Decolonizing development: Colonialism, Mayanism, and agriculture in Belize

This dissertation investigates the relationship between colonialism and development practices through a study of the materialization of the power of development in southern Belize. I ask how ‘Belize’ comes to exist as a territorial nation-state where the power of development is hegemonic. To answer this question, I bring postcolonial theory to bear on development discourses and practices that reproduce colonial, capitalist social relations. In the first part of the thesis, I argue that development practices are materialized in ways that reflect the particular historical geographies of colonialism. This is illustrated through a reading of the history of the colonial state and the Maya (in chapter II) and through an archeological reading of the discourse on Maya farming (chapter III). The Maya farm system was produced as an object to be developed, leading to repeated attempts to ‘settle’ Maya farmers onto private farms. In the second part of the thesis, I examine the effects of these practices for development practices and the conflicts they engender. I argue that colonialism solicited development as a means of reorganizing trusteeship, territorializing space as non-Maya, and producing hegemony under conditions of inequality, colonial rule, and primitive accumulation. Colonial disciplinary knowledges—especially Mayanism—have played a crucial role in producing the Maya as ‘Maya’ in such a way that called for development. Although value has been consistently extracted with essentially no local accumulation of capital, development discourses treat ‘Maya’ land use practices as amodern barriers to development. These practices have been contested in many ways. Mayanism and colonial practices are reworked through the defense of common Reservation lands; through political struggles around the Columbia River Forest Reserve; and through the Maya Atlas , a text produced through a counter-mapping project aimed at articulating a radically different geography of southern Belize. The last three chapters of the thesis offer postcolonial readings of different texts and spaces of development, including: the texts of Charles Wright, a soil scientist; the Maya Atlas; a participatory rural development project; and the 5th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization in Cancún.