Agrarian Horizons: Rethinking the Politics of Land Reform

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Agrarian reforms have been a central object of political and social contestation in twentieth-century Latin America. This panel brings together new perspectives on the politics of land reform, offering historical reinterpretations of cases from Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The papers will consider how struggles for land reform have been framed within ‘area studies’ research agendas. They will examine the transformations brought by the breakdown of entrenched landholding patterns – the creation of new political actors, the reconfiguration of state models, and changing conceptions of property – as well as discussing the continued relevance of land struggles in the present.

Sub Track

• Area Studies: Critical and Historical Analysis

Session Organizer

• Tony Wood, New York University

Chair

• Sara J Kozameh, New York University

Individual Presentations

• “Constructing Legitimacy: Opposition and Acquiescence to the 1959 Cuban Agrarian Reform” - Sara J Kozameh, New York University

• “Venezuela’s colonial legacies and its contemporary land reform since 1999” - Andres Otalvaro

• Estudios rurales latinoamericanos: clase, entidad y género. Una revisión - Ailynn Torres Santana, Universidad de La Habana

• “Taking the Land: Patterns of Peasant Mobilization in Peru, 1960–1975” - Tony Wood, New York University

Discussant

• Cristóbal Kay, International Institute of Social Studies