ABSTRACT
Political economy has emerged as one of the major approaches that anthropologists are using to provide an integrating framework in which to articulate various levels of analysis. A political economy approach is a useful alternative to modernization and dependency theories. The expansion of capitalist agriculture is a multilevel process that includes the reorganization of local, regional, national, and international systems of production, distribution, and consumption in order to facilitate the process of capital accumulation both at the local and global level. The expansion of commercial agricultural production had far-reaching effects on the economic options available to most people in the region as well as on the regional ecology. The evidence from Honduras and Mexico show the similar effects that the expansion of capitalist agriculture has had on land utilization patterns. Because small farmers are unable to make a living by growing stable food crops, they have increasingly turned to activities other than agriculture to make a living.
