Reflections on Rural Poverty in Latin America

Abstract

In recent years there has been a major rise in poverty studies. Different approaches to poverty, with their diverse theoretical underpinning and focus, are analysed. Some of these studies have significantly advanced our understanding of the causes, characteristics and consequences of poverty; others have only marginally, if at all. It is argued in this paper that poverty is being produced and reproduced by certain economic, social, political and cultural relations at local, national and global levels. Thus to overcome inequality and poverty it is necessary to change such systemic relations via major reforms at all these levels. Integrating further developing countries and their peasantries and rural labourers into the world economy through neoliberal measures is not the panacea for overcoming poverty. Quite the contrary, it could entrench poverty even further in the Latin American countryside.

Ces dernières années ont donné lieu à une multiplication du nombre d'études sur la pauvreté. Différentes approches, ainsi que leurs fondements théoriques et leurs orientations, ont été analysées. Certaines de ces études ont fait avancer significativement notre connaissance des causes, des caractéristiques et des conséquences de la pauvreté, alors que d'autres, très peu, voire aucunement. Cet article soutient que la pauvreté est produite et reproduite par certaines relations économiques, sociales, politiques et culturelles, et ce, au niveau local, national et global. Ainsi, afin de surmonter la pauvreté et les inégalités, il est nécessaire de changer ces relations systémiques par le biais de réformes majeures à tous ces niveaux. Intégrer davantage les pays en développement, ainsi que leur paysannerie et leurs travailleurs ruraux, à l'économie mondiale par le biais de mesures néo-libérales n'est pas une panacée pour surmonter la pauvreté. Au contraire, cela pourrait enraciner encore plus la pauvreté en milieu rural en Amérique latine.

Notes

Cristóbal Kay is Associate Professor in Development Studies and Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT, The Hague, The [email protected]. The author is most grateful to Raúl Hopkins and the Latin American and Caribbean Division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome for their support in writing this paper. They are, of course, not responsible for its content.

 1. The impact of SAPs on rural poverty varied significantly between Latin American countries, see Trejos [1992]. For the increasing urban character of poverty as well as the persistence of rural poverty in Latin America, see Ibáñez [1990].

 2. Data are taken from ECLAC [2004: 282–3]. A detailed insight into rural poverty based on rural household survey data and which distinguishes between small farmers, landless farm workers and rural non-farm workers can be obtained from López and Valdés [2000]. A useful up-to-date overview on rural poverty in Latin America is given by Dirven [2004].

 3. However, so far the record of the ISI period is considered to have been better than that of the current neoliberal period in terms of growth, equity, employment and poverty reduction; see the superb study by Thorp [1998].

 4. For an exhaustive study of neoliberal agrarian policy, see Gómez [1994] and Zoomers and van der Haar [2000]. For an overview of the neoliberal agrarian counter-reform, see Kay [2002a].

 5. A comprehensive analysis of rural poverty and public policies of the Concertación governments in Chile since 1990 has been done by Köbrich et al. [2004].

 6. Such differences in poverty discussions can be observed, for example, comparing the following important texts ranging from orthodox to heterodox views: World Bank [2001], IFAD [2001], Hulme and Shepherd [2003], Webster and Engberg-Pedersen [2002], Chossudovsky [1996], and Cammack [2001].

 7. For an excellent analysis of this kind, see Cammack [2004]. His sharp and provocative conclusion that ‘under the guise of attacking poverty, the World Bank is attacking the poor’ [Cammack, 2002: 134] is surely going to be contested by some researchers.

 8. See, for example, the interesting forum at the XXIV LASA Congress held in March 2003 which was published under the title ‘From Marginality of the 1960s to the “New Poverty” of Today’ in Latin American Research Review, Vol.39, No.1, 2004, pp.183–203. The following scholars participated in the forum: Mercedes González de la Rocha, Elizabeth Jelin, Janice Perlman, Bryan R. Roberts, Helen Safa and Peter M. Ward.

 9. One of the first original thinkers to formulate the concept of ‘social capital’ back in 1980 was Pierre Bourdieu [1986]. His vision is radical and quite different from that espoused later by the World Bank. For a forceful and illuminating critique of the World Bank notion of social capital, see Harriss [2002]. For a reflexive and most enlightening analysis of the debate on social capital, see Bebbington [2004a], which is the first of three notes on this topic and the next two notes are published in subsequent numbers of the journal.

10. As an illustration of the uses of the notion of social capital within the Latin American rural context, see Durston [2002] and Atria et al. [2003].

11. For a critical examination of the concept of social capital, see Harriss and de Renzio [1997].

12. These two meanings of ‘new rurality’, which are often not clearly distinguished in the literature, are well represented in the excellent collection edited by Giarracca [2001]. For an analysis of new rurality within the Central American context, see Clemens and Ruben [2001].

13. According to Sergio Gómez [2002] many aspects of the so-called ‘new rurality’ were already present before the neoliberal turn and what is rather new in his view is the late perception of these changes by analysts.

14. For a good exposition of the rural livelihoods approach, see Ellis [2000: 3–27] and Bebbington [1999]. For an application of this approach to the Latin American context, see Bebbington [2004b] and Zoomers [2001].

15. The need to move away from ‘methodological nationalism’ in development and poverty analyses is well made by Gore [2004]. See also Gore [2000].

16. I have discussed at length the two approaches to marginality in Kay [1989: 88–124].

17. Some of the ideas in this section were first presented in Kay [1995].

18. It is estimated that Latin America's peasant agriculture comprised four-fifths of farm units and controlled over a third of the cultivated land, accounted for almost two-thirds of the total agricultural labour force, and supplied two-fifths of production for the domestic market and a third of the production for export, see López [1982: 26].

19. De-agrarianisation is the process by which the significance of agricultural activities decreases in the peasants' livelihood strategy. For a fuller discussion of the concept see Bryceson [2000]. For an analysis of the process of semi-proletarianisation, see Kay [2000].

20. For a discussion of the World Bank's land reform policies see, Borras Jr. [2003a] and a riposte to the World Bank's critique of so-called state-led agrarian reforms, see Borras, Jr. [2003b].

21. However, in Bolivia weak state capacity and the state's neglect of the peasantry explains Bolivia's failure to capitalise on the potential benefits of the major agrarian reform of 1953; see Kay [2005]. The Mexican experience with agrarian reform since the revolution of 1910–17 is in this respect generally more encouraging.

22. There is an increasing literature, as well as debate, on the relationship between globalisation and poverty. While for some analysts globalisation leads to greater inequality and poverty – see e.g., Wade [2004] – for others it leads to higher rates of growth and to less inequality and poverty, see e.g., World Bank [2002]. For a comprehensive study on Latin America, see Ganuza et al., [forthcoming]. For a general and brief survey on how globalisation is affecting rural poverty, see Killick [2001]. For an analysis of how to improve the relationship between international trade and poverty reduction, see UNCTAD [2004]. Some decades ago structuralist and dependency theories had already drawn attention to the possible negative effects of trade on income distribution and poverty in developing countries.

23. For an analysis of the role of NGOs in rural poverty reduction, principally in Bolivia and Peru, see Bebbington [2004c].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristóbal Kay

Cristóbal Kay is Associate Professor in Development Studies and Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies, PO Box 29776, 2502 LT, The Hague, The [email protected]. The author is most grateful to Raúl Hopkins and the Latin American and Caribbean Division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome for their support in writing this paper. They are, of course, not responsible for its content.