Everyday Expertise: Land Regularization and the Conditions for Land Grabs in Petén, Guatemala

Advocates claim that market-assisted land reform (MALR) promotes economic development and reduces poverty by improving the security of private property rights and the efficiency of land markets. However, scholars argue that MALR often benefits elites at the expense of the disadvantaged and forces intended beneficiaries to resist or make difficult compromises. Nevertheless, this critical literature largely glosses everyday processes of implementation that help this policy get traction in particular locations. This paper examines the work of regularizing (titling) land in the context of a World-Bank-funded MALR project in northern Guatemala. Specifically, the focus is on the meaning-making work of field technicians who seek to convince campesinos (peasants) to participate in this regularization project. In their recruiting efforts, these technicians creatively link neoliberal slogans, human rights narratives, and exclusionary visions of nation, race, and property. By examining how technicians elaborate knowledge in the field and on the fly, this study reveals spheres of politics where regularization could be modestly contested or transformed. Such politics are worth attending to because in northern Guatemala and elsewhere, regularization contributes to conditions for land grabs.