The government of Bolivia announced plans on Tuesday to buy land and distribute it among landless indigenous groups in an effort to improve their lives.
One of these groups are the Guaraní people, who some claim are living in Bolivia in “a situation of servitude analogous to slavery.”
There are others who dispute that claim, including several prominent American ranchers. They claim that President Evo Morales’ government wants to confiscate their land using the bogus slavery accusation and redistribute it so that it can obtain rights to more of Bolivia’s profitable natural gas reserves.
So who should we believe? As the New York Times‘ Simon Romero wrote back in May, “the reality… might be more complex than either side suggests.” Just several months later in September, the greater issue of how socialist ideas would translate into actions in Bolivia exploded into a fight over natural gas– that brought Bolivia to the brink of collapse. Perhaps now these flames of passion will be fanned further.
Evo Morales is Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and has made socialist themes the central platform of his presidency. He has said that he wants to make changes to Bolivia’s constitution in order to take actions that will help the country’s poor (who constitute 2/3 of Bolivia’s population), such as distributing profits from the country’s natural gas earnings more equitably. This has angered Bolivia’s wealthier elites, who generally tend to live in the country’s eastern areas that have the greatest abundance of natural gas reserves.
The United Nations claims that “Bolivia’s richest 100 rural families hold five times as much acreage as two million poor peasants.” These are the types of families such as the Americans discussed in the aforementioned article. These big land owners are the ones being accused by Bolivia’s government of using indigenous slave labor to work their ranches. At the American-owned ranch, the New York Times reported that “workers get work contracts, food, clothing, housing and education for their children at a schoolhouse on the ranch. But wages remain low, with senior farmhands earning less than $6 a day.” One worker was quoted as such: “We are not slaves, but we are not prospering. We just exist.”
The land owners think that the government would rather have indigenous people as land owners because the government would be able to negotiate more lucrative natural gas extraction contracts from people who supported the government’s overarching philosophy and had benefited from it. It does seem like a logical argument. Where the truth lies though is not entirely clear. For instance, I’m curious who owned the disputed land historically. Was the land in discussion ever stolen from indigenous peoples?
So what do you think? Is this a case of the long oppressed poor becoming the oppressors? Or is it a case of the powerful and corrupt calling foul when justice is served? Perhaps the answer does lie somewhere in the middle.
Photo Credit: nagillum on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
It sounds similar to what Chavez has been advocating and similarly is exciting, but maybe not the best in the long term. On the plus side, it’s great to see some people getting a good deal after being downtrodden. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily very smart to take land from those who can afford to invest in the technology to use it efficiently and give it to those who might only have the means for subsistence farming.
No matter where or what its origin, PRIVATE PROPERTY of amounts of resources greater than a person’s private personal needs is THEFT.
The planet and all its resources belong by nature to all. If someone gathers some resources for his own or his own breed’s needs, that is natural. Anyone who takes more than that depriving others of the ability to satisfy their physiological needs, is a thief.
Only groups may have common property of large amounts of resources for the efficiency of organized shared work and shared benefits.
Socialism OR Theft? What’s the difference? Anyone who thinks “big oil” is bad should take a look at big government. No other organization is less efficient, more corrupt, provides less value or is more wasteful. At least with a corporation I can choose (as can the rest of the population) not to support it monetarily.
Chavez is trying every underhanded thing he can to become a dictator. He already lost the referendum trying to eliminate term limits and now he’s preparing to try another way to get it done. He is nothing more than another crazy bastard like Castro.
I don’t know that I would call breaking up a monopoly “socialism”. I think that in a truly free enterprise system – there can be no caste system perpetuating itself. When disparity becomes so great that there is literally no opportunity for the poor – then there may be an aristocracy in place.
I think what needs to occur is not subsistence. The people must have means provided whereby they can begin to engage in capitalistic rebuilding. I would prefer to see taxation moving to invest in capital investment in new businesses… and the people empowered to begin to prosper through capitalistic means.
Socialism will only destroy the entire nation. But if there was a breaking of monopoly and capital investment and the creation of the means by which the poor could truly build wealth… that seems explorable.
Socialism will destroy the entire nation… and the poor will suffer. Capital investment and participation in capitalism on the parts of the poor should be the goal. Government does a horrible job of it. The 100 families should be “talked to”. If they do not turn to invest in the people… to create businesses… to invest that capital… then screw them. Tax them. God gives riches not for selfish pursuit of pleasure… but for capital investment so that others can be employed and prosper. These wealthy should be investing back into the community in capital investment. It’s unChristian. Socialism by Government force is a failed system. There’s balance in all things. The solution may be worse that the ill… if they move to socialism. The taxes must be used for capital investment to generate wealth creation amid the poor… or the results will be awful.
I visit many parts of Bolivia in my work, and I think the answer does lie somewhere in the middle. Clearly it is desirable that Bolivia’s tremendous economic resources benefit its entire population, and not just a tiny oligarchy. On the other hand, developing these resources responsibly (and justly) will require truly enormous financial investments that Bolivia (and/or friendly Venezuela) are simply incapable of making. Evo has to support the interests of his people without alienating every corporate and government entity on the planet. We see similar tensions in the USA and Europe where people are demanding a transition to green economies. Traditional left versus right, socialist versus capitalist modes of interaction simply won’t work when a nation tries to foster a third way. My worry is that Evo, while truly championing his people, is burning so many bridges to the institutions that could help Bolivia, that in the end his dreams will remain dreams, and no more. Who wants to invest in a country that demonizes foreign investors and its own most successful businessmen?
How did the people who have land get it in the first place?
The rich never become rich honestly. They never earn the money themselves. They earn it on the backs of workers, or society as a whole. The rich then either create or buy the government. Then the rich tax the poor, taking more of their money. This is the system, repeated all over the world for ages and ages. This cycle must be broken.
I think that those exploited by American land owners are probably in better conditions that those exploited by Bolivian ones. The problem with USA it that it is ferociously opposed to any kind of social process in Latin America (and any other place in the world).
Remember FDR “Somoza is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch”. Americans were opposed to social progress well before the cold war as the former quotations makes evident.