Land Titling and Peasant Differentiation in Honduras

Abstract

Many countries of the Third World entered the fourth quarter of the 20th century essentially without having experienced the change in the structure of rural landholding that is part of the so-called revolution. State sanction of titles to land conferring on its holders the right to use and transfer it within legal limits is widely recognized to have played a key role in the penetration of the capitalist mode of production into precapitalist agriculture. In the light of this, and in the face of growing rural unrest, a restructuring of the legal bases of land tenure along liberal lines has become the policy of a number of these nations. Countries such as St. Lucia, Ecuador, Thailand, and Honduras have attempted large-scale land titling programs. This article assesses the titling program in Honduras, suggesting that it is likely to exacerbate the tendencies toward differentiation characteristic of the capitalist development of agriculture.