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

Conclusion
Regional Segovian identity and cultural attitudes has historically informed the manner in
which economic development takes root in Las Segovias. As I have shown in this
dissertation, innovations to the longstanding coffee industry in Nicaragua are
significantly impacting the lives of rural, small farmers of the region. Although these
innovations represent a series of contemporary remedies for the ills of the past, they are
responding to the current phases of ecological and social distress. But these innovations
are, in fact, nothing new. Instead, they comprise another variety of corporate and First
World interventions in developing nations such as Nicaragua. Development, in this
historical moment, is framed in a different fashion than in the past, but it still privileges a
distinct segment of the population.
The majority population of impoverished Segovians have grown accustomed to
outside influences in their territory. For poor people in Las Segovias, models for
economic development and social organization come and go, but they still must struggle
to keep the land productive without spoiling the sources of their income—in other words,
the rainforests, water sources, and healthy topsoil.
The social conflicts in and injustices of the Nicaraguan coffee industry predate the
introduction of toxic petrochemical farm inputs that threaten wildlife habitat and delicate
tropical ecosystems. The shift to organic coffee production should reduce the risks to
wildlife habitat, and to native flora and fauna, but organic production offers little to
encourage new approaches to the legacy of marginalization, discrimination, and
exploitation that is part and parcel of the national and international control of the coffee
industry. Organic production and cooperative organizational models may liberate farmers
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