(Dis)Accords: The Politics of Market-Assisted Land Reforms in Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

In spring 2003 the World Bank published a major statement on land reform policy reflecting powerful new institutional support for market-assisted land reforms. This article uses the case of land conflicts in Chiapas, Mexico and their resolution through market-assisted “Agrarian Accords” to critically examine this new policy current. Using fine-grained case studies and ethnography, rather than the national/crossnational studies typically used to assess market-assisted land reform, this article finds no grounds for the foundational claim that decentralized, market-assisted land reforms are inherently less politicized than state-led land reforms. Despite claims to the contrary, proponents of the new policy deploy one-dimensional understandings of politics and the political construction of markets that gloss the ways “community” and “markets” are highly politicized sites where actors play out multiple territorial projects.