Trees, Beans, and Bullets: Forestry, Development, and Counterinsurgency in Northern Guatemala, 1960-1970

• In Event: Cold Warriors and Technocrats: Experts and Expertise in the Latin American Countryside

Abstract

In the forests of Guatemala’s northern frontier, science has long been freighted with political significance. During the 1960s, as civil war intensified in the countryside, the military responded to rural insurgency not just with bullets but with promises of science-based development. Which scientists were up to the task, however, depended on one’s perspective. Some officers recruited experts from the UNFAO to create a rationalized forestal industry that promised to generate new revenue, spur industrialization, and secure a dangerously remote region. Others favored colonization by small farmers from the densely populated central highlands, which they believed would eliminate the threat posed by masses of landless peasants. Those backing colonization tended to value the social sciences more than soil studies. The debate played out through two state institutions: FYDEP, a quasi-autonomous military command and forestry enterprise; and INTA, the institute of agrarian reform and colonization. This paper explores the discourses of scientific knowledge employed by FYDEP and INTA as they made their respective cases for what to do with the northern forests. Scientific authority, especially that granted by international bodies, translated into political power in this debate, while the advancement of certain scientific ideas over others carried profound ramifications for Guatemala’s peasants, refugees, and landowners. The eventual victory of FYDEP over its institutional rivals in the capital was a significant development in the construction of the Guatemala state, with enduring legacies of exclusion and violence for the system of parks and biosphere reserves that now dominate the landscape of the Petén.

Author

• anthony w andersson, New York University