Johnson on Fischer and Benson, _Broccoli and Desire: Global Connections and Maya Struggles in Postwar Guatemala_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (March 2007)

Edward F. Fischer and Peter Benson, _Broccoli and Desire: Global 
Connections and Maya Struggles in Postwar Guatemala_. Stanford, CA: 
Stanford University Press, 2006. ix + 212 pp. $50 (cloth), ISBN: 
0-8047-5484-5.

Reviewed for EH.NET by David C. Johnson, Department of History, 
Elmhurst College.


Due to the absence of precious metals in Guatemala, during its 
colonial era (1524-1821) the Spanish colonizers searched for an 
alternative commodity that could be exported back to Spain. The 
Spanish crown prohibited its colonies from exporting manufactured 
products, so the creole settlers in Guatemala searched for an 
agricultural commodity. Indigo, a blue dye derived from legumes, 
became the major export during the 1700s. But when indigo seed from 
Guatemala arrived in Venezuela in 1777, the Caracas region quickly 
began to export more indigo than Guatemala. Towards the end of the 
1700s, Guatemalan finqueros (farmers) began to shift to cochineal, a 
crimson dye made by crushing an insect (Coccidea) that lived by 
sucking on prickly pear cacti. When the eighteen year old British 
chemist William Henry Perkin discovered a mauve aniline dye in 1856, 
the gradual decline of the more expensive cochineal from Guatemala 
began. Coffea Arabica, introduced into Guatemala through the Catholic 
Church in 1750, filled the void left by cochineal and by 1870 coffee 
accounted for over fifty percent of the nation's exports.

 From 1870 up through today, coffee has been Guatemala's primary 
export. By the time of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United 
States started to pay attention to the coffee economies in Latin 
America with the goal of lessening their political and economic 
instability caused by widely fluctuating prices. From 1962 through 
1989, the coffee exporting nations and the western consuming nations 
banded together and enacted quotas in an effort to fix the 
instability of the international coffee trade. The non-governmental 
organization that monitored the quota agreement, the International 
Coffee Organization, started an initiative that encouraged coffee 
farmers to switch to export commodities other than coffee. The quota 
agreement was allowed to lapse in 1989 when the United States no 
longer considered communist infiltration a threat to Latin America, 
and with free trade came plummeting coffee prices. From 1989 up 
through today, coffee prices have been well below 1989 levels, a 
condition that has resulted in many farmers turning to alternative 
agricultural exports.

Edward F. Fischer and Peter Benson, in their monograph _Broccoli and 
Desire: Global Connections and Maya Struggles in Postwar Guatemala_, 
examine one of the alternative export commodities that Guatemalan 
farmers have turned to since the early 1960s. The authors examine the 
contemporary globalization of Guatemalan broccoli from two 
perspectives; the Maya farmers that grow the broccoli and the 
American consumers that eat it. As with coffee cultivation, the Maya 
farmers are at a distinct disadvantage in this relationship. The 
farmer takes all the risk by borrowing money to pay for fertilizer 
and labor until the harvest and sale of their crop. Additionally, 
should the broccoli not look appealing or be the wrong shade of 
green, a buyer representing American wholesalers will reject the 
crop, leaving the farmer with little option but to dump the product 
on the Guatemalan market and receive a fraction of its export price. 
The farmer weighs the risks against the rewards and cultivates 
broccoli in what Fischer and Benson label as endeavoring "algo más," 
or "something better" (p. 3). On the other hand, the American 
consumer is concerned with staying healthy and possibly becoming 
and/or remaining ecologically conscientious. The producer and the 
consumer are usually unaware of each others' reasons for 
growing/eating the broccoli, and it is the authors' contention that 
the term "desire" best explains the complexities of the Guatemalan 
and North American relationship.

The authors successfully illustrate the conflicting and often 
complementary web of desires that link the southern producer with its 
northern consumer. The usage of the term "desire" in the title 
signifies the want versus need relationship of the Maya farmer. For 
the northern consumer, the desire for fresh broccoli often allows 
them to concentrate on the aroma of steamed broccoli infused with 
garlic flavored olive oil. The same consumer is usually unaware of 
the complex, and often exploitative, commodity chain that carries the 
product from Tecpán in the highlands of Guatemala to the capital of 
country music, Nashville. The authors' objective is to explore the 
"emergent forms of social life, political identities, and ethical and 
moral orientations" (p. 5). Too often, the debate surrounding 
globalization in general and the exportation of nontraditional 
agriculture (coffee, cotton, sugar, and bananas are the traditional 
agricultural exports in Guatemala) uses polarizing terminology to 
frame the argument as a battle between exploitive market forces and 
heroic resistance from farmers. Yet _Broccoli and Desire_ uses an 
ethnographic approach to record the pragmatism of Maya farmers, even 
though they may have lost their pervious year's crop to bad weather. 
By considering the economic realities, the authors' are then able to 
explore how cultural meanings and moral variances develop within the 
construct of both the Maya farmer and the high-school teacher 
purchasing the broccoli in an air-conditioned supermarket in 
Tennessee.

One constant of any book about Guatemala, irrespective of the time 
period, is the violence committed against the indigenous population. 
The worst violence to occur since the Spanish Conquest in the 1520s 
occurred from the early 1960s up through 1996, when the nation saw 
200,000 people, mostly Maya, killed in what only can be described as 
genocide. Although in 1996 the government and the rebels signed the 
Peace Accords, in 2003 the U.S. Department of State noted that police 
officers routinely kidnapped and tortured their own citizens. Once 
again, the Maya were on the receiving end of much of this violence. 
In the second half of the book, Fischer and Benson move from global 
connections to the Mayan struggle to stay alive and prosper in 
postwar Guatemala. A reader unfamiliar with the history of Guatemala 
would have been better served to have this second section ("Violence, 
Victimization, and Resistance") come before the first section ("How 
the Maya Want"). The interconnecting network of desires of both Maya 
and Nashville shopper are illustrative only if the reader is aware of 
what is happening in contemporary Guatemala.

Nonetheless, Benson was in Guatemala when in 2003 a former president 
accused of genocide by the U.S. and every reputable human rights 
organization intimidated the Guatemalan Supreme Court into abrogating 
a law that disallowed people accused of genocide from running for 
president. When General Efraín Ríos Montt campaigned in Tecpán in 
2003, loudspeakers serenaded the crowd with songs that extolled his 
benevolence while firecrackers welcomed the local dignitaries to the 
stage. The next day, making a campaign stop in the Maya town Rabinal, 
the reception was different, as the General was forced off the stage 
because of a fusillade of rocks. These two widely contrasting 
receptions are indicative of the complex and oftentimes violent 
relationship between the governed and those governing.

Nonetheless, the broccoli farmers in both Tecpán and Rabinal continue 
to live a precarious life, not only because of the economic risks 
that the authors examine in the first section, but also because of 
the continuing violence of the state. Furthermore, globalization has 
bequeathed an export from the United States that the Maya farmer must 
negotiate in their goal of maximizing their desire: gangs. One fruit 
vendor at the local market in Tecpán was robbed of 700 quetzals 
(about $90) by youth whom other vendors believed were gang members. 
The Maya adult that grows broccoli continues to navigate between a 
corrupt government and a youth movement that threatens to exacerbate 
the cycle of violence.

The authors do not delve into why the Maya today opt to grow 
broccoli, an effort initially underwritten in the 1960s by the World 
Bank and the United Nations. One relationship has not changed since 
the 1960s; those providing services (transportation or the sale of 
fertilizer) always benefit from the export of nontraditional 
agricultural commodities, irrespective of drought or hurricanes. The 
"desire" component in their book offers an alternative narrative 
about the complex relationship between producer and consumer beside 
the traditional focus on commodity chains. Globalization offers the 
Maya opportunity, an opportunity in many ways that presents a greater 
reward than traditional coffee farming because the profit margins are 
so much larger. Most importantly, Fischer and Benson also show how 
the capricious consumption patterns of the West can have negative 
consequences on the developing world. When U.S. President George H. 
W. Bush declared "I'm not going to eat any more broccoli" shortly 
after his inauguration in 1989, the resultant firestorm demonstrated 
that a casual remark could have negative repercussions for broccoli 
growers in the U.S. and worldwide. The Maya of Tecpán that grow 
broccoli survived that incident, and since then have adopted 
strategies for and adapted to the forces of globalization. Although 
the format of this book may require a reader unfamiliar with 
contemporary Guatemala to begin with the second section, _Broccoli 
and Desire_ nevertheless makes an important contribution to the 
scholarship of post-war Guatemala.


David C. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of History at Elmhurst 
College. His research is about the international coffee trade and how 
it impacts domestic production in Guatemala. He is currently revising 
an article about the international coffee trade for _Latin American 
Perspectives_ and is writing a book chapter about the Guatemalan 
economy, 1960-1990.

Copyright (c) 2007 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator (administrator at eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (March 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived at 
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.