Political dynamics of change in land resources-based social relations
Within the dominant extractivist political economy, particular social differentiation processes are prompted and/or deepened under economic, political, cultural and symbolical rationales of power. On the materialist side, changing social and property relations in the northern lowlands have resulted in both, more heterogeneous class formations and more complex inter- and intra- class relations. The oligarchic-yet-transnationalized, flex-crop agribusinesses have become dominant over traditional landed upper classes and territorial political elites. Though mighty large estate owners and ranchers still remain, many of them have developed contract-farming agreements with the flex-crop agribusinesses and others have sold or leased their land to them. These deals on good terms, however, should not lead us to conclude that changing dominance within the often competing-for-resources classes of capital is absolutely free of conflicts and contradictions. While clashing interests among the classes of capital are seldom overt in national politics, they can create a lot of tension in specific, localized settings. For instance, it was not unusual to hear ranchers complaining about the negative impacts of expanding flex-crop plantations over watersheds’ availability, contaminated water sources to water their cattle because of the heavy use of agro-chemicals in the plantations and especially, about the agribusinesses owners’ annoying distant rule, normally exercised through business ‘field managers’. This stands for a clash between old-times tactics of governing land resources and populations and the ones particular to current extractivist government rationality.