i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

Chapter 4
Small-Scale Organic Coffee Farming
as Sustainable Development in Las Segovias
In my fieldwork, I paid special attention to socioeconomic disparities that are inherent in
farm production and international trade, and I questioned what, if anything, alternative
development could do to reconfigure these traditional inequities. My research is shaped
by several contemporary studies of rural development in Latin America (e.g., Hale 1994;
Gould 1997; Field 1994, 1999; Nash 2001; Kearney 1996, Escobar 1996; Benjamin 1987;
Collins 1982; Enríquez 1991, Lancaster 1992; Mintz 1985; Wolf 1982). I combine
scholarly theory with Segovian campesinos’ personal experiences and interpretations of
development efforts. These individual perspectives provide an understanding of how
various development theories and models might apply to the Segovian scenario. The
individual accounts also link the period of socialist rural development and the more
recent neoliberal economic policy ushered in by post-Sandinista governments.
The most recent episodes that brought increased concern for coffee farming
communities from the international community are Hurricane Mitch in October 1998 and
the international coffee crisis in the late 1990s early 2000s, both of which affected the
Segovias campesino population especially harshly. Natural disasters, political strife, and
exploitative trade arrangements accentuate the vulnerability of smallholders in this region
and thus influence development agendas and local responses.
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