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Zimbabwe's agrarian reform ('Third Chimurenga') narrative continues to cast more insights into the fate of farm workers, many of whom, as descendants of black Africans in the former British and Portuguese central African colonies of what are today Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique, were not seen as 'Zimbabwean enough' to benefit from the exercise. While many of these workers were adversely affected, a few, particularly the senior farm supervisors/foremen, showed agency in exploiting the miniscule avenues offered by the reform to position themselves, and eventually access land. Some became intermediaries between the state, the new black settler farmers and former white owners, sowing mutual trust and ambience within a volatile and potentially explosive situation. Using ethnographic data from an A1-designated case study farm (Billdore/Riverside) in the Trelawney/Banket commercial farming area in Zimbabwe's Mashonaland West province, the article suggests that such micro-level positionalities and functions proved critical in the ensuing politics of land appropriation that was predicated on partisan citizenship and belonging rhetoric. Despite their state of unbelonging, some of these previously landless migrant workers have emerged from the shadows of the Third Chimurenga and become their own masters, forging mutual relations and land-labour arrangements amidst the uncertainties of the ever-changing Zimbabwean land tenure system and political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to make a socioeconomic analysis over rural settlements in the extreme south of Bahia and in Pontal do Paranapanema in São Paulo state. Its emphasis is on cassava agrobiodiversity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen farmers in ten settlements in Bahia and eleven farmers in seven settlements in São Paulo. Those regions socioeconomic levels are among the lowest in their states, with major vulnerability in Bahia. About 60% of farmers's children live in the settlement, two thirds of them work on agricultural activities. Composed mainly by elderly population, settlements in Bahia represent most of cassava diversity, whose production provides to the artisanal flour production flour. The cultural dynamics over the flour production activities in the settlements constitute a key element in the region's agrobiodiversity maintenance. The Pontal's cassava production on the other hand, answers to the demand of industrial starch outside the settlements, which causes the growing of few varieties that answer to the industrial standards. The Bahia settlements' agroecological perspective has been fundamental to its agrobiodiversity enhancement while the industrial agriculture perspective endorsed in São Paulo's region weakens the agricultural diversity as well as its sociocultural structures associated with the agrobiodiversity maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a research project that reveals how a group of peasants from the ejidos of Sauz Sabino, municipality of Atotonilco el Grande, state of Hidalgo, perform different activities in order to produce the minimum necessary sustenance through the construction of agricultural terraces. The inhospitable conditions of the lands that these ejidos occupy have made terraces on ravines and hillsides their only option for cultivating corn. Interestingly, this process finds them rescuing techniques used long ago by their ancestors that reflect the social changes triggered by Mexico's Agrarian Reform programs implemented in the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following work discusses the early initiatives taken as part of the Agrarian Reform in Chile and Peru from the 1960s onward, analyzing the acceleration of the reforms under the governments of General Velasco Alvarado in Peru (1968-1975) and socialist physician Salvador Allende (1970-1973) in Chile. We then come to reflect on the counter-reform that swept through Chile under General Augusto Pinochet in the period between the coup d'état on September 11 1973 to 1990, and the more gradual consolidation of the counterreform in Peru under the government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyzes the actions of Peruvian peasant movements, such as the Peruvian Peasants' Confederation and the National Agriculture Confederation, which demanded of the state agricultural reforms and later the awarding of resources to be able to farm the land. It first briefly assesses the performance of the movement prior to 1969, the year in which the military government implemented agricultural reforms in Peru, and then reflects on the interaction between the state and peasant movements during the implementation process. Finally, it discusses the movements' participation in the return to the liberal model, evaluating both the maneuvers for wresting concessions from the state bureaucracy, as well as the organizations' stance in terms of the emergence and expansion of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] guerilla movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to imagine the actual relevance of historical knowledge to social movements. Historians almost always refuse to conduct any kind of analysis on the historicity of rural struggles, arguing that, ultimately, history does not study the past to sell prophecies. We would, however, have to be particularly insensitive not to recognize the importance which history acquires in the legitimacy and legality of social movements, in particular those which were or are linked to the struggle for agricultural reforms. The issue, however, is far from simple for a series of reasons that I will attempt to explore in this article. In doing so, I analyze the subject of agricultural reform and the concept of the peasant during historic conjunctures from the 1960s to the 1990s. I depart from the presumption that it is possible to encounter several points of contact which explain the scant presence of history in academic reflections seeking to legitimize the role played by struggles in rural Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines different conceptions and political debates about land reform in Brazilian history between 1934 and 1964, particularly in its relation with the constraints represented by the rural property system created in 1850. With the expansion and intensification of the debates and the organization of the popular movements in the 1950's, land reform began to be linked to different concepts and antagonistic development strategies. It is characterized how land reform becomes one the most relevant and conflictive issue in the political arena during the João Goulart government and military regimen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores key issues around land and agrarian reforms, beginning with definitions. It analyses debates over political intent and the contradictory economic outcomes of (redistributionist) reforms: these decrease some class inequalities but hold potential for further differentiation in the countryside. It also takes up three current issues: gender, land rights and land reforms, neoliberal ‘reforms’, titling and land ‘grabs’, and agrarian reforms’ contemporary relevance in the context of globalising trends. It concludes that land and agrarian reforms continue to be of much importance to poverty alleviation, food security and sustainable agriculture, particularly in a world framed by neoliberal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the main contributions which the internationally renowned agricultural economist SOLON BARRACLOUGH made to rural studies, particularly in Latin America. It also describes aspects of his professional career highlighting his work with the Latin American Regional Office of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) since the late 1950s and specially with the Agrarian Reform Training and Research Institute (ICIRA) in Chile. BARRACLOUGH was one of the leading architects of the CIDA studies on land tenure in various Latin American countries. It is during this period that he became one of the leading experts and advocates of agrarian reform and the empowerment of the peasantry. With his appointment as director of the prestigious United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in Geneva in 1977 he continued to be actively engaged with rural and peasant issues such as food security and peasant participation as well as with environmental problems and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]