Latin American Peasants

The essays in this collection examine agrarian transformation in Latin America and the role in this of peasants, with particular reference to Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Central America. Among the issues covered are the impact of globalization and neo-liberal economic policies.

Although the results of Latin American peasant movements appeared particularly impressive in the 1960s and the 1970S, the end of the decade witnessed the progressive repression of the major movements on the continent. Latin American peasant movements, thus, have to be understood in terms of their conditions, their accomplishments in terms of potential class emancipation, and alternative outcomes such as repression, reform, and co-optation.

Informed by Eric Wolf’s Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, published in 1969, this book examines selected peasant struggles in seven Latin American countries during the last fifty years and suggests the continuing relevance of Wolf’s approach. The seven case studies are preceded by an Introduction in which the editors assess the continuing relevance of Wolf’s political economy. The book concludes with Gavin Smith’s reflection on reading Eric Wolf as a public intellectual today.

First Published 1975, The Latin American Peasant is not a historian's book, the presentation is rather sociological. The concept peasant, taken as equivalent of the word campesino or campones, does have both historical and geographical reality in the Latin American context.