Bolivia to distribute land to indigenous Indians

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia to distribute land to indigenous Indians
Irish Sun
Wednesday 3rd December, 2008
(IANS)

The Bolivian government will buy land for distribution among members of indigenous Indian communities living in virtual serfdom, EFE reported Wednesday.

Juan Carlos Rojas, chief of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, told reporters Tuesday that the measure would benefit the indigenous communities in the eastern and southern provinces of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija.

Bolivia's indigenous Indian communities live in appalling indigence with little access to education or health care.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had pointed out in its report in June that the Guarani Indians in Chaco area are living under 'a situation of servitude analogous to slavery.'

More:
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571...

[Peace Patriot]

1. The numbers on land ownership in Bolivia are staggering.

"The government's agrarian reform has encountered violent opposition in Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija, where land barons remain opposed to the idea of breaking up individual holdings - some comprising nearly one million acres - to provide plots for landless peasants.

"According to figures compiled by the United Nations, Bolivia's richest 100 rural families hold five times as much acreage as two million poor peasants." --Irish Sun

The rightwing here and there, and the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies, try to tie individual sovereignty and the right to hold property to the "rights" of corporations to own everything and gobble up all resources. Thus you have ill-informed and often stupid small-medium farmers and small-medium businesses defending the "rights" of Exxon Mobil and Monsanto and Big Ag and Big Timber. The small enterprises are getting totally screwed, but they often can't see who is screwing them. (Big = bad, in my opinion.) And now they're trying to tie the "rights" of these million-acre landholders in Bolivia into a "property rights" argument, despite the gross injustice to the indigenous majority, who were brutally pushed off of their own land. The corpo/fascist press is trying to trigger a reflex here, about the "sacredness" of "property rights." Two million poor peasants without land, and with no jobs and no alternatives. And they just want to peacefully and democratically research titles to land, as any good government does, and find land for the food producers. Like Exxon Mobil & brethren, and their insatiable profiteering, the rightwing landowners are not satisfied with half a million acres, or quarter of a million acres. They want it all. That is the definition of predatory capitalism, which commits suicide in the end, by destroying whole societies.