Agrarian Reform- Hope Turns to Terror
Stephen, James C.
The popular and peasant organizations of El Salvador have always advocated land reform. Increasingly, over the past 20 years, the peasants have given their lives in the struggle for modest...
...But its consequences are disastrous...
...no cooperatives have been formed...
...This situation further deteriorated with the arrival of modern agribusiness companies...
...Further, those social sectors closest to the owners were able to dominate these cooperatives...
...It has exacerbated the problems of landless rural proletarians...
...Once again, the rationale behind the program is political, not economic: the goal is creation of a sector of privileged peasants who will disassociate themselves from the popular organizations and fully support the Junta...
...This so-called "Landto-the-Tiller" program came as a surprise to everyone except the group of U.S...
...And there is good reason to believe that Phase II will never be implemented and the economic base of the oligarchy never threatened...
...no farms have been expropriated...
...The Land-to-the-Tiller program is designed to create "owners" out of all current tenants, providing their plot or plots do not surpass seven hectares...
...If the reform doesn't benefit the landless, it often isn't much better for the newly formed cooperatives...
...The new "owner" can stay on the land for 30 years, but cannot sell or transfer it...
...Many fled and hid in the fields...
...More than 30% of their cattle were slaughtered...
...At first blush, such a program seemed to be a very radical attack on the agrarian oligarchy...
...Adolfo Majano pledged their firm commitment to agrarian reform...
...JanlFeb 1981 El Salvador's agrarian reform has been accompanied by an unprecedented level of violence...
...Simply put, small renters rotate plots of land from one year to another...
...Fourth, it creates an impossible credit snarl: how do you get credit to 150,000 disparate small holders...
...Furthermore, landlords bribed military officials in order to get their farms returned, and were successful in many cases...
...Yet, even on its own terms, the program is an abysmal failure...
...Although many U.S...
...Why, then, have these groups condemned an agrarian reform that is sopken of as the "most far-reaching reform in 36 Latin America...
...Since the renting of plots will be prohibited, the program locks poor peasants onto one very small plot of land for 30 years, thus freezing their system of plot rotation...
...Simultaneous with the Basic Agrarian Reform Law, the Junta declared a countrywide state of siege...
...More than 10 months after the reform, the colonos continue to live in extreme poverty with no control over their own destiny...
...In addition, those estates 500 hectares and larger make up only about 15% of El Salvador's arable land...
...Finally, security forces either killed or set to flight peasants and/or ISTA technicians who resisted...
...It therefore is not surprising that administrators and other salaried employees dominate many of the newly formed peasant cooperatives...
...Given the very poor soil on which most small-scale renting occurs, overutilization would create a totally sterile soil...
...Phase III: "Land to the Tiller" The "reform" process did not end with Phase II...
...In addition, Phase I was designed and implemented without the participation of peasants, popular organizations, the Church or academics-precisely the groups which had a strong commitment to agrarian reform and the expertise necessary to carry it out...
...More than 60% of the land affected by Phase I is either pasture, forest or mountains -some of El Salvador's most unproductive land...
...The result: El Salvador remains in dire need of radical agrarian reform which must be built on the full and open participation of all peasant organizations and political groups in that nation...
...Moreover, Land to the Tiller is built upon the supposed NACLA Report 38update * update * update * update desireability of fostering petty capitalist ownership among peasants...
...To understand how this was possible, we must look at the two socio-economic sectors that work on the large estates: salaried employees and permanent resident laborers (colonos...
...Peasants flee from random torture or murder by ORDEN members...
...Thus, scores of newly formed cooperatives were left with little but empty pastureland...
...No more renting of land will be permitted...
...The objective behind this practice is to minimize soil erosion and falling yields of basic grains...
...The program was drafted by the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) with the consultation of Roy Prosterman...
...Yet nothing has been done on Phase II...
...As government officials have acknowledged, the timing and motivation for the agrarian reform were eminently political...
...2) have seized the land of peasant refugees...
...Yet the peasants' hopes and expectations turned to skepticism and disappointment when government Leaders took few concrete measures to implement the reform...
...By the end of March 1980, the first month of the reform process, it was clear that security forces had escalated their assault against the popular organizations...
...Phase I: The Large Estates On March 7, the government announced the first phase of the agrarian reform, Decree 154, which authorized the expropriation of estates 500 hectares and larger (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) and the formation of cooperative peasant associations...
...Background to Reform El Salvador urgently needs a profound agrarian reform...
...The salaried employees-administrators, bookkeepers, mechanics, etc.-maintain close ties with paramilitary organizations and the National Guard...
...The answer lies in the brief history of El Salvador's agrarian reform...
...On April 28, 1980, the Junta announced Decree 207...
...Reform to Repression On October 15, 1979, after ousting the regime of General Carlos Romero, a group of young military officers led by Col...
...planners and its architect, Roy Prosterman...
...No enforcing laws have been passed...
...Phase II: The Heart of the Reform Whereas the first phase of the agrarian reform process authorized the expropriation of estates larger than 500 hectares, Phase II targeted all estates between 150 and 500 hectares...
...Landless rural workers (60% of the rural population who neither rent, sharecrop or own) have been entirely excluded from the agrarian reform at a moment when the rural proletariat is expanding faster than any other group in the countryside...
...Because they cannot afford to let their land lie fallow, the soil will quickly become useless...
...Groups of National Guard troops accompanied by ORDEN peasants (ORDEN is a paramilitary network of spies, informers and enforcers, see Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Yet the reality of the situation was different...
...This attack provoked the March 1980 resignation of the truly moderate members of the Junta...
...In theory, the program appears simple and highly beneficial...
...But that is exactly the effect of the Land-to-the-Tiller program...
...The shock, however, was to be short-lived...
...At this stage of the process, U.S...
...It has been characterized by poor planning, political expediency and the complete absence of peasant participation...
...As modern agricultural firms have forced thousands of peasants off the land, they have not been able to find employment in the cities...
...While it is often claimed that these estates encompass El Salvador's best farmland, this is only partially true...
...At worst, it is a program which, like the current one, aims at the destruction of independent peasant organizations...
...But, because of land use, population density and provision of credit, this model is completely inappropriate for El Salvador...
...for El Salvador's industrial growth has depended on labor-saving machinery supplied by multinational corporations...
...In that month alone, they killed more than twice as many people as they had in February...
...Instead, the areas of Chalatenango, Cuscatlin and Morazin-the areas of greatest concentration of small renters-have been turned into a nightmarish wasteland because of the ceaseless attacks of military and security forces...
...Claiming that this was necessary to protect peasants from landlord retribution, the government actually authorized the militarization of the countryside...
...Colonos, on the other hand, have been kept in a state of submission...
...For this reason, we must question sources which claim that 60,000 families have benefitted from Phase I. Ignoring the Landless To understand the real nature of the reform process, one has to look at the question of benefits...
...advisers basically saw agrarian reform as a device for winning the peasantry away from the popular organizations...
...No one has received title to land under this program...
...These negative consequences stem from the manifest ignorance of El Salvador demonstrated by the program's U.S...
...Increasingly, over the past 20 years, the peasants have given their lives in the struggle for modest social and economic improvements in the countryside...
...Without that participation, the product at best is a coarse form of paternalistic manipulation...
...This glaring fact provoked the late Archbishop Oscar Romero to declare: "Reforms which require the blood of the people are invalid...
...Finally, it will lead to an avalanche of litigation...
...Thus, estimates are that only 2-15% of coffee estates were affected by Phase I reforms...
...Of the dead, more than 50% were peasants-the supposed beneficiaries of agrarian reform...
...Reform of the nation's agricultural sector, therefore, is critical for improving the general health of the economy and, above all, for laying the foundation for a just distribution of social wealth...
...Beneficiaries or Refugees...
...They have been prevented from joining the popular peasant organizations and are often characterized as the sector of the peasantry with the lowest level of social and political consciousness...
...news reports make bold claims about the number of beneficiaries in the Land-to-the-Tiller program, the fact remains that there are none...
...experts" who designed and imposed it on El Salvador's government...
...Thus, one has to be careful about accepting a picture of deep economic change caused by Phase I reforms...
...By not implementing this program, the government clearly demonstrates that its interest in agrarian reform is predicated on political expediency rather than a genuine commitment to farreaching social and economic change...
...involvement appears to have been limited...
...But this aspect of the reform, as well as all the others, excluded peasants from the planning stages...
...Phase II reforms would encompass more than 25% of the good farm land (1800 farms) as opposed to 15% (250 farms) affected by Phase I. Undoubtedly, Phase II is at the heart of the agrarian reform process...
...Despite this growth, El Salvador remains a predominantly agrarian country dependent on export crops which make up approximetnlv 7. n of the total v;lup, of AGRARIAN REFORM Hope Turns to Terror its exports and absorb more than 50 % of the workforce...
...The violence in areas most acutely affected by Land to the Tiller is unparalleled...
...Not surprisingly, the peasants reacted with fear and distrust when the military first appeared...
...Thousands of potential "beneficiaries" have been turned into refugees...
...In other words, Phase II hit directly at most of the wealthy coffee estates-the economic stronghold of the oligarchy...
...Thus, employment in the manufacturing sector grew only 6% from 1961 to 1971 while manufacturing activities increased by 24...
...Secondly, coffee magnates had subdivided their estates among family members since 1971 in anticipation of the demand for reform...
...Thus, we encounter the absurdity of an agrarian reform process that igJanlFeb 1981 37update update update update nores the landless...
...Landlords, operating through paramilitary organizations and the National Guard, sabotaged the machinery and moveable assets of many cooperatives...
...Furthermore, as large estates steadily encroached on small farmers and campesinos during the past 20 years, the number of landless skyrocketed...
...Five hundred agricultural technicians from the Salvadorean Institute of Agrarian Transformation (ISTA) were dispatched to inform the peasants of the reform process and to organize them into cooperatives...
...The historic monopolization of land resources in the country has created a situation in which 50% of the rural population are unemployed for eight months of every year and more than 7 0% of all rural children suffer from chronic malnutrition...
...First, it institutionalizes and reproduces extremely small farms (minifundia...
...In view of the marked shift to the right by the Junta and this unrelenting assault against the peasants, the government's announcement of the Basic Agrarian Reform Law in early March came as quite a surprise...
...A University of Washington law professor, Prosterman had authored a similar program in Vietnam as a part of the infamous Operation Phoenix...
...In the first place, coffee, the basis of El Salvador's rural oligarchy, is typically grown on relatively small plots...
...Second, it will lead to serious over-use of the land, triggering accelerating rates of erosion...
...Indeed, to carry out Phase II is to alienate the oligarchy and its military supporters, and the Junta has thus far shown little desire to move in this direction...
...Third, it will provoke a greater need for inputs from agribusiness concerns, such as fertilizer...
...seldom does anyone cultivate the same plot of land more than three years in succession...
...14, No...
...NACLA Reportupdate update.update.update To the contrary, state security forces unleashed an unprecedented wave of terror against the popular organizations and their followers, particularly the' peasantry who, according to Church reports, had been singled out for especially harsh treatment...
Vol. 15 • January 1981 • No. 1
