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The Influence of the Agency for International Development (AID) on Ecuadors's Agrarian Development Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

M. R. Redclift
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Extract

Since the Alliance for Progress was first established over fifteen years ago, a number of interpretations have been offered for United States agrarian development policy in Latin America. This paper examines two of these interpretations in the light of a detailed study of peasant organization and agrarian reform in Ecuador, a country which received considerable attention from AID from the early 1960s. It has been suggested that AID staff in Latin America are often confused about the role the Agency should play. Indeed, the former Peruvian President, Belaunde, is said to have remarked that ‘AID is very feminine: it never says “no”, but it always says “maybe”‘. It might be added that such prevarication does not seem to have prevented AID from curtailing its more ambitious proposals so as to make them ‘…acceptable to prevailing elites’ However, neither the undoubted conservatism of the Agency, nor its lack of decisiveness are its only notable features. A more penetrating analysis of AID's role in Latin America must begin with the context in which AID operated in specific cases, and consider the legacy of its involvement in particular countries. In this paper it is suggested that AID was instrumental in establishing the outlines of the agrarian development strategy currently being pursued by the Ecuadorian State. As such, its role cannot be considered in inflated conspiratorial terms, nor can AID's activities be interpreted as of only marginal significance in the continent as a whole.

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Articles
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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 1979 , pp. 185 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Petras, J. and Laporte, Robert, Cultivating Revolution, The United States and Agrarian Reform in Latin America (New York, 1973), p. 407.Google Scholar

2 ibid., p. 411.

3 Petras, J. and Laporte, Robert, op. cit., and Olson, Gary L., U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World Peasant: Land Reform in Asia and Latin America (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

4 In the 1940S and 1950s industry was thought to be the key … Agriculture was seen as being something passive that you could drain resources from without need of replacement. In the 1960s, both the profession (economics) and the policy makers (AID) see agriculture as playing a critical role …’ Interview quoted in Petras and Laporte, op. cit., p. 452.

5 Olson, op. cit., p. 127.

6 Petras and Laporte, op. cit., p. 417.

7 Olson quotes one AID official expressing the following opinion: ‘Only if U.S. security were threatened would we assist in realizing land reform in the Philippines. It would be difficult to pull it off. If the Huks had been perceived as more of a threat, we would have done what we did in Japan, Korea and Taiwan’. Olson, op. cit., p. 69.

8 Agee, Philip, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Penguin, London, 1975).Google Scholar

9 See, for example, the resignation of Arosemena, which was largely attributable to his alcoholism (Agee, op. cit., p. 294), or Velasco Ibarra's anti-communist stand which was more influenced by the prospect of a loan from the International Monetary Fund than the work of the CIA (ibid., pp. 180–.3).

10 The agrarian reform on the Coast and the organizations of peasants are discussed more fully in Redclift, M. R., Agrarian Reform and Peasant Organisation on the Ecuadorzan Coast (The Athlone Press, University of London, 1978).Google Scholar

11 According to one survey, seven our of ten landlords of large rice estates (over 500 ha) considered their non-agricultural activities more important than their estates. Comisida de Estudios para el Cuenca del Rio Guyas (CEDEGE), Tenencia de la tierra y reforma agraria - un estudio socio-ecOnomico y legal (T. Ingledow & Associates Ltd., Guayaconsult, Guayaquil, 1970), p. 42.

12 Among the more important of these reports were CEDEGE, Tenencia, loc. cit.; CEDEGE, Babahoyo Irrigation Project Feasibility Report (T. Ingledow & Associates, Guayaconsult, Guayaquil, 1970); Baraona, R. and Delgado, O., El sistema de tenencia precaria y la explotación del trabajo de los aparcaos’ in El Proyccto de Reforma Agraria en la Región Arrocera del Ecuador (FAQ, Santiago, 1972); Informe de la Encuesta sobre la comercialización por el campesino de la Costa. Central Ecuatoriana de Servicios Agrícolas (CESA) (Quito, 1971).Google Scholar

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17 Ibid., p. 113.

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19 El Universo, Guayaquil, 5 Feb. 1969.

20 Ibid., 30 Dec. 1970.

21 Ibid., 2 May 1975.

22 Hurtado and Herudek, op. cit., p. 52.

23 Representative of the Cámaras' attitude was their initial reaction to the 1968 Agrarian Reform Law ‘… the only solution (is to) look for increased production, which will automatically bring improvements in living standards.’ El Universo, 27 Dec. 1968 .

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28 Ibid., p. 24.

29 Ibid., p. 52.

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32 The political control of agricultural technology is discussed briefly in Redclift, M. R., ‘Agrarian Class Structure and the State: the case of Coastal Ecuador’, Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericanos (CEDLA, Amsterdam, 12 1976) and Chap. 7 of Redclift, Agrarian Reform.Google Scholar

33 This programme is described in detail in Blankstein, C. and Zuvekas, C., ‘Agrarian Reform in Ecuador: an evaluation of past efforts and the development of a new approach’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Ojeda, op. cit., pp. 18–21.

35 Blankstein and Zuvekas, op. cit., p. 92.

36 Zuvekas, Clarence Jr ‘Agrarian Reform in Ecuador's Guayas River Basin’, Land Economics, 52, No. 3 (08 1976), 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Brown, Marion also makes this point in a brief consideration of ‘Land Sale Guaranty’ in ‘Private Efforts and Reform’ in Dorner, Peter, (ed.), Land Reform in Latin America.Google Scholar

38 García, Antonio, Sociología de la Reforma Agraria en America Latina (Buenos Aires, 1973), p. 171.Google Scholar

39 For an analysis of the effects of the ‘quota system’ imposed on small banana producers, see Arrata, Vera, Historia de un triste banano (Guayaquil, 1972).Google Scholar

40 According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Guayas River Basin is capable of providing enough food for 20 million people. This estimate was given in Nueva (Quito), 12 Oct. 1974, p. 38.

41 Private Memorandum, AID Office, Guayaquil (undated).

42 Ibid.

43 This discussion of ‘La Carmela’ follows Ojeda's account (Ojeda, op. cit.) and my own interviews with the participants in May 1975.

44 AID memorandum, op. cit.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 For some years we have insisted on the necessity of constructing the “agricultural enterprise”, which would rationalize work through employing every technical benefit with, of course, the protection of the state …’ El Comercio (Quito), 2 July 1975.

48 Orlando Fals Borda and colleagues have made precisely this point, Borda, O. Fals, El Reformismo por Dentro (Mexico, 1972) and Rural Cooperatives as Agents of Change: a research report and a debate (UNRISD, Geneva, 1975).Google Scholar

49 Peter Worsley in his Introduction ‘to Worsley, P. (ed.), Two Blades of Grass: rural cooperatives in agricultural modernisation (Manchester Univ. Press, 1971), p. 5.Google Scholar

50 Martinez, Ramón Espinel, CESA, el movimiento cam pesino y la comercialización: aporte teórico para la discusión en la reunión funcional de comercialización (CESA Litoral, Guayaquil, 08 1975), p. 11.Google Scholar

51 Since 1975, AID has shown much more interest in helping the poorest groups in less developed countries. This paper does not discuss these changes in policy, which are probably linked to the discussion within U.S. Government circles about the future form and role of the Agency.