Resiliency in Hostile Environments : A Communidad Agricola in Chile's Norte Chico

The agricultural communities (communidades agricolas) of Chile's Norte Chico are dynamic systems of indivisible communal land, inherited use rights, democratic decision-making, and diverse economic strategies closely linked to changing environmental conditions.

In this semi-arid region where drought is chronic and poverty is widespread, families reproduce their livelihood and "comunero culture" through a variety of integrated economic, subsistence, and social practices.

Based on fieldwork spanning years of extreme climate changes, this vividly detailed ethnography of daily life in a peasant community explores the full range of income-generating and resource management strategies and forms of cooperative mutual assistance that are available to these households.One family's story is highlighted to illustrate the extraordinary resiliency of these communities despite the harsh ecological and, at times, social and political environments in which they are situated.

The book places these descriptions within the political economy of development in Chile's current "transition to democracy."While the state is more attentive to rural poverty in the post-dictatorship era, some programs and policies informed by a discourse of modernization and standardization limit these traditionally flexible livelihood options.

William L. Alexander is Assistant Professor and Program Co-ordinator for the Anthropology and Latin American Studies program at the University of Arizona South.