Agrarian Reform and Class Consciousness in Nicaragua. By Laura J. Enríquez. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. Pp. viii, 206. Tables. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95).
entiation accelerated. It was out of this growing differentiation, not an elite land grab, and this is Professor Lauria-Santiago's central argument, that privatization of municipal ejidos, communal lands, and state-owned baldios developed. A rising rural middling peasantry, many ladinos who until then had been forced to rent Indian-owned land, embraced the possibilities of coffee and pressed for the privatization of land, to facilitate planning and access to credit. Far from an overnight coup, the process dragged into the next century and involved dozens of conflicting laws and policies and many local and regional histories, a number of which An Agrarian Republic details. Most of those engaged in peasant and commercial agriculture were able to gain legal possession of their plots. Some also worked part time for wages, but few were left landless, at least initially.