Open Access"Deeply Human, Fundamentally Social": Fascism and Internal Colonization in Badajoz Province during the Early Franco Dictatorship
Author(s) -
David R. Henderson
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
perspectivas
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2184-3902
DOI - 10.21814/perspectivas.3088
Subject(s) - colonization , rhetoric , politics , rural area , dictatorship , settlement (finance) , unemployment , population , political science , sociology , political economy , economic growth , development economics , economics , law , geography , democracy , archaeology , philosophy , linguistics , demography , finance , payment
This article explores the ambition of the Franco regimes National Institute of Colonization (INC) to remake the countryside through irrigation and settlement. It focuses on the human side of this project, arguing that Spains colonization effort was fundamentally fascist in its aim to ensure the success of a nationalized and politically loyal segment of the rural population. It argues that the agricultural engineers of the INC inserted themselves as paternalistic authorities in the countryside, managing a carefully chosen portion of the peasantry. As the INC worked to begin its large-scale colonization schemes in the 1950s, it sought to determine which towns suffered from a social problem caused by the unemployment of tenants and small-property owners rather than landless laborers. In spite of the technical rhetoric of the engineers, with their stress on productivity and rationalizing land use, this article will demonstrate that certain political and moral considerations remained paramount throughout the process.