Guatemala

Backgrounders and Monitoring papers on land reform in Guatemala

Guatemala Backgrounder in PDF (21 pages)

FONTIERRAS: Structural Adjustment and access to land in Guatemala
Byron Garoz, Susana Gauster
September 20, 2005 - Agriculture is central to the Guatemalan economy and society, representing 23% of the Gross National Product in 1997, and with 61.4 % of the population living in rural areas in 2000. Agriculture in Guatemala is characterized by extremely unequal land distribution In 1998, according to the Ministry for Agriculture, Grains and Food (MAGA in Spanish ), 96% of producers cultivated 20% of the land mass and lived in subsistence conditions. At the same time 0.2% of producers possessed 70% of the land, with large areas of land used for production of agricultural exports. After more than thirty years of different government policies, the genocide of indigenous people and the peace accords of the 1990s, land access and distribution in Guatemala remains highly exclusionary.

Backgrounder Part I :The Agrarian Question in Guatemala
Laura Saldivar Tanaka and Hannah Wittman, Land Research Action Network
January 13, 2003 - Part 1 of this paper discusses the history of land reform efforts in Guatemala and gives an overview of the political struggles for land.

Backgrounder Part II: The Agrarian Question in Guatemala
Laura Saldivar Tanaka and Hannah Wittman, Land Research Action Network
January 13, 2003 - Part 2 of this paper discusses land markets and the establishment of FONTIERRAS, and explores the role of Civil Society in shaping the debate over agrarian reform Guatemala.