Andean peasants
International Viewpoint 10 November 1986
PERU land (2,874,000 hectares), 59.1 per cent of which was irrigated, were affected by the agrarian reform. (5) Only 13 percent of the land was allocated to individuals or to the peasant communities. The remaining 87 per cent was given to the cooperative corporations [Asociacions Associatives] set up on the foundations of the former estates. (6)
There are 1,984 such cooperative corporations according to official figures. They are divided into three types: Social Interest Agricultural
THE THIRD CONGRESS of the Peasants' Federation of the Department of Puno was held on August 28-31. It was attended by 1,250 delegates from every area of Puno. In this department, the peasants' struggle for the land goes back a very long time. (1) In 1920, the
Asociacion Pro-Indigena (Native Rights Association) estimated that out of the 7,000 Indian rebellions in this region since the onset of Spanish colonization, 5,000 had been over the land taken from the peasant communities.
ARIANE MERRI
With the introduction of the agrarian reform administered by Velasco Alvarado's military regime, the appropriation of the peasants land took another form. (2) The cooperative corporations that emerged from this agricultural restructuring became the new masters. They got the better land and virtually all the credits.
The vast majority of the peasant communities remain confined to marginal low-productivity land. (3)
For years the peasants have been fighting for the dismantling of these cooperative corporations and distribution of their land to the peasant communities. In his election cam-
Alan
Garcia, the candidate paign of the
American Popular Revolutionary
(APRA) -
Alliance who became president on July 28, 1985 - made a lot of promises to the peasants. (4) But the Puno peasants.
got tired of waiting for results and, with their organizations, they went into action in early 1986, occupying land and demanding that it be divided up.
The process of capitalist development in Peru led at the end of the
1950s to a diversification of the gave rise to the which economy, emergence of new strata in the bourgeoisie and to a revival of mass strugcountryside.
especially in the gles,
The old landholding oligarchy was challenged from all sides.
Although they brutally suppressed, the were peasant movements that shook the the time revealed the country at backwardness of the agrarian struc tures.
Velasco Alvarado's military government, after taking power in
1968, had a dual objective. First, it sought to shore up the country's political stability, which had been threatened by the peasant mobilizations. Second, it aimed to modernize the existing economic structures, so that Peru could meet competition from its neighbors.
In this strategy, agrarian reform had a key importance. It was necessary to institute a form of agricultural development that could support a rapid process of industrialization. On June 25, 1969, an agrarian reform was enacted into law by Decree 17/116. It was given a very radical appearance. Nearly a million hectares were expropriated from holdings of over 50 hectares in the coastal area or 30 hectares of irrigated land in the highlands. Their owners were paid compensation in the form of bonds, which they were called upon to invest in industry.
Subsequently, another decree obliged the banks to accept these bonds as security for investments. So, in the last analysis, the bill for these expropriations had to be paid by all Peruvians.
In all, 43.6 percent of the arable in Peru are called departments, territorial subdivisions
"provinces" are subdivisions of the departments.
2. On October 3, 1968, a military coup ousted President Belaunde put General Velasco Alvarado in power.
The peasant communities represent a vestige of Indian tribal collectivism. The Quecha word for them, "ayllu, " also means "clan.
Alan Garcia was elected on April 14, 1985. See "Political recomposition after the general elections, " in 'International Viewpoint,' No. 76, May 20, 1985.
'Le Monde diplomatique, November 1981. Only 2.2% of the total land in Peru (2,285,215 square kilometers) is cultivated (28,275 square kilometers). Pasture land and woods take up 25% of the
Companies (SAIS), Agrarian Producers" Cooperatives (CAP), and Socially Owned Rural Enterprises -(ERPS). They monopolize the better land and absorb almost all agricultural credit, at the expense of the communities. At the same time, they employ a tiny minority of the economically
*i the Bi
active population in about 120,000 people at the beginning of the 1970s. (7)
The workers in these cooperatives, the feudatarios, are supposed to be partners. In fact, they have become agricultural workers who are paid less than the subsistence minimum set by the government. The managers and technicians have become the new bosses. Food deficit growing
These enterprises are oriented toward the export trade. The result is that Peru's food deficit has been steadily growing from year to year. While in 1971, 34 per cent of cereals' consumption was covered by imports, this proportion increased to 46 per cent in 1978. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that Peru imported 119 million dollars worth of food products in 1969, the date of the agrarian reform, and 231 million dollars worth in 1976. This sum reached 500 million dollars in 1984. (8)
The cooperative corporations very quickly came to be seen as new latifundia [big landed estates] by the peasant communities. The ressurface, 311,304 square kilometers (31,130,400 hectares).
6. The General Directorate of Agrarian Reform (DGRA), 'Le Monde diplomatique, March 1980. The 1970 statute officially recognized 2,939 peasant communities, representing 3.5 million inhabitants scattered over 18 million hectares. Only 432 communities benefited from the agrarian reform. Moreover, not all the existing communities recognized, far from it.
7. Mariano Valderama, "La reforme agraire peruvienne, vers de nouvelles formes de domination du capital, in ' Reforme agraire et revolution populaire en Amerique latine. ' CIERA, Managua, 1982.
8. Sylvie Ballay, "L'agriculture l'epreuve du Liberalisme, *Problems d'Amerique latine, " No. 73.
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fight for land
International Viewpoint 10 November 1986 ponse was a wave of mobilizations and land occupations at the beginning of the 1970s. Out of these mobilizations was forged the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP), which very quickly established itself as the country's major peasant organization. All the government's attempts to cut the ground out from under the CCP through setting up a rival organithe National Agrarian Confederation (CNA), failed.
In August 1975, a coup d'etat put General Morales Bermudez in power, and then in 1980 power was handed
Belaunde Terry, who had been kicked out by the military in 1968, returned to power, along with the rightist Action Popular (AP). Under the auspices of the IMF, he plunged into a policy of decontrolprices and reprivatizing agricultural and industrial enterprises come under state supervision. That was the direction of the Law for Promoting and Developing Agriculture passed on November 17,
The government intended to proof tropical products, with the effect of further impoverishing a large section of the peasantry, that is, the producers of consumer goods. The enterprises that up until then had marketed agricultural products passed into the private sector.
to free enterprise guaranteed domination of the market for a few big companies. They could set prices to suit themselves and ruin the small and who could not keep up. The result was the same for consumer products.
The restructuring of the cooperatives that Belaunde Terry proposed had nothing in common with the peasants' demands. It did not at all distributing land peasants but rather broke up these cooperatives and returned them to the private sector in order to open the way for the development agriculture. That, in fact, was what the cooperatives were supposed to complish, but until then they had
In May 1983, an unprecedented event occurred. The first National Congress of Farmers' Unity (CUNA) was held. It brought together both the peasant organizations such as the CCP and the organizations that represented the cooperatives opposed to Belaunde Terry's privatization projects. He had united everyone against policy. Despite the lack of consensus on the question of the cooperatives, the CUNA established a program of demands that, in catastrophie circumstances of successive drought and flooding, were common to all.
1985, elections brought Alan Garcia to the presi16 dency. He got 47 per cent of the vote, coalition headed by a totally discredited which got a pathetic 5 per cent. On the other hand, the United Left (IU), got 23 per cent of the vote cast. (9)
president enjoyed an immense popularity. He had made a lot of promises to the peasants, and still more to those of the traditionally
Andean communities. He promised to restructure the cooperatives, interest-free credit and agricultural development programs for the "Andean Trapeze" — the highland departments. Peasants begin land occupations
In the department of Puno, the Velasco is particularly grotesque. The cooperatives got 49.76 per 1,766,180 hectares. The peasant communities hold no more than 155,882 hectares, or 4.39 per cent. Only 44,059 hectares, 1.24 per cent, were distributed to individuals. Moreover, the land held by the cooperative corporations is good quality, unlike that given to the communities.
In the department of Puno, there are about 1,300 communities and parcialidades, of which only 582 were officially recognized by the 1970 statute. (10) Thirty-nine communities, 3.9 per cent of those recognized, are associated with SAIS's, while the SAIS's in Puno alone represent 39 per cent of the cooperative corporations in Peru.
The result of this policy has been a decline in production for internal consumption in 1985-1986), for the advantage of export groups, which increased by cent in the same period. that, 400,000 persons joined the exodus to the cities.
delivery on promises that have been made so often and never kept, peasants in the department started to occupy
SAIS land in December 1985. Kunurama, Rio Grande and Azangaro after the other. The APRA government sent in the army to evict the
Although the department has not been officially put under the state of emergency, it has been put under military rule on the text of combating Sendero Luminoso.
Nonetheless, in February 1986, the government was obliged to issue two decrees (005 and 006) providing for restructuring, decrees recognized that the SAIS's were disproportionately large, a source of corruption, and that they had marginalized almost all of the peasantry.
Decree 005 is applicable through-
While the need for restructuring the cooperative corporations was recognized, only the Reform (DGRA) was authorized to carry out this process. The peasant communities and their trade-union organizations were effectively denied
Decree 006 applies only to the department of Puno. It is an implicit recognition of a particularly acute situation, but also of the combativity of the peasants in the region. While the government is obliged to undertake to restructure the 44 cooperative corporations in the department of Puno, its plans rest entirely on the state bureaucracy, with possible involvement of the
There is an explicit refusal to involve the peasant organizations on the provincial and district level, as well as the Peasant Federation of Department of Puno (FDCP), which is linked to the CCP. The whole process remains in the hands of APRA functionaries. That means they will implement the reform at their disin accordance with a tradition of political patronage.
This scheme is also destroy the independent class-struggle organizations that the peasants have built. This applies equally to United Peasants' Federation of Melgar (FUCAM), which initiated the land occupations in December 1985, and the FDCP. The government is trying to revive APRA's own peasant organizations, which are totally unrepresent-
A left coalition made up mainly of the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP), the United Mariateguist Party (PUM) and the National Union of the Revolutionary Left (UNIR).
10. "Communidades" and "parcialidades" refer to two types of peasant communities. The first is characterized by communal ownership of the land, which does not exclude private plots. The second is characterized by private land tenure.