6. Guatemala

Photo: Claudio Ronchini

The rural population of Guatemala suffers from one of the most unjust
systems of land concentration in the world. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, in 1998 just 0.15% of the landowners had 70% of the arable land, mostly devoted to export cropping, while 96% of the country's farmers occupied just 20% of the farmland. 90% of the inhabitants of rural areas live in poverty, and more than 500,000 are below subsistence levels. At the same time, Guatemala has one of the world's most stable proportions of the national population located in the countryside, hovering at about 69%, and more than 50% of the national workforce is employed in agriculture and agriculturally-related jobs.

Over time the degree of land concentration has intensified. Between 1964 and 1979, the number of farms of less than 3.5 hectares doubled, while the average size of farms of less than 7 hectares fell from 2.4 to 1.8 hectares from 1950 to 1979. According the 1979 Agricultural Census, 88% of all farms were less than the 7 hectares deemed the minimum to maintain a family, and this 88% of all farms possessed just 6% of all arable land. In contrast, the 2% of all farms that were classified as haciendas (large estates) had fully 65% of arable land.

The National Coordination of Indigenous People and Peasants (CONIC) estimates that of 10.8 million hectares of surface area in the country, only 2.8 million are being productively cultivated, with another 2.4 million hectares that are being used in ways that are unproductive or are underutilized. Studies indicate that some 5.5 million hectares would have to be distributed-more than half the national territory-if each landless or near-landless family were to have access to the 7 hectares needed for subsistence.

Historical Overview

The hacienda system in Guatemala has its roots in the Spanish Conquest, when the land was seized from indigenous peoples and given as compensation to the new Spanish colonists. After independence in 1821, land ownership remained highly skewed, and the Church and indigenous communities lost their rights to land ownership.

In 1890 coffee made up 96% of all Guatemalan exports. The peasant sector had been left behind, restricted to the most infertile soils, and food imports began. Peasants began their annual migrations down from the mountains to the coast in search of seasonal jobs.

The agrarian law of 1894 allowed the sale of state lands to individuals, in other words, land was to be a commodity and not a public good. In 1901 the United Fruit Co.-known today as Chiquita-began its activities in Guatemala. Between 1924 and 1930, the government rented 188,682 hectares of land on the fertile Pacific plains to this foreign company.

The company paid only a small tax on its exports and earned its profits tax free, and it was also made exempt from existing labor laws.
In 1945, Juan José Arévalo won the presidency, and decreed a 'land to the tiller' reform under which titles were to given to sharecroppers, tenants and squatters who had tilled the same piece of land for at least ten years. Elected President in 1951, Jacobo Arbenz promised to transform Guatemala into a modern capitalist nation via industrialization and land reform.

On June 17, 1952, the Congress of Guatemala approved the Agrarian Reform Law. Its principle objectives were to eliminate all forms of feudalism and labor servitude, distribute land to the landless and near landless, and provide smallholders with credit and technical assistance.
Opposition to agrarian reform was rapid and decisive. The rural elites, the Catholic Church, certain sectors of the middle class, expropriated landowners and foreign corporations, like United Fruit Co. all came out against land reform. Since the subsequent coup in 1954 not one piece of land has been expropriated in Guatemala, reinforcing an unjust system of land tenure.

Land Markets

In 1980 the US Agency for International Development (USAID) noted the intensifying pressure for land and recommended land reform via the market. From 1984 to 1990 USAID created and supported the Penny Foundation (Fundación del Centavo) program, which purchased 28 haciendas which were then sub-divided into 1,400 collectively titled parcels, and provided beneficiary families with production and marketing guidelines. The mechanism was to sell the land but create a credit bank so farmers in poor communities could buy it. In other words, it was actually a "land market" system rather than a market-led land reform.

In 1994 a new government agency was created, to be administered by the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA), which would intervene in the land market, giving assistance to renters, smallholders and the landless who wished to buy land. This agency, called FONTIERRAS, has two programs. One provides public grants for land acquisition and promotes markets for buying and selling land; and another gives subsidized credit and technical assistance to new farmers to help them initiate productive farming businesses.

However, the implementation of this program has been slow. By October of 2000, fewer than 4,000 families had benefited from it. The World Bank, which finances this program, declared its lack of interest in continuing to do so. According to the United Nations, the basic obstacles that FONTIERRAS would have to overcome in order to carry out a significant redistribution of land include insufficient staff and resources. Beyond this, various issues related to market-style land reforms should be highlighted. The most cited pillar of this type of reform is the so-called "willing seller/willing buyer" principle. The truth is that given the nature of land concentration in Guatemala, it is almost impossible for peasants to participate in land markets.

The World Bank points out that landowners are reluctant to participate in this scheme because they fear it will encourage demands for land and the incidence of spontaneous land occupations. Furthermore, the majority of the landless and near landless do not have the resources or ability to negotiate effectively in the land market. Overall, the implementation of FONTIERRAS, which had been part of the 1996 Peace Accords, has really only focused on the negotiated sale of some unutilized public lands.

Land speculation and associated corruption are rampant in Guatemala. According to some estimates, from 50 to 90% of properties do not have up-to-date titles, while others suggest that the amount of land registered with titles-real or fraudulent-is double the actual surface are of the country. This ambiguity in the land registry system has also been cited as an obstacle to reforms based on land markets.

Currently Guatemala is the only Central American country that lacks a national land cadastre and registry. There is a lack of technical capacity to carry out a national cadastre, and current efforts are notable for the lack of community participation. The international agencies failed to talk to each other about coordinating their efforts. Currently, their available resources are on the order of USD $62.5 million.

Alternative Proposals for Rural Development

A broad group of social movements, research institutes, religious and human rights organizations have launched a proposal titled: "Blazing the Trail: Proposed Platform for Rural Development." Among the organizations elaborating this documents were CONIC, the Guatemalan Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences (AVANCSO), the Human Rights Legal Center (CDHL) and the Pastoral Land Commission (PTI). Together they formed the Agrarian Platform.

According to this proposal, the fundamental first principle of rural development is equitable access to land, backed by investment in appropriate infrastructure and services to facilitate sustainable livelihoods, and access to land should not be limited by the laws of the market. They propose the dismantling of the agroexport development model, the democratization of access to land, the transfer of titles to peasant and indigenous communities, and the diversification of the economy.

CONIC has some 80,000 members, about 95%of whom are indigenous people, spread out over in 14 of the 22 departments of Guatemala. Their principle objectives are to fight for the right to land and for better access to public services for poorer farmers. Beyond that they have about half a million associated peasants in 20 of the 22 departments, covering five regions of the country.

For the peasant organizations, FONTIERRAS doesn't work for a variety of reasons, including the underlying conditions of extreme land concentration, the lack of resources to fund the program, and the dominant model of agricultural production. And for those few who actually receive land this way, there are no programs to help them get their products to the market, they are unable to pay the debts they acquired in purchasing the land, and sooner or later their new land is repossessed.

A study carried out by CNOC and CONGCOOP proposes a greater degree of state intervention in the recovery of lands seized illegally during the military dictatorship, and in the distribution of expropriated land by INTA, which is actually permitted under the constitution (though never done in practice). They suggest landowners be indemnified for their expropriated lands.

The study found that the principle factors impeding access to land are:
Some 95% of all properties are not registered.

The colonial land registry was never modernized.

There is little or no credit available to small farmers; 95% of all credit goes to urban areas, and even in FONTIERRAS the amount budgeted for credit is minimal.

There is little or no technical assistance for small farmers, since the Ministry of Agriculture dismantled the extension service and FONTIERRAS offers assistance only to the few families who are its beneficiaries.

Text based on TANAKA, Laura Saldivar e WITTMAN, Hannah - Peace agreement and "Fontierras" in Guatemala

7. India

8. Mexico

9. South Africa

10. Thailand

11. Zimbabwe

12. Positions of Via Campesina

13. Bibliography

14. Table of Contents