Land Reform Summer School 2025

Redefining Land Reform: We began by contextualizing the recent "Big Beautiful Bill" proposal to sell off public lands as land reform - establishing that land reform describes any restructuring of property regimes and land ownership, not inherently progressive policy. This critical framework shaped our entire historical analysis.

Civil War & Reconstruction Analysis: Using W.E.B. Du Bois's work, we examined how enslaved people launched a general strike that crippled the Confederacy's economy while joining the Union army to directly confront their oppressors. This pivotal role in winning the Civil War generated political will for progressive Reconstruction policies like the Southern Homestead Act, which could have redistributed plantation lands to formerly enslaved people.

The Reactionary Alternative: Instead of targeting Southern plantation owners, land reform moved westward through the Homestead Acts and Dawes Act. This represented a coalition between settlers seeking "free soil" in the West and northern industrial corporations (especially railroads) with financial interests in land grabbing. Rather than building alliances with enslaved/formerly enslaved peoples for Southern land redistribution, this coalition chose indigenous dispossession.

Paramilitary Violence: Progressive Reconstruction efforts were systematically sabotaged by organized white supremacist, paramilitary violence in the South, demonstrating how reactionary forces actively work to prevent redistributive land reform.

Core Lesson: The direction of land reform depends entirely on which political coalitions advocate for it. 19th century American westward expansion was reactionary land reform because it emerged from an alliance between settlers and transcontinental corporations, choosing indigenous dispossession over challenging existing plantation wealth structures.

Conditions for Peasant Revolution: Building on Session 1's framework, we identified five key conditions where successful peasant movements emerge: (1) Areas with growing development discrepancies (not necessarily the poorest regions); (2) Easy access to urban centers, mines, and industrial areas; (3) Increasing absentee land ownership that weakened traditional landlord-peasant bonds, making exploitative aspects clearer; (4) Rigid negative reactions from landholders to moderate peasant demands that awakened peasant consciousness; and (5) Small emancipatory efforts that built organizational capacity.

Historical Development of Peasant Autonomy: In 1700s Cochabamba, economic crisis forced landlords to rent out hacienda parcels to survive debt. Families and wage laborers pooled resources to create the first "piquero" (smallholder) class, establishing the foundation for peasant autonomy through strategic economic adaptations.

Diversification Strategies: Bolivian peasants developed sophisticated survival strategies: Highland "Verticality" - assembling land parcels across different ecological zones to grow complementary crops (potatoes/quinoa at high elevations, grains lower) as insurance against localized failures; Valle Bajo Intensification - using permanent irrigation for double maize harvests annually with hired labor; Cliza Valley Mixed Farming - combining maize cultivation with livestock and potato production adapted to drier conditions.

Beyond Agricultural Diversification: Peasants developed comprehensive "livelihood diversification" including local and distant marketing, creating retail networks and ferias (markets) for barter/cash exchange, and non-agricultural activities as artisans, traders, and small-scale moneylenders.

Modern Political Strategy: We examined the 16-year period of political instability (10 administrations) following the Chaco War loss to Paraguay, analyzing how peasants strategically capitalized on political openings while protecting themselves during reactionary periods. Key developments included the creation of the first peasant union, strategic renting of land from haciendas, establishing schools as underground organizing centers, and eventual land purchases. These tactical actions corresponded directly to the political openings or closures offered by each administration - peasants advanced their organizing during progressive moments and consolidated gains during conservative periods. The 1952 national revolution succeeded through miner-peasant alliances, fulfilling the urban connection condition.

California Application: The Coachella Valley fulfills organizability conditions with high absentee ownership, strong urban market connections, and stark development inequality between Eastern farmworker communities and Western desert resort towns (where many absentee landowners now live). We concluded with our working group's vision for an agroecological school in the region, modeled on Bolivian examples, with dedicated funding to begin implementation.

Class Analysis of Progressive vs. Radical Movements: The concentration of resources and funding from urban-based environmental and conservation organizations creates a fundamental disconnect from working-class rural populations. This urban, philanthropic influence shapes the Progressive trend's dominance over radical, peasant-led approaches in the US context, with progressive movements characterized by college-educated, middle-class leadership, consumer-led analysis, and access to philanthropic networks rather than independent working-class power.

Strategic Limitations of Market-Assisted Approaches: Contemporary land justice tools prioritize "landowner persuasion" and market-based solutions rather than organizing landless peoples for redistributive land reform. Emma Harden's research on hobby/backyard farmers reveals how individualized, plot-based organizing leads to isolation, abandonment of political commitments, and local-scale impact without regional/state/national coordination.

Historical Food Regime Evolution: Three distinct food regimes demonstrate the evolution of global agricultural control: the colonial First Food Regime (1870-1930s), the US-dominated Second Food Regime with Green Revolution expansion (1950s-1970s), and the current Corporate Food Regime (1980s-present) characterized by structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization, and unprecedented corporate concentration. The 2008 Global Food Crisis exposed systemic contradictions with record harvests alongside record hunger.

Contemporary Land Justice Achievements: Nine land justice tools have achieved significant measurable success: over 61M+ acres protected by land trusts, 1,300+ active land trusts nationwide, and the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act passed in 23 states to address African-American land loss. These tools include Community Land Trusts, Buy-Protect-Sell strategies, Land Back movements, and cultural easements for Indigenous nations.

Alternative Organizing Models: The Bolivian peasant model (216 families organizing collectively to purchase land) demonstrates independent fundraising strategies that build power from below rather than relying on philanthropic largesse. Current USDA cuts and termination of Regional Food Business Centers/DEI initiatives, while harmful, create political openings for independent organizing to fill institutional gaps.

Political Education vs. Education: The session emphasized developing analytical capacity to respond strategically to emerging conditions rather than merely absorbing historical facts. This distinction between education and political education is crucial for building effective organizing capacity, as demonstrated through the working group's concrete initiatives including the Centro Campesino de Formacion Agroecologica ($10,000 committed) and Cooperative Development Vendor Matching programs.

Herbicidal Warfare as Colonial Strategy: Israeli use of herbicides to destroy Palestinian border farms demonstrates how chemical weapons systematically target both land and people to undermine indigenous food sovereignty and territorial control. This colonial tactic parallels domestic industrial agriculture's assault on farmworker communities, revealing agriculture as a continuation of chemical warfare by other means.

Chemical Weapons Heritage in Agriculture: Modern pesticides share identical mechanisms with WWII nerve agents (organophosphorus compounds inhibiting acetylcholinesterase), directly linking contemporary farming to Nazi chemical weapons research. The VX nerve agent originated from pesticide development work, exposing the military-industrial-agricultural complex's shared toxic foundation.

Profit Over Nutrition Systems: Herbicides that systematically eliminate nutritious milpa weeds (traditional polyculture biodiversity) expose how industrial agriculture prioritizes market control over feeding people. This destruction of biodiverse food systems reveals corporate agriculture's intent to maximize profit rather than nourish communities, creating artificial scarcity amid abundance.

Regulatory Theater vs. Corporate Power: Despite existing pesticide laws, systematic enforcement failures demonstrate how corporate power supersedes worker protection. The gap between regulation and reality necessitates land redistribution as the primary community defense mechanism, moving beyond reform toward structural transformation.

Land Reform as Primary Defense Strategy: Given the systematic failure of pesticide regulations to protect farmworker communities, land redistribution emerges as the most effective mechanism for eliminating agro-chemical exposure. Communities that control their own land never voluntarily choose to poison themselves or their children, making land reform a direct path to chemical-free agriculture that bypasses the regulatory capture dominating government agencies.

Women's Embodied Knowledge as Organizing Foundation: Female farmworkers' direct experience of chemical harm through pregnancy, nursing, and daily exposure creates specific demands for land reform that center community health over market access. This embodied knowledge of industrial agriculture's violence against social reproduction informs distinct organizing strategies that prioritize collective protection over individual equity.

Memory of Harm as Anti-Chemical Resistance: Communities with lived experience of agro-chemical violence become natural allies for chemical-free agriculture, making land reform not just about access but about collective self-defense. Guest speakers demonstrated how territorial markets and social organization create economic alternatives that bypass corporate control, building farmer autonomy through independent food networks rather than philanthropic dependency.

Climate Transitions as New Colonial Frontiers: Renewable energy projects like wind farms in Oaxaca demonstrate how climate action can perpetuate extractive relationships, dispossessing indigenous communities while generating profits through rent capture rather than genuine ecological transition. The Eoliatec del Istmo wind park's 81% profit margins reveal "green" colonialism operating under environmental rhetoric.

Extractivism Theory and Competing Theories of Political Ecology: Latin American indigenous extractivism theory emerged in the 1990s responding to neoliberal policies, focusing on how communities become "sacrifice zones" for capitalist/imperialist profit or national development. While critics say that extractivist theory misuses concepts such as the "appropriation of natural resources" (since all production requires initial extraction), we clarified that extractivist critique is not opposed to development & production. Instead, it specifically targets how accumulation modes—even by national-popular, South-led governments—disregard local community perspectives. This territorial focus reveals frontier communities most primed for land reform organizing, complementing rather than contradicting national-popular transformations while highlighting how governments may undermine their own political coalitions by creating sacrifice zones (recently: Bolivia and Ecuador).

State-Facilitated Corporate Land Access: Mexico's transition from nationalized energy (1938-1960) to privatization enabled transnational capital access to indigenous territories. The systematic legal transformation of ambiguous land tenure into private leasing systems reveals how state policy creates conditions for corporate accumulation through territorial dispossession.

Technological Fixes vs. Structural Transformation: Climate change creates massive land transitions that generate new sites of struggle, but technological and bureaucratic solutions often reproduce existing power relations. True climate justice requires moving beyond corporate-led renewable energy toward democratic control over land and resources.

Land Reform as Climate Strategy: Given systematic failures of both pesticide regulations and green energy policies to protect communities, land redistribution emerges as the primary defense mechanism. Communities controlling their own land never voluntarily choose to poison themselves or surrender territorial sovereignty, making land reform essential for both chemical-free agriculture and just energy transitions.

Indigenous Resistance as Anti-Colonial Knowledge: Zapotec, Huave, Mixe, and Zoque communities' organized opposition to wind mega-projects demonstrates how territorial defense creates alternative development models. Their banners declaring "El Istmo es Nuestro" (The Isthmus is Ours) articulate collective sovereignty against both corporate extractivism and state-imposed modernization.

Global North-South Land Reform Connections: The presentation's linkage between Oaxaca wind parks and California extractive industries reveals how similar dynamics of land dispossession operate across the Global North-South divide. A People's Green New Deal framework positions land reform as fundamental to achieving climate solutions that serve communities rather than capital, creating new economic relationships through territorial markets and farmer autonomy.