Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America

Alain de Janvry is professor of agricultural and research economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been a consultant for the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Organization of American States, and the U.S. Agency for Intrnational Development. He is the author of numerous articles on economics, agricultural, and rural development.

• PrefaceAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Laws of Motion in the Center-Periphery Structure: The Underlying ForcesChapter 2. Agrarian Crisis in Latin America: The FactsChapter 3. Transformation of the Agrarian Structure and the PessantryChapter 4. Disarticulated Accumulation and Agrarian CrisisChapter 5. The Political Economy of ReformismChapter 6. Types and Consequences of Land ReformChapter 7. The Strategy of Integrated Rural DevelopmentChapter 8. The Agrarian Question and Change in Latin America: ConclusionsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

The two basic problems addressed in this wide-ranging study are the stagnation of food production and the dynamics of rural poverty. The facts of the agrarian crisis in Latin America show that cheap semiproletarian labor on the vast export-oriented and mechanized landed estates of today leads to destruction of the peasantry. The process is accompanied by ecological collapse, demographic explosion, urban migration, and increasing landlessness... This volumeis tightly organized; the material is logically presented with a minimum of professional jargon. It deserves a careful reading. Latin America in Books, January 1983