Revolution, Reform, Conservatism: Three Types of Agrarian Structure
Delgado, Oscar
Latin America had a population of 199 million in 1960, according to a United Nations estimate. Of this total, 108 million or 54 per cent live in rural areas, and of these 2812 million are...
...The Venezuelan Four-Year program proposes to settle 200,000 peasants on the parcelled land...
...All this is, however, achieved upon a tacit condition, namely that of United States support for the established political and economic oligarchies of the various Latin American countries...
...As the president of the University of California, Clark Kerr, puts it: "the successful perpetuation of the family homestead...
...254-5...
...How else would it have been possible to redistribute 61 million hectares (52 in Mexico, 5 in Cuba, 4 in Bolivia...
...Another difference between parcellation and agrarian transformation is that the latter limits the amount of land a person may legally own, and the former doesn't...
...but, only a few years later, almost a third part of that land had fallen into the hands of speculators and absentee landowners who rented it to the farmers...
...If they are approved in the form they were presented, 9 they will certainly not provide the legal basis for an agrarian transformation, but only for parcellation...
...but many have more than 10,000, and some have hundreds of thousands—even millions...
...This phrase also requires some explanation...
...Report on Tenant Farming, p. 4. Giuseppe Barbero says that Bolivia today "is characterized by the absence of the large estate but is dominated by a primitive type of agriculture though she has large unexploited natural resources...
...Other investigators also point out this danger.28 There exist alternative policies to parcellation, namely cooperative and/or communal exploitation of land...
...13 Three years later, when the four-year plan is coming to its close, this figure has fallen to only 21.5 million...
...According to a cable just received from Santiago, the Chilean Congress has passed this draft, which is now a law...
...2y2 acres...
...In Cuba, the large estates and ranches were taken from individual owners and national and foreign companies...
...cit., pp...
...IP-2...
...Generally speaking, they work the soil in a primitive or almost primitive fashion...
...such an opportunity is limited or non-existent in them...
...The preconditions of total collectivization are: integration of the trading set-up which now wavors the big operators...
...They will be shareholders in industrial, commercial, and service enterprises...
...The countries of rural conservatism have a static agrarian situation...
...one third bought by the government from private owners (parcellation...
...We can deal here only with one aspect of this urgent problem: The different agrarian policies which can become stimulants or obstacles to the improvement of agricultural production and productivity, and to the white, mestizo, and indigenous rural population which participates —or is unable to participate—in growing crops and raising cattle...
...That country is now engaged in the most expensive "land reform" ever made in the world, even more expensive than those of Italy and Japan, with their special difficulties...
...R. Fernandez y Fernandez and Ricardo Acosta, Politica Agricola: Ensayo sobre Normas Para Mexico, Mexico...
...All rural dwellers who are economically active have family and social responsibilities, but almost all of them are underemployed and many are victims of seasonal unemployment...
...Venezuela makes an annual assignment of 187.5 million dollars...
...161-201 tri,-s which managed to achieve a true in Albert O. Hirschmann, ed...
...government as a participant is not only in order but imperative...
...1.9 million have enough land, and 100,000—mostly absentee landlords—have too much land...
...It is enough to say that if the Alliance for Progress is to be guided by such concepts, its failure is practically certain...
...This is no longer land reform...
...It gives the United States 19 unconditionally favorable votes at the United Nations...
...To what extent are we committing ourselves in such internal matters as land tenure reform...
...To help solve these difficulties, the President added, the Bank for International Development (BID) has allotted 309 million dollars for colonization and improved utilization of the soil.24 (Emphasis ours...
...Both in Mexico and in Bolivia, land reform marked a notable social progress, though it was limited to only a part of the rural population...
...They have something in common—rural conservatism— which distinguishes them from the countries of revolutionary land reform, which we may call countries of "agricultural transformation...
...From the point of view of defending their interests, the resistance of landlords to the land reform is perfectly logical, even if it is irrational in the present historical situation...
...Though their political control had disappeared, their economic power had been destroyed and their social monopoly broken, they successfully resisted land reform everywhere except in Mexico and Bolivia...
...14 Bolivia, Decreto-Ley de Agosto 2, 1953...
...That ideal world, in which they had been the center of attention and power, is now colliding with industrial civilization...
...The answer is simple and can be reduced to four words: Economic and social development...
...Still, it is convenient to group together the countries of recent parcellation (Venezuela and Colombia), those of colonization (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay), and those dominated by large estates (the rest of the seventeen...
...Mexico, Codigo Agrario, Diciembre 31, 1942, art...
...The landlords will find a refuge in the big cities (or will remain in them if they are absentee owners...
...No other Latin American country could afford to invest the equivalent of 750 million dollars in a program devoted exclusively to parcellation and its auxiliary agricultural services...
...We stated earlier that parcellation permits preservation of the traditional structure, based on large estates...
...29 Forexample, the Mexican economist Victor L. Urquidi: "It is very probable that, unless a new effort, combined with cooperative or collective forms of agricultural production, is made, economic development will not receive from agriculture all the contribution it requires...
...It is worth recalling that, in the last 10 years, 208 projects of land reform laws or relevant legislation have been presented to the Brazilian Congress...
...Of this, 7.4 million is owned by landlords with over 1,000 hectares each...
...Because of financial stringency or for other reasons, 8 they have received hardly any credit, technical assistance and other services needed for efficient farming...
...There are Latin American families who own more land than is occupied by a number of sovereign nations...
...The concentration of land in a few hands is not affected by it, and it leaves the problems of the rural population unsolved...
...President Kennedy himself has said in a speech that there exists in the rural areas of Latin America "an immediate necessity of a better distribution of wealth and income and of a broader participation in the process of development"—and that "the unequal distribution of land is one of the gravest social problems in many Latin American countries...
...In fact, there are families or groups of interrelated families in the Argentine, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, of which each has more land than several countries put together...
...The forms in which the ancien regime accommodated itself to the new order have varied greatly...
...Some of them will stick to their old values, and would rather become the victims of the hurricane of social transformation than give up an inch of their land...
...335 44...
...Tenencia y use de la Tierra en America Latina, in Selected Studies of the Latin American Seminar on Land Problems, Campinas, Brasil, 1953, published in Problemas Agricolas e Industriales de Mexico, Vol...
...The countries which tried colonization in the course of the present century were successful only as regards a few fortunate individuals...
...they were simply buried in the commissions...
...6 "It is necessary to create a firmer foundation for collective organization— here lies, one might say without exaggeration, the salvation of the ejido...
...the Peruvian draft law foresees one of 11.5 million dollars or about 3 per cent of the budget...
...It will be even more certain unless the Alliance quickly acquires what it presently lacks—a program of specific measures to deal with controversial issues, to be formulated, in the first place, by the American government...
...As a first step in land reform and possible redistribution, the respective participating countries should first look to public lands and lands not presently under appropriation...
...The Venezuelan government has bought about half a million hectares, at market prices, from landlords who sold their land voluntarily...
...Translated by I. A. LANGNAS 1 Oscar Delgado, Estructura y Reforrna be a coincidence but it is certainly very Agraria en Latino-america, Bogota, So-significant that no military regime ever ciedad Economica de Amigos del Pais, seriously modified the concentration of 1960...
...They include two countries at the very extremes of economic and social devleopment: Argentina and Haiti...
...Thom as F. Carroll, ed., La Creation de Nuevas Unidades Agricolas, Report of the Second Latin American Seminar on Problems of the Land, Santiago, FAO, 1961, pp...
...Wherever such cultural contacts take place, the Indians suffer from exploitation not only by the white bourgeoisie but also by the white and ladino (mestizo) peasants...
...The more intelligent among the landlords will adapt themselves to the new situation...
...It is evident that, when the ownership of land is so concentrated, the efforts to increase agricultural productivity will benefit only a very small percentage of the population...
...4-7...
...CEPAL...
...In actual practice, the national development programs have tended to concentrate on the non-agricultural sectors of the economy, where it is easier to achieve visible progress and where the resistance of interests opposed to progress and reform is less entrenched...
...Politically speaking, the Alliance stimulates an irrational and unconditional adherence of Latin American governments to the foreign policy of the United States without any serious discussion on an international level...
...The majority of them speak only an Indian language, though some of them are bilingual...
...Paris, Plon, 1961, pp...
...Only they are careful to call it "land reform...
...and one third confiscated from the friends of the deposed dictator Perez Jimenez who had obtained it illegally when in power...
...The national economy of these two countries benefited somewhat from the land reform,5 but the benefits were limited by an excessive fragmentation of the estates which were distributed...
...The average percentage of rural Latin America is around 80...
...The reason Cuba falls into a different category from Mexico and Bolivia is that the transformation happened there with surprising efficiency and speed...
...the struggle to hand all the land to the peasants...
...Their power would be seriously jeopardized if that support were to be withdrawn...
...73 and 79...
...This means a limitation on the supposed American pressure in favor of replacing these oligarchies by political, agrarian, industrial and financial democracy...
...Japan spent 390 million dollars to distribute 2 million hectares among 4 million beneficiaries...
...20 XIth Conference of Agriculture Economists, op...
...We found serious contradictions between them...
...However, this progress is generally unnoticeable because the population rapidly increases at one of the highest rates of growth in the world...
...References to 41 projects in Universidade do Brasil, Instituto de Ciencias Sociais, Bibliografia sobre Reforma Agraria, Rio, 1962, pp...
...Colombia and Peru have an active agricultural population of 2,023,000 and 1,546,000 respectively, i.e...
...but even here, 9 years after the law was passed, 28.5 million hectares-87 per cent of all utilized land—are still in the hands of landlords who own more than 1,000 hectares each...
...Our error lay in not taking complementary measures to assure to the farmers the permanent ownership of their land...
...creation of big state farms...
...This reform has meant a "parcellation" of cultivated land or a "colonization" of virgin soil...
...612-650, 1961...
...Internal migration to the cities is constant and growing, but it does not absorb the rural population explosion caused by the rising birth rate and the falling death rate...
...This being so, it is not difficult to view the Alliance, paradoxically, as a subtle form of resistance to social and cultural change—including a true land reform...
...l'iabilidad Economica de America Latina, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1962, p. 87...
...The formula is "parcellation," i.e., the subdivision of large properties and the fostering of homesteads...
...Not one of them was able to pursue its normal course through the commissions appointed to "study" them...
...The case of Venezuela will prove this...
...On the other hand, the XI International Conference of Agricultural Economists held at Cuehavaca in 1961 criticized the land reform in Bolivia "because insufficient attention has been paid to the transformation of Indian communities into market-oriented cooperative soci eties...
...See also the study by Charles Erasmus of the important cotton area of the Yaqui Valley, with its ample documentation of corruption in official agencies in charge of agricultural credit...
...Every year, every month and every day there are new mouths to feed and new hands to be provided with work, land, tools, and money...
...In Mexico and Bolivia, the rhythm of change has been much slower than in Cuba, for all the positive achievements of their land policies...
...T. Pompeu tia (Cuba and Bolivia) or a new army Accioly Borges, A Reforma Agraria na (Mexico...
...cit., p. 2. 21 On the political power of landlords see Merle Kling, Toward a Theory of Power and Political Instability in Latin America and John H. Kautsky, An Essay on the Politics of Development, both in John H. Kautsky, ed., Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism, New York, John Wiley, 1962...
...Latin laud reform dissolved their army and American Issues, New York, The Twen-either substituted for it a workers' militieth Century Fund, 1961...
...A number of Latin American experts favor cooperatism on a large scale29 while the American experts are divided 3a But the official U. S. policy, as embodied in the Alliance for Progress, does not take these alternatives into consideration...
...12 This means 7 per cent of the active agricultural population, as opposed to 41 per cent in Mexico and 32 per cent in Cuba...
...Its pronouncements are marked by vagueness, diversity, and even contradiction...
...All three reports are official and refer to the same period...
...In Mexico today, 47 years after the Land Reform Law was signed, 106 million hectares remain in private hands, and 71 million (76%) belong to private individuals who own more than 1,000 hectares each...
...But, in actual practice, none of these countries has paid the compensation required by the law...
...Moreover, Indian communities benefit very little from government aid or not at all, and it is an open secret that such programs have been a complete failure because of inadequate funds and lack of any real interest on the part of the governments concerned...
...9 Jorge Alessandri, Proyecto de Ley sobre Expropiaciones Agricolas and Mensaje Presidential in Boletin de la Camara de Disputados, Santiago, nr...
...For Peru, see note 9. 19 T. Pompeu Accioly Borges, in a private communication...
...The Venezuelan beneficiaries occupy 1.5 million hectares of land: One-third taken from public lands (colonization...
...But properties belonging to several members of a family can be registered under the name of its head...
...25 Congress of the United States, 'Economic Policies in South America (Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee on Inter-American Economic Relationship), Washington, Government Printing Office, 1962, pp...
...Some 51,4 million have an insufficient amount of land...
...Thomas F. Carroll, The Land Re-landed property and that the only counfor n Issue in Latin America, pp...
...cit., p. 650...
...landlords, or 1.5 per cent of all landholders, own 471 hectares, or 65 per cent of all land in private hands.' Each of them owns an average of 4,300 hectares...
...The Sub-Committee on Inter-American Economic Relationships of the United States Congress, headed by Senator Sparkman, has recently published an extensive volume, Economic Policies and Programs in South America, 1962, which formulates its basic criteria of land reform...
...1-123...
...On Peru, La Reforma Agraria en el Peru, Exposition de Motivos y Proyecto de Ley, Lima, Comision para la Reforma Agraria y la Vivienda, 1960...
...They were not subdivided, but continue to be operated as wholes by the government or by peasant cooperatives...
...roughly three times and twice that of Venezuela...
...II, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961, pp...
...Latin America had a population of 199 million in 1960, according to a United Nations estimate...
...But it has been very fast by comparison with Venezuela and Colombia...
...It seems to us that an official clarification of the meaning and objectives of "agrarian reform" in the context of the Alliance for Progress, especially the role of U.S...
...i.e., the abrogation during the Aleman administration, which has acted as a brake...
...with efficiency, benefit only a very limited Howard S. Ellis, with Henry C. Wallich, number of people and affect only a small eds., El Desarrollo Economico y America fraction of the idle land and underdevelLatina, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Eco-oped resources of these countries...
...but in its first three years (1960-1962) only 50,000—a quarter of the number planned—have been actually settled...
...taking over of basic industries by the government...
...10 Romulo Betancourt, Discurso de Carabobo, in Reforma Agraria Integral en Venezuela, Mexico, no date...
...In Cuba, the large estates and ranches were not divided by the Castro Revolution...
...The Indian policy of Latin American governments generally aims to keep them isolated from the white peasantry of their countries...
...The strongest resistance came from the big landlords...
...486-90, 1960...
...Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961...
...165, 1962...
...VI, I: 55-83, Anie;ique Latine in Sociologie du Tra1962...
...Moreover, they would not receive it in cash but in long-term bonds They would lose their political power and their social status, which they derive from the ownership of land...
...4 "It is disillusioning, says the FAO, 2 Philip N. Hauser, ed., Urbanization that the effective progress has been so in Latin America, Paris, UNESCO, 1961...
...expenditure for assignment of 270,000 hectares, in Joao Gonsalves de Souza and Manuel Diegues Junior, Resumen de las Respuestas al Cuestionario Enviado a los Paises Latinoamericanos, Washington, Pan-American Union, p. 90...
...This hope is based on changes in the composition of their Congresses (Brazil will have elections in October 1962) and on the election of a new president of Chile...
...Victor Manzanilla Schaffer, La Reforma Agraria, in Mexico: 50 Anos de la Revolucion, Vol...
...But the beneficiaries of the land reform were, in both countries, abandoned to their fate...
...In view of the sorry history of international commodity stabilization agreements, to offer another example, we had best be quite wary that the United States is not put in position of going along at the risk of being charged with their possible if not probable failure2 6 These documents need no comment...
...An agrarian transformation may well make the landlords feel "lost...
...provisions for land grants in aid of schools and colleges dating back to 1859, and (3) the so-called homestead acts dating from back to 1861 are recommended for consideration...
...There will be, in fact, no social or political change...
...Land reform is not exclusively a tenure problem but a problem of improved farming practices generally (rural education, research, extension services, credit institutions...
...348-59 in W. E. Moore and A. S. Feldman, ed., Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas, New York, Social Science Research Council, 1960, p. 354...
...The rural population will remain poor, and the backward tenancy systems and the exploitation of agricultural labor will continue...
...They actually received payment, almost full and immediate...
...Colombia has 27.7 million hectares of agricultural land...
...Rosendo Rojas Coria, Introducion al estudio del cooperativismo, Mexico, Talleres Graficos de la Nacion, 1961...
...The laws of Venezuela and Colombia, on the other hand, authorize the expropriation of land, with payment partly in cash and partly in medium-term bonds...
...The reports of governments which speed up the re-distribution of land are often distorted by exaggerating the area of the land and the number of beneficiaries...
...In spite of these obstacles, some Indians have established contact with the white peasants...
...in Mexico, 100 hectares of irrigated and 200 of unirrigated land...
...Parcellation," as used in this article means: a. The acquisition by a government agency of land used for crops or cattle by purchase from its private owners paid in cash and at once and b. the subdivision of this land for resale as private property to landless or landpoor peasants by payment of an amount of money equal or similar to that laid out by the government agency on the installment system, with a fixed term and a low interest rate...
...This is because, for many people, parcellation means an "agrarian transformation," and so they associate what is happening in Venezuela and Colombia with what happened in Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba...
...Also, Venezuela has an unusually small number of agriculturally active population—only 705000, as against 10,300,000 in Brazil and 28,500,000 in all...
...Jesus Silva Herzog, El Movimiento Campesino, in Mexico: Cincuenta Anos de Revolucion Vol...
...How can this problem be solved...
...5 Edmundo Flores, Tratado de Econ omia Agricola, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1961...
...Another reason is the small operating capital of the Banco National del Credito Ejidalonly 72 million dollars per annum, while the actual credit needs are estimated at 400 million...
...Large parts of Brazilian and Chilean public opinion believe that such constitutional provisions make land reform impossible and they are pushing for constitutional amendments which would permit a deferred payment of the indemnification...
...for the rest, colonization completely failed to solve their agrarian problem . 4 Parcellation, as a method of land reform, leaves the large estates practically intact...
...cit., p. 16...
...This is why it is the favorite method of land reform in "rural conservative" countries...
...16 and 8.9 million dollars in Cuba for 5 million hectares...
...on the contrary, existing property rights under law are to be respected...
...From 1915 to 1962, the Mexican government has paid only 14.5 million dollars in imdemnification...
...However, the government bonds to be used for compensation have not been issued to date, in spite of demands and reminders...
...For the sake of curiosity we collected and examined the reports of various officials and commissions in charge of these programs...
...However, the National Peasant Confederation corrected these figures to 15,000 beneficiaries who received official title to the land and 10,000 peasants settled on land without official title in the period under review...
...growth of agricultural cooperation...
...235, 238-9...
...7 Pan-American Union, La Estructura Agropecuaria de las Naciones Americanas, Washington, 1960 and America en Cifras: 1960, nr...
...C. Wright Mills, Listen, Yankee...
...In Bolivia, land reform has moved at a faster pace than in Mexico...
...Alberto Aguilera Camacho, Derecho Agrario Colombiano, Bogota, Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1962...
...Hernandez y Hernandez writes: "The numerical predominance of small peasant property, possession and usufruct will maintain the foundation of the present agrarian regime, with its expoitation of poor and medium peasants by the local merchants and bosses...
...A FAO document says: "Mexico, which carried out its land reform years ago, faces today's new problems which require new kinds of action...
...None of these laws were actually rejected...
...V. 12:51-68...
...Much the same thing happened in Peru and Ecuador...
...Venezuela has financial resources unmatched by any Latin American country...
...6 We can now classify the Latin American countries as follows: I. Agricultural Transformation: 1. Agrarian revolution (Cuba) 2. Land reform (Mexico and Bolivia) II...
...In Mexico and Bolivia, official support of cooperatives has considerably fallen off as their governments gradually veered away from revolutionary agrarianism 31 To sum up: The Alliance for Progress will make only an insignificant contribution to Latin American industrialization and land reform so long as it lacks effective means of coercion and a clear formulation of the means required to realize its objectives...
...One out of every 185,000 Latin Americans—or one out of every 100,000 rural Latin Americans—owns over 1,000 hectares.* For 107,955 • A hectare = approx...
...In these countries, new ruling groups3 and new ideologies replaced the old and changed the traditional values...
...11 On Japan, Pan-American Union, Report on the Agrarian Reform Program of Certain Countries, Washington, 1960, p. 5. On Italy, Giuseppe Barbero, La Reforma Agraria Italiana, in Boletin de Estudios Especiales, Mexico, XVII, 202...
...cit., p. 648...
...they speak for themselves...
...123-57 in Estudio Economico de America Latina 1959, Santiago, CEPAL E/CN...
...Moreover, in terms of the national economy, they have to produce a surplus for economic development...
...This land has not been given to the peasants, as happened in Cuba, Mexico, and Bolivia...
...23 Cf...
...24-25...
...The system of small-scale production for the market will not free the peasant masses from misery and oppression...
...Thes 28/2 million have to produce food not only for themselves but also directly for their 70V2 million dependents and, more indirectly, for the 91 million urban dwellers...
...The only such measure formulated so far is the fixing of restrictive limits by the various governments with regard to land reform...
...Several Latin American countries are planning to start a parcellation program in 1963...
...Some of these oligarchies seem to have found a magic formula which would permit them to maintain the existing agricultural structure while proclaiming that they had transformed it...
...but it does not decrease it absolutely...
...Its indices of urbanization2 and industrialization are progressively rising...
...It favors the Western bloc in the Cold War and prevents Latin American countries from becoming neutralist...
...These have adopted the cultural patterns of that peasantry...
...The Charter of Punta del Este refers to the "effective transformation of structures and of unjust systems of tenancy and exploitation of land...
...They will try to forget a lost world which had seemed ideal to them but which was too unjust to resist the passage of time...
...Considering that in most of them the 3 Gino Germani believes that the dis-population increases at a rate of 2.5 to solution of the old-style army of the 3% and that, generally speaking, a large ancien regime, generally a bulwark of part of the families own no land, it is rural conservatism, is a necessary condi-cbvious the programs now in operation tion of agrarian transformation: "It may are far from providing a solution...
...Giuseppe Barbero, op...
...15 The budget for 1959...
...This is also true of political development: They include, on the one hand, the Central American republics dominated by "strong executives" and custodians of foreign interests and, on the other, a country like Uruguay, with its markedly developed democracy...
...15 14.5 million dollars in Mexico for 52 million hectares...
...Similarly, in Bolivia, one official report says that 4.2 million hectares were given to 47,585 beneciaries in 1955-1960...
...in Bolivia, the limit varies according to the geographical zone.14 No other country has such restrictions...
...VI, No...
...In three countries of Latin America, a political revolution produced an agrarian policy of redistributing the property and tenancy of land: Mexico (1915), Bolivia (1953), and Cuba (1959...
...Certainly the United States is not pressing for any preconceived patterns of land tenure or agrarian reform...
...It offers Latin American countries money—in amounts insufficient for the needs of their development— but does nothing to resolve the grave problem of the "terms of trade" which is an essential precondition of any increase in the rates of capital formation...
...Then Land Reform' (in Northeastern Mexico) in Man Takes Control, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1961, pp...
...Here, too, this false kind of land reform is bound to fail...
...Also, neither country made a sufficient effort to foster government, collective, or cooperative operation of agriculture and cattlebreeding...
...Hernan Toro Agudelo, Minister of Agriculture, Plan Bienal Para le Reforma Agraria, in El Tempo, June 3, 1962...
...Among the different types of rural conservatism, parcellation deserves special treatment...
...In the year since the Colombian law was passed (November 1961), the Colombian Institute of Land Reform has so far parcelled out only 15 thousand hectares, which were handed over to 750 persons...
...Rene Dumont, Terres Vivantes, vail, Paris, October—December, 1961...
...The Congresses of two "colonization" countries (Brazil and Chile) and of two "rural conservative" countries (Peru and Ecuador) are now studying several "land reform" projects...
...There can be no question that the rural—and agricultural—population of Latin America is increasing today in a geometrical progression...
...12 The Instituto Agrario Nacional, in a Statement to the Associated Press, July 1, 1962...
...In the present pre-election campaigns they are concentrating upon obtaining more representative Congresses so as to neutralize—to say the least—parliamentary domination by big land owners and their allies...
...2, 1961...
...The oligarchs are now fighting from their last bastions a battle which they are losing...
...Chile thus joins Venezuela and Colombia as another country which accepts "parcellation...
...From 1938 to 1955, 12.5 million dollars were paid to American ex-owners for lands expropriated in 1927-1940...
...What this formula means in practice, however, is the stimulation of the minifundio in a disguised and uneconomic form, within the framework of a subsistence rather than market-oriented agriculture...
...10 The sum seems disproportionately high when compared with the cost of land reform in Japan and Italy...
...Thus, in Cuba the limit, for a private person or a corporation, is 403 hectares...
...It seems to do it on the naive assumption that the neo-traditional oligarchies might be moved by an instinct which Durkheim called "altruist suicide...
...The key passages are: The concept of agrarian reforms...
...Indians form some 15 per cent of Latin America's rural population...
...The constitutions of these two countries bar any expropriations without a cash payment in advance for the property to be expropriated, and at market prices...
...The peasants pay in annual installments for a medium-term period...
...31 Cf...
...This is also true of Venezuela and Colombia with their "land reform" laws...
...least of all can it undertake unilaterally to assure individual croppers of its support of ultimate landownership, no matter how seemingly meritorious cases may be...
...And yet, 63 per cent of them-18 million adult farmers—have no land at all...
...Statistically speaking, Latin America has the highest index of concentrated accumulation of rural property in the world...
...An ECOSOC report issued in November 1961, says on p. 24: "The necessity of a land reform in Latin America and the Middle East has been accepted on the international plane, but little has been achieved on the national scale...
...20 Generally speaking, in the countries of agrarian conservatism, the big landowners have exercised a powerful political and economic influence ever since Independence...
...Its annual per capita income is, through the revenue derived from petroleum, the highest in Latin America—$500, as against $92 in Bolivia, and a general average of $292...
...One of its aims is "to prompt, within the particular conditions of each country, programs of integral land reform oriented towards the effective transformation of structures and of unjust systems of tenancy and exploitation of land wherever it is required and with a view of replacing the regime of latifundia and minifundia by a just system of property...
...The countries of agricultural transformation have a dynamic agrarian situation: Their agricultural population—or at least a large part of it —has a genuine opportunity to raise its standard of living...
...serves to maintain contact with the old society.27 In other words, the old elites " will continue in power at the expense of representative democracy and the participation of the mass of the population in national life...
...Not only would they lose their prestige, but they would fall into the depths of unpopularity and be blamed by society as a whole for having prolonged a fundamentally unjust situation...
...16 Edmundo Flores, op...
...It seems advisable not to trust official data too much...
...Retranslated from Spanish text...
...Similarly, "colonization" means here the opening or preparation of new agricultural, cattle-raising, or forest land owned by the government or of no definite ownership, and the settlement in it of rural population...
...Both, however, have actually preferred parcellation...
...22 Their resistance is certainly not without a logic of its own...
...In Mexico and Bolivia, on the contrary, they were subdivided into very small farms—an average of 4 hectares of unirrigated lands—and handed over to the peasants...
...And their practical efficiency will depend on the amount of public funds assigned to buy land from private owners...
...Italy spent only 120 million to give to over half a million beneficiaries 750,000 hectares of redistributed land and 2812 million hectares of improved and colonized land...
...scanty and inadequate so as to create the Pedro C. M. Teichert, Economic Policy, impression that the distribution and Revolution and Industrialization in Latin colonization of land, even if carried out America, University of Mississippi, 1959...
...Conditions vary from country to country...
...On Ecuador, see R. Fernandez y Fernandez, Reforma Agraria en el Ecuador, in El Trimestre Economico, Mexico, 112, 569-94, and Ecuador, Junta Nacional de Planificacion y Coordination Economica, Antefrroyecto de una Ley Agraria...
...209-37...
...Cuba, Decreto-Ley de Mayo 17, 1959...
...22 "The land reform progressed little against a decided resistance by the landlords...
...Largely as the result of events in Castro Cuba, the specter of wide-spread and uncompensated expropriation has unfortunately been read into the Alliance program and one of the conditions of U.S...
...The Mexican economist Jesus Silva Herzog asks for "a reform of the Mexican land reform...
...8 "The lack of sufficient and timely credit and the bad faith of the officials in charge made the ejidatarios fall once more into the hands of unscrupulous operators and moneylenders...
...To this end (1) an accurate survey of acreage and useability of the public domain, (2) an appropriate adaptation of the U.S...
...In accordance with this project, all expropriations have to be paid for in cash and in advance except "abandoned or notoriously ill-worked estates" when the compensation can be paid on installments and according to the market value, as follows: down payment of no less than 20% .. . and the rest in equal six-monthly installments, in cash, for a maximum total of 10 years and with adequate interest...
...It is estimated that the percentage of rural population will fall from 54 to 46 in 1970...
...they continue in operation by either a government agency or a peasant cooperative...
...Of the Latin American countries themselves, the laws of Venezuela and Colombia indulge in some rhetoric in favor of cooperatives, but the actual policies of these countries have restrained rather than favored the growth of different types of cooperatives...
...cit., p. 187...
...In all the remaining countries of Latin America, there has been no serious program of redistribution or parcellation...
...This is a situation with no parallel elsewhere...
...The old ruling groups had governed with the sup port of traditional ideas, and their rule was tolerated by the masses who lived in utmost ignorance, submission, and political apathy...
...Their lands would be confiscated outright or they would receive an indemnity which they consider too small for investment in business...
...Latin America is now beginning to develop, however, slowly...
...Gieuseppe Barbero, Realizaciones y Problemas de la Reforma Agraria en Bolivia, in El Trimestre Economico, Mexico, 112...
...President Betancourt, in his last Message to Congress, said that in three years—December, 1958 to December, 1961-1.3 million hectares were granted to 42,000 beneficiaries...
...Rural Conservatism: 1. Parcellation (Venezuela and Colombia) Colonization (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay) Rural conservatism, in the narrower meaning of that phrase (the remaining countries...
...Actividad Reciente en Materia de Reforma Agraria en America Latina, pp...
...Edwin Lieuwen, Armas y Politica en America Latina, Buenos Aires, Sur, 1960, pp...
...26 Ibid., p. 79...
...nomica, 1960...
...1, January—March, 1954, p. 254...
...The amount of money Venezuela spent on its "land reform" would seem fabulous if we didn't compare it with the cost of agrarian transformation, truly insignificant by comparison: 133,000 dollars in Bolivia for 4 million hectares...
...of Latin America...
...17 (In all three cases, the land was expropriated...
...15-16 and 19...
...Given an annual rate of increase of 3 per cent, this means about 6 million new mouths and new pair of hands every year in all Latin America, and 3.8 million in the rural sector...
...The levels of rural income and buying power will not stimulate savings and consumption, so that they will not benefit industrialization...
...Fernando Chaves, Las Cooperativas, Elemento de Cambio Social, in Americas, Washington, 13, 9:7-11...
...28 The economist John F. Timmins writes: "The Homestead Acts gave millions of acres to the settlers...
...Also, Reformna Agraria, 6 vols., Caracas, Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria, 1959...
...However, the rural population as a whole and hence also the number of actual and potential agricultural workers, will actually rise by that date from 108 million to 133 million...
...The land reform laws of Cuba, Mexico, and Bolivia stipulate that the former owners of expropriated land be indemnified with long-term bonds...
...In two other countries, conservative governments, representing a bourgeois-landlord-military-clerical coalition, have introduced a land reform: Venezuela (1959) and Colombia (1961...
...As things are now, Brazil and Chile cannot be expected to go beyond a modest parcellation...
...25 [And:] [The Charter of Punta del Este] recognizes that conditions and needs will vary from country to country...
...In Brazil and Chile there is a hope, still vague and distant, that parcellation may be transcended and a genuine land reform achieved...
...In most of the literature on the subject, "land reform" actually means parcellation...
...At first sight it seems strange to apply the label of "rural conservative" to seventeen countries which differ so much economically, socially, and politically...
...17 Cuba, Instituto Nacional de Ia Reforma Agraria, Report of the Director, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, in Bohemia, La Havana, May 28, 1961...
...Meanwhile, the United States government insists that the Latin American countries carry out a land reform...
...but vast areas have no schools at all and an illiteracy rate of 100 per cent...
...A. J. Toynbee, The Present Revolution in Latin America, lecture given at the University of Peurto Rico in February, 1962: "There exists in Latin America an oligarchy of landlords, a dominant minority surely doomed to disappearance, but dying with difficulty and refusing to die before it puts its mark on the 'new rich' of industry and commerce...
...18 Some "colonization" and "rural conservative" countries are preparing a parcellation for 1963...
...Of this total, 108 million or 54 per cent live in rural areas, and of these 2812 million are economically active...
...So much for individuals...
...and The Marxists, New York, Dell, 1962...
...Land reform would include real estate tax reform...
...Before parcellation was started, 22 million hectares were occupied by large estates, over 1,000 hectares...
...1R Carlos Lleras Restrepo and others, Tierra, Bogota, Ediciones Tercer Mundo, 1962...
...Bolivia, in FAO, Documentacion del 11 Seminario de la FAO sobre Problemas de la Tierra, Montevideo 1959, Doc...
...12/541, 1960...
...Germani, La Democratie RepAmerica Latina, in Desenvolvimento e resentative et les Classes Populaires en Conjuntura...
...It was sold to them at cost price, which included the value of improvements and the wages of the officials in charge of the transactions...
...A partial success was registered only by a violent social cataclysm, as in Mexico and Bolivia...
...In Colombia, the government assigns annually, from 1962, 12 million dollars for "land reform," some 3 per cent of the national budget...
...Nor is it easy to include in the same group countries which never had any significant colonization or foreign immigration with others which have intermittently tried out colonization ever since the beginning of the 19th century, though on a small scale in relation to their open spaces and settled population...
...27 Clark Kerr, Changing Social Structures, pp...
...But another such report gives 1.5 million hectares and 63,414 beneficiaries, and a third —1,065,000 hectares and 32,608 beneficiaries...
...Any serious land reform there is blocked by juridical considerations—always the most conservative and changeresisting in Latin America...
...But it has not, so far, clearly stated what kind of land reform it wants...
...The programming and administration of agrarian reform is, and must remain, an internal matter for each of the several nations...
...it must be called an "agrarian revolution...
...This type of landlord will die with his boots on and with his gun cocked...
...13 Carroll, op...
...The two-year plan of the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture for 1962-3 proposes an expenditure of 18 million dollars for the purchase of land to be distributed to tenant farmers and sharecroppers...
...This migration, a product of urbanization and industrialization, makes the rural population decrease relatively, in proportion to urban population...
...A careful reading of it will justify our reservations on the efficacy of the Alliance for Progress as an instrument of agrarian transformation...
...Their income is extremely low, and considerable numbers of them live only on the margin of money economy...
...III, pp...
...24 John F. Kennedy, Message to the Congress of the United States on Latin America, March 14, 1961...
...The Bogota Act of September 12, 1960, mentions "the improvement of rural life and use of the soil" and "the revision of legal systems with regard to the holding of land with the view of insuring a broader and juster distribution...
...Carroll, ed., op...
...Barbero, op...
...The small payment was made in money, not in bonds...
...This happened in Cuba as well as in Venezuela...
...The objective of land tenure changes is not to be punitively directed against large landholdings or absentee landowners as such...
...A closer look at the three countries where a revolution occurred with a broad popular participation will reveal certain distinctions which will require separate categories...
...The Charter of Punta del Este of August 17, 1961, outlines a program for the decade of 1961-70...
...Venezuela has 2'9.6 million hectares of land used to raise crops and breed cattle...
...2i but, except in one or two cases, the landed interests have been completely successful in blocking any structural change...
...The nations of Latin America, gathered under the leadership of the United States and with the promise of its aid, have signed two documents which refer to the land question...
...But whether they resist or not, the landlords are doomed to lose the fight for the retention of their long-held privileges.23 Since society asked them to give up their lands, they have won many skirmishes and even some technical battles...
...30 Among the American officials and Congressmen who favor cooperatives are Chester Bowles, Hubert Humphrey arid Wayne Morse...
...Two million dollars were paid to 170 Mexican ex-owners in bonds which were later cashed by the government at a depressed market value of 5 to 16% of the nominal...
...El Agrarismo Mexicano y la Reforma Agraria, Mexico, Fondo de Cul tura Economica, 1959...
...And yet a conference of agricultural economists agreed that "the majority of the tenancy contracts now prevalent in Latin America are archaic, unequal, rigid and unsuitable for the full utilization of human and natural resources...
...But they are losing strategically and the fortress of their privileges—inherited rather than acquired—is beginning to succumb...
Vol. 9 • September 1962 • No. 4
