Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:43:55.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Public Policy, Peasants, and Rural Development in Honduras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Charles D. Brockett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For approximately the last two-and-a-half decades it has been a stated goal of both Honduran and U.S. policy to improve the welfare of the Honduran people, both directly through the provision of services and indirectly through the promotion of economic development. The need is great; Honduras has the lowest per capita GNP in Central America ($660 in 1984) and the highest population growth rate (3.4%). It also has the second highest percentage of its population living in rural areas (61%). Consequently, rural development has been a primary concern of development programs.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 69 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kepner, Charles David Jr and Soothill, Jay Henry, The Banana Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism (New York, 1967, reissue of 1935).Google Scholar

2 Blutstein, Howard I. et al. , Area Handbook for Honduras (Washington, D.C., 1971), p. 177Google Scholar; U.S. General Accounting Office, Administration and Effectiveness of U.S. Economic and Military Aid to Honduras (Washington, D.C., 3 12. 1970), p. 4.Google Scholar

3 House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Interamerican Affairs, Foreign Assistance Legislation for FY 1980–1981, pt. 5, 96th Cong. 1st Sess. (20 02. 1979), p. 245.Google Scholar

4 Checchi, Vincent, Honduras: A Problem in Economic Development (New York, 1959), p. 52.Google Scholar

5 Posas, Mario and del Cid, Rafael, La construcción del sector público y del Estado Nacional en Honduras, 1876–1979 (San José, Costa Rica, 1981), pp. 86–8.Google Scholar

6 Fonck, Carlos O., Modernity, and Public Policies in the Context of the Peasant Sector: Honduras as a Case Study (Ithaca, unpublished Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1972), p. 24.Google Scholar

7 Bank, World et al. , Honduras: Agricultural / Rural Sector Survey, vol. 4 (1978)Google Scholar, annex 11; U.S. Agency for International Development, Congressional Presentation, Fiscal Year 1986, Annex 3, Latin America and the Caribbean, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1985), p. 127.Google Scholar

8 Martinson, Tommy Lee, ‘Economic Rent and Selected Change in Agricultural Production Along the Western Highway of Honduras’, Revista geográfica, 71, (diciembre 1969), pp. 65–74.Google Scholar

9 Posas and del Cid, op. cit., p. 87.

10 Boyer, Jefferson C., Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis in Southern Honduras (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1982), p. 188.Google Scholar

11 Keene, Beverly, ‘Export-Cropping in Central America’ (Washington, D.C., Bread for the World, Background Paper No. 43), p. 2.Google Scholar

12 Shane, Douglas R., Hoofprints on the Forest (Washington, D.C., study prepared for U.S. State Department, 1980), pp. 36, 42.Google Scholar

13 Slutzky, Daniel, ‘Agroindustria de la carne en Honduras’, Estudios Sociales Centro-americanos, vol. 7, no. 22 (1979), pp. 166–9Google Scholar. Even the one packing plant which is owned primarily by Honduran capital received loans from the U.S. agribusiness holding company, Latin American Agribusiness Development Corporation; see Boyer, op. cit., p. 93.

14 Shane, op. cit., p. 52.

15 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Attache Report: Honduras – Livestock and Meat (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

16 U.S. Agency for International Development, Honduras, Project Paper: Small Farmer Livestock Improvement (Washington, D.C., 1983), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

17 U.S. Agency for International Development, Honduras, Project Paper: Export Promotion and Services (Washington, D.C., 1984), p. 7.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

19 Ibid., p. 42.

20 U.S. Agency for International Development (1985), op. cit., pp. 115, 12–123.

21 Nesman, Edgar G., Peasant Mobilization and Rural Development (Cambridge, MA, 1981)Google Scholar; Staatz, John M. and Eicher, Carl K., ‘Agricultural Development in the Third World’, Agricultural Development in the Third World, Eicher, Carl K. and Staatz, John M. (eds.), (Baltimore, 1984).Google Scholar

22 Tendler, Judith, Intercountry Evaluation of Small Farmer Organizations: Final Report (on)Ecuador and Honduras (Washington, D.C., U.S. Agency for International Development Program Evaluation Studies, 1976), p. 28.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., p. 32.

24 United States Agency for International Development (1985), op. cit., p. 115.

25 Ibid., p. 176.

26 Weeks, John, The Economies of Central America (New York, 1985), p. 77.Google Scholar

27 For El Salvador see Durham, William H., Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, 1979)Google Scholar; for Guatemala, Brockett, Charles D., ‘Malnutrition, Public Policy and Agrarian Change in Guatemala’, Journal of lnteramerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 26, no. 4 (11, 1984Google Scholar). More generally, see de Janvry, Alain, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, 1981)Google Scholar; Feder, Ernst, ‘How Agribusiness Operates in Underdeveloped Agricultures: Harvard Business School Myths and Reality’, Development and Change, vol. 7 (10 1976)Google Scholar; Griffin, Keith, International Inequality and National Poverty (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; de Alcantara, Cynthia Hewitt, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture (Geneva, 1976)Google Scholar; and Pearse, Andrew, Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want (Oxford, 1980).Google Scholar

28 Brockett, Charles D., ‘The Commercialization of Agriculture and Rural Economic Security: the Case of Honduras’, Studies in Comparative International Development (forthcoming).Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 7.

30 Parson, Kenneth H., Agrarian Reform in Southern Honduras (Madison, University of Wisconsin, Land Tenure Center, Research Paper no. 67, 03 1976), pp. 11–15.Google Scholar

31 Durham, op. cit., p. 122.

32 Ruhl, Mark, ‘Agrarian Structure and Political Stability in Honduras’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 26, no. 1 (02 1984), p. 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Fonck, op. cit., pp. 28–9.

34 ‘Agrarian Reform Law in Honduras’, International Labour Review, vol. 87, no. 6 (06 1963), pp. 573–580.Google Scholar

35 Charles R. Burrows, Recorded interview by Dennis J. O'Brien, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program (4 Sept. 1969), p. 14.

36 U.S. Congress, Congressional Record (Washington, D.C., 10 2, 1962), pp. 21614–620.Google ScholarPubMed

37 Burrows, op. cit., pp. 16–17.

38 Charles R. Burrows. Letter to Edward M. Rowell, Department of State (18 November 1962), Presidential Office Files, Countries, Box 18, John F. Kennedy Library, p. 2.

39 Posas, Mario, ‘Política estatal y estructura agraria en Honduras (1950–1978)’, Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, vol. 8 (09–12 1979), p. 126.Google Scholar

40 Burrows (1969), op. cit., pp. 35–6.

41 The candidate, though, was ambivalent about the agrarian reform itself. Anderson, Thomas P., The War of the Dispossessed: Honduras and El Salvador, 1969 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1981), p. 113Google Scholar; Shaw, Royce Z., Central America: Regional Integration and National Political Development (Boulder, Co., 1979), p. 139.Google Scholar

42 Posas, op. cit., p. 60.

43 Posas and del Cid, op. cit., pp. 130–1.

44 Morris, James A., Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Military Rulers (Boulder, Co., 1984), pp. 45–50, 79–81, 96–100Google Scholar; Pearson, Neale J., ‘Peasant Pressure Groups and Agrarian Reform in Honduras, 1962–1977’, Change, Rural and Policy, Public, Avery, William P. et al. (eds.) (New York, 1980), pp. 297–320Google Scholar; Pfeil, Ulrike, Peasant Mobilization and Land Reform: A Theoretical Model and a Case Study (Honduras) (Gainesville: unpublished Master's thesis, University of Florida, 1977), pp. 77–144Google Scholar; Posas, op. cit., pp. 68–76; Posas and del Cid, op. cit., pp. 142–152; Ruhl, op. cit., pp. 49–56; and Volk, Steven, ‘Honduras: On the Border of War’, NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 15, no. 6 (11–12, 1981), pp. 14–23.Google Scholar

45 Boyer, op. cit., pp. 104–5.

46 Posas, op. cit., p. 80.

47 Ickis, John C., ‘Structural Responses to New Rural Development Strategies,’ Bureaucracy and the Poor, Korten, David C. and Alfonso, Felipe B. (eds.) (West Hartford, CT., 1983), p. 25.Google Scholar

48 Posas, op. cit., p. 101.

49 ‘Blood and Land’, Time (18 08. 1975), p. 36Google Scholar; Anderson, Thomas P., Politics in Central America (New York, 1982), pp. 117–118.Google Scholar

50 Posas and del Cid, op. cit., p. 211.

51 Posas, op. cit., pp. 97–111.

52 Ruhl, op. cit., p. 55. He notes that the reform ‘was very important symbolically because the program demonstrated the continued flexibility and reform potential of the Honduran government and fostered an “incrementalist” policy orientation among the peasant organizations’.

53 Ruhl, Mark J., ‘The Honduran Agrarian Reform under Suazo Córdova’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 39, no. 2 (Autumn 1985), pp. 73–4.Google Scholar

54 This was one of the precipitating causes of the so-called ‘soccer war’ of July 1969 between the two countries; see Anderson (1981), op. cit., pp. 90–3.

55 Volk, op. cit., pp. 20–3.

56 U.S. Agency for International Development, Honduras, Project Paper: Small Farmer Titling (Washington, D.C., 1982), p. 4.Google Scholar

57 Hatch, John K. and Flores, Aquiles Lanao, An Evaluation of the AIFLD/HISTADAUT Project Proposal To Assist Peasant Federations (Washington, D.C., prepared for U.S. Agency for International Development, 19 08. 1977), p. 13.Google Scholar

58 Ibid.; Tendler, op. cit.

59 U.S. Agency for International Development (1982), op. cit., p. 4.

60 Posas, op. cit., pp. 67–107; Slutzky, Daniel, ‘Notas sobre empresas transnacionales, agroindustriales y reforma agraria en Honduras’, Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, vol. 9 (05–08), pp. 35–48.Google Scholar

61 Boyer, op. cit., pp. 192–4. On the other hand, most of the reform sector is devoted to the production of basic grains; see Ruhl (1985), op. cit., p. 71.

62 U.S. Agency for International Development (1983), op. cit., pp. 6–7.

63 U.S. Agency for International Development (1982), op. cit., p. 6.

64 Ibid., p. 5.

65 Ibid., pp. 1–13, in 1981, the United States initiated a five-year $9.55 million program in Honduras to help coffee growers, including to combat coffee rust.

66 Tendler, op. cit., p. 8.

67 ‘Peasant Union Protests Arrests in Northwest’, Sula, San PedroTiempo (5 05 1982), p. 5Google Scholar (JPRS 1982 – 80878, p. 42).

68 Kincaid, Douglas, ‘“We Are the Agrarian Reform”: Rural Politics and Agrarian Reform,’ Honduras: Portrait of a Captive Nation, Peckenham, Nancy and Street, Annie (eds.) (New York, 1985), p. 144Google Scholar. Also see Ruhl (1985), op. cit., pp. 75–6.

69 This is, of course, in step with the evolution of the agrarian reform in El Salvador, with the change from redistribution to ‘land to the tiller’; see Simon, Laurence R. and Stephens, James C. Jr, El Salvador hand Reform, 1980–1981: Impact Audit (Boston, 1982).Google Scholar