Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Guatemala’s palm oil production has surged in line with the global demand for biodiesel and vegetable oil production. While corporate land grabs have been a popular concept in agrarian studies, we emphasize the integral roles of the state and racially-charged political power relations, enhanced by the neoliberal food regime. These power relations, with racism at their core, foster land control grabs occurring alongside the rise of the palm oil industry. Their effects extend beyond merely the dispossession of land. The oil palm expansion and related dispossessions mostly benefit the international markets and the wealthy ruling class comprised of creole descendants and affluent ladinos. The soaring industry has given rise to human rights violations and a lack of access to or control of various resources, such as food and water. Based on fieldwork, we show that dispossessed Guatemalans, especially the indigenous, experience rising poverty, domestic food shortages and an influx of foreign foodstuffs as the meagrely paid work in the oil palm sector is only available for the few.

KEYWORDS:

• Accumulation by dispossession
• indigenous peasantry
• neoliberal diet
• food regime
• land control
• neoregulation

Notes on contributors

Emma Pauliina Pietilainen received her bachelor’s degree from the stream of Sustainable Development in Social and Public Policy at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, minoring in Development Studies and Political Science. She developed a pronounced interest in the global agrifood system while working on her BSSc Honours Thesis, a Foucauldian discourse analysis on the palm-oil agrodiesel promotion. During her studies for a Master of Arts in International Studies at Simon Fraser University, global food insecurity and the US-Latin America trade relations encouraged her to specifically examine Guatemala’s surging palm-oil production and associated socioeconomic and ecological issues.

Gerardo Otero is Professor of international studies and sociology at Simon Fraser University. Author of Farewell to the Peasantry? Political Class Formation in Rural Mexico (Westview Press, 1999), he has published over a hundred scholarly articles, chapters or books about political economy of agriculture and food, civil society and the state in Mexico and Latin America. His new book is The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People (University of Texas Press, 2018). E-mail: [email protected]. Web page: http://www.sfu.ca/people/otero.html.

Notes

1 The term ladino is often used synonymously with mestizo, a person of mixed, including indigenous, heritage (McAllister and Nelson 2013, 3); however, ladino generally refers to a person with lesser association with indigeneity (Hale 2006). Thus ladinos do not speak an indigenous language, wear indigenous traje, or take part in indigenous practices. Many mestizos encountered during fieldwork carried indigenous roots with pride, and showed respect to the indigenous, whereas others, although perhaps similar in terms of ancestry, were more akin to the group ladino. The ruling class, or ladino ‘elite’ is comprised mostly of ‘creoles’, descendants of colonialists, or wealthy ladinos.

2 USDA FAS Exporter guide (Vásquez) e.g. in years 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015.

3 Statement of Thomas Shannon – George W. Bush’s envoy to Latin America and Barack Obama's former Brazil ambassador (Grandin 2010, 21).

4 Places are often referred to e.g. ‘Chisec area’ or ‘the Franja’ for the (1) anonymity and safety of interviewees, (2) sometimes-obscure borders of municipalities or communities, or (3) vague locations of cited communities by interviewees (second-hand information). All names and specific personal details have been changed or omitted.

5 Guatemala has 23 different Mayan groups (and thus varying ‘traditions’) of which Q’eqchi’ is the fourth largest, though it represents the ethnicity of most research participants.

6 Consejos Comunitarios de Desarrollo.

7 Sam 2013; field research 2014.

8 One oil palm tree demands approximately 170 to 368 litres of water daily and one hectare of palm usually contains 143 palms (https://www.netafim.com/crop/oil-palm/best-practice. Accessed in December 2015). Therefore, in ‘humid tropics’ where specific irrigation is not required, a hectare demands between 24,310 and 55,198 litres per day. In 2014, oil palm covered some 153,000 hectares of land in Guatemala; hence, palm plantations consumed at least over 3.6 billion litres of water daily.

9 During field research, the cost of over-the-counter medication was noted: antihistamine, cough syrup, and ibuprofen cost approximately 550 quetzals, about 70 USD: ‘wary of violating DR-CAFTA’s intellectual property clauses, in December 2004, Guatemala rescinded a law allowing for increased availability of generic pharmaceuticals for the poor’ (Grandia 2012, 189).