Guatemala Country Brief: Property Rights and Land Markets

In contrast to most Latin American countries with high land concentration, 1 Guatemala has been unwilling to consider re-distributive agrarian reform.2 One alternative proposed, therefore, for improving access to land for the rural poor is to make the land market more accessible. The following sections will describe Guatemala’s agrarian structure and land market, and assess the various land market programs implemented in Guatemala since the 1950s, focusing mainly on those undertaken in the 1980s and 90s.