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

and parceled off, and by February 1992, five months into the first International Monetary
Fund accord, 34% of the APP lands were privately held. By the end of 1993, 84% of the
APP had been sold (Jonakin 1995:8). The CASs had lost most of the technical and
financial support upon which they depended. The programs that had been intended to
provide the rural poor with the “structural preconditions” for “greater participatory
democracy” ceased operations (Wheelock, in Williams 1994:170). The Government of
Reconciliation 86 essentially abandoned land redistribution and the policies affording the
poor access to education, farmer credits, and agricultural technology by curtailing the role
of MIDINRA (Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuaria y Reforma Agraria – Ministry of
Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform) in the national politics. These
cooperatives had grown accustomed to Sandinista government support when, in pursuit
of reentry into the global capitalist system, the Chamorro government adopted the
structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund (Enríquez 1991;
Jonakin 1997:100).
Community-based campesino organizing requires significant sacrifice,
investment, and trust among farmers of different socioeconomic classes and productive
capacities. Exporters and buyers are the ultimate measure of whether a co-op can satisfy
the quality and yield that specialty markets anticipate. In contrast, community indicators
for success are not defined externally. Rather, they are based on improving the general
quality of life for a majority of the Segovian populace. There is long way to go before
that is achieved. As Heberto Rivas from the UCPCO explained of his co-op,
“necesitamos que todos progresen para mejorar las condiciones de vida de los
86 This is the name the UNO Coalition adopted once they took power from the
Sandinistas in 1990.
238