Agrarian Reform in the 1980s

Abstract

In a country where a major part of the population depended upon agriculture, the pressure for access to land became one of the most important demands of an increasing number of worker and peasant organizations at the end of the 1970s. The introduction of a land reform marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of the state and its intervention in the economy. The reform was accompanied by the application of a series of new policy instruments intended to affect the generation and distribution of real income in the countryside. During this reformist stage, policymaking was directed not only towards providing public goods or stimulating efficient production, but also at the correction of rural market failures. As we have seen in previous chapters, the skewed land distribution, lack of productive demand for labor, and concentrated input and product markets characterized this sector. The reform was one of the instruments of state intervention to improve the access to land of peasants and the landless, and it affected the interests of the big landowners who had benefited most from rapid agro–Export growth and related policies in the past.1