Agrarian Reform and Acculturation

By Isaak Heller ‘22, Independent Fellow

Working for Focus On The Global South has been a fascinating process, with opportunities for learning at every turn. The day to day of agrarian reform work has been one very interesting line of work. So far, this has included holding an agrarian reform conference, working on on-the-ground struggles for land redistribution (from Manila), and planning an upcoming regional agrarian reform conference that will be held in Thailand in March (this will be my second time there, the first occurring around a month ago, when I went there for two weeks for Focus’s annual staff meeting, which brought together staff from Focus’s offices in the Philippines, India, Cambodia, and Thailand). Agrarian reform cases are fascinating, in part because they are mini campaigns that include many strategies that are relevant to larger social movements. Unfortunately, I cannot go into the specifics from specific cases.