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Malnutrition, Public Policy, and Agrarian Change in Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Charles D. Brockett
Charles D. Brockett*
Affiliation:
University of the South (Sewanee, TN)
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Extract

Widespread malnutrition persists in Guatemala despite substantial economic growth since 1960. Indeed, there was a deterioration in the living standards of many (for example, the Indians in the Western highlands) even prior to the destruction caused by the government's pacification campaigns of the early 1980s. Chronic and widespread malnutrition has not been the result of just “natural causes”; to the contrary, it is the intent of this study to document that Guatemala's extraordinarily high level of malnutrition is the result of structural transformations and public policy, as well as demographics.

This argument has been documented best, in a Central American context, by two excellent works on El Salvador. Durham (1979: 21-51) presented a thorough analysis that demonstrates that land scarcity has not been primarily the result of a high rate of population growth (although that certainly contributes) but, instead, of increasing land concentration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , November 1984 , pp. 477 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1984

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