Content area
Abstract
The dissertation explores the impact of cash crop development and foreign aid on the socio-economic position of peasant settlers in a frontier region of eastern Bolivia. To this end, it focuses upon the relationship between expanding cash crop production and the accessibility of infrastructure, technical assistance and credit, patterns of land use, and social differentiation in Obispo Santisteban province. This province has been characterized by extensive settlement and the rapid expansion of commerical agriculture in recent years, and international development organizations have played an important role in shaping the emerging agrarian structure.
The principal argument is that capitalist development led not only to greater differentiation but also transformed led not only to greater differentiation but also transformed a large strata of the peasantry into a labor reserve without completely divorcing them from the means of production. Contrary to explanations which see peasants as transitional groups or forming a traditional society or pre-capitalist mode of production, the dissertation argues that the productive arrangements which define the peasantry in northern Santa Cruz are the product of capitalist development. Data represents information collected through interviews, participant observation and field survey information in three frontier settlements, interviews with large cash crop producers, statistical information from regional organizations, and archival research in derechos reales of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the agrarian reform office in La Paz.
