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

Abstract

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.