Spain's rural de-population . . . and maybe repopulation

In the Fall of 2019, I went to study abroad in Salamanca, Spain. My undergraduate institution paid me an additional stipend of around $1,500 to go since I had never been abroad before. I am part Spanish, although my great-grandmother's birth records have since been lost to us. My mother often told us stories of the days when the Spanish and Native American part of the family had a small farm in Texas. They were always juxtaposed with how things went horribly wrong in my grandmother's marriage and the relocation of my mother's family to Mexico. My great-grandmother, born Josephine de la Garza in 1898, had thirteen children and lived the life you would imagine befitting rurality before the Great Depression. She, her husband, and her children including my grandmother, milked cows, had chickens, and made ends meet by picking cotton for other people. Subconsciously, I always associated rurality with Hispanidad or Spanish-ness. 

I learned many things when I went to Spain. My brother who went before me, Ian, was right that we get many of our cultural cues from Spain. The type of dry, morbid, blunt, and sometimes insensitive humor I got from my family was ubiquitous in the part of Spain I studied in. Unlike in America, no Spaniards stopped being friends with me because a joke landed the wrong way. In some ways, Spain's politics felt less divided than in America, even in the midst of the Catalan separatist referendum on the other side of Spain. Spaniards on the left seemed more socially conservative than their American counterparts, with one self-described feminist Spanish language professor calling the term "latinx" grammatically incorrect. Spaniards on the right were far more fiscally progressive than their American counterparts. I recall that my conservative friends from the local fencing club were immensely proud of Spain's socialized healthcare system. If you've seen my previous posts, this should ring a bell. Rural Americans tend to poll as more socially conservative and fiscally progressive than their metropolitan counterparts. Among other things I learned, I quickly became aware that Salamanca, Spain was a culturally rural place, with many of the people I interacted with either growing up rural or whose families moved to the city in the previous one or two generations. 

Spain's population dilemma

With a population of around 47,000,000 people, Spain also has some of the most densely populated cities of Western Europe and least densely populated countryside. The rapid industrialization of the 1950s and 1960s brought the vast majority of Spain's rural population away from the villages and into its cities. Exacerbating the issue is Spain's low birth rate, where the average number of children per woman fell to 1.10 in 2024. 

In Spain, each Autonomous Community ("Comunidades Autonomas" are Spain's rough equivalent to states) has different recorded birthrates. Some communities like Madrid are very urbanized while others like Asturias are rural and mountainous. The Instituto Nacional de Estadistica records birth rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy at birth, and the proportion of people over certain ages by province. The site also differentiates between total births, births from exclusively Spanish mothers, and births from foreign-born mothers. The last delineation is helpful in assessing one proposed solution for Spain's depopulation, which is the encouragement of immigration to Spain from the Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. In 2024, the provinces scoring the highest birth rates to mothers of Spanish origin are Ceuta and Melilla, two of Spain's remaining urban port enclaves in North Africa. The two cities are also undocumented immigration hotspots for Spain. Ceuta had a rate of 7.17 births per 1,000 inhabitants, and Melilla had 7.54 births per 1,000 inhabitants. Counting Spanish and foreign mothers, the rate rose moderately to 8.22 and 9.19 births per 1,000 inhabitants. Just across the Strait of Gibraltar, Andalucia and Murcia boasted comparatively high numbers of children born to Spanish mothers, with 6.45 live births per 1,000 people and 6.81 live births per 1,000 people respectively. Calculations with foreign mothers yielded a very mild increase to 6.95 in Andalucia and a moderate increase to 7.93 in Murcia. According to the Spanish Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca, y Alimentacion (Agriculture, Fish, and Food), Andalucia, Murcia, Melilla, and Ceuta appeared to host significantly more urban communities when compared to autonomous communities in the interior of Spain. The most rural autonomous communities were Extremadura, Castilla La Mancha, Castilla y Leon, and Aragon. ("Las comunidades autónomas con un mayor porcentaje de población censada en municipios rurales, de un 30% a un 50%, son Extremadura, Castilla–La Mancha, Castilla y León y Aragón.") According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica's 2024 data, Aragon, Castilla La Mancha, Castilla y Leon, and Extremadura had birth rates of 5.27, 5.76, 4.57, and 5.82 per 1,000 inhabitants respectively. Counting foreign mothers, the rates increased to 6.33, 6.71, 5.23, and 6.20 per 1,000 inhabitants. Today's immigration may prove to be a long-term solution to Spain's rural depopulation crisis.

Credit: Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca, y Alimentacion.

While the comparatively lessened birth rates in rural Spain might seem like a cause for alarm, it is important to consider that the median age in rural Spain is much higher. In many cases, however, young people whose families left Spain's rural villages have been the ones trying to revive Spain's countryside. 

Immigration in Spain

Anecdotally speaking, I made friends with many immigrants in Spain: a Venezuelan family that owned a bar in the middle of my 35 minute walk to religious studies class at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, an Ecuadorian churchgoer, an Argentinian fencer, a Chinese fencer, and a Black American Navy veteran who found work as an English professor. I never heard anything negative about Spain from any of them. Most Spaniards I met welcomed me, although they often mistook me for an Italian or Central American from my accent. Most never guessed me to be an American due to my obvious lack of North European features or (thankfully) fashion sense. My family wholeheartedly believed in the melting pot theory of America, ultimately resulting in this mix of Spanish (1/8), Native American (1/8), Jewish (3/8), Sicilian (1/8), and probably Mexican (1/4) blood. I suffered the quiet social consequences of my impurities in the racial cliques of the public school system where I grew up. To me, Spain looked like the real melting pot. Nonetheless, like every nation, Spain has its prejudices. The four main nationalities I heard negative comments about were the English, the French, the Catalans, and the Moroccans. The sad part about the Moroccans is that there is probably more (apart from religion) cultural similarity between Spain and Morocco than between Spain and France. In Spain's case, old grudges die hard. 

Spain is an immigration hotspot in two ways: it is the bridge between Africa and Europe, and it has a long-standing policy of giving immigrants from its former colonies an expedited path to citizenship in the hopes that such immigrants remain in Spain. Most preferred immigrants come from Latin America, but the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea are also on the list. Even dual Latin American-United States citizens are eligible for the two-year fast track. Conversely, Spain generally does not have birthright citizenship for being born on Spanish soil. The contrast in treatment creates a strong preference for immigrants from the former Spanish viceroyalties in Latin America. The Instituto Nacional de Estadistica traces both immigration and emigration data for Spain, among other demographic data. South American immigrants, not even including Central and North Americans, outnumbered all African immigrants by a ratio of 335,185 to 128,527. Despite its preferred status, the Philippines only contributed 3,305 immigrants. With over 600,000 residents emigrating annually, most of whom are foreign-born, Spain has issues retaining immigrants. Nonetheless, with a total immigration of 1,288,562 in 2024, Spain still has a positive balance of net immigration. Furthermore, for both male and female immigrants, the single largest age cohort of immigrants is between 23 years of age and 33 years of age. In other words, Spain receives statistically prime working age immigrants.

Spain's most anti-immigration party, VOX, is split on the issue of immigration from Latin America, with younger party members opposing all immigration. Establishment party members believe that Latin Americans share a cultural and linguistic heritage with Spaniards that prime them for citizenship. Partido Popular (PP), the center-right party, outlined its 2026 immigration platform calling for tougher enforcement of immigration laws and stressing the meteoric rise of the population born overseas by 1.5 million people over four years. Reading between the lines of its five principles, "Order & Legality," "Contribution Should Be A Condition For Remaining," "Integration With Demands," and "Zero Tolerance For Crime," it is clear that Partido Popular does not share concerns about immigrants competing with Spaniards for employment opportunities. Explicitly under their 2nd proposal prong "employment as a port of entry," Partido Popular says that Hispanidad, understood as a shared space of language, history, and values, will be a positive factor in the evaluation of visas. ("La Hispanidad, entendida como espacio compartido de lengua, historia y valores, será un factor positivo en la evaluación del visado.") Unlike with VOX's split, PP does not appear to be advocating for a change in Spain's immigration structure, but rather stricter enforcement of existing law. With a mere half of Spain's extreme right turning against immigration from Latin America, it looks like Spain's incentives for Latin American immigration will remain in place.

For reasons likely dating back to long-standing historical grievances, VOX and Partido Popular, the center-right party, oppose North African immigration. In Moorish Blood: Islamophobia, Racism, and the Struggle for Identity in Modern Spain, Fernando Bravo Lopez acknowledges that the long Moorish occupation of Spain resulted in various reactions to that part of Spanish history. Modern Spanish reactions range from an attempt from Spaniards to erase marks of the occupation to an embrace of the past occupation as a part of Spanish history. 

The currently governing PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol) on the left appears conciliatory toward irregular migrants, most recently granting amnesty to 500,000 undocumented immigrants and allowing immigrants without legal residency access to Spain's public health services. It goes without saying that PSOE is also perfectly fine with immigration from Latin America. In any case, the proportion of Latin American migrants has eclipsed migration from North Africa, and given the political landscape, will likely continue to do so.

Foreign-Born Population of Spain by Region of Birth, 1998 and 2022

Source: Claudia Finotelli and Sebastian Rinken, Migration Policy Institute

In particular, rural communities came to rely upon Latin American immigrants who work in the agricultural and hospitality sectors of the economy. South American immigration has revived some rural villages in Teruel, Leon, and Palencia, proving that the system can work at scale. A 2023 piece Is Spanish depopulation irreversible? Recent demographic and spatial changes in small municipalities by Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Isabel Pujadas-Rubies noted factors aiding or hindering the recovery of rural Spanish communities from depopulation. The researchers concluded that while immigration has historically benefitted Spain's rural communities, migration patterns depend upon the health of the economy. Migration growth was also mostly able to compensate for negative natural growth most cases.

Credit: Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, Isabel Pujadas-Rubies. Charts derived from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE)

Infrastructure and grassroots efforts

While helpful to the recovery of Spain's villages, immigration can only go so far. Infrastructure is needed to keep rural communities livable, connected, and economically viable in the 21st century.

Illustrated by this video from early 2026, the resettlement of Spain's villages carry different challenges. One isolated Aragonese village named La Estrella in the mountains, until very recently inhabited by an elderly couple, is less likely to be repopulated than the long-abandoned village of Sarnago in the Castilian plains. Aside from access, one key ingredient to the revival of Sarnago is the fondness that the descendants of former residents still hold for the village. Once a week, the relatively young descendants of Sarnago's villagers converge upon the village to repair its buildings in the hopes that the site one day can become livable. The group even created a museum out of an old schoolhouse, potentially attracting some small measure of tourism. Illustrating further the difference between Sarnago and La Estrella is the 2023 piece by Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Isabel Pujadas-Rubies addressing whether Spanish depopulation is irreversible. The researchers ultimately concluded that while rural communities may survive through bonds with larger municipalities, rural communities which are distant from metro areas will likely never recover.  

Villages in Western Castilla y Leon experienced the most population loss in the twenty years preceding the 2020 pandemic, followed by small municipalities in Aragon, Castilla La Mancha, and Extremadura. Some "villages situated far from the coast in Galicia, Catalonia, and Andalusia" also suffered heavy population losses. In total, the researchers concluded that 40% of Spain's municipalities face "a bleak demographic future." Nonetheless, efforts against rural depopulation continue on the activist level, the national level, and even at the level of the EU. The new President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, "created a Vice-Presidency for Democracy and Demography." The office will be responsible for assessing the link between rural demographic changes and access to services. EU efforts on rural depopulation will need to be covered in a different blog post. 

Local passion met institutional support as early as March of 2021 when the Spanish government introduced a $11,900,000 plan to improve internet infrastructure in the countryside. The plan came as part of a greater effort to bring digital nomads to Spain during the pandemic years. Sarnago was among the villages attempting to attract digital nomads. By late 2024, Spain continued efforts to extend 5G internet service to rural areas with the collaboration of private companies like Vodafone and Telefonica. As of 2025, Spain's fiber optic internet connectivity coverage reaches 46% of the rural population. According to the Spanish Ministerio del Economia, Comercio, y Empresa (Economy, Commerce, and Business), rural internet coverage exceeds the coverage available to rural French, German, and British communities. ("La cobertura de fibra óptica en las zonas rurales alcanza al 46% de la población, duplicando la media europea de cobertura rural y muy por encima de la cobertura de Francia (12%), Alemania (6%) o Reino Unido (6%)")

In spite of the federal and grass-roots support for the restoration of Spain's villages, some efforts find themselves halted by local governments themselves. In 2023, the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha threatened to fine or imprison a group of young Spaniards seeking to revitalize the village of Fraguas because the village site now lies within a natural park.

Tourism: a problem in the cities and maybe a solution in the country

Spain is a major tourist destination for both global and local tourists. The site of a confluence of Celtiberian, Carthaginian, Roman, Visigothic, and Moorish civilizations in addition to the native Spanish Catholic peoples in Spain, the nation hosts fifty UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Four of the World Heritage Sites are national parks. 

Recently, however, urban Spaniards have protested against the tourism industry for raising the cost of living in Spain's cities above the budget of many native Spaniards. In a seeming contradiction from Spain's earlier efforts to attract digital nomads to its countryside, Spain's government recently proposed a 100% tax on property purchases by non-EU citizens. While tourism may strangle the budget of locals in already saturated cities, it may at the same time provide a lifeline to rural communities. 

I specifically recall during trips from Salamanca to Valladolid, Madrid, Toledo, Avila, and Zamora that the train or bus would pass by old medieval watchtowers and beautiful scenery. There is little doubt that Spain's countryside holds untapped potential for tourism. 

The Camino de Santiago, a set of pilgrimage routes, stretches across Spain and ends at Santiago de Compostela in Spain's Northwestern corner. Each of the routes necessarily pass through stretches of rural lands and communities which could use the business more than big cities like Barcelona, Seville, and Madrid. 

Credit: https://www.pilgrim.es/en/routes/

The pilgrimage is traditionally completed on foot and most of the routes run through the rural regions of Extremadura and Castilla y Leon before ending in the comparatively urbanized Galicia. The two most urbanized routes appear to be the Portuguese route and the Ruta Norte (Northern Route), which runs through the Cantabrian Mountains on Spain's northern coast. Pilgrims stop along the route in hostels specifically for pilgrims or "albergues." Most albergues will be located in urban centers, but it is conceivable that some pilgrims need to stop between cities due to lengthy distances. Furthermore, the albergues are relatively inexpensive, and in many cases, managed by the public specifically to host pilgrims rather than general tourists. For example, between Caceres and Salamanca are numerous smaller cities and villages whose economies could be bolstered by the presence of publicly funded albergues. While urban Spaniards rail against the tourism industry for the rising cost of living, rural Spaniards could preserve their communities with the aid of rest stops for weary and hungry pilgrims. 

Credit: Google Maps

Conclusion

Spain's rural depopulation crisis may seem insurmountable. Gil-Alonso, Bayona-i-Carrasco, and Pujadas-Rubies were not optimistic in their article Is Spanish depopulation irreversible? Recent demographic and spatial changes in small municipalities. However, a number of unique solutions through Hispanic immigration and tourism are available to Spain. Furthermore, strong institutional support from the Spanish government and the EU may extend the services and internet connectivity needed for geographically distant villages to survive and maybe flourish. Finally, if Spain could come back from an even worse episode of depopulation during the Reconquista, it can come back from this. 

Gabbs, Nevada is a real place

During Thanksgiving Break 2024, I traveled with my partner at the time to visit her family in Gabbs, Nevada. Leading up to the trip, I told my friends and family where I was going by saying the name of the town, waiting for a second, then dramatically saying "population: 58." This usually got a bit of a puzzled reaction, but I felt it conveyed my bewilderment effectively. It seemed like an impossible place to me, far more remote and isolated than anywhere I had been.

A faded sign outside of Gabbs with a list of obsolete churches and social clubs, November 2024 

It turns out the population is certainly larger than 58, with the most recent numbers I could find putting the population at 237. I'm not sure if the discrepancy was because of my ignorance or some miscommunication. Regardless, the town was certainly isolated. It was about seventy miles away from the nearest gas station and grocery store, deep in the magnificent beige of the Great Basin Desert. 

I was perhaps too unbothered by the isolation, as I neglected to fill up my car at my opportunity to do so. As Interstate 80 changed to US 50 which changed to NV 361, the setting sun cast a lovely red glow on the desert, before turning into a pitch darkness that properly spooked me. I love a good country drive in pitch darkness, but the lack of trees or any shapes for my headlights to bounce off of was causing a low-grade panic to set in. My paranoia about running out of gas certainly did not help. 

NV 361. I swear this was terrifying at night. November, 2024

We did arrive safely, not quite sure if we were going to spend that night with our hosts or at a local motel that one Yelp review referred to as "Norman Bates scary." We thankfully did not have to find out what that meant, and spent the night on the couch after some stargazing and exploring our hosts' underground library. The lack of light pollution and 

We talked with our hosts quite a bit about life in Gabbs. They were my partner's great uncle and aunt, and they were constantly on the road. They spent about half of the year driving to visit friends, preferring to hole up in Gabbs in the more temperate seasons, leaving mainly during winter and summer. For them, the remoteness was peaceful, and it was where my partner's great aunt and grandmother grew up.

Gabbs was founded around a magnesium mine in 1941, when demand for the mineral was high due to World War II. Though demand dropped off sharply after the end of the war, operations in the mine continued, and the town was built up with a library and a k-12 high school, where my partner's grandmother attended while growing up there through the 1950s. She mentioned seeing nuclear blasts on the horizon growing up, likely seeing explosions from the Nevada Test Site, which operated continuously through the 1960s.  

Wide-Lens Shot of Gabbs, a view from the desert. November, 2024.  

The next day we had a two hour excursion of wandering in the desert and exploring the town. While the previously cited Nye County Civic-Plus source indicates that the town has an operational school, library, and community pool, it was clear from our exploration and conversations with my partner's family that this was no longer the case. The pool was dry and overrun and the library and school were just empty facades with decayed interiors. Apparently the town had been losing population over time and the population was now mostly retirees.  

An abandoned pool in the center of town, November, 2024. 

 Our discussions of rural disadvantage in week five reminded me of wandering around Gabbs. The readings around the crises facing rural schools brought the image of the empty school back to my mind. This simply seemed to be a later stage of the problems described in those articles. I am now struck by how Gabbs is so remote that its decline is not noticed at all by the outside world. There is so little information available about this town even in our age of information. If I had not been there, it would have been impossible to understand it as a real place.   

 On the drive back home I appreciated the beauty of the desert a good deal more. I am also happy to report that I did not run out of gas, though it got a bit too close for comfort at the end there.  

SNAP under fire

Credit: USDA, May 2010
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) has played a pivotal role as one of the most effective tools for combating food insecurity at a federal level. Food insecurity and food desserts often go hand in hand, and this blog has previously discussed their impacts. The current administration has proposed major changes to SNAP under the Make America Health Again (“MAHA”) campaign but what exactly is happening?

In July 2025, Congress passed H.R. 1 (the "One Big Beautiful Bill"), which introduced significant federal cuts to a range of social programs, including SNAP. Beginning in October 2027, the law will change SNAP’s work requirement policy, payment error rate policy, and the share of administrative costs covered by the federal government.

SNAP time-limit work requirements require participants to spend at least 80 hours per month engaged in allowable activities such as employment or job training. Previously, applied these requirements only to “able-bodied adults without dependents.” This group included people between the ages of 18 and 54 without children or a work-limiting disability, and excluded those who were pregnant, veterans, experiencing homelessness, or youth aged out of foster care. The new law expands these requirements. Non-disabled adults ages 55 to 64 without dependent children and non-disabled adults ages 18 to 64 whose youngest dependent is between the ages of 14 and 15 must now meet the work requirement. In addition, the law removes previous exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth who aged out of foster care.

Beyond work requirements, the law also changes how states are held accountable for SNAP benefit distribution. SNAP defines the payment error rate as “the measurement of the accuracy of active case review.” In simple terms, the rate reflects the percentage of SNAP benefits that states issued incorrectly, including both overpayments and underpayments. In the past, states with high payment error rates were required to implement corrective action plans and could face financial penalties only after sustained high error rates over multiple years. Under the new law, states with payment error rates exceeding six percent will be required to absorb a portion of their SNAP benefit costs.

However, past data suggests that this threshold is set too low. In 2024, only seven states reported payment error rates below six percent. Additionally, in an effort to increase cost-sharing, the federal government has reduced the percentage of administrative costs it will cover, lowering the federal share from 50 percent to 25 percent. Administrative costs include staffing, case management, eligibility verification, IT systems, and customer service infrastructure. Cutting federal support in half places a higher burden on state budgets and makes it difficult for states to reduce payment error rates and properly enforce SNAP eligibility requirements.

Consequently, this cost-sharing structure will likely impose the greatest hardships on under-resourced states. For example, based on Ohio’s previous error rates, the state could potentially be on the hook for $318 million in SNAP benefit costs.

In addition to restructuring how SNAP operates, policymakers have also pushed to change what participants can purchase with their benefits. The MAHA movement has pushed to restrict the types of food that can be purchased with SNAP benefits. For decades, federal policy allowed SNAP benefits to be used to purchase any food item except alcohol and ready-to-eat hot foods. Any additional restrictions required states to obtain a waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). While these federal rules remain in place, several states, encouraged by the current administration, have applied for waivers that would prevent SNAP benefits from being used to purchase “junk foods.” Beginning January 1st, several states, including Utah, West Virginia, Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana, implemented restrictions preventing SNAP participants from using their benefits to purchase soda.

Supporters of the MAHA movement frame these changes as necessary to combat a national health crisis, critics disagree. Opponents highlight the barriers that many rural communities already face when trying to access food. In some areas, residents may only have access to gas stations or small convenience markets as their primary food sources. Additional restriction on eligible food purchases could leave SNAP participants with few practical options for using their benefits. Furthermore, health policy experts note that limiting choices does not guarantee that individuals will make “healthier” decisions. Instead, these restrictions that limit food purchasing options may undermine participants’ autonomy and dignity.

Taken together, these changes represent a significant shift in the federal approach to SNAP. Expanded work requirements, increased state cost burdens, and new restrictions on eligible food purchases may share how participants access and use benefits. These changes will be felt strongly in many rurall communities with limited food access.

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 County, California

 (c) Lisa R. 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, Mendocino County, California

 (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2022

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 (c) 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.