Honduras: Land Struggles

Roger D. Norton ()
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Roger D. Norton: Texas A&M University

Chapter Chapter 4 in Structural Inequality, 2022, pp 77-132 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This narrative describes an inequality arising from the distribution of land and the obstacles in the political economy to reforms in land tenure to benefit the rural poor and all farmers and to improve other policies. It opens with Columbus’ encounter with the Mayans. The Honduran landscape exhibits today’s skewed land distribution and environmental problems that affected those Mayans. Spain’s New World agricultural decisions consisted of vast land grants to influential colonists. Colonial capitalism was a patronage economy and highly unequal. Land reform laws passed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not lessen inequality, and conflicts over the issue generated a military coup that led to an unproductive collective-style land reform with arbitrary seizures of land.

Keywords: Columbus; Hurricanes; Mayan agriculture; Land grants; Land conflicts; Land reform; Mayan civilization; Livestock; Rural poverty; Council of the Indies; Mayan revolts; Encomienda system; Patronage economy; Colonial inequality; Tariff exemptions; Wheat policy; Colonial land inequality; Agrarian reform laws; Coup d’état; Land expropriation; Land invasions; Agrarian cooperatives; Slash-and-burn agriculture; Forest management; Water cycle; Raw sugar; Cantaloupe growers; Village women; Participatory agricultural strategy; Government interventions in the economy; Land invasions; Agrarian cooperatives; Expropriation; Patronage capitalism; Owner-operated farms; Agrarian reform law; Expropriation; Land tax; Agricultural policy dialogue; Shrimp ponds; Wild shrimp; Mangroves; Shrimp pond effluents; River ford; Callejas Administration; Governance; Exchange rate; Gender and agrarian reform; Land rental; Crop purchase program; Cajas rurales; Land tax; Agricultural Modernization Law; Political conflict; Agrarian cooperatives; Rural poverty; Historical inequality; Campesino organization; Agrarian reform; Agricultural bank; Idle farmland; Expropriation; International development bank; Commercial farmers; Policy reform legislation; Policy advisors; Land rental; Negotiations on draft legislation; Campesino organizations; Campesino leaders; Investments in agrarian cooperatives; Land rental; Titling farmland; Farm size ceilings; Land fund; Women and agrarian reform; Expropriation; Agricultural policy dialogue; Idle land; Expropriation; Participatory policy design; Agricultural policy legislation; Archbishop of Honduras; Campesino leaders; Participatory policy design; International development banks; Honduran Congress; Agricultural reform legislation; Violent reform protests; Drafting regulations; Cajas rurales; Land fund; Women’s land titling; Food stamps; Squatters on government land; Forest management; Forestry regulations; Agricultural trade agreements; Latin American town; Local establishment; Cajas rurales; Campesino shooting; Agricultural privatization; Reform implementation; Grain marketing; Expropriation; Land titling; Land rental; Agricultural Modernization Law; Inequality; Land tax; Rural poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-08633-5_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-08633-5_4

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