One of the most urgent issues in contemporary Latin America is the popular struggle against rural poverty. Because Latin American states have failed to alleviate rural impoverishment, the poor have undertaken to solve their own problems. One fruitful way of improving their conditions has proved to be forming grass-roots peasant organizations outside state auspices. This approach, however, can bear fruit only under a democratic regime or in states that provide some political space in which peasants can act without being crushed.