[Land reform in Bolivia has been "on again, off again" since the 1952
Revolution.
- From '52 to the '70s only about 45% of peasant families received titles,
mostly in the western highlands (an indigenous area) where the large
latifundias where mostly broken up;
- Things then stalled in 70s and '80s and military governments used the
land reform laws to give vast lowland tracts in the east to their friends
and supporters.
- Since then, under the neo-liberal's "property rights" movement (drawing
on Peruvian Hernando de Soto, etc), a 1996 law used the land reform
mechanisms to put things in reverse. It redirected efforts exclusively at
"re-titling" and reclamation ("saneamiento", literally sanitizing)
*without* redistribution, locking in both unequal ownership and illegal
expropriations by large landlords.
The assignment of land titles was heavily funded by the World Bank, USAID,
and other foreign donors who in turn contracted private consulting firms
(often from inside the Washington beltway) virtually approving or removing
the title ownership of Bolivian peasants and large landlords.
(see http://pdf.dec.org/pdf_docs/Pdach791.pdf and
http://www.chemonics.com/aboutus/staff.aspx for a large example of a
company handling Bolivian land ownership that points out it is located
between the World Bank and the White House).
The property rights "re-titling" also had a retrogressive impact on
indigenous communities who rely on complicated blends of "traditional" and
"modern" land holdings (the landless peasant movement insists that either
universal communal or universal individual holding requirements harm them),
as well as on the complicated issue of rural farmers who have "temporarily"
migrated to urban areas ("residentes"), and on women who do not inherit
title.
- Now the land reform process will start again. Few details seem
available, even in the Bolivian press, although clearly there has been much
more popular participation in this process than in the gas deals. Press
reports focus on the large amounts of unused land *potentially*
redistributed in the lowland east although this will be a slow, case by
case, process over years. There are *probably* also provisions in the bill
from greater granting of indigenous demands for greater protection and
promotion of "traditional" approaches in the western highlands. Will land
be titled in the name of both partners in a couple? What will be the mix
of communal vs individual ownership? Anyone seen the specifics? Paul]
Bolivian Senate OKs Sweeping Land Reform
By DAN KEANE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; 6:28 AM
LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Bolivia's leftist president won passage of an ambitious
land redistribution bill and signed it into law to the cheers of
impoverished Indian supporters, who stand to benefit from what eventually
could be the confiscation of private holdings the size of Nebraska.
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, is intent on reversing
centuries of dominance by a European-descended minority and granting
greater power to its poor indigenous majority.
Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks as Vice President Alvaro Garcia
Linera looks on during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz,
Bolivia on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Bolivia's Senate on Tuesday night
returned to session to pass Morales' far-reaching land reform law, ending
a week-long boycott by opposition lawmakers meant to block the
controversial bill.(AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)
Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks as Vice President Alvaro Garcia
Linera looks on during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz,
Bolivia on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Bolivia's Senate on Tuesday night
returned to session to pass Morales' far-reaching land reform law, ending
a week-long boycott by opposition lawmakers meant to block the
controversial bill.
He's already given poor farming communities some 8,500 square miles of
government land this year, and hopes the new land reform bill will
eventually allow his government to redistribute some 77,000 square iles of
unproductive land.
Morales has said the government will not seize productive land, but rather
large tracts of Bolivia's sparsely populated east held by a handful of
wealthy families.
The president did not say Tuesday exactly how the land reform will proceed.
The government's first step will likely be deciding how to determine
whether a parcel of land is productive or not _ a process sure to spark
heated debate with Bolivian agribusiness leaders who have long fought
against Morales' agrarian reform.
Conservative leaders walked out of the Senate last week to block the bill,
which was pushed through the Senate on Tuesday in a vote that saw a
majority of lawmakers absent.
More than 3,000 Indian demonstrators, many in brightly colored woolen
ponchos and straw hats trimmed with neon thread, had descended on the
capital, La Paz _ some walking for weeks _ as opposition lawmakers tried
to stall passage of the reforms.
Morales had threatened to circumvent Congress and impose the law by
presidential decree if the Senate did not reconvene by Tuesday afternoon.
The bill passed 15-0 with the remainder of the 27 senators absent from vote.
The jubilant protesters turned the presidential palace into a celebratory
scene as Morales signed the legislation.
"This is the struggle of our ancestors, the struggle for power and
territory," Morales told the crowd. "Now, the change is in our hands."
Despite their long journeys, the marchers were in high spirits.
"We're exhausted, sure, but we are here to reclaim our rights from those
speculators who have taken our lands all over the country," said Natalio
Izaguirre, who hiked 18 days from his small village near Potosi, about 260
miles south, in sandals made from leather and old car tires.
Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks as Vice President Alvaro Garcia
Linera looks on during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz,
Bolivia on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Bolivia's Senate on Tuesday night
returned to session to pass Morales' far-reaching land reform law, ending
a week-long boycott by opposition lawmakers meant to block the
controversial bill.(AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)
Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks as Vice President Alvaro Garcia
Linera looks on during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz,
Bolivia on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Bolivia's Senate on Tuesday night
returned to session to pass Morales' far-reaching land reform law, ending
a week-long boycott by opposition lawmakers meant to block the
controversial bill.
The marchers poured into the palace Tuesday night red-eyed with fatigue
but smiling wide, some playing drums and Andean flutes.
The main hall filled with the faint fragrance of the coca leaves the
Indians chewed to stave off hunger _ a smell later replaced by the warm,
greasy aroma of boxed chicken dinners the government laid out for the marchers.
Morales used a presidential decree in May to nationalize the country's oil
and gas fields in an attempt to redistribute wealth in South America's
poorest country. At Tuesday night's ceremony, Morales said his
government's next project would be to nationalize Bolivia's mining industry.
Some agribusiness leaders from the eastern lowlands have vowed to use
force if necessary to defend their farms against government expropriation.
"It is not possible, my friends, to have so much land in so few hands, and
so many hands without land," Morales told about 10,000 supporters in a
plaza in La Paz before the vote.
The conservative opposition party Podemos holds 13 of the Senate's 27
seats. With help from two senators from minor opposition parties, Podemos
previously prevented the body from reaching a 14-seat quorum. Morales'
Movement Toward Socialism party, or MAS, has 12 Senate seats.
But Tuesday night, one Podemos senator returned to the chamber to vote for
the land reform, joined by assistants filling in for two other opposition
senators.
It was not immediately clear whether the assistants' votes would hold up
to legal scrutiny.
MAS controls the lower house of Congress, where the land reform bill
passed earlier this month in a party-line vote.
The government has publicly accused some of Bolivia's most politically
powerful families of large-scale land fraud, adding a layer of personal
animosity to an already charged issue.
On Monday, an opposition senator from a prominent landowning family was
caught on camera making an obscene gesture to pro-Morales demonstrators
heckling him outside the Senate _ an act since replayed repeatedly on
Bolivian television stations.
