The agrarian question of extractive capital : political economy, rural change, and peasant struggle in 21st century Paraguay

Abstract

This dissertation examines the impact of contemporary capitalist globalization on class relations, class conflict, and economic development in the Paraguayan countryside. It offers a political economy analysis of agrarian change, situating this analysis in the wider historical context of the protracted transition to democracy between 1989 and 2008, the rural class structure of the country, the changing character of contemporary agro-extractive capitalism, and the long‐standing class struggle for redistributive land reform. Particular focus is placed on the combative but still highly fragmented peasantry and on the “parliamentary coup” that took place in June 2012, as this event reveals the major fault lines of the balance of class forces in the countryside, in particular the commitment of a compact and coalesced, dominant agrarian class and political elite in Congress to preserving the country’s unequal distribution of land and wealth. By examining the Paraguayan land reform impasse under the short‐lived government of Fernando Lugo (2008–2012) through an interactive state-society framework, this dissertation attempts to locate the sources of current social and political conflict in the country, and the demands of rival social groups. In doing so, it argues that the rise and fall of Lugo occurred in the context of structural legacies from the Stroessner era (1954–1989) that have remained largely unchanged and that coexist today with an expanding agro‐ extractivist development model. <br> This dissertation also challenges the recent hailing of agricultural biotechnology as a panacea for food insecurity and rural poverty in countries of the global South. Based on an empirical investigation of the neoliberal soy regime in Paraguay, the present study documents how the profound transformation of this country’s agricultural mode of production over the past two decades, spurred by the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture and the bio-revolution, has jeopardized rural livelihoods. Drawing on the concept of “agrarian extractivism”, the study demonstrates how the transgenic soyization of Paraguay’s agriculture has led to an increased concentration of landholdings, as well as the displacement and disempowerment of peasants and rural labourers who have been rendered surplus to the requirements of agribusiness capital. At the same time, the consolidation of this new agro-industrial model has fostered a growing dependence on agrochemicals that compromise environmental quality and human health. Agrarian extractivism has also reshaped the political terrain of the countryside; the class struggle for land and agrarian reform has now expanded to include struggles against the deleterious operations of extractive capital.