Community development and land reform. Preliminary observations on some cases in Latin America

Samenvatting

It is shown that CD projects, which are accompanied by such radical measures as land reform, have a greater chance of success than those which are carried out in a static soc environment. The most difficult obstacle to effective CD has been the peasants' distrust of gov agents, based on past experiences of bad treatment & oppressive measures from the gov to maintain the status quo. Such distrusts tends to disappear when the gov takes such measures as land reform, which indicate that the soc climate is changing in favor of the peasants. A project of the Instituto de Colonizacion Rural (Instit of Ru Colonization) in El Salvador, & the program of the Cornell U in Vicos, Peru are small-scale exp's which support this hyp. Large-scale positive effects on peasants' att's of land reform were observed by R. N. Adams & other scholars in the early 1950's in Guatemala, under the Arbenz regime. Difficulties encountered in largescale land reform programs, ie, in the Laguna region & the Bajio in Mexico, were partly due to not using sufficient CD as a complementary measure. AA.