Abstract

CASTELLANOS NAVARRETE, Antonio. Oil palm on peasant lands: The politics of territorial transformations in Chiapas, Mexico. Rev. pueblos front. digit. [online]. 2018, vol.13, e.2018.v13.357. ISSN 1870-4115.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2018.v13.357.

This article explains why and how numerous smallholders have converted their land to oil palm in Soconusco and in the southern Lacandon rainforest of Chiapas. Based on a Gramscian political ecology perspective, it shows how the oil palm expansion in Chiapas has been driven by a set of neoliberal and corporatist political practices. These practices were pushed by the state and, to some extent, consented by the rural population given the agrarian and environmental history of the study regions. This article shows that politics and power dynamics are central to the mechanisms that make certain crops and rural development models predominant.

Keywords : agroindustry; biofuels; Mexico; rural modernisation; neoliberalisation; territory.

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