ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the progress of the Agrarian reform in a key area of coastal Peru in an attempt to uncover the character of the reform effort itself, the nature of the state's involvement in the agricultural economy in the wake of the reform, and the reasons for the failure of the military to impose corporatist forms on the agrarian sector. Examination of the actual course of agrarian reform in the lower valley of the Piura River (the Bajo Piura) reveals the inadequacy of any rigidly instrumentalist conceptualization of the state, the degree to which agrarian reform contributed to the active mobilization of the peasantry and was propelled by a mobilized peasantry, and the precariousness of the state's attempts to manage the peasants and agriculture. The chapter reviews both the contradictory character of the military's program with its twofold goal of promoting social justice and augmenting productivity, and the relative strength of independent peasant organizations contributed to the military's failure.
