The legacies of partial possession: From agrarian struggle to neoliberal restructuring in Mexico and Colombia

Abstract

How have communities in Latin America responded to neoliberal agrarian reforms? We address this question via an incorporated comparison of two regions affected by rural restructuring: La Laguna, Mexico and Viejo Caldas, Colombia. Prior to the introduction of market-led reforms, agricultural producers in both regions were heavily dependent on state support, yet in neither did they mobilize to resist neoliberal policies that were incompatible with the prevailing system of state-managed commercial agriculture. What explains this outcome? We argue that acquiescence to neoliberalism was, paradoxically, a legacy of agrarian unrest: In response to major mobilizations, historic land reforms were carried out in La Laguna and Viejo Caldas during the 1930s that created regional political economies organized around cotton and coffee, respectively. Over time, these economies evolved into regimes of ‘partial possession’ wherein the social reproduction of rural livelihoods came to depend on specific state institutions: the Ejido Bank in Mexico and Fedecafé in Colombia. We attribute the absence of organized opposition to neoliberal reforms in La Laguna and Viejo Caldas to the conservatizing political transformation that partial possession engendered. In so doing, we highlight the importance of regional histories in shaping popular responses to neoliberal restructuring across the variegated landscape of Latin America’s countryside.