News from the Backyard: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala

[Catherina]

Last edited Fri Apr 26, 2013, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

“Sons and Daughters of the Earth”: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala
Written by Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
Thursday, 11 April 2013

In the last ten years, the expansion of corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations in northern Guatemala has encroached on the lands of Maya Q’eqchi’ indigenous people—many of whom fled to this region during the country’s 36-year genocidal war. These plantations have already displaced hundreds of families—even entire communities—leading to increased poverty, hunger, unemployment, and landlessness in the region. The companies grabbing land are controlled by European-descendent Guatemalan oligarchs who are benefitting from rising global commodity prices for food, animal feed, and fuel (biodiesel and ethanol). In the face of violent expulsion and incorporation into an exploitative system, peasant families are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity as Q'eqchi' peoples or R'al Ch'och ("sons and daughters of the earth&quot .

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The benefits of this export boom are highly concentrated. Only 14 companies—owned by 14 oligarchic families—make up the powerful Sugar Producers’ Guild (ASAZGUA), with control of over 80 percent of the country’s sugar plantations and 100 percent of the sugar mills. Five companies control all of the country’s ethanol production and eight families make up the influential Oil Palm Growers’ Guild (GREPALMA), which controls 98 percent of the harvested oil palm and 100 percent of the palm oil mills.



The power of these wealthy families has been spurred by large investments from multilateral lending agencies. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has allotted US$150 million to finance “sugar and bioenergy companies and exporters especially in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and north-eastern Brazil.” The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) provided US$20 million for highly controversial land deals for sugarcane agribusiness in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley. The loan was approved on the basis of a single socio-environmental impact assessment report developed by the agribusiness industry itself.

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Legal Land Grabbing?

Debt plays a major role in the supposedly voluntary displacement of indigenous peasants. The private, individual property rights promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s may have given peasants’ access to bank credit, but annual interest rates of up to 26 percent led many to lose the land they had used as collateral. The system of individual land ownership also transformed once-sustainable collective Q’eqchi’ farming practices, making them dependent on external inputs for fertility. In a region with poor, rocky soils, this often means buying an increasing amount of expensive chemical fertilizers and falling further into debt.

These land deals are often accompanied by violent evictions and other coercive practices. Peasants who refuse to sell at non-negotiable prices are harassed; lands are enclosed within large plantations; and access rights are closed off, even to visiting government officials. Dozens of villages have been reduced to a small cluster of houses; and in at least four cases, entire villages—including houses, schools and churches—were gobbled up completely by plantations.

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Alberto Alonso-Fradejas ([e-mail]) is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. This article is an excerpt from “Sons and daughters of the Earth: Indigenous communities and land grabs in Guatemala”, Land and Sovereignty in the Americas Briefing Series, published by Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in partnership with the Transnational Institute. The full brief is available for free download at: https://www.foodfirst.org/en/Land+grabs+in+Guatemala

Additional Resources:

Peasant Union Committee (Comité de Unidad Campesina, CUC): www.cuc.org.gt

Website/blog about the case of Guatemala’s Polochic Valley: http://valledelpolochic.wordpress.com/documentos/

Documentary films:

“Aj Ral Ch´och: Sons of the Earth” (Spanish and Q’eqchi’ with English subtitles) by IDEAR-CONGCOOP and Caracol Producciones:

“Evictions in the Polochic Valley” (Spanish and Q’eqchi’ with English subtitles) by IDEAR-CONGCOOP and Caracol Producciones:

(I placed this video at the top of the thread)

https://www.foodfirst.org/en/Land+grabs+in+Guatemala

[Judi Lynn]

1. Less than 1% hoarding 80% of the arable land in Guatemala.

Just saw that in the first segment of the 2nd video directly above. Returning later to finish watching it.

Those numbers are criminal. It should NOT be possible. Saw the man from the German landowning family speaking...... unbelievable.

Thanks for this thread and its information. Looking forward to finishing the video, it's very helpful.

[Catherina]

2. Thanks for watching. It's very depressing

and happening everyday. The rich don't care. They speed by columns of evicted peasants, trudging for miles barefoot, carrying whatever they could salvage of their possessions and call them "parasites" for not adapting to this wonderful new neoliberal world. One of the saddest things I ever saw was some jerk pissing at them from the window of an SUV.