6 - Land and Counterinsurgency

Summary

Chapter 6 turns to the case of Nicaragua’s land tenure institutions, analyzing the emergence of new land titling rules that stoked insecurity and corruption. It argues that the Contra War (1980–1990) remade the rules of agrarian reform and land titling in ways that subverted the state’s ability to regulate property ownership and opened up a property rights gap. As the perceived threat posed by the insurgency deepened and large numbers of peasant producers defected to the rebels’ side, the increasingly narrow and highly centralized FSLN coalition in power implemented a series of alternative rules that permitted the individual and provisional titling of unregistered lands, which generated greater peasant dependence on the incumbent regime but also heightened corruption and conflict.