The World Bank and market-assisted land reform in Colombia, Brazil, and Guatemala

Abstract

The article analyzes the implantation of market-assisted land reform (MALR) in Colombia, Brazil, and Guatemala, in the period 1994−2008. Disseminated by the World Bank (WB), MALR was conceived as an alternative model to redistributive agrarian reforms, based on the expropriation of private lands by the state. After contextualizing it in the more general process of the updating of the neoliberal political program, the article discusses the agrarian agenda of the WB and its lines of action, amongst which was MALR. It also shows the political and economic objectives which guided its implementation and analyzes the results of MALR. The article discusses the differences between the theory and practice of MALR, arguing that its experimentation revealed structural limits as a public policy for combating rural poverty. While the WB worked with agendas and the definition of the type of agrarian policy suitable for economic and institutional neoliberalization, the governments of client states used MALR as an instrument to undermine popular struggles for the democratization of agrarian structure in highly unequal societies, propagating the idea of access to land ‘without conflict.’ In the three countries, MALR was implemented through a partnership between the WB and national governments against the agendas of the majority of peasant organizations.