The Long Agrarian Reform: The Social and Environmental Consequences of Agrarian Development Policy in Guatemala, 1944–60

The Agrarian Reform of 1952 transformed environment and agriculture across Guatemala, though not in the way that its planners intended. In 1945, the Guatemalan state began an aggressive effort to modernize agriculture with the goal of diversifying export crop production and ensuring that basic grains were affordable for peasants and workers. Extension agents worked with rural and indigenous communities to promote new crops and new agricultural techniques including mechanization, seed hybridization, and the application of fertilizers and pesticides. Officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Institute for the Promotion of Production hoped to stimulate production for market and expand the base of the Guatemalan economy by transforming peasants into small farmers. The apex of the Agrarian Reform was the controversial redistribution of land from large landowners to peasant farmers that began in 1952. Though the Reform was reversed following a coup in June 1954, the shuffling of land between radically different agro-ecological regimes—peasant and large landowner—initiated a dramatic transformation of the countryside. Successive governments embraced the technical innovations introduced by the Arbenz and Arevalo administrations, while dispensing with most of the social redistributive aspects of the agrarian reform project. On the Pacific Coast, monoculture production of cotton expanded rapidly, destroying forested land and displacing peasants. In the highlands, the renewed emphasis on export agriculture exacerbated seasonal migration to the Coast and reinforced a simplified agro-ecology focused on corn. Population pressure, deforestation, soil exhaustion and limited capital fostered instability in basic grain production, resulting in periodic food shortages and the rise of chronic malnutrition. Drawing on Ministry of Agriculture records, agrarian reform files, and US government reports, I argue that the short-lived Agrarian Reform triggered social and environment changes that were pivotal in Guatemala’s transformation into a highly productive—and highly exploitative—agro-exporter.