BOLIVIA: Bolivian President Evo Morales awards land titles and tractors to indigenous peasants

Bolivian President Evo Morales handed over former government land and agrarian equipment to poor farmers on Wednesday (August 02) as part of his self-styled "agrarian revolution". Driving a tractor, a smiling Morales arrived at the land reform event in Ucurena, 450 kilometers southeast of La Paz to address poor peasants present at the land reform event. Morales handed over 50 of the one thousand tractors the government is ready to deliver to those cultivating land in Bolivia. "We've met with the Venezuelan President, with his ambassador, with some other authorities and they all said we do have tractors here. I then wondered how much would they cost, and they said "zero kilometers", here you have a little red one. Early this morning we received 50 brand new tractors from Venezuela," announced Morales. The leftist leader, a coca farmer from a peasant background, unveiled the land reform program last May, the same day he nationalized the oil industry in South America's poorest country. In a country with no shortage of arable land, most of Bolivia's productive farmland is in the hands of a privileged few, with the poor majority forced to scrabble for small patches to live off. But attempts by the country's first ever indigenous president Evo Morales to redistribute millions of acres (hectares) of idle land to poor peasants angered local businessmen and landowners in the eastern city of Santa Cruz back in June. Santa Cruz, the landowners' power base in Bolivia's agricultural heartland, was the first city to receive 60 titles to 7.8 million acres (3.1 million hectares) of former government land. "Our lands were enslaved 500 years ago. Our lands were stolen 500 years ago. All we are doing is returning those lands to Bolivian peasant movement. They (the businessmen) have no right, no moral authority to talk about land enslaving. Those lands belong to the primitive peoples, to the indigenous people in Bolivia," explained Morales. Although Morales' oil nationalization plans have worried foreign investors and stoked fears in Washington of continuing a leftward, nationalist trend begun by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, criticism at home has not been widespread. But his land reform plans have laid bare fault lines in a country where the Roman Catholic Church estimates a handful of families own 90 percent of all farmland, while 3 million indigenous peasant farmers share the rest.

ITN Source | August 3, 2006

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