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

funding package. Corcasan brought in the president of SERVICO-OP, Pedro Molina, to
provide four separate training sessions to farmer groups. He spoke about social
economies and the unequal distribution of labor and resources in countries in the tropics
and in raw-material-producing nations.
Molina described sociopolitical situations in certain countries that enable a few to
make the majority of profits. The people he called “Cabezones” are those politicians,
ministries, entrepreneurs, and bank presidents that derive profits from the labor,
ignorance, and poor bookkeeping of the small, vulnerable farmers. The capitalist system
fights for power between wealthy individuals and corporations while the farmers are left
to suffer, he declared.
Molina referenced stages of economic development from the “primitive
community” to slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. In many respects the feudal
relationship still exists today in Nicaragua, he claimed. Large-scale farmers provide
housing and small parcels for subsistence production in exchange for farmwork. After
coffee prices fell, beginning in 1999, haciendados removed people from their land. It had
become too costly to provide water, electricity, and other basic services when the coffee
price was so low that many would not even harvest their crop. This left the landless
laborer with little or no alternative. The outskirts of Matagalpa grew with shanties and
unsanitary neighborhoods. This culminated in June 2005 with the encampment of
approximately two thousand displaced workers and their families living alongside the
highway and demanding land from the National Assembly. Eventually, these precaristas
(squatters) were given title to government farms and other productive land.
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