Land Grabbing in Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by GRAIN
Land Grabbing in Latin America

Right now communities in Latin America, as around the world, are suffering a new kind of invasion of their territories. These invaders are not the descendants of the European conquistadores, who appropriated land, gathered slaves and plundered their colonial domains. Nor are they the big finqueros (estate owners) of the 19th and 20th centuries, who expanded their properties by carving up the territories of indigenous peoples and creating vast plantations for the production and export of commodities such as sugar cane, coffee, cacao, banana, henequen, gum, rubber and hardwoods, and who relied on what has been called "indebted servitude", forced labour under slave-like conditions. The new landowners are not those who brought industrial agriculture into Latin America either, who exploited local people's ancestral knowledge in order to adapt their methods to the new environment and climate.

It may be said of all these notorious characters, rooted to "their" lands and mansions, that they were physically present and politically powerful within the region. They fought continually among themselves to consolidate their fiefdoms (leaving a huge toll of dead soldiers). They made enemies and forged alliances to expand their control over water, labour, commerce, elections, public policies and access to land - regardless of the rights and the lives of others. Yet these overlords lived on or frequently visited their properties, and so came face-to-face with the resistance and rebellions of the people who had been invaded and dispossessed. No one feels nostalgia for them, but communities fighting them could do something directly, know who to struggle with, where to do it and when.

The history of Latin America is one of agrarian conflicts, and of indigenous peoples struggling to defend their ancestral territories. A new chapter of this history is opening. Another wave of land grabbing is hitting the Americas, and this time it operates from a distance and wears a halo of "neutrality". Today's land grabbers (as thoroughly explained in governmental web brochures) say that they are merely responding to food insecurity and a world crisis "that forces us to grow food wherever we can, even if we outsource production, because we will bring home this food for the benefit of our citizens". But when we dig a little, the financial monster shows its tail. The land grabbers are in fact big corporations and joint ventures investing enormous amounts of money in land, food production, the export and import of commodities, and food-market speculation.

Millions of hectares of farmland in Latin America have been taken over by these foreign investors over the past few years for the production of food crops and agrofuels for export. Much of the money comes from US and European pension funds, banks, private equity groups, and wealthy individuals like George Soros, and it is being channelled through special farmland investment vehicles set up by both foreign and local companies. Brazil's largest sugar company, COSAN, has a specialised farmland investment fund called Radar Propriedades, which buys Brazilian farmland on behalf of clients such as the Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund of the US. Louis Dreyfus, one of the world's largest grain-trading multinationals, has a similar fund into which American International Group (AIG) has invested US$65 million. While media attention has focused on land deals in Africa, at least as much money and more projects are in operation in Latin America, where investors claim that their farmland investments are more secure and less controversial - ignoring the struggles over access to land being waged in practically every country on the continent. More and more investors and governments from Asia and the Gulf are training their sights on Latin America as a safe place in which to outsource food production.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/10-9

Also posted in Editorials, etc:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x523385