Abstract

HURTADO-PAZ Y PAZ, Laura. Colonization Programs and the Counterinsurgency State in Guatemala. LiminaR [online]. 2019, vol.17, n.2, pp.15-31. ISSN 2007-8900.  https://doi.org/10.29043/liminar.v17i2.677.

This essay focuses on the Patrimonio Agrario Colectivo, a way of allocation and transferring “national land” by the Guatemalan state from 1962 to 1978. This method of appropriating land and natural resources allowed indigenous communities to settle on lands that civilian and military elites were about to occupy and exploit, by installing cheap labor in the vicinity while simultaneously responding to peasant groups’ demands for land. Indigenous communities settled along the agricultural frontier in accordance with their own ancestral structures and internal rules. The Patrimonio Agrario Colectivo is currently (2002-2018) a focal point of the modern process of peasant dispossession by the palm oil agro-industry, eroding the integration and survival of various community indigenous organizational structures in these regions.

Keywords : land property; Alliance for Progress; Patrimonio Agrario Colectivo; community organization; palm oil plantation.