Unnatural disaster : the political economy of famine in Guatemala

Abstract

Guatemala is a specific case that illustrates how increasing immiseration and concentration of wealth occur simultaneously with the integration of a country into the global economic system. This integration takes the form of orienting national production and development towards exports, while increasing its dependence on imports of both basic needs and luxury goods. The process is championed by the national economic elites that benefit from this globally integrated development. They promote and effect this orientation of the national political economy through their control over resources, particularly land, production, exchange and the state. This 'dependent' orientation of the economy towards export led development and the grossly inequitable socio-economic structure that is its foundation have systematically deprived the majority of Guatemalans of their very means of subsistence and survival. It has appropriated their means of production and destroyed their entitlements, resulting in widespread hunger and famine. The actual famine that occurred in 2001 was simply a system of this systemic crisis that has placed millions in Guatemala at risk.

This thesis shows how the political economy of the country is inequitably structured, how it concentrates wealth in the hands of a small economic elite while actively impoverishing the majority. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)