LAUSR

Abstract This article explores the history of the Honduran palm oil industry, through a case study of the Bajo Aguan region in the North Coast. This region went from being a supposedly “empty” space before the 1960s, to the home of a colonization project that became the centerpiece of the Honduran agrarian reform and the palm oil industry, during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s it came to be known as the “capital of the agrarian counter-reform,” as a cycle of dispossession led to the concentration of most of the land distributed during the previous period by a handful of large private companies. From the 2000s onwards, a new consensus has arisen regarding the centrality of the crop in the country's rural development strategy. However, this apparent consensus has been contended in the Aguan by a set of peasant organizations who question the legality and legitimacy of the deals that led to the control of the industry by these companies. It argues that to better understand the current configuration of the Honduran palm oil industry and the relation between the different types of small-holding producers and the larger companies, it is necessary to take into account their particular histories and forms of articulation with the industry as a whole.