Legitimating Foreignization in Bolivia: Brazilian agriculture and the relations of conflict and consent in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

By Lee Mackey

Introduction: Brazil is a leader in tropical soybean innovation, the pretender to dominance of a global biofuels market, and the source of 78 bilateral agricultural cooperation agreements in nearly every country of the tropical world. The globalization of a constellation of Brazilian actors in tropical agriculture and biofuels raises the specter of Brazil as not only a destination but also a driver of transnational land investments across the tropical world. Despite the global scale and magnitude of these emergent land-based dynamics there has been little analysis of Brazil as a source of production and landholding abroad within the current phase of land deals. In order to generate future research hypotheses on the emergent trajectories of Brazilian actors shaping land-based social relations beyond Brazil I analyze an actually-existing intraregional case of Brazilian landowning to ask the question: what are the relations of conflict and consent concerning Brazilian landholding in Santa Cruz, Bolivia? In Amazon frontiers the politics of industrial agriculture in landscapes of the rural poor, contested regional integration projects and shadow of Brazilian expansion suggest that the globalization of Brazilian agriculture will be mediated through the particular social relations governing land in this region.2 The peripheral transnational frontier of Santa Cruz, Bolivia presents a valuable case through which to ground future analysis of the central role that the globalizing relations of Brazilian production are poised to play across the tropical world.