The ronda and the rope: parallel justice systems and the dangers of legal abandonment in rural Latin America

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala delivers a speech in rural Puno.
Humala ran on a campaign with ethnonationalist tones. He is currently serving a 15 year sentence for his involvement in the Odebrecht scandal, the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history.
© Presidency of Peru, 2015 

Much has been written about the lack of access to legal services in rural areas of America. Savvy writers usually stay clear of making worst case scenario predictions. This is understandable, as nobody wants to be the person who says the sky will fall down. I shall not make such calamitous predictions either. What this article contains is instead a view into a place in which legal systems have failed and given way to other forms of justice.

This article is a small survey of parallel systems of justice in rural and remote areas of Peru, a country with which I am intimately familiar. Over the course of this piece I will go through the circumstances that led to the formation of such systems, their current status, and some of their worst excesses. Peru is not the United States. Its geography, history, and demographics are radically different. The underlying conditions that produced these parallel systems are not, however, unique to Peru. It is worth asking what fills a vacuum when the courts do not play a role. In Peru, we have some answers. Whether the same questions in rural America would ever be answered in like manner to Peru is for the reader to imagine.

The geographical roots of legal absence

A lone truck challenges the curves of the Pasamayo Serpentine.
The trip is usually made harder by fog and wet asphalt. Hundreds of people have fallen 300 feet to their deaths in this road over the last couple decades.
© Santiago Stucchi, 2008.

Peru's geography represents a major obstacle to the nation's political integration and by extension, to its legal system. Peru is vertically split in half by the Andes mountain region, it is flanked on its east by the Amazon rainforest and on its west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru's capital of Lima holds 1/3 of the nation's population. The result of this is an extremely centralized nation, dominated by its political and economic coastal elites. Its mountainous terrain makes transportation quite difficult as well, with some highways like the infamous Serpentine of Pasamayo (an extremely narrow 14 mile stretch of highway which has mountain on one side and abyss on the other) being the only way to make way through the country.

In many remote areas, especially in the Andes, there is very little formal policing. The courts are a distant, nonoperative institution. Language barriers do not help either, as about 15% of Peru's population speaks Quechua as their main language, but much of the population, and especially those working in government, do not speak it at all. Historically, communities in such areas have governed themselves with little involvement from the central or even regional government. Often, they handled disputes through informal assemblies or through respected community leaders. The first rondas campesinas (meaning "peasant patrols") were established in the northern Andean region of Cajamarca, in the late 1970s. These early rondas were primarily created to deal with property crimes (the main one being cattle theft).

Sendero Luminoso and the militarization of the rondas

A painting displayed on the First Military School of Sendero Luminoso.
On the left, the students. On the right, Sendero's leader, Abimael Guzman. Above him the figures of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.

In May 1980, the Maoist terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (literally "Shining Path"), a primarily rural Andean movement, declared war on the Peruvian government. It was led by Abimael Guzman, a professor of philosophy at a university in Ayacucho (a region in the south Andes). Part of Sendero's strategy was what they called "batir el campo" (meaning "scouring the countryside", destroying all non-Sendero authority in such regions). Initially, many rural communities sided with Sendero, agreeing with their message of discontent against the neglect the government had for the people of the Andes. When confronted with the violent revolts happening in the Andes, President Fernando Belaunde dismissed them, assessing the threat as nothing more than small issues with cattle rustlers. Sendero held "people's trials" against those it considered "antirevolutionary elements". The subject of these trials were often community leaders, and the price of resistance was massacre. The most notorious of these was the Lucanamarca massacre of 1983, in which over 60 people (ranging from ages of 6 months to 70 years of age) were killed with machetes and axes, in retaliation for the killing of one of Sendero's commanders. What followed were years of massacres in the Andes, with much of the human cost falling on the rural communities that lived there.

Eventually, in the early 1990s, the Peruvian government found its footing in the fight against Sendero, and the war started to turn. Under the leadership of President Alberto Fujimori, the rondas started being armed and supported by the government. This cooperation proved instrumental in defeating Sendero in rural regions, and displacing them into other areas where the government had an easier time fighting them. On September 12, 1992, Sendero's leader Abimael Guzman was captured in a safehouse in an upper class neighborhood in Lima, where he was being hosted by a wealthy classical dancer. That was game over.

Constitutional recognition

After the inflection point of Guzman's capture, Fujimori moved forward with a series of reforms. Chief among them was the Peruvian Constitution of 1993. In its Article 149, the constitution recognizes the authority of the rondas campesinas within their jurisdictions, as long as they "respect the fundamental rights of people". The same article calls for the cooperation of the "traditional" judicial power and these parallel systems of justice in the future.

How the project of cooperation and respect for the fundamental rights of people is going is difficult to assess with precision. But, where statistics are scarce, it is always good to tell a story.

A Canadian in Ucayali

The village of Nuevo Jerusalen in the Ucayali Region of Peru.
A village such as this was where the events described below took place.
© Vratislav S, 2012

Imagine you are a young (ish) Canadian man. Like many of your peers, you seek enlightenment. You doubt Western medicine and respect indigenous cultures. So, you decide to look into the real stuff. You travel south, to Peru, perhaps further south, to the Ucayali Region (in the Amazon rainforest). You do ayahuasca, it changes your life, you seek to go further down the rabbit hole. You seek a teacher, Olivia Arevalo Lomas, a well known elder, healer and community leader. You dedicate ten years of your life to this. Then one day, a bang, and your teacher is dead, three gunshot wounds. The police eventually show up (it takes them some time), and everyone is really angry. Even worse, they think it is your fault. Oh no. Facebook posts start to be circulated. "WANTED" they say, then a picture of you, then a plea for clues on your whereabouts. People in the comments express their wishes that you are brought to justice, others propose rewards for hunting you down. Things are looking really bad for you. But actually, these latest developments are not that bad, since you are already dead. Police soon find a phone which contains a video recording of your last moments. A mob got to you (quickly, well before the police ever got there, since you are conspicuously foreign). There was no trial, no evidence, no attorneys. You have been lynched, and your manner of death was strangulation. Your family says you were really nice, hated guns, and just loved ayahuasca. The locals will remain convinced it was you. The rest of the world will never know. This story is not a thought experiment. These events happened to Sebastian Woodruffe, a Canadian tourist. His death drew international attention before disappearing from the news cycle within days.

Gerardo's choice

If you are in any way like me, you may have heard the story and said to yourself, "only one way to avoid a similar fate, stay as far away as possible from that region if you are not a local." However, this is not a solution. In 2007, in the village of Patascachi (near the border with Bolivia, population around 1000), a mob descended upon the house of Gerardo Parisuana, a farmer. Nearly the entire town was there. The occasion? Gerardo's son Gary was accused of being a cattle rustler, and the mob had had enough of him. The evidence against him? A gang of cattle rustlers, upon capture, had accused Gary of being their leader. The police arrested Gary, but found insufficient evidence to hold him and released him shortly after. For the rondas, however, the "trial" had already happened, the verdict was in, and there was no room for appeals. Gerardo now had a choice: to lynch his own son, or to have the rest of his family share his son's fate. Gerardo made his choice. According to witnesses, the crowd tortured Gary before Gerardo hanged him.

The mayor on trial

A sign near the city of Ilave, in the Puno Region.
The city of Ilave is at an elevation of over 12 thousand feet above sea level.
© TeshTesh, 2015

Not even money and power are enough to protect yourself from such a fate. In 2004, in the city of Ilave (in the Puno Region, near Lake Titicaca in the heart of the Andes), the mayor of the city, Cirilo Robles, was lynched by a mob. It all started with a protest sparked by allegations of corruption and embezzlement. Aymara-speaking peasants made camp in front of the municipality's doors, protesting that the mayor had promised to pave the Ilave-Mazocruz highway, and the promise was yet to be fulfilled. The mayor left the city as soon as the protests started, and only came back weeks later. When he finally came back, he held a meeting with his council at his private residence, in which he resolved to resign. The mob found out about the mayor's return, and soon thereafter they descended upon his home. They breached the house and dragged the mayor after giving him a beating. He was tortured for hours before being hanged in the city's square. His lifeless body was found under a bridge. Later that year, Peru's Government Accountability Office investigated the allegations against him. They found no evidence of embezzlement, and they exonerated him. The Supreme Court of Peru sentenced two members of the mob to 30 years in prison. The mayor's successor, Miguel Flores, closed this somber chapter with a phrase that could be considered the most Peruvian aphorism, "Everything remains the same for us."

Conclusion

The rondas campesinas are not just a series of horror stories. They emerged from genuine necessity. They fulfilled a role that no one else could. They even have constitutional recognition. But the results they tend to generate speak for themselves. Formal policing and legal institutions are not perfect, but they tend to produce something different. 

Peru is not the United States. The Andes are not Appalachia. The Amazon is not the Ozarks. But legal vacuums do not know borders, and the dynamics that fill them may follow recognizable patterns. Whether those patterns may ever extend to America is, as said in the introduction, for the reader to imagine.

The Grange: community building in rural America

                      

Credit: Anderson Valley Grange

Some of my earliest memories are attending the yearly variety show at the Anderson Valley Grange. The bustling Grange hall during these performances felt like the busiest gathering of the year, besides the fair. The Grange gives fair warning that “this is a variety show NOT a talent show.” In catching up with my grandma about the Grange, which she was a member of for many years, she remembered most performances as “really bad,” noting affectionately that the MC was “extremely corny.” She and her hippy friends were often among the acts of the night, and may have been at least in the neighborhood of “really bad” also.

Regardless of the varying quality of the performances, the Grange provided a sense of community in a place where many people lived too deep in the forest to see their neighbors regularly. There was always some friend of my parents or grandparents who had apparently known me since I was a baby, and I would likely not see them again until the next variety show. Unbeknownst to me as a child at the variety show, the Grange had been playing a similar role in rural communities across America for almost 150 years.

The origins of the Grange

The Grange, formally known as National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, began as an organization dedicated to agriculture when it was founded in 1867 by Oliver Kelley, a Minnesotan with an interest in reorganizing and educating agricultural workers. Kelley had been sent to the South after the Civil War by President Andrew Johnson to assess the agricultural conditions of the region and formed the Grange partially in reaction to this tour.

I Feed You All! Image Credit: Library of Congress 

The Civil War had marked the culmination of a rapid series of changes to farming communities. The draw of urban economies and the increasing efficiency of agricultural technology had steadily reduced the share of the US population engaged in farming, declining from 90% in 1790 to 42% in 1880. This demographic shift came with changes to the social fabric of rural communities.

Once, farmers had engaged in subsistence agriculture and frequently labored together if one member of the community needed help planting or with harvest. Now, innovations like the cast iron plow greatly reduced the need for farmers to work together in the fields. Additionally, most farmers had shifted from subsistence farming to commercial farming, rendering them competing market actors rather than a community with shared goals.

Kelley began the Grange with the increasing obsolescence of traditional farm life in mind, and his vision for a new farming community was a rather radical one. The National Grange claims that “[s]ince our founding in 1867, we have lived by our motto, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.,” and that “[w]e have always welcomed and invited people of all races, creeds, religions and nationalities into our membership.”

The Grange did in fact embody principles of equality in many ways. The Grange not only welcomed women, but required that at least four members elected to the board be women for a Grange to be chartered. Recognition of the labor that women provided in agricultural life was central to the Grange from its inception.

In addition to the social principles espoused by the Grange, the group was strongly motivated by Kelley’s longstanding interest in developing and proliferating farm technologies in an equitable manner. Kelley saw people engaged in agriculture being left behind. In his words, “Everything is progressing. Why not the farmers? The inventive genius of the country is continually at work improving tools, and farmers remain passive.”

A feature of the Grange that is particularly interesting in the modern world is their Masonic-inspired secrecy and ritual. Kelley had found that his membership in the Masons was a helpful foot in the door during his time in the South. He believed, quite correctly it would seem, that “[t]he secrecy would lend an interest and peculiar fascination.” Grangers would ascend through a variety of ranks, known as “degrees”; wore sashes, badges, and regalia corresponding to their rank; and had secret handshakes and passwords. These features faded in modern Granges, but my grandmother still recalls a secret handshake and being given a “goddess name” when she joined in the 80s.

Expansion, goals, and advocacy

The Grange was a near-immediate and explosive success, with over 24,000 chartered Granges and almost one million members within eight years of its founding. While Kelley had begun the Grange with central planning in mind, hoping to eventually incorporate the Grange into the Department of Agriculture, Grange chapters quickly became extremely independent, with the National Grange exerting little control over their operations. The Grange was focused on farmers, but were very lenient regarding who could become a member. Even from shortly after its founding, Granges often included lawyers, judges, and educators among their members.

The early Grange strongly advocated for cooperative farming. While we commonly think of cooperative farming as groupings of producers, the Grange additionally endeavored to unify production and sale of agricultural products to extract greater profits, a practice known as vertical integration in economics and antitrust law. At the peak of the Grange collectivization attempts in 1877, about 30,000 co-ops existed. The Grange also operated the infrastructure necessary for these co-ops, like mills, grain elevators, and warehouses.

Though the Grange is ostensibly non-political and discourages discussion of politics at their meetings, their concern for the agricultural class manifested in advocacy for a variety of political causes, especially in their early history. Perhaps most prominent was the effort of the Grange to combat the high rates charged by railroads, an effort that resulted in the Granger Laws and inspired modern antitrust law. A contribution that perhaps has the most lasting impact on rural communities is their campaign for rural free delivery of mail.

A critical view of the early Grange

While many accounts of the Grange dote over its inclusivity, Prof. Charles Postel provides a rather scathing contrasting perspective on the Grange in his book Equality: An American Dilemma. He notes that gender equality was a relatively palatable position in Washington D.C following the Civil War, where seven of the eight founding members of the Grange were working as members of the federal government at the time of the founding. While women did occupy prominent leadership positions in the Grange, many female members were relegated to secretarial roles.

Additionally, the Grange was somewhat wavering in its support for suffrage. The National Grange came out in support of suffrage in 1885, but reverted to support for state rights to set suffrage policy the next year. Granges did provide an audience for suffragettes, and the National Grange finally backed the suffrage amendment in 1915.

The Grange did not explicitly discriminate against African-Americans, however it was clear to many that they were not welcome. Kelley was a lifelong Democrat, and many Granges made quite obvious overtures to white Southern farmers. Prof. Jenny Bourne of Carleton College notes in her book In Essentials, Unity: An Economic History of the Grange Movement that the National Master of the Grange said that admitting “colored” members was a question best left to local interests in 1873. Unsurprisingly, many communities in the South answered this question with exclusion. In response black farmers created the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance near the end of the 1880s.

Many positive accounts of the Grange’s early history acknowledge and discuss the exclusion of African Americans, but the relationship of the Grange to Native Americans is often left unexplored. Prof. Postel notes that Kelley was largely disinterested in the Civil War because his “deep antipathy towards the Indians of Minnesota” motivated him to cooperate with Republicans, despite being a lifelong Democrat. While the Grange performed a variety of charitable work for Native Americans from the 1940s onwards, it must be acknowledged that the interests of white farmers were often directly opposed to Native Americans during the early history of the Grange.

As aptly put by Prof. Bourne, “the history of the Patrons of Husbandry exposes the classic tension between the desires for achieving overall economic success and for dictating how the spoils are split.”

The fall, rise, and second fall of the Grange

While declining profits from farming rendered cooperative efforts very attractive, Grange efforts to collectively sell and purchase agricultural products suffered from defection by individual farmers and a lack of effective cooperation between the National Grange and local and state Granges. Additionally, the cooperative methods employed by the Grange often required an upfront investment that many farmers were increasingly unable to afford as the economy became increasingly strained in the late 1800s.

Grange membership had fallen precipitously in the 1880s and 1890s, as many members found that the costs of their membership outweighed the perceived benefits. It did not help that some members apparently found the agricultural programming “dull as well as not worth the money.”

In terms of rural political advocacy, the space once by the Grange had been effectively co-opted by new organizations like the Farmers Alliance, the Farm Bureau, and the Greenback Party by the late 1800s. While the Grange receded from the national political science, it was a significant influence on these organizations and on modern farm interest advocacy groups, like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and state dairy marketing boards.

   Combined Grange and Farm Bureau Facility in Del Norte. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2019)

The Grange currently advocates on the national level for relatively modest and non-partisan goals, like increased spending on agricultural research. They maintain their longstanding anti-tariff views and have generally been advocates of immigration, but seem to be tempering their language to assuage Trump voters in recent years.

While the Grange largely withdrew from the political stage by the early 1900s, membership had begun to rebound as Grange organizations started to offer important services to rural communities. In particular, the Grange began offering insurance and created power cooperatives in the 1930s.

While nonprofit utilities and insurance providers initiated by the Grange still serve rural communities, these enterprises are now mostly under non-Grange management and no longer exclusively serve Grange members. The fact that these services gradually stopped being linked to Grange membership and decreasing rural populations has caused a steady decline in Grange membership. Since the 1955 Grange membership has fallen from 850,000 members to 140,000.

The Anderson Valley Grange and the new role of Granges

The Anderson Valley Grange has a particularly Northern California themed history. This wonderful article recently written by Lisa Morehouse details the initial frictions at the Anderson Valley Grange in the 70s and 80s as the longtime residents of the area, largely loggers, apple farmers, and sheep herders, were suddenly inundated by hippies hoping to use the Grange, home of the best dance floor in town.

The Anderson Valley Grange. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2020)

The current head of the Anderson Valley Grange, a man known around town as Captain Rainbow who “wore a loincloth [and] lived up in the woods” when he first moved to Anderson Valley, tells the story of how a crisis led to a reconciliation of this "old-timer" vs hippie conflict. 

In his early days in Anderson Valley, “if you were a hippie, you weren’t particularly welcome here.” He didn’t go to the local bar, nicknamed “the Bucket of Blood” for about 10 years “because it was chainsaw haircut time if you did." The hippies would use the Grange hall for concerts and plays, but the old-timers were reluctant to rent to them.

Things changed in 1985 when the old Grange hall, built in 1939, burned down. The community came together to build a new Grange hall. The hippies begged the Grangers to include a dance hall and offered to help rebuild the hall if the insurance money ran out.

Captain Rainbow recounts that even if you had a bad encounter with an old timer, “The next day, hungover, both of you would be hanging sheetrock together, and you’d find out that, hey, you’re all right.” He was delighted to receive an invite to join the Grange, along with the many other hippies who had helped rebuild the hall.

A post buried about half way down this archive of the Anderson Valley Advertiser shares a similar sentiment, noting that running out of insurance money, “was a blessing in disguise, forcing us to rely on each other, it forged new friendships and respect.”

My grandmother recalls joining after this cultural divide had somewhat mended. She joined because she wanted to find a venue for her Congolese dance teacher and was welcomed with open arms (certainly supporting the acceptance of hippies by this stage).

Today, the Anderson Valley Grange still acts as a center of community for the region. They host their annual variety show, monthly pancake breakfasts, dances, and quinceaneras. The Grange maintains ties to their agricultural roots, collaborating with Anderson Valley Brewery, using the hall for agricultural education, and hosting seed exchanges. Mendocino County Grangers also started a retirement facility that houses 170 people.

Food Bank Sign at the Anderson Valley Grange. Credit: Lisa Pruitt (2022)

While still lively, the Anderson Valley Grange faces the same issues as Granges nationwide. In Captain Rainbow’s words, “We need some fresh blood.” The Grange is active, but the membership is aging. “When my generation came in and became part of the Grange, the old-timers, they needed us. And [], I’m a geezer now!”

While Grange membership has been on a long downward trend, there has been some incremental growth in the last few years. The Anderson Valley Grange, like many in California, has an increasingly Latino membership, and is making overtures to Native Americans in the area.

Conclusions

The Grange is an institution with an extremely rich and complicated history that this post has barely scratched the surface of. While its political relevance has faded, it still remains with us as a hub of community in many rural areas. Living in the city, it is easy to forget how crucial simple infrastructure like a large hall with a stage is to engender a sense of community. As rural communities struggle and decline, we should be mindful of the role that organizations like the Grange play in supporting them.

A 2026 Farm Bill enters the House…

On February 13, 2026, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, an updated version of the Farm Bill, was introduced in the House of Representatives. Shortly after, on March 4th, the House Agriculture Committee voted 34-17 to advance the bill to the House floor, marking the first major legislative step in a likely long and contentious process considering the recent extreme polarity of Congress.

Supreme Court of the United States in 2023

It's high time for a new farm bill-- the last official version, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, was authorized for 5 years, spanning from 2018 to 2023. But, updates to the Farm Bill after 2023 were stalled by political gridlock. Instead of passing a new Farm Bill in 2023, Congress opted for two consecutive one-year extensions of the outdated 2018 framework.

At last, lawmakers are attempting to move forward with a new version of the Farm Bill to update how the federal government supports, or defunds, the included topics affecting agriculture, food systems, conservation, and rural communities across America.

Farm bills have been introduced to Congress starting in 1933 following catastrophic impact the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl had on American farmers. In response, the federal government created programs designed to stabilize farm income, conserve land, and ensure a stable food supply. You can read more about the history on the farm bill here or in this prior blog post. However, throughout the years the Farm Bill has grown into one of the federal governments largest and most comprehensive policy packages which typically spans hundreds or thousands of pages. Programs housed under the Farm Bill range from SNAP funding, crop insurance, conservation programs, rural development programs, agricultural research, food distribution programs, and beyond. 

This Farm Bill claims to “expand investments in rural communities, bring science-backed management back to our national forests, and restore regulatory certainty in the interstate marketplace.”

Within the report, two sections specifically caught my eye—the MAHA section and the discussion surrounding California’s Proposition 12. Both sections highlight how the Farm Bill increasingly serves as a platform for broader political debates.

Sign in El Dorado County, California in 2025

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

MAHA Section
The highlighted MAHA section references the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement within the current administration led by Robert F. Kennedy. MAHA aims to address national health issues. As written in the one-pager released by the House Agriculture Committee on MAHA in this Farm Bill the goals of MAHA are to “renew our lands, reforming dietary guidelines to focus on sound nutrition science, ensuring that rural America has access to quality healthcare, and making whole foods such as fruits and vegetables more affordable and accessible for everyday Americans.”

This Farm Bill codifies recent reforms to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) which include prioritizing whole, high-quality protein and full-fat fluid milk and hard cheeses. This Farm Bill also proposes the incorporation of these guidelines into SNAP which may impact which foods are promotes within federal nutrition assistance programs. 

Sign in Sonoma County in 2024

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

Another initiative highlighted in this one-pager is the establishment of a “local procurement program” that will in theory strengthen partnerships between local producers and the “food distribution community” in effort to ease fresh food distribution.

On paper, the idea sounds promising. Strengthening local food systems could support farmers while improving access to healthier foods. However, the proposal remains vague-- it is not clear (at least to me) who, how, or where these programs will take place.

Another major component of the MAHA section focuses on rural healthcare, an issue that has become increasingly urgent as rural hospitals close and rural healthcare systems become increasingly stressed, as I discussed in this prior blog post.

Clinic in McCloud, California in 2018

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

This bill proposes expanding programs affecting rural healthcare including the Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program, the Community Facilities Program, and the Rural Hospital Technical Assistance Program. The Rural Hospital Technical Assistance Program is codified within the bill with the goal of “improv[ing] the financial and operational sustainability of rural healthcare facilities, bolstering essential health services for rural residents and preventing hospital closures in their hometowns.” This program originally received funding through the Rural Development Hospital Technical Assistance Program Act of 2025, which was appropriated up to $2 million per year from 2025-2029. The proposed Farm Bill extends that funding window, restating the maximum funding for the fiscal years 2027-2031. As I mentioned in this blog post, politicians use policy packages such as this to signal their support of rural farms, families, systems, etc. but the monetary value proposed is insignificant to the cause. Here, $2 million spread between the countless rural healthcare systems that are in serious need is negligible.

Proposition 12 Section
Another section highlighted by the House Committee on Agriculture focuses on California’s Proposition 12 (Prop 12), one of the most controversial livestock welfare laws in the United States. Passed by 63% of California voters in 2018, Prop 12 prohibits the sale of certain pork, veal, and egg products in California unless they are produced according to certain animal welfare standards. These standards focus on enclosure size compliance. 

Chickens in transportation truck in Northwest Arkansas in 2017

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt

Corporations like the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) advocate for repealing Prop 12 to allow for the sale of animal products from animals raised in smaller and confined spaces. The American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council brought suit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture asserting that Prop 12 violated the Dormant Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court upheld Prop 12, yet the current administration and House Republicans have attempted to overturn the decision and influence public opinion or legislatures to not support it anymore—for example, through this one-pager. In this one-pager, the House Committee on Agriculture calls Prop 12 “arbitrary and unscientific.” They state that “retail pork prices in California have increased 18.7% compared to a 6.3% increase nationwide. They then state that “[c]ompliance costs disproportionately affect small and mid-sized producers, who face tighter margins and less access to capital.” While small or mid-sized facilities may be affected more than large ones, Prop 12 has been fully in effect since 2022. I support Prop 12 and find that since the majority of Californians who voted were in support of Prop 12, the NPPC and the MAHA movement should reassess their priorities.

Ultimately, the Farm Bill has increasingly incorporated broader policy debates, but the 2026 rendition highlights how influential national debates and administrations can be. Programs initially intended to support farmers, rural communities, and ecological conservation now are debated at length in effort to gain an inch of power or influence. However, a new Farm Bill was desperately needed to address the everchanging landscape—especially post-COVID and entering a likely recession.

Rural morality and the left

Western Norway

Source: Wikimedia Commons (2016)

Internationalism, the idea that people and states should organize across borders, is a popular organizing principle on the political left. It takes two related forms. Liberal internationalism promotes democracy and free trade as a path to peace through multilateral governance. Socialist internationalism emphasizes solidarity among workers across nations, rather than competition between them. Both tend to replace an emphasis on local community with an abstract political identity that isn’t rooted anywhere in particular.

International governance creates a layer of authority that communities cannot meaningfully influence. The resulting cosmopolitan governing class (sometimes pejoratively referred to as “globalists”) are socially and geographically distant from communities affected by their policy. Meanwhile, international economic integration guts local economic prospects so that multinational firms can thrive.

This process spreads similar models of education and culture, eroding distinct regional identities and traditions. In the name of internationalism, many have advocated for cultivating cosmopolitan “citizens of the world.” Within this frame, local or regional culture is something to be overcome, not preserved. Is rural culture something that needs to be overcome in pursuit of a more equal society? 

French philosopher Jean-Claude Michèa offers a critique of liberalism that bears directly on this question. Until recently his work was unavailable in English. Michael Behrent, a History Professor at Appalachian State University, recently published a collection of his works titled Toward a Conservative Left. Don’t let the title put you off. What the title evokes is the way in which Michèa combines a critique of capitalism with a suspicion of progress. Michèa says little about American politics in his work, but his analysis maps uncomfortably well onto the contemporary Democratic Party, which has become a party of urban educated professionals. 

Michèa’s personal background is relevant too. He was born in 1950 in Paris, France, to parents who were members of the French communist Party, and grew up in public housing. The Party was central to his childhood. His parents were employed by the Party, with his dad working as sports reporter for the Party newspaper. It was a community of working-class people who looked out for one another. 

At the center of Michèa’s work is Orwell’s concept of “common decency,” developed in The Road to Wigan Pier.  For Orwell, common decency is the moral intuition observable in tight-knit communities built around face-to-face interaction. It is the instinct “that makes a jury award excessive damages when a rich man’s car runs over a poor man.” Michèa takes this concept further,  giving it anthropological character. Working people, because of their way of earning a living and social status, tend to exhibit a form of solidarity and spontaneous ethics. Working people rely on one another out of necessity. It is a set of habits that arise through family life, neighborhood association, and shared work. Common decency requires social relations through which people experience themselves as dependent on and responsible for one another. This social fabric, Michèa argues, is breaking down.

This maps directly with the concept of high density of acquaintanceship that is found in the rural American context. In a small agricultural community, a neighbor’s failed harvest is visible. Decency is not an abstract value, but a material reality that rural people navigate on a daily basis.  Michèa argues that modern society has removed people from the social relations that foster this common decency. 

Here is where Michèa’s argument becomes uncomfortable. He contends that economic liberalism, meaning the spreading of free markets, free trade, and global integration of markets, and cultural liberalism are not in tension at all. He believes these two liberalisms actually operate in concert. He writes, “a right-wing economy cannot function in a lasting way without a left-wing culture.” It is well documented that economic liberalism has devastated rural communities by financializing land, offshoring manufacturing, and consolidating agricultural markets. 

Cultural liberalism, for Michèa, works in parallel. It elevates individual autonomy and the right to choose one’s lifestyle over inherited social norms or traditions. Institutions that once anchored rural life: stable family, religious practice, the local community, have all been delegitimized over time in the name of individual emancipation. Rural communities are left with a social and moral vacuum at a time when economic liberalism has taken away their material foundations. For Michèa this is not a coincidence, capitalism prefers autonomous individuals without a sense of rootedness to a place and an inherited way of life. The tech worker who relocates for opportunity is a more compatible economic subject than the farmer who will not leave because his family has worked the same land for three generations. 

While Michèa’s argument is not without its blind spots, he invites the left to take working class culture seriously. To be clear, I don’t believe the left should abandon a commitment to individual freedom. However, a politics aimed toward a more just society cannot organize against rural morality. To me, this is what is intended by the provocative title. The social fabric that allows for the cultivation of common decency is worth conserving.

Senators call for investigation into the state of rural child care

Head Start offices in Toledo, WA.
Photo by Joe Mabel, distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

On January 26, six senators led by Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock announced an investigation into how the Trump administration's child care policies affect rural families. The letter, addressed to Todd Lindsey, Acting Under Secretary for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Alex Adams, Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, requests "information regarding ACF and USDA's current capacity to support child care, particularly in rural communities." The senators highlight the national child care crisis, emphasizing the high costs and lack of access many families face. 

Child Care Funding in Rural Areas

This letter follows a January 6, 2026, attempt to freeze federal funding for child care and family assistance in five states due to fraud allegations. Courts restored the funding by January 9th, allowing child care centers to continue receiving support. The freeze temporarily affected the Child Care Development Fund Block Grant, which helps make child care more affordable, as well as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The letter also follows H.R. 1 (the "One Big Beautiful Bill"), which you can read more about here. The bill expanded the Child Tax Credit and increased the amount that employees can set aside pre-tax for child care. These changes mostly benefit middle- and upper-income families. On February 3, 2026, the House passed a new spending package, and President Trump signed it. That bill increased the Child Care Development Block Grant and Head Start by $85 million each. 

Head Start provides critical resources to children up to five years old. Its programs include providing breakfast and lunch, mental health care, and school readiness. Almost half of all Head Start slots are in rural districts. In a survey of 10 states, Head Start programs comprised about one-third of child care centers in rural communities. This program supports children and families. Expanding Head Start has drawn bipartisan support, and  78% of rural Americans support it. 

The Rural Child Care Gap 

The senators cited a September 2025 poll by the First Five Years Fund, which found that rural families experience child care challenges across the board. 

Overall, 4 out of 5 Rural Americans say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a “state of crisis” or “a major problem,” including 81% of Rural Parents and 80% of Rural Nonparents.

Further, one in five rural parents report having trouble finding or keeping a job because of the cost or access to child care.  

Data collected by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska further illustrates the gap. 31.5 percent of children in rural areas who may need access to child care do not have access to a child care facility within 10 miles of their home. This data assumes that parents drive. However, approximately six percent of rural households do not have a car. Lack of access to transportation can make finding child care even more difficult in rural areas, especially when transporting multiple children. 

Kickapoo Community Childcare Center in Lincoln County, OK. Photo by Rebecca South, distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 license. 

Effect on Families

The lack of access and high costs of child care drive parents out of the workforce. A 2021 Bipartisan Policy Center survey found that 86 percent of parents in rural areas who do not work cited child care responsibilities as a reason they stay at home. Child care centers face significant economic difficulties, driven by high turnover rates and low wages. Closures have led to parents, often mothers, leaving the workforce at higher rates than ever over the last two years. 

These funds also provide child care to parents pursuing higher education. Congress did not reauthorize the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools, pausing the program. Programs at rural colleges make child care affordable for student parents and provide other support to help them pursue higher education. 

One administrator at UW-Whitewater said she expects that this will make it more difficult for student parents to graduate. Cutting this program means parents will either need to work while pursuing their degree or leave their program to stay home with their child. 

The Future of Rural Child Care

Recent legislation surrounding rural children and families has proven to be a mixed bag. While bolstering Head Start programs might expand child care resources in rural areas, other funding cuts could undermine those gains. This administration has shown its willingness to use child care funding as a political football. ACF and the USDA, which work together on child care in rural communities, have had their funding withheld, field offices closed, and major workforce reductions. 

The senators concluded their letter with six questions about the future of rural child care, with a response requested by February 16, 2026. As of today, ACF and USDA have not issued a response. Their response will inform the future of the debate around child care funding in rural communities through the rest of the Trump Administration. 

Truancy laws: bad for rural students and their schools

Coleville, CA

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

All states have passed compulsory attendance laws requiring that students in a certain age range attend school, with varying exceptions by state. But, nearly one in four students are chronically absent.

Students and their parents can face penalties for truancy. Some states take a punitive approach to truancy, allowing referrals to juvenile court for truant students and imposition of criminal charges  parents that can result in hefty fines and even jail time. 

For example, a 2024 Kentucky law required that a school refer a student to the County Attorney for "formal court action" if a student accumulates 15 or more unexcused absences. Until Governor Newsom repealed the policy in October of 2025, California's truancy laws allowed parents to be fined up to $2,000 or up to a year in jail if their child was chronically truant (missed 10% of the school year). In Merced County in 2017, 10 parents were charged with a misdemeanor for their children's absences. 

Despite a recent shift away from punitive truancy policies, 20 states still require schools to alert courts if a student is truant.

Greenville, CA

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2012

Rural communities are especially susceptible to truancy. The National Rural Education Association found that "[n]early one in seven rural students experiences poverty, one in 15 lacks health insurance, and one in 10 has changed residence in the previous 12 months." Schools with greater populations of students in poverty are three times as likely to be chronically absent. Additionally, the spatial isolation of rural areas means that rural students travel farther to get to school and may have a more difficult time accessing transportation. The transportation issue, along with limited funding, also means that rural schools have less access extracurriculars, leading to students being less engaged in their school community. The lack of opportunities is not a new problem; this blog post from 2014 discusses the struggles related to school involvement in rural areas.

Truancy laws are ineffective

Truancy laws are ineffective at decreasing school absence because they do not address the underlying reasons why students are absent in the first place. 

For example, in an article by the New York Times on homelessness in rural areas, author Samantha Shapiro explained a crucial paradox: 

Students who do not have a stable place to live are unable to attend school regularly, and failing to graduate from high school is the single greatest risk factor for future homelessness.

This is just one example of how truancy laws fail to address the problem, and instead act punitively. As expressed by California Assembly Member Patrick Ahrens, the sponsor of California's bill repealing criminal fines and jail times, "[f]ining or imprisoning parents did nothing to get kids the education and support they need."

Truancy compounds on the issue of rural school funding in states where school funding is directly tied to attendance. While not the majority, six states use average daily attendance (ADA) to determine a student count for funding allocations, including California, Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri. Using ADA results in districts with higher rates of chronic absences receiving less funding, making it even more difficult to address truancy issues. 

Better solutions to chronic absences

While punitive policies are ineffective, one study found that truancy decreased by 5% with the sending of simple, periodic, personalized messages to parents about their child's attendance. These messages used templates that automatically pulled information about a student, including their name, absences, and goals for decreasing absences which could be sent to parents to keep them better informed. 

Data systems, such as Iowa's, catch absentee patterns early and allow schools to intervene earlier are more effective. Instead of punishment, prevention should be the focus of school policies to decrease truancy.

Rural news, late notice: the mail lag that quietly taxes rural life

American Samoa Post Office (2021) - Pago Pago, AS; Credit: Talanei News 

Without a post office in one’s community, one must resort to traveling farther and farther away in order to have access to this necessary element.

That quote was from a 2011 blog post about post offices as community lifelines. It, along with many other posts on threatened post office closures in 2011 and 2012, highlights a rural baseline: when infrastructure is limited, distance becomes a cost paid in time, fuel, and coordination. In 2026, however, the issue seems less about whether a post office exists and more about the timeliness of mail delivery. The issue of slow mail delivery in rural America is partly caused by public policy.

In 2025, the Postal Regulatory Commission (“Commission”) outlined nationwide changes by the United States Postal Service (“U.S.P.S.”) under its “Delivering for America” plan. The plan was introduced shortly after the Trump Administration called for privatizing the U.S.P.S. While it claims the plan is essential for financial stability, critics argue that the Delivering for America plan more resembles a "march to privatize the U.S. mail." Particularly relevant to rural America under this plan is a concept called Regional Transportation Optimization (“RTO”). The Commission explained:

Under RTO, mail dropped off at Post Offices and collection boxes more than 50 miles from a regional hub is collected the next day instead of the same day.

The Commission warned that rural communities would face disproportionate negative impacts. That is, some mail originating in rural areas enters the U.S.P.S. system later than mail from locations closer to processing centers. Hence, rural areas are more likely to experience the additional day and any subsequent delays. Reports from journalists like Sophie Culpepper help illustrate what that extra day looks like in practice for rural communities.

In her 2026 Neiman Lab Report, Culpepper described community newspapers facing mail delays that arrive late, go missing, or show up in batches. She interviewed publishers in Maine, Michigan, South Dakota, and Virginia, all of whom reported a significant increase in complaints about U.S.P.S. delays last summer. 

In Maine, the Midcoast Villager – which serves Knox and Waldo counties – is the primary or only local news source for roughly 80,000 residents. Publishers told Culpepper that they have little visibility into, or control over, U.S.P.S.’s delivery timelines:

When we’re fighting against something that we really have no control over, that’s terribly frustrating…because I can’t afford to lose a subscriber, let alone many.

Rural Post Office (2024) - Salvo, NC
Credit: Wikimedia Commons Contributors

For a weekly newspaper, punctuality is essential. Culpepper directly linked mail delays to rural livelihoods because local advertising relies on timely delivery. From community announcements like auctions and open houses to business inquiries like invitations to local project bids, if the newspaper is late, rural residents not only miss the news; they lose the opportunity to act while it still matters. 

Newspaper delivery is just one issue where mail speed influences rural life. A similar issue arises in the business context. In a 2026 interview with the Federal News Network, Elena Patel described the U.S.P.S. more as a rural economic platform than as a news pipeline. 

Patel, a Brookings senior fellow and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, argued that judging the U.S.P.S. mainly by profitability misses the role the postal service plays in rural economies. Patel pointed out that private carriers can impose geography-based surcharges of up to $20 per package, costs that can wipe out small margins for rural businesses trying to reach distant customers. 

Patel also highlighted the practical functions of post offices in rural areas: shipping goods for e-commerce, maintaining a reliable business address (including P.O. boxes), and accessing counter services such as certified mail. She concluded:

We need to rethink the Postal Service as a public good and fund it appropriately so that it can support rural economies.

Taken together, these stories reveal why the mail delivery system is a rural livelihood issue. Rural areas suffer twice when mail slows down: once in time and once in opportunity. Time is spent on extra trips to town, more phone calls, and contingency plans just to complete basic tasks. Opportunities are missed: auctions and bids close, notices arrive too late, payments are delayed, and small businesses lose customers as shipping slows or becomes more expensive.

This is the quiet tax of a lagging mailbox: not a sudden shutdown, but a consistent decline in timely mail delivery in rural communities. When a national service like the U.S.P.S. is treated as a profit-and-loss problem, delay becomes an acceptable efficiency trade-off.

Waterlogged boundaries, the case for bioregionalism, and its unfortunate demise

Fording a river, Grouse mountain, British Columbia, Summer 2021

If you’ve ever been in the Pacific Northwest, you've seen the local “uniform.” Amongst the water-resistant (nothing is waterproof!) Carhartt pants, flat-billed trucker hats, and colourful spectrum of flannels, there is a waterproof jacket in the armoury. This jacket must have a hood so that you do not need an umbrella, a sin that only a tourist would make.

A bad idea, Squamish mountain, British Columbia, Spring 2022

The jacket is necessary because in the wet winter months, any person caught on the scenic trails of Squamish (known for the Chief, one of the largest granite domes in the world) would think that Noah’s flood was upon him, that the sun would never reappear, and that rain has so consumed reality that any imagination of the world can only find a cloudy mist covering a canopy of pine trees. In short, the water cycle of the PNW calls for the jacket.

In contrast, in a place like the Central Valley, deciding how to dress requires taking into account the overhead sun and the dust. Therein lies the non-ironic donning of cowboy hats and boots respectively (A recent blog post about western apparel is here). Continue further east on the Interstate 70 past the plains and the Mississippi river and you will find the habit of tucking long sleeve shirts into pants, which are then tucked into socks, a necessity in the tick laden bushes of Appalachia. (A study from Nebraska Medicine about the migration of tick populations west).

Each of these clothing outfits make sense in the place where they are adopted. Sartorial culture reflects the ecosystem hydrological and biological of the region where people live. This understanding is one key tenet of bioregionalism. Bioregionalism (defined by one non-profit here) is a philosophy which holds that political systems should reflect naturally definable, local regions rather than artificial political boundaries. (Read more about this philosophy as taught by a Bay Area theatre here). Bioregions are drawn by the natural lines drawn by watershed boundaries, topography, as well as the socio-cultural human histories of the area.

10% water capacity, Lake Hensley, California, 2025

Bioregionalists seek several core goals: including matching political boundaries with the aforementioned bioregions; prioritizing the usage of local resources and materials; and building regional sustainability and supply chains rather than global ones. This local focus benefits the making of policy that is suited to local ecological needs, rather than the difficulty of federal or state systems that cannot possibly take account of all local conditions and ecosystems. (Read more about federal funding to rural water systems here)

Current political divisions force rural and urban communities into statewide policy frameworks that, through competing interests and compromise, can poorly fit all. Agricultural water use in arid basins is legislated alongside, and often in, coastal zones where the flow of rivers can power 98% of electrical grids (read more about BC Hydro here). Or consider the current issue of the banning of or restriction of gasoline vehicles being impractical in rural regions that remain dependent on generators and gasoline vehicles (read more here).

Currently, the rural-urban divide is often framed within a structural power antagonism, where cosmopolitan elites- with vastly greater urban resources- intrude on traditional rural communities. The physical distance between these two groups sharpens these perceived differences. These urban elites live far from rural denizens, often in ecosystems that are vastly different. Consider the common epithet, “coastal elite.” (Read more about water disagreements between the rural and the urban here and here).

As the reasoning goes, how could someone in the Bay understand the water struggles of the Central Valley? A bioregionalist approach would instead link governance between metropolitan and rural communities wherever and whenever they are linked by watersheds and water cycles requiring literal downstream cooperation.

Of course, bioregionalism is not without flaws. Even from this brief inventory of bioregions, readers will see issues with assuming histories and shared interests in fluid boundaries that are anachronistic, ambiguous, and would be contentious and complex to draw. Land-based identity idealizes lives that are pre-urbanization, occasionally even pre-industrialization, and is often isolationist and exclusionary of any political change as a result.

In a globalized economy, high technology requires supply chains that cannot be localized efficiently, or at all. Anything that would require national coordination (national defense, macroeconomic policy, large scale infrastructure projects) would be difficult if not impossible under bioregional governance. Of course, there is also the potential of extreme inequality between natural resource-rich and natural resource-poor regions. Without national redistribution and the needs of national and global economy, spatial inequality would be all but guaranteed.

I finish with a point about Cascadia, the former bioregionalist movement stronghold within the PNW that spanned from Juneau, Alaska to San Francisco. Prior to the 47th American president, most money spent within Cascadia, (defined here, as in my heart, as Oregon, Washington, British Columbia), remained within Cascadia. Now with rising tensions between the United States and Canada, this seemingly unbreakable cross-border relationship is strained by the Canadians' general boycott of American goods (read more). Alas, the Cascadian identity, nascent if it ever truly existed, has yielded to national lines for now.

Superbloom, California, 2017