Land administration projects (LAPs) build state institutions that are charged with the public administration of land as property via the systematic mapping, titling, and registering of land with the goal of creating formalized, transparent land markets. Although these may seem to be only technical tasks, when taken in context, LAPs often become sites of struggle for political and economic identities. This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement project will examine post-war Guatemala's land administration project in the Franja Transversal del Norte, a "frontier" region sited for agricultural colonization beginning in the 1950s. This region's complicated history of repeated colonization and counterinsurgency violence and its majority indigenous Maya Q'eqchi' population exemplify the difficulties in implementing a uniform LAP. The doctoral candidate will seek answers to the following questions: How are the cadastral survey and the reconstruction of the Guatemalan state after the civil war mutually constituted? What is the relationship between the state territorial process of individualized propertied citizenship and emergent indigenous autonomy? The doctoral candidate will explore the degree to which territorial visions map onto ethnic identities and how the Q'eqchi' must articulate a territorial identity in relation to propertied citizenship. The researcher also will attempt to determine whether the land administration project has decreased land conflicts. She will use a political ecology framework to explore material outcomes of the production of property regimes, key theoretical debates on the role of cadastral surveys in producing state identities, and the relationship between territoriality, indigenous autonomy, and citizenship. She will employ a mixed-methods approach, including regression analysis of land tenure survey data, review of archival and grey literature, and participant observation of rural villages, a Maya Q'eqchi' community association and international development agencies. This extensive study of the land administration project in Guatemala will consider the dynamics of territorialities over time and scales.
This research project use both qualitative and quantitative methods to enhance basic understanding of the effects of land administration development projects. Different methods employed in prior studies have led to radically different conclusions regarding the effects of these projects, but this project's mixed-methods research approach should shed light on the sources of these differences, and it should strengthen fundamental knowledge by explicitly incorporating geospatial factors into analysis. In the theoretical literature, there is a schism in the geographical literature between state mapping projects and counter-mapping. This schism means that state projects are often portrayed as finalized, historical moments and that works on counter-mapping often fail to address the influence of state and development processes on those movements. By addressing state mapping and counter-mapping in the same research, this project will contribute to understanding these processes as generated out of productive, dialectical tension. This project will also assist Maya Q'eqchi' communities in attaining government recognition for their land rights. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. This project is jointly supported by the Geography and Regional Science Program and the Americas Program of the Office of International Science and Engineering.
