Analyzing the Politics of Development Funding, Competition, and Corruption in the Ch’orti’ Maya Area

Abstract

My thesis is a study of the obstacles that prevent development practitioners from prioritizing beneficiaries’ needs when implementing development projects in the Ch’orti’ Maya area. Historically, structural dynamics have prevented the Ch’orti’ population from meeting their basic needs. While working in the region for six months in 2011 and 2012, I discovered that such structures remain despite efforts of local development agencies to promote a better quality of life through project implementation. Throughout eight weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in the summer of 2015, I interviewed ten local development practitioners and seven local experts, and I found that local development agencies in the Ch’orti’ area are constantly adapting to funding fluctuation. In efforts to continue to receive funding, development practitioners engage in a series of strategies that deprioritize beneficiaries’ needs. In addition, competition for funding and beneficiaries polarizes local development agencies, and prevents them from collaborating with each other or coordinating efforts. What is worse, resources development practitioners have at their disposal are sometimes contingent upon politicians or donors benefitting from interventions. Thus, development projects have treated the symptoms but not the causes of food scarcity and malnutrition in the Ch’orti’ Maya area. My analysis suggests that, beyond determining which agency will implement which project, donors foster the emergence of service economies when funding is abundant, and they foster competition when funding decreases.