Introduction

Why, and how, do states title large swaths of communal lands to Indigenous and ethnic groups? Building on and expanding existing work on state building, this theory-building study proposes that high-ranking government officials title ethnic communal lands to extend the power of the state in contested peripheral localities. Political scientists have examined why and how governments create private-property regimes, institutions for taxation and education, and bureaucracies that bolster the modern state (Reference MylonasMylonas 2013; Reference SlaterSlater 2010; Reference Centeno and FerraroCenteno and Ferraro 2013). Until recently, less emphasis has been accorded to ethnic communal land titling as a tool of statecraft. My study provides insight about state building by focusing on the motivations of political elites in the central government for titling communal lands to Indigenous and other ethnic groups.

A first generation of studies about ethnic land rights has examined the rise and spread of formal institutions at the international and national level (Reference Van CottVan Cott 2000, Reference Van Cott and Sieder2002; Reference Sieder and SiederSieder 2002; Reference Plant and SiederPlant 2002; Reference La PeñaLa Peña 2005; Reference Henders, Boulden and KymlickaHenders 2015). These studies have emphasized that Indigenous people’s mobilization and international allies’ pressure has been essential for the formal adoption of communal land rights based on ethnicity, but analysts have been skeptical about rights implementation, especially in developing countries, where the rule of law is weak, political corruption is high, and political appointees, rather than independent land commissions, make land titling decisions (Reference Van CottVan Cott 2000; Reference StocksStocks 2005; Reference Brinks, Levitsky and MurilloBrinks, Levitsky, and Murillo 2020). A second generation of studies is paying analytic attention to a wave of ethnic communal land titling that has spread through the Americas since the 1990s. In Bolivia, for instance, 20 percent of the territory is titled ethnic land (Reference Reyes-García, Paneque-Gálvez, Bottazzi, Luz, Gueze, Macía, Orta-Martínez and PachecoReyes-García et al. 2014; Reference Colque Fernández, Tinta and SanjinésColque Fernández, Tinta, and Sanjinés 2016). Surprisingly, in Colombia and Nicaragua, where the majority of people do not self-identify as Indigenous, that number is higher than 30 percent (Reference Salinas AbdalaSalinas Abdala 2014).Footnote ¹ On average, 11 percent of the territory in Latin American countries is titled as ethnic land (Reference Altamirano RayoAltamirano Rayo 2017).

To learn about the motivations behind ethnic land titling, I focus on Honduras, where people that self-identify as Indigenous make up about 7 percent of the national population, and titled ethnic lands cover about 13 percent of the national territory, an extent approximate to the Latin American average (Reference Davis-CastroDavis-Castro 2020), which makes Honduras an appropriate case study for theory generation. I approach this issue by demonstrating that political elites in the central government use communal land titling to Indigenous and other ethnic groups to meet the state’s own security needs. In the Honduran case, criminal organizations contested the state’s territorial power in remote localities without state presence. Presidents and the military used ethnic land titling to recover control of those regions. Analyzing the interaction between security interests and ethnic communal land titling in Honduras is important for a number of reasons.

First, much of the existing scholarship on ethnic land rights focuses on the origin and spread of formal institutions (Reference Assies, van der Haar and HoekemaAssies, van der Haar, and Hoekema 2000; Reference Van CottVan Cott 2000; Reference Rodríguez GaravitoRodríguez Garavito 2015; Reference Rodríguez-PiñeroRodríguez-Piñero Royo 2010; Reference Verdum and GrijalvaVerdum and Grijalva 2009; Reference Uprimny YepesUprimny 2010; Reference Lucero, Eisenstadt, Danielson, Corres and Sorroza PoloLucero 2013). The normative power behind ethnic land rights has played an important role in driving the research agenda (Reference BryskBrysk 2000; Reference LightfootLightfoot 2016). Scholars are now exploring questions about implementation (Reference Kröger and LalanderKröger and Lalander 2016; Reference Otto and HoekemaOtto and Hoekema 2012; Reference Martí i PuigMartí i Puig 2010; Reference Ubink, Hoekema and AssiesUbink, Hoekema, and Assies 2009; Reference Assies and PuigAssies 2007). Like the majority of countries in the Americas, Honduras has adopted international and national legislation that recognizes the land rights of Indigenous and ethnic groups. The Honduran case offers a productive setting for continuing to focus the research agenda beyond institutional adoption and into implementation issues.

Second, many scholars assume that ethnic land titling is uncommon in weak institutional environments where economic groups that covet ethnic lands are seen as powerful, overriding forces in political decision-making processes (Reference GonzálezGonzález 2015; Reference Aguilar-St⊘enAguilar-Støen 2016; Reference Kröger and LalanderKröger and Lalander 2016). Analysts often depict government authorities as members of informal power structures and corruption networks who are unwilling to realize the socioeconomic rights of marginalized ethnic groups (Reference Velásquez RunkVelásquez Runk 2012; Reference Gonzales and GonzálezGonzales and González 2015; Reference ShipleyShipley 2016). Under this rendition, political decisions result from bargaining outcomes between government officials and economic groups. Honduras is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the Western Hemisphere. High levels of poverty and income inequality have resulted in and been reinforced by widespread political corruption (Reference Warf and StewartWarf and Stewart 2016), making the country one of the most corrupt countries in the Americas (Transparency International 2016). Hence, the Honduran context allows for probing whether the pattern of economic-based political decision-making persists under all conditions in weak institutional environments, and under which conditions government authorities might realize the historical socioeconomic claims of marginalized groups.

Finally, ethnic land titling is widely considered to result from a combination of grassroots and international activism. There is a strong belief that massive titling programs are a reaction to the mobilization strategies that Unity of Mosquitia (Moskitia Asia Takanka, MASTA), an Indigenous political organization, used to obtain greater economic and political participation. However, internationally connected grassroots organizations, such as the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras, COPINH), the Fraternal Organization of Black Hondurans (Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH), and the Tawahka Indigenous Federation of Honduras (Federación Indígena Tawahka de Honduras, FITH)—all among the oldest and most experienced organizations in the country—have consistently claimed communal land rights by using similar mobilization tactics (Reference Gómez, Puig and SanahujaGómez 2004; Reference AndersonAnderson 2007; Reference BrondoBrondo 2010, Reference Brondo2013; Reference MollettMollett 2013; Reference ThorneThorne 2016; Reference LoperenaLoperena 2016; Reference Jokela-PansiniJokela-Pansini 2016). Rather than being responsive, the government has failed to protect grassroots leaders (Reference GyntherGynther 2016; Global Witness 2017) and purposely fragmented their land claims (Reference BrondoBrondo 2007). The government has also treated COPINH, OFRANEH, and FITH with less generosity. Determining the motivations behind this differentiation in treatment has important implications for grassroots mobilization strategies in the Honduran context.

Although previous studies have emphasized international norms and social movements as factors shaping ethnic land titling, this study focuses on the security interests of high-ranking government officials as an additional but crucial motivator. My research does so by comparing titling patterns across Honduras, bringing together in-depth subnational studies in anthropology and geography on participatory mapping projects (i.e., the practice of producing maps of customary use of land and resources with the involvement of Indigenous people) with grassroots movements’ demands for guaranteeing Indigenous and ethnic land rights (Reference BryanBryan 2011; Reference MollettMollett 2013; Reference Webber and GordonWebber and Gordon 2013; Reference Portillo Villeda, Stahler-Sholk, Vanden and BeckerPortillo Villeda 2014). Based on semistructured elite interviews, data on ethnic land titling, reports on drug-trafficking, and notes from three months of fieldwork in seven sites in Honduras—including intense on-the-ground work in its southeastern region—my study suggests that analyses of political decision-making in weak institutional environments should also consider security interests as an important factor.

Through a close study of Mosquitia, Honduras’s southeastern region chosen for its surprisingly high communal land-titling levels, I demonstrate the powerful role that security interests play in producing unexpected institutional outcomes. I adopt a narrow definition of security interests that focuses on territorial control by the central government, rather than a broader conception which includes the provision of protection and public goods for citizens (Reference EnloeEnloe 2016; Reference HyndmanHyndman 2007). In the Honduran case, security interests translate into an anti-narcotic strategy intended to recover physical access to Mosquitia for state authorities, not a strategy that produces much-needed security services for local inhabitants. I build on the work of Catherine Boone (Reference Boone2014), which highlights how the government manipulates different types of property regimes in sub-Saharan Africa to secure political order. The analysis focuses on the crucial role that ethnic land titling plays as an anti-narcotics strategy. I present Honduran officials as strategic actors who seek to reclaim territories controlled by rival nonstate actors to reproduce the state’s power. The state’s infrastructural reach constrains the range of action of these strategic actors. Presidents and the military are incentivized to penetrate regions that Indigenous and other ethnic groups inhabit and that organized crime occupies. In a context where the local population resists direct state domination, government officials use ethnic land titling as a relatively cost-efficient technique to govern local civil society. The need to reclaim territorial power informs the state-building strategy that authorities adopt.

The analysis of land institutions as a mechanism to secure state rule builds on an extensive literature in political science and comparative sociology. That literature upholds that the design, and redesign, of land tenure regimes is a strategy that states use to reinforce rule (Reference AndersonAnderson 1974; Reference ScottScott 2009). From a historical and comparative perspective, the argument presented in this article is not surprising: central government officials have allocated land to guarantee security objectives in disparate contexts, including North America, Africa, and Asia (Reference MamdaniMamdani 1996; Reference BooneBoone 2003, Reference Boone2014; Reference Engerman and MetzerEngerman and Metzer 2004; Reference Davidson and HenleyDavidson and Henley 2007; Reference HarrisHarris 2002). Yet arguments about ethnic land titling as a means to secure state rule have not resonated in the Latin America literature. Most of the work on Latin America regards ethnic land titling as a way to uphold Indigenous autonomy rather than as a security strategy that reinforces state power. By using original qualitative evidence from Honduras, I propose a different perspective. Honduran authorities have replaced state property and private property in land with communal property. Because of the concentration of state-sanctioned communal property in the eastern region of Mosquitia but not elsewhere, Honduras offers insightful conditions to use comparative logic to pinpoint the motivations of decision-makers.

Concepts

Douglass North (Reference North1991) has defined institutions as “humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights)” (97). I leverage this bifurcated definition of institutions to analyze the implementation of formal property rights in land. At the center of my inquiry is the motivation for the selective observance of formal rights that allocate collective land and natural resources to Indigenous and other ethnic groups, or what I have termed ethnic communal property rights.

Ethnic communal property rights are formal institutions that govern the use, access, management, and tenure of land and land-based natural resources on the basis of ethnicity. Formal legal recognition happens when the state adopts constitutional provisions, ratifies international treaties, or enacts domestic laws that incorporate these rights as part of the country’s legal framework. Since the 1980s, countries in the Americas have codified laws that recognize ethnic communal property rights in constitutions,Footnote ² signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and ratified ILO Convention 169, which orders the titling of Indigenous territoriesFootnote ³ (Reference AnayaAnaya 2004; Reference Rodríguez-PiñeroRodríguez-Piñero 2010). A large body of literature has explored the drivers and diversity in form of this wave of formal recognition (Reference AnayaAnaya 2004; Reference Rodríguez-PiñeroRodríguez-Piñero Royo 2010; Reference GilbertGilbert 2016).

There are five distinct types of property rights: the rights of access, use, management, exclusion, and alienation (Reference OstromOstrom 2003). Countries do not always recognize the same bundle of rights to ethnic groups. The law could grant ethnic people collective control over land and natural resources, which entails a degree of self-government (Reference YasharYashar 1999; Reference GonzálezGonzález 2015; Reference EngleEngle 2010; Reference BooneBoone 2019). Conversely, local people might have narrow rights of access, use, and management (Reference Agrawal and OstromAgrawal and Ostrom 2016). In that case, the state devolves only limited decision-making powers to ethnic groups. In all cases, the state affords members of certain ethnic groups the legal right to exclude nonmembers from enjoying land rights. In addition, group members cannot alienate their rights to ethnic outsiders; the sale or transfer of land is illegal. Neither individual members nor the ethnic community as a whole have full ownership rights, only proprietor rights.

Government officials must activate formal ethnic communal property rights for these institutions to have actual political effect (Reference CareyCarey 2000; Reference Levitsky and MurilloLevitsky and Murillo 2009); this occurs through titling programs, in this context. Ethnic communities may exercise de facto property rights, but the state may disregard or undermine these informal institutions (Reference OstromOstrom 1990). For ethnic communities to eventually hold secure property rights in land, government authorities must first identify, delineate the boundaries of, and issue formal titles to the land. Thus, ethnic communal land titling happens when the government issues an official document that serves as a public certification of communal land tenure. An ethnic land title results from three crucial political decisions: (1) whether to incorporate ethnic people into the modern state (Reference ScottScott 2009; Reference SlaterSlater 2010); (2) whether to title private property in land (freehold) or communal property based on ethnicity (Reference Otto and HoekemaOtto and Hoekema 2012);Footnote ⁴ and (3) whether to title microterritories or macroterritories.Footnote ⁵ This article focuses on the underlying reason for titling macroterritories (i.e., large land extensions to Indigenous and other ethnic groups).

Focusing on the territorial claims that Indigenous people and ethnic communities make across the Americas, I draw a distinction between two observed types of ethnic land titling. In the case of microterritories, the government breaks ethnic villages apart and allocates small plots of land at the village level to local, state-sanctioned political organizations. By titling individual villages separately, central authorities design smallholding regions and prevent local authorities from managing the land and natural resources that are located beyond the village boundary. Only the village land that is included in the communal property title, and not adjacent areas, falls within the jurisdiction of local leaders. In this case, the government encourages the proliferation of political and administrative units at the lowest level of the state apparatus. By fracturing the powerbase of large Indigenous or ethnic communities in a territory, this mode of titling follows the political logic of divide and rule. Alternatively, the government can design and title macroterritories. Government officials can amalgamate separate villages together and allocate a large continuous area with its surrounding environment to state-authorized political organizations, so that ethnic leaders have the direct authority to allocate productive resources located far beyond the village boundaries. In this way, the government institutionalizes relations of property and authority between themselves, their allies, and villagers. Although both kinds of titling modes create communal land that cannot be legally traded on open and competitive markets, the distinction between microterritories and macroterritories is pivotal for this analysis. In essence, the difference is political: state-sanctioned local authorities in macroterritories have greater authority over more villagers and determine resource allocation for larger expanses than those that govern microterritories. The mode of titling macroterritories follows a political logic of co-optation.

Theory

Existing studies provide society-centric explanations of ethnic land titling that span both economic and political motivations. Economic structuralism provides a pessimistic answer: the government will side with economic elites and resist titling macroterritories (Reference Larson, Cronkleton and PulhinLarson, Cronkleton, and Pulhin 2015; Reference StocksStocks 2005; Reference Van CottVan Cott 2000, Reference Van Cott and Sieder2002; Reference Brinks, Botero, Brinks, Leiras and MainwaringBrinks and Botero 2014; Reference HaleHale 2011). To reinforce established structures of socioeconomic domination, governments will stall or ignore claims to resource-rich land with little consequence. If titling happens, it follows an economic rationale. Government officials, the argument goes, will allocate microterritories in coveted areas and in slightly larger extensions in places that hold little to no economic potential (Reference HaleHale 2011; Reference Pacheco, Ubink, Hoekema and AssiesPacheco 2009). Instead of titling macroterritories to ethnic groups, government officials would rather title private property to further the formation and growth of supra-local land markets (Reference Gauster and Ryan IsaksonGauster and Isakson 2007). Velásquez Runk (Reference Velásquez Runk2012) further expects government officials to protect economic interests in countries with high levels of socioeconomic inequality and corruption. A corollary is that ethnic land rights are largely aspirational.

Surely, economic structuralism is part of the story; government officials may be inclined to protect the interests of economic elites rather than those of marginalized ethnic groups. But that is only a partial answer. Economic structuralism does not persuasively explain the contrasting outcomes in Honduras. In much of the country, the government has titled microterritories. In the eastern Mosquitia region, however, they have enacted a generous titling program that encompasses large territories with productive potential. Domestic economic elites and transnational companies alike covet the natural resources in the east (Reference KerssenKerssen 2013; Reference McSweeney and PearsonMcSweeney and Pearson 2016).Footnote ⁶ Despite strong economic interests, government officials removed from the legal land market about one million hectares that the state could have left as state property or titled as private propertyFootnote ⁷ (INA 2016).

On the political side, the rationale for ethnic land titling can be broadly categorized as a response to demands by subnational ethnic groups (Reference Martí i PuigMartí i Puig 2010; Reference Reyes-García, Paneque-Gálvez, Bottazzi, Luz, Gueze, Macía, Orta-Martínez and PachecoReyes-García et al. 2014). Observers have argued that ethnic groups in the east push for the protection of their land from outsiders and the government listened. Kröger and Lalander (Reference Kröger and Lalander2016) particularly stressed that ethnic land titles are the culmination of ethnic communities’ major political mobilizations against land grabbers. According to this perspective, the government responded to ethnic demands to help mitigate intergroup land conflict (Reference Kröger and LalanderKröger and Lalander 2016). However, land conflicts are spread throughout Honduras and the government’s response varies from neglect to repression. In fact, grassroots organizations that represent the Lenca people, the largest ethnic group in the country, have been demanding territorial rights since the mid-1980s (Reference MollettMollett 2013; Reference Slack, Burdick, Oxhorn and RobertsSlack 2009). Despite the Lencas’ relentless mobilization to protect their land and ward off hydroelectric and other development projects (Reference ShipleyShipley 2016; Reference LoperenaLoperena 2016), government officials have largely ignored their requests. Rather than titling large macroterritories to the Lencas, the central government has fragmented their territorial claim by titling small communal land plots, reducing their power to resist the government’s development projects.Footnote ⁸ Another mechanism that generates titled macroterritories is the conciliatory lobbying strategies that ethnic leaders employ to persuade bureaucrats of the cultural validity of their territorial claims (Reference JungJung 2008; Reference Stahler-Sholk, Vanden and KueckerStahler-Sholk, Vanden, and Kuecker 2008; Reference Jackson and WarrenJackson and Warren 2005). According to Gómez (Reference Gómez, Puig and Sanahuja2004), convincing ethno-environmental arguments produce macroterritories. More broadly, Warren and Jackson (Reference Warren, Jackson, Warren and Jackson2013) argue that Indigenous leaders have been able to establish their legitimacy through the rhetoric of cultural continuity, which has allowed them to gain official recognition, protection, and access to territories. Although grassroots organizations have based their territorial claims on environmental conservation and cultural continuity, the Honduran government has mostly resisted these demands. For instance, the Organization for Ethnic Communal Development (ODECO) has established working relationships with government officials to defend the territory of Garifuna people with limited success (Reference Anderson and RahierAnderson 2012).

To be sure, society-centric accounts are crucial to understand the context in which ethnic communities live. As a complement, I propose a state-centric argument that focuses on the motivations of officials in the central government to unexpectedly title macroterritories in 2012. Since the early 1990s, when the administration of Rafael Callejas (1990–1994) instituted neoliberal reforms, the government titled microterritories outside Mosquitia (Reference AndersonAnderson 2007, Reference Anderson2009). In 2012, the government radically shifted its strategy and began titling macroterritories in Mosquitia. In only four short years (2012–2016), macroterritories in Mosquitia covered about 12 percent of the country’s total land area. By early 2016, the governments of Porfirio Lobo (2010–2014) and Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-present) had granted land titles over the largest extension of land in forty years. In a context where ethnic land titling is authorized by the president and supported by the military rather than by independent agencies, there is little reason to modify the traditional, restrictive titling model in place since the 1990s. I draw from a state-centered understandings of security interests to explain the sudden shift in titling strategies (Reference HuntingtonHuntington 1968; Reference SkocpolSkocpol 1979) and to argue that ethnic land titling happens to bolster territorial power in contested geographies.Footnote ⁹ In the process of claiming domination over territory, the government makes limited concessions to civil society when and where they need to. In Honduras, these concessions took the form of titled macroterritories.

Internal security threats are a crucial motivating factor for titling macroterritories. Threats to state power arise in far-flung localities where the repressive arm of the state is scarcely present. In these areas of limited state reach, internal security threats arise from the capacity of nonstate actors to cause or facilitate internal turmoil and render the locality difficult or nearly impossible to govern. For instance, nonstate subnational authorities may obstruct access to particular locales, impede the enforcement of national laws and policies, and even fuel criminal activity. Internal security threats arise where the state has low coercive and infrastructural capacity when de facto local authorities obstruct the government’s entrance and management functions. In the state-centric model proposed here, ethnic land titling is state-driven and determined by the need to exercise territorial authority. By titling ethnic lands, central authorities create local administrative units that are governed from the top down through their allies. The government fixes the new boundaries of ethnic lands and, within this delimited area, asserts political control through intermediaries. Consequently, vast areas that central authorities initially conceive as troublesome are transformed into manageable areas. Seeing ethnic land titling as a strategy to recover territorial control helps explain the remarkable episodic burst of land titling in Mosquitia. As I show in the section that follows, the state acted with stunning speed in an inaccessible and remote region but has resisted doing so in the rest of the country. Government authorities simultaneously embarked on a widespread land titling project and increased military presence in Mosquitia, a major transshipment point for narcotics intended for the United States market. Through that titling strategy, government officials sought to increase military presence unencumbered, diminish the intensity of the drug trade, and incorporate ethnic people into the state apparatus.

Context

I focus on the Mosquitia region to illustrate how security interests motivated presidents to title macroterritories. Mosquitia, Honduras easternmost region, has very little formalized state presence (US Department of State 2012). Mosquitia offered the ideal geographical and physical conditions for organizations trafficking drugs: it is flat, traversed with rivers, has a deepwater port, and is virtually inaccessible except by small planes or boats (Reference Bunck and FowlerBunck and Fowler 2012, 301, 307). The region has been serving as a popular refueling stop for vessels moving cocaine northward from South America. In the mid-2000s, the region became the perfect place for traffickers looking for an unencumbered path to the north after Mexico stepped up drug interdiction measures (UNODC 2012). In 2009, Mosquitia was the single most important port of entry for drug cargoes headed northward (UNODC 2012; Reference Bosworth, Arnson and OlsonBosworth 2011; Reference Cuéllar, Kandel, Davis, Díaz, Luna and OrtizCuéllar et al. 2011; Reference Bunck and FowlerBunck and Fowler 2012). Organized crime took advantage of the political crisis triggered by the successful overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya to use Mosquitia as the main entry point for drugs (UN 2010). After the coup d’état, the police and the military focused on controlling dissidents in cities (ICC 2015, par. 61–65), which led the government to neglect the east even further. In 2008, the United States had provided US$3 million through the expanded Mérida Initiative to fund law enforcement and interdiction operations in Honduras (Reference Meyer and SeelkeMeyer and Ribando Seelke 2015, 17–18; Reference Ribando Seelke, Wyler, Beittel and SullivanRibando Seelke, Wyler, Beittel, and Sullivan 2012, 33). However, the United States suspended economic assistance, information exchange, and anti-narcotics aid to Honduras after the coup (UNODC 2012; Reference Bosworth, Arnson and OlsonBosworth 2011). In short, the 2009 coup turned the east into a hub for drug traffickers (UNODC 2012, 23). By 2010, according to US estimates, about 260 tons of cocaine, worth roughly US$2 billion (or 13 percent of Honduras’s gross domestic product), landed in Honduras (UNODC 2012). In 2011 and 2012, between 80 and 87 percent of all cocaine smuggling flights destined for the United States first landed in Honduras (US Department of State 2012–2013). Between 80 and 90 percent of cocaine arrived in Honduras via maritime shipments (US Department of State 2014–2015). Drug trafficking became an important source of income, and traffickers created a drug-based economy (Reference Cuéllar, Kandel, Davis, Díaz, Luna and OrtizCuéllar et al. 2011; Reference Bunck and FowlerBunck and Fowler 2012). Figure 1 shows the number of suspected cocaine-carrying flights detected by US authorities and estimated cocaine movements using Honduras as a bridge.

Figure 1: Drug flights landing in the east, 2008–2013.

Sources: US Department of State 2011–2017; UNODC 2012.

Although cocaine flowed into the east, the more developed, populated, and affluent cities of the north and west suffered violent consequences. Heavily armed criminal groups fought to control strategic territories (UNODC 2010). Rivalries between these drug-trafficking rings, in turn, caused mayhem in the country’s major cities (UNODC 2010). By 2011, “the national murder rate (92 per 100,000),” according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “was one of the highest recorded in modern times” (2012, 15, my emphasis). Drug lords targeted each other but also police officers and high-ranking military officials. For instance, in late 2009, the Sinaloa Federation, a powerful drug-trafficking organization in the Western Hemisphere (UNODC 2012; Reference Phillips, Eguizábal, Ingram, Curtis, Korthuis, Olson and PhillipsPhillips 2015), assassinated “anti-narcotics czar” General Arístides Gonzáles for campaigning against illicit airstrips linked to that cartel (Reference Bosworth, Arnson and OlsonBosworth 2011; Reference ArceArce 2016). The UNODC (2012, 13) remarked that the influx of greater volumes of cocaine raised the economic incentives for criminal groups to maintain control over larger geographic areas, tax all activity therein, and “act like a state within the state.” To put it succinctly, criminal organizations affiliated with Mexican cartels usurped state power in key strategic localities and, in the process, destabilized the country.

Analysis: Ethnic Land Titling as a Security Strategy

In September 2012, President Lobo ordered the government’s land administration agencies to work with Miskito political elites to title a dozen “Territorial Councils” in the east, each amalgamating several villages into ethnic land blocks. By 2016, the government had met its aim: bureaucrats had designed and titled all the ethnic land blocks in Mosquitia. Titled lands added up to over one million hectares, an area larger than Jamaica (INA 2016; Reference PresidenciaHonduras 2016). In that land area, the state has officially sanctioned about a dozen ethnic elites, the heads of the Territorial Councils, to administer and adjudicate land matters inside the newly created jurisdictional units. Both Lobo and his successor, Hernández, traveled to Puerto Lempira to hand-deliver the land titles to the authorities of the newly formalized Territorial Councils (Reference PresidenciaHonduras Presidencia, 2016). Ethnic land titling was not solely a response to ethnic community’s demands for secure property rights. Honduras began identifying and titling macroterritories recently, three decades after acknowledging ethnic communal property rights in the 1982 constitution and nearly two decades after ratifying ILO Convention 169 in 1995. For over three decades, grassroots organizations had demanded a land title (MASTA 2013; Reference PadillaPadilla 2008; Reference Padilla, Veloso and PadillaPadilla and Contreras Veloso 2008). The government had ignored their demands until the early 2010s (Reference Mollett and ColemanMollett 2011).

The government titled vast macroterritories in Mosquitia to accomplish two interrelated goals: to displace criminal organizations that had infiltrated the east, and to rule the region through state-sanctioned intermediaries. Government officials were worried about the serious security challenges posed by criminal organizations using Mosquitia as a forward operating base for trafficking drugs. In the process of ethnic land titling, government officials made alliances with local political elites. These alliances allowed them to gain local acquiescence for heavy-handed counternarcotic operations and increasing militarization (Reference CaveCave 2012). In 2010, President Lobo decided to combat criminal organizations (Reference Bosworth, Arnson and OlsonBosworth 2011; Reference MejíaMejía 2010). Lobo and Hernández, his successor and the head of the legislature at the time, focused on securing anti-narcotics aid and information exchange from the United States.Footnote ¹⁰ Taking the military’s advice, Honduras began implementing a repressive public security strategy that broadened the role of the regular military and created a new military police to perform domestic security functions generally left to civilian law enforcement (Reference Meyer and SeelkeMeyer and Ribando Seelke 2015, 12).

The acute security crisis in the country, which resulted from the intensity of the drug trade, forced government elites to pay attention to the east. The strategy to recover state power congealed by early 2012, when Lobo and Daniel Ortega met to discuss security threats in Central America (Consejo de Comunicación y Ciudadanía 2012). “I was in Nicaragua observing the process and spoke with President [Daniel] Ortega and Comrade Rosario [Murillo]. We talked a lot about what they had done,” remarked Lobo. “We enrich ourselves with the experiences that our neighboring countries have about common issues [ethnic land demands]” (personal interview, May 28, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras).Footnote ¹¹

High-ranking government officials viewed the trafficking problem as a serious threat to the survival of the state and the lack of state presence in Mosquitia as the fundamental cause. From their perspective, local inhabitants were victims, not the main perpetrators. During the 2012 meeting with President Daniel Ortega (2007–current), President Lobo remarked,

President Hernández also described criminal organizations as threats to the state. In January 2012, President Hernández noted, “As we have said that we could very well lose the country, now with the support that is being given to us by friendly nations [i.e., the United States] we can say that we will be able to reclaim peace and tranquility in Honduras” (Honduras Weekly 2012). Top-ranking military officers expressed that criminal organizations operating from Mosquitia threatened state sovereignty. For instance, Deputy Admiral Rigoberto Espinoza Posadas, deputy chief of the armed forces (2014–present), explained, “Two years ago, drug traffickers provided basic services, like healthcare…. La Mosquitia is a depressed zone without presence from the government. For that reason, drug trafficking activity flourished there. Organized crime was rooted in La Mosquitia … that is why all the [military and political] activities are happening there to make sure that drug traffickers do not return” (personal interview, May 25, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras).

In similar terms, General Julián Pacheco Tinoco, head of the Bureau of State Investigation and Intelligence during Lobo’s administration and minister of security under Hernández’s tenure, described the narcotic trafficking problem:

The essence of Deputy Admiral Espinoza’s and General Pacheco’s explanation is that drug lords infiltrated Mosquitia because that territory was unguarded. As criminal organizations threatened the survival of the state, government officials designed a military and political strategy to regain control of the eastern territory and displace drug traffickers from the region. The military viewed drug lords as outsiders who either employed Miskito villagers as hired hands or bought large expanses of land to launder drug money or build clandestine airstrips, storage facilities, and training grounds. In areas where land holding is communal, drug traffickers used cocaine profits to establish and extend private property relations and expand the agricultural frontier (Reference McSweeney, Richani, Pearson, Devine and WrathallMcSweeney et al. 2017; Reference PaleyPaley 2014). For instance, General Ronal Rivera Amador,Footnote ¹² director of the School for Commanders and Generals (personal interview, May 13, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras), and Infantry Colonel Alfonso Reyes, director of the National Defense College (personal interview, May 6, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras), believed that government neglect of Mosquitia paved the way for drug trafficking to become “a way of life.” Local villagers began to protect the drug trade and to refuse collaboration with anti-narcotics agents, whom locals viewed as threats to the only profitable source of livelihood in the region (personal interview, Gustavo Adolfo Paz Escalante, June 18, 2018, Tegucigalpa, Honduras). As General René Osorio Canales, the chief of the armed forces during Lobo’s administration, puts it, “The [eastern] sector has been the platform of drug traffickers…. It is a flat region where an airplane can easily land…. Humble local people have seized the opportunity to earn a living transporting drugs and making due because there are no other livelihood options” (personal interview, June 30, 2015, Tegucigalpa, Honduras).

Because government officials surmised that the drug boom directly resulted from state absence, Presidents Lobo and Hernández invested substantial military and administrative resources to reestablish the state’s presence. The state’s anti-narcotics approach intertwines a military and a political element. The military plan is to stop the flow of drugs by intercepting cocaine cargoes landing or docking in Mosquitia. The political strategy centers on building alliances with local leaders.

Through its titling program, the central government built new hierarchical governing structures that are prone to political manipulation and co-optation. In 2012, the central government began working with local political elites to identify the exact area to which the state would issue land titles. Once the boundaries were identified, the state issued a communal property title to a Territorial Council on behalf of multiple villages. The Territorial Council, headed by one political appointee, became the official representative of the communities specified in the communal land title. These political appointees are the key intermediaries between the state and the villagers. Figure 2 shows in boldface the new governing structures that the state built and bolstered by titling intercommunal lands.

Figure 2: New hierarchical governing structure.

Political elites used the new institutions to build a patronage system that generated local political support. In fact, the central governments channeled all of the development programs and international aid through vetted political intermediaries. For instance, the Hernández administration works with local ethnic leaders to implement the “Plan of Action for the Development of La Mosquitia.” This plan contains new projects intended to gather detailed demographic and geographic information about the east. For instance, the central government worked closely with ethnic allies to carry out a comprehensive door-to-door survey in the entire Gracias a Dios Province. The US Department of Defense also funded a detailed mapping project of the eastern territory, called Indigenous Central America, conducted by the University of Kansas with the help of the very same local intermediaries.Footnote ¹³

The central government also used these new institutions to mute widespread criticisms about the heavy use of military power to ensure state dominance in the eastern territory. After all, local political elites, rather than common villagers, are the ones connected to national and international organizations that could openly criticize the government for the militarization of Gracias a Dios Province. In the east, there is no clear dividing line between civilian and military functions. The center-right governments militarized police work and public security in Honduras by decrees that authorize the armed forces to issue and carry out arrest orders, undertake search and seizure activities, and conduct anti-narcotics operations (OAS and Inter-American Commission of Human Rights 2015, 99–112).Footnote ¹⁴ Moreover, the central government has given the military the responsibility of providing local public goods in the east, typically a civilian task in other countries. For instance, the armed forces are in charge of the only regional hospital that exists in the eastern province, located in Puerto Lempira. The army also monitors environmental reserves and acts to control environmental crimes within these areas.Footnote ¹⁵ The central government has even welcomed US military assistance for building basic infrastructure. President Hernández himself said, “U.S. troops are going to help us build new educational centers, health care centers, and they will probably assist in the construction of the Mosquitia Agricultural University” (Diálogo 2015). Without making a distinction between military and civilian functions, and without seriously considering local preferences and needs for policing and social good provisions, the central government grants ample power to the armed forces in the east.

In sum, the military elite fully supports titling macroterritories as a policy that reinforces the state’s territorial power. Titling ethnic lands in the east created new governing institutions to control the underpopulated, remote, and geographically extensive eastern territory through local political intermediaries that state elites can co-opt and manipulate. Through greater government intervention, the state sought to build local acquiescence and political support to displace drug trafficking organizations. The government uses ethnic land titling to win the war on drugs.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this article has been to show that the security interests of high-ranking government officials is a major motivation behind ethnic land titling in weak institutional environments. Even though ethnic land titling continues to be an important strategy of statecraft in contemporary times, it has remained largely invisible in the political science literature about Latin America. My analysis offers a definition of ethnic land titling; proposes a state-centric approach to explain variation in titling practices; and advances a hypothesis about titled ethnic land by using original data from Honduras. I emphasize the role of security interests in designing and titling vast areas as ethnic lands to project state power, which contrasts sharply with accounts of political decision-making as primarily based in economic self-interests or as a reaction to ethnic mobilization. My emphasis on security interests makes it possible to connect the study of land institutions to broader, inherently political understandings of state reach into rural areas and to the strategies that central governments deploys to regain and maintain territorial control.

The state-centric framework and empirical evidence I present runs counter to a trend political science to takes individual economic interests as an overriding factor for explaining institutional outcomes. For many, government officials in developing countries are political actors under the sway of domestic interest groups motivated by overpowering economic incentives. My analysis adds new evidence to the established literature by showing that government officials choose to title ethnic lands when security challenges arise. These land tenure regimes generate a web of institutions at the local level that anchor the power of the government. To do so, they back the power of local ethnic elites to allocate, adjudicate, transfer, and manage land and land-based natural resources in the newly designed subnational territorial units. In this way, the government builds new institutional hierarchies and manipulates local intermediaries to monitor and control the local population. In turn, these decisions are consequential for the character of citizenship and long-run economic trajectories of regions with these differentiated institutions. Some of the larger political struggles over ethnic land rights in the Americas can be better understood from this perspective.

A major contribution of my study is to suggest that the compulsion to control territory—common to all states—can be a powerful motivator to stop the creation and growth of land markets in resource-rich localities as a way to neutralize security challenges. Conversely, governments are unlikely to implement or accelerate ethnic land titling to respond to Indigenous demands when there are no pressing security issues at stake. For government officials, the strategy of building ethnic communal property regimes is viable when either neglect or moves toward land commodification risk alienating ethnic subjects and increase internal security threats—in the Honduran case, the power of drug-trafficking organizations. I underscore that advances in ethnic land titling covaries with the security interest of high-ranking government officials to regain control of contested geographies. This finding, in turn, suggests that government officials choose institutional outcomes that economic elites dislike when and if state power is jeopardized. It is not that government officials respond to ethnic land demands in a technocratic way, but that they adopt ethnic land titling as a strategy to ensure institutional access and presence in contested territories, even when doing so runs against the core interests of economic elites. I conclude that government officials will act independently from economic interest groups only if and when ethnic land titling serves to prevent losing territorial authority and alleviating security concerns.