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BOLIVIA
The days of the latifundia are
counted
BY NIDIA DIAZ—Granma
International staff writer—
EVO
Morales has not failed once since he became
president of the Quemado Palace after being the
favorite at the polls with 53.7% of the vote,
despite certain people doubting his victory. On
November 28 he dealt another blow to neoliberalism
and internal interests by the passing, despite
right-wing opposition, of the Agrarian Reform Act
with which the days of the latifundia are counted.
In
less than one year, accompanied by his Movement
Toward Socialism (MAS) Party and the huge indigenous
and popular movement on which his government is
sustained, he has renationalized hydrocarbons; taken
the majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly;
and, just a few weeks ago, in a gesture of sovereign
bravery, played it all by demanding that
transnational companies, virtually the proprietors
of the country’s energy resources, sign new
contracts via which the Bolivian state is now once
again marketing, defining the export of, the
industrialization and prices of gas and crude oil in
order to reinvest the profits into social programs
of benefit to the people.
Not
many people believed then that a popular government
could put an end to the so-called capitalization
undertaken by Sánchez de Losada without risking
foreign investment and, with that, the withdrawal of
the foreign enterprises that had been handed
Bolivia’s energy heritage as a consequence of
applying the neoliberal model imposed on the region
by Washington.
On
this occasion there was a strong push just prior to
the signing of the Agrarian Reform Act when the
right-wing opposition, representing landowners and
the oligarchy, not only boycotted the debate in the
Senate but left the House in the aim of preventing
the text already passed in the Lower Chamber from
being approved at this level.
President Evo had described the senators from the
Poder Democrático y Social (PODEMOS) of the former
president, Jorge Quiroga, and Unidad Nacional (UN)
as “attacking democracy “by leaving that House
inquorate in order to block and prevent the passing
of a bill on Community Redirection of Agrarian
Reform and warned that “the people and the world
will judge them.”
Meanwhile, a long march of thousands of indigenous
peoples that began on October 31 was advancing on
the capital in silent columns from all points of
Bolivian geography: the Beni lowlands; the heights
of Oruro, Pando, Potosí; from La Paz Altiplano,
Santa Cruz and elsewhere. According to the
Bolivarian News Agency many of them managed to enter
the Government Palace and others followed the
re-initiation of debates from the Murillo Plaza
until, in an unprecedented gesture, two PODEMOS
legislators and one from the UN joined the 12 MAS
senators, thus breaking the right-wing resistance
for the good of the campesinos and Bolivia itself.
The explosion of joy was uncontainable when, after
signing the new agrarian legislation previously
sanctioned by the Senate, President Evo Morales
announced that “with the passing of this law,
latifundia in Bolivia are finished.”
He
clarified that the agrarian revolution will not only
translate into the handing over land, but would be
accompanied by supplies such as tractors and other
machinery and markets.
Finally, the leader noted: “our marches have never
been in vain. There has been a march for
hydrocarbons and now the march for land. We will
definitely need some more marches so as to continue
advancing and opening the way to the definitive
elimination of neoliberalism in the country.”
A
NECESSARY ACT
Converted by the mismanagement of previous
governments into one of the poorest nations in Latin
America and with the greatest social inequality,
thus prompting the new legislation, whose objective
is to end the latifundia of unproductive and
speculative land, Bolivia is offering the
possibility of dividing them among people who will
really work them.
A
study undertaken by the Special Commission for
Indigenous and Original People’s Affairs revealed
that 91% of the country’s cultivable land is in the
hands of private owners who also belong to the
traditional political parties, are senators or who
have been senior officials in previous
administrations, within the media hierarchy, or
simply relatives of these.
These large landowners, who represent only 5% of
the population, are the owners of 89% of the land;
medium proprietors who represent 15% are the owners
of 8%; while the rest of the producers who make up
80% of inhabitants own only 3% of the land.
It
is no coincidence that in Santa Cruz and Beni,
departments where important sectors opposing the
process of change taking place in Bolivia are
concentrated, 14 families are the absolute owners
three million hectares of land. They include the
current senator Walter Guiteras, one of the most
vicious detractors of the Evo Morales government.
As the former coca leader has already announced, the
blow dealt to the latifundia is to be followed by
the nationalization of mining in 2007, the year in
which the new constitutional text to be submitted to
a referendum should be ready. If it is passed the
re-founding of Bolivia will forge ahead. The
government of Evo Morales has made many advances in
its first year in power. There will be more than a
few obstacles, but what is in no doubt is that the
Bolivian people have demonstrated that they are
ready to be the owners of their own destiny, which
is not precisely the one to which they had been
condemned.
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