ABSTRACT
Deforestation associated with shifting agriculture and the colonization of agrarian frontier regions is intimately tied up with processes of land concentration and dispossession which characterized the development of agro-export agriculture (Carriere, 1991; Goodman and Redclift, 1991). So-called ‘liberal’ states which emerged during the late 1800s and early 1900s, promoting private enterprise and restricted forms of representative democracy, fostered the growth of coffee production and introduced laws which tended to accelerate the disintegration of communal holdings. The profit opportunities associated with the cotton, beef and sugar booms of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, further intensified processes of land concentration and landlessness. By 1970, approximately half of all rural families were either landless or farmed sub-subsistence plots of less than a hectare (see Table 3.1)
