Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete

Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete’s research interests span widely across global political economy and critical development studies, with regional expertise in the politics of agrarian change and neo-extractivism in Latin America. He has explored these themes through an analytical focus on the nature of landlord-capital relations, the forces of campesino resistance, and the role and character of the (post-)neoliberal state.

He has co-edited two volumes on these topics in the Routledge Critical Development Studies Book Series. The first book, Agrarian Extractivism in Latin America (Routledge 2021), provides a meta-theoretical framework derived from agrarian political economy and political ecology to understand and interpret the new trajectories of rural transformation associated with corporate agro-industrial farming. The second book, From Extractivism to Sustainability (Routledge 2023), examines the relationship between natural resource extraction, industrial policies, and sustainable development from an interdisciplinary perspective.

He has published research articles in the Journal of Agrarian Change, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Political Ecology, Global Discourse, Latin American Perspectives and Estudios Críticos del Desarrollo, as well as a numerous book chapters. His research has been funded by grants and scholarships from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague, and two collaborative SSHRC Connection Grants.

Dr. Ezquerro-Cañete holds a cotutelle PhD in International Development Studies from Saint Mary’s University and the Autonomous University of Zacatecas. In 2022–23 he was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) at the University of Guadalajara.

Outside of academia, Arturo works as the Maritimes Coordinator at the Breaking the Silence Network (BTS), a Canadian-Guatemalan organization that has engaged in human rights accompaniment and solidarity work with civil society groups in Guatemala since the late-1980s. He also sits on the Migrant Workers Support Committee for No One Is Illegal Halifax/Kjipuktuk (NOII) which provides mutual aid to seasonal agricultural migrant workers in Nova Scotia.

Recent publications

2023 (with Henry Veltmeyer) “Agro-Extractivism.” Journal of Peasant Studies (forthcoming).

2023 (with Henry Veltmeyer) From Extractivism to Sustainability. London: Routledge

2022 (with Ben McKay and Alberto Alonso-Fradejas) Extractivismo Agrario en American Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

2021 (with Ben McKay and Alberto Alonso-Fradejas) Agrarian Extractivism in Latin America. London: Routledge.

2020 “La Lucha de Clases por la Tierra y por la Democracia en Paraguay.” Estudios Críticos del Desarrollo, 10 (18): 97-144.

2019 "‘La Soja Mata’: The Deadly Expansion of Paraguay’s Agro-Extractive Frontier.” In Organized Violence: Capitalist Warfare in Latin America, edited by Dawn Paley and Simon Granovsky-Larsen, 78-95. Regina: University of Regina Press.

2018 (with Ramón Fogel) “Un Golpe Anunciado: Fernando Lugo y la Promesa Perdida de la Reforma Agraria en Paraguay.” In La Cuestión Agraria y los Gobiernos de Izquierda en América Latina: Campesinos, Agronegocios y Neodesarrollismo, edited by Cristóbal Kay and Leandro Vergara-Camus, 89-118. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

2017 (with Ramón Fogel) “A Coup Foretold: Fernando Lugo and the Lost Promise of Agrarian Reform in Paraguay.” Journal of Agrarian Change, 17 (2): 279-295 (with Ramón Fogel).

2017 “Paraguay: Class Struggle on the Extractive Frontier.” In The Class Struggle in Latin America: Making History Today, edited by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, 182-206. London: Routledge.

2016 “Poisoned, Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay.” Journal of Agrarian Change, 16 (4): 702-710.