Latin America

Articles, research and communiqes addressing land reform and landless movments in Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Confrontation in Bolivia over Agrarian Reform
Roger Burbach, CENSA
December 18, 2006 - The government of Evo Morales and the indigenous social movements of Bolivia have won an historic victory with the passage of an agrarian reform law that calls for the 'expropriation of lands' that 'do not serve a just social-economic function.' According to Miguel Urisote, the director of the Land Foundation, an independent research center in La Paz, 'this is a blow to the latifundios, the large estates where many Indians often work in slave-like conditions.'

Venezuela’s Land Reform: Land for People not for Profit in Venezuela
Gregory Wilpert
September 20, 2005 - The Venezuelan government under President Hugo Chavez is the only government in Latin America, and perhaps even in the world, that is currently trying to pursue an ambitious land and agrarian reform program. The government has also introduced new agricultural policy principles, such as those of food sovereignty and the primacy of land use over land ownership. Because of this, despite the fact that Venezuela has a relatively small agricultural sector, land reform has become one of the Chavez government’s most controversial policy endeavors. Exactly why this land reform is so controversial, what it consists of, and what are its problems and prospects are some of the issues we will examine in the following pages.

Paraná will host Latin American School of Agroecology
Lúcia Nórcio, Agência Brasil
September 05, 2005 - Curitiba - Establishing an exchange network among peasant farmers throughout Latin America is one of the goals of the Latin American School of Agroecology, which will be inaugurated tomorrow (27/8) in the municipality of Lapa, in the state of Paraná. The school represents a partnership between the governments of Venezuela and Paraná, the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), the International Via Campesina (an organization that brings together movements involved in the struggle for land from all over the world), and the MST. The school is located within an MST agrarian reform project known as the Contestado settlement. The protocol of intentions for its creation was signed in January during the V World Social Forum.

Violence and Aggression against Human Rights in the Wake of Agribusiness
Antônio Canuto, Secretary of the National Pastoral Commission on Land (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT)
July 12, 2005 - The agribusiness sector concentrates land, water, and income. Its production is mainly for export, creating profits for a privileged elite at a very high socio-environmental cost. The irrigation of monoculture consumes 70% of the country’s water. Its machines are substituted for manual labor in the countryside, in a country whose greatest problem is unemployment. In the states where agribusiness has expanded, privately-sponsored violence is growing, along with repression through the power of the Judiciary.

The Counter-Agrarian Reform of the World Bank
Marcelo Resende and Maria Luisa Mendonça, Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos)
July 12, 2005 - From January 2003 to July 2004, Brazil received $3.2 billion in loans from the World Bank and from the Inter-American Development Bank. During this same period, Brazilian public institutions paid $6.9 billion to these banks. In other words, Brazil sent abroad $3.7 billion more than it received.

Transgenic crops – An Important Debate
Sérgio Antônio Görgen, State Congressman, Worker’s Party, Rio Grande do Sul
July 12, 2005 - What is in discussion here are two models of rural development. One of them is centered on large landholdings controlled by multinational groups and focused on chemical input-dependent monoculture production. The other is centered on small and medium sized agricultural production units organized in cooperative networks, local agro-industries, national companies, strategic public companies, and based in the diversification of production and in organic and agro-ecologic technologies.

40 Days of Protest Against Glamis Gold's Guatemalan Mine End in Blood Shed
Daniel Vogt, Asociación Estoreña Para el Desarrollo Integral (AEPDI)
January 16, 2005 - January 10 marked the fortieth day that platform trailers carryied milling cylinders destined for Glamis Gold's Marlin mine through the western department of San Marcos Guatemala. Since December 3, the convoy of trailers and Glamis Gold mining activity have become objects of the growing opposition to metal mining in the largely indigenous populated highlands.

Protesting the Death of Farmers in Los Encuentros, Guatemala. 11 Jan. 2005
NATIONAL COORDINATOR OF FARMERS ORGANIZATIONS (CNOC)
January 16, 2005 - The CNOC as an organisation representing the interests of the Indigenous peoples and farmers of Guatemala, laments the death of Raul Castro Bocel and Miguel Tzorín Tuy, farmers who were killed today by the Guatemalan authorities while protesting the transportation of a piece of machinery that the company Cropa Panalpina will use in the operation of mines in the West of the country.

Land Occupation in Bolivia
Econoticiasbolivia.com
September 02, 2004 - The occupation of Bolivian oil field marks the beginning of a new wave of protests, which developed in the rural areas of the country. Further actions are being carried out in the south of the country, and marches to La Paz are being prepared by landless farmers from different regions. The landless movements explained that the occupation of the oil field was a direct action against the government for the acquisition of the just entitlements [ titulación ] to their properties.

Agrarian Crisis Sparks Nationwide Strike
Rebecca Brigham, Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
July 09, 2004 - More than one hundred indigenous rights groups, women's organizations, human rights groups, campesino organizations, and labor unions organized the 12-hour strike that impacted most of the country, which paralyzed Guatemala. Guatemalan civil society organizations were also protesting the newly proposed regressive tax and the recent signing of the Central American FreeTrade Agreement (CAFTA). . . . Find out More

Indigenous Rights Attorney Assassinated in Venezuela
Alex Contreras Baspineiro, The Narco News Bulletin
July 07, 2004 - Just hours before President Hugo Chavez was slated to deliver thousands of hectares of land to indigenous and peasant farmer communities indigenous rights attorney, Joe Castillo ,was assassinated. Within hours of the return of lands to people, another defender was shot down.

Colombia: Decades of War Over Land
Constanza Vieira, Inter Press Service (IPS)
July 07, 2004 - In many rural areas of Colombia, life is measured from war to war, the first of which broke out in 1948, the second in 1954, the third in 1962 and the fourth, which is still raging, in 1964. The war that began in May 1964 produced an army of peasant origin to defend themselves against the attacks of armed gangs created by the land-hungry elites with backing from the State. . . . Read More

75,000 Venezuelan Peasants Win Land Titles
Argiris Malapanis with Olivia Nelson & Natalie Doucet, The Militant
July 06, 2004 - Big farmers tried to block implementation of agrarian reform law that has already benefitted tens of thousands of Venezuelan families.This report comments extensively on how the land reform is benefitting poor peasants in Venezuela.

Brazil : Agrarian Reform for Informal Lands
Mario Osava, Inter Press Service (IPS)
June 03, 2004 - Nearly a quarter of Brazilian territory (200 million hectares, equivalent to the area of Mexico) does not have known landowners because there is no legal register of titles. During the previous administration, of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the annual average number of families settled reached 80,000, while last year, under Lula's watch the total was 37,000. In addition to these formal efforts by the Brazilian government, peasant organizations have continued to push for more immediate land access in ways that have proven to be as successful. . . . . Read More

Scoping Study on Land Policy Research in Latin America
Stephen Baranyi, Carmen Diana Deere & Manuel Morales, Baranyi-The North-South Institute (NSI)-Canada
May 21, 2004 - After being relegated to the margins of development debates for over a decase, land policy has moved rapidly up the international agenda in recent years. In Latin America, a wave of market-oriented land policy reforms were adopted in the 1990s, from Mexico through Honduras and Nicaragua to Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. At the same time less visible yet important innovations were taking place on a number of fronts: joint titling to couples to promote gender equity; the regulariazation of indigenous peoples' titles to communal lands. . . . . Yet by the turn of the century frustrations with the uneven pace of change led certain social movmements and political parties to revive the banner of redistributive land reform. . . . Read More

Globalization and Social Movements: A Brazilian Perspective
Joao Pedro Stedile, MST (Landless Workers Movement)
March 09, 2004 - On October 20, 2003, one of the leading spokespersons of the MST (Landless Wokrers Movement) of Brazil, Joao Pedro Stedile, presented a public lecture in Toronto. Mr.Stedile provided an overview of the present crisis of neoliberalism, gauging the strategic responses of dominant institutions to this crisis as well as the challenges and opportunities that the momet affords social movments mobilizing for progressive change. Mr.Stedile addresses matters related specifically to Brazil and Latin America in general.

TAKE ACTION- Colombian Peasant Organization Members Detained
Colombia Solidarity Campaign
March 02, 2004 - Luz Perly Cordoba*, President of the Arauca Campesino Association (ACA), who had accompanied members of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign on a human rights mission to Arauca in February 2003, has been detained by state forces. The organization’s office has been raided by police, which led to further detentions. We call on all individuals and organizations to express their deep dismay and disgust at the continued persecution of the social movement in Arauca, and call on the Colombian state to release Luz Perly Cordoba from detention immediately.

I'm a Landless Peasant, I've Got Land but it's in the Graveyard
Maurice Lemoine, Le Monde Diplomatique
October 23, 2003 - Venezuela's opposition particularly loathes the crucial agricultural reforms of President Hugo Chávez, which have begun to return parts of enormous,barely used land-holdings to poor landless peasants and to encourage them to grow their own food and build working communities.

To Fight for the Land and to Learn from the Struggle
Thierry Deronne, Translated by Greg Wilpert and Nathan Converse
October 16, 2003 - A Press Conference was held prior to the International Conference of Resistance and Solidarity of the indigenous peoples and peasants in Caracas on August 30, 2003. The transcript includes interviews with some confernce participants prior to the conference, which was held October 11-14, 2003 in Venezuela.

The Crime of the Latifundio
Alai-Amlatina
October 02, 2003 - Historically the violence in the Brazilian countryside has been caused by the enormous concentration of land by the few. As a result, hundreds of rural workers have been murdered; the land monopoly generates poverty, unemployment, and the exclusion from political life while preserving the power of rural oligarchs.

TAKE ACTION- Murder and Arrest of Honduran Peasant Activists
Victoria Cervantes, uk.indymedia.org
July 29, 2003 - The National Center for Rural Workers (CNTC) in Honduras, Central America asks for urgent support for their communities after 2 activists are murdered and 30 detained in two separate attacks July 16 and July 17th.

Peasants Assassinated in Honduras
COCOCH (Honduan Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations)
July 21, 2003 - After more than 18 years struggling for a piece of land, a number of farmers and peasant activitst were killed when working in their community by group of hitmen under command of the Honduran landowner Jos Len Argueta. Together COCOCH and CNTC condemn these acts of violence and call on the Honduran government and Human Rights Councils to take action.

The Right of Peasants to Produce Food is in Danger
Via Campesina
April 09, 2003 - Millions of peasants have been evicted from their farming land. The development of huge plantations for cash crops aimed at exportation and industries, and the rapid increase of other land use forms such as the construction of hotels, golf courses and supermarkets haven taken away the land from the peasant often in the name of national development.

Two Models of Land Reform and Development
Jeffrey Frank, Z Magazine
November 27, 2002 - Guided by the slogan "Occupy, Resist and Produce," the MST initiated a direct action model of land reform
wherein landless peasants occupy an unproductive parcel
of land, petition the Brazilian government for land
rights, and operate the settlement as a collective
enterprise.