Presentation short abstract

The paper examines how indigenous smallholders in the Amazon secure land in a commodity frontier moment. Adding to the debate of indigenous land claims in Peru, it shows the micro-processes of how families rely on social networks to safeguard farming livelihoods and can thereby reshape land access.

Presentation long abstract

The North-Eastern Peruvian Amazon has long been subject to commodity frontier expansion driven by state interventions and international agricultural markets. Increasing shortage and commodification of land has put the livelihoods of marginalised indigenous smallholders at risk. While there are rich accounts on how indigenous people oppose the state and demand forest rights on a collective level in Peru, this paper follows family histories from two villages to explore their micro-level efforts to find land for farming in a changing socio-economic context. Empirically, the paper draws on in-depth household studies using semi-structured interviews, participant observation and transect walks. The Findings show that individuals and households juggle between market- and non-market ways of finding land, with the former becoming increasingly important in a commodity frontier. It explores and discusses the centrality of social networks in acquiring land and lays out how respondent households safeguard farming livelihoods while customary and traditional access to resources is challenged. The paper thereby lays out how local actors reshape land relations in a commodity frontier moment. These land relations deviate from those envisioned and deployed by the state (private property) and assumed in relation to agricultural commodity markets. The paper particularly draws on access analysis to address what it means to find and have land for these indigenous smallholders and pays attention to the spatial, social and temporal dynamics of land access in a commodity frontier. Forests and particularly secondary forests as traditional land use practices is part of this complex picture on access.