments, has been profoundly transformed in the last twenty years by the introduction of pineapple monoculture. This process implies a reconfiguration of rural territories, social relations of production and labor markets. It is also located in the most asymmetrical space in the Central American region, since the imbalances in production, development and salary levels are considerable between Costa Rica and the neighboring country to the north, Nicaragua. In this paper, we discuss the notion of agrarian extractivism from the point of view of human resources, in particular the peasant and migrant labor force (temporary and of Nicaraguan origin). Next, we present the context in which pineapple expansion has taken place in this region and the research methods implemented. In the third section, we analyze the impacts of agrarian extractivism from the point of view of the transformations of rural labor, through two main processes: on the one hand, peasant labor and its role in the monoculture economy, and on the other hand, migrant labor, which is essential but nevertheless invisibilized and precarized.

In this paper, we discuss the notion of agrarian extractivism from the point of view of human resources, in particular labor force and migration (mainly temporary and of Nicaraguan origin). Next, we present the context in which pineapple expansion has taken place in this region and the research methods implemented. In the third section, we analyze the impacts of agrarian extractivism from the point of view of rural labor transformations, through three main processes: 1) the retreat of the peasantry; 2) the generalization and imposition of industrial agricultural labor; 3) the dependence on migrant labor.