On October 31, 2006, more than 1,000 Campesinos and activists from the lowlands of southeastern Bolivia began marching one thousand kilometers (620 miles) from Santa Cruz to La Paz. They hoped to rally support for modifications to the National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), originally passed in 1996, which legitimized the possession of illegally-obtained land in Bolivia, a particular gem for large landowners.
On November 28, 2006, everyone arrived in La Paz. Later that same day, the Senate—minus boycotting opposition party members—passed the reform bill… This video is a short documentary of the march leading up to bill’s reform.
To Have and Have Not: The Bolivian Landless Movement
A bloody history of land occupation and unequal distribution led up that night’s passage of the reforms. On April 20, 2000, hundreds of Bolivian landless families peacefully took over land in Pananti, an area in Tarija, and began a precarious new life. They pooled their labor to cultivate the land, which had been abandoned for eight years, and built their homes close together for protection from the thugs hired by local cattle ranchers who claimed the land was theirs. The residents devised shifts to keep watch on the community while others slept, worked in the fields, or gathered water from far-away sources. In early November, 2001, 60 armed men hired by local cattle ranchers attacked landless farmers in the Pananti settlement, burnt down their homes, and unleashed a barrage of gunfire which killed five men, one 13-year-old boy, and wounded 22 others. In response, landless farmers killed a leader of the attack.(4) Police arrested five landowners linked to the violence and nine landless farmers. Juana Ortega, who had given birth just three days beforehand, was one of those arrested. Ortega occupied the land for her children, “I decided to do it for them, for the land they will need to survive.”(5)
This violence reflects an ancient system of exploitation in which land is concentrated in the hands of a few rich landowners while poor farmers are left to tenant farming slavery or starvation. The wealth of Latin America’s large landowners has been built on the backs of the region’s poor, landless farmers. Since the Spanish colonists arrived on the continent plantations were largely powered by slaves, though land was sometimes lent to workers in exchange for money, crops, or labor. It was common for owners to rule every aspect of life on their plantations—from communication with the outside world, to internal commerce and justice. These colonial chains still grip the continent. With the application of neoliberal policies, old plantations were turned into modern industrial farms owned by US and European corporations. Campesinos fed up with working conditions or unable to compete with large farms increasingly migrated to the city. Currently, Latin America has some of the most unequal land distribution in the world.(6) ( Read more at zmag)
