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Public Policy, Peasants, and Rural Development in Honduras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Charles D. Brockett
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Extract

For approximately the last two-and-a-half decades it has been a stated goal of both Honduran and U.S. policy to improve the welfare of the Honduran people, both directly through the provision of services and indirectly through the promotion of economic development. The need is great; Honduras has the lowest per capita GNP in Central America ($660 in 1984) and the highest population growth rate (3.4%). It also has the second highest percentage of its population living in rural areas (61%). Consequently, rural development has been a primary concern of development programs.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 69 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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62 U.S. Agency for International Development (1983), op. cit., pp. 6–7.

63 U.S. Agency for International Development (1982), op. cit., p. 6.

64 Ibid., p. 5.

65 Ibid., pp. 1–13, in 1981, the United States initiated a five-year $9.55 million program in Honduras to help coffee growers, including to combat coffee rust.

66 Tendler, op. cit., p. 8.

67 ‘Peasant Union Protests Arrests in Northwest’, Sula, San PedroTiempo (5 05 1982), p. 5Google Scholar (JPRS 1982 – 80878, p. 42).

68 Kincaid, Douglas, ‘“We Are the Agrarian Reform”: Rural Politics and Agrarian Reform,’ Honduras: Portrait of a Captive Nation, Peckenham, Nancy and Street, Annie (eds.) (New York, 1985), p. 144Google Scholar. Also see Ruhl (1985), op. cit., pp. 75–6.

69 This is, of course, in step with the evolution of the agrarian reform in El Salvador, with the change from redistribution to ‘land to the tiller’; see Simon, Laurence R. and Stephens, James C. Jr, El Salvador hand Reform, 1980–1981: Impact Audit (Boston, 1982).Google Scholar