MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE AGRARIAN REFORMS IN LATIN AMERICA - HISTORY - 2025

The main achievements of the agrarian reforms in Latin America can be summarized in four fundamental points: social peace in the fields, greater attention to indigenous people engaged in agricultural activities, raising the visibility of the peasants before public opinion, and increasing political and union participation. of the peasantry.

However, the achievements of these reforms in areas of reduction of existing inequalities in the distribution of farmland are still being discussed. Likewise, their supposed contributions to increasing production, agricultural employment and improving the living conditions of the peasantry are controversial.

In this regard, many affirm that the agrarian reform processes in Latin America have only achieved that portions of the land have been distributed among small farmers.

However, these changes have not generated an improvement in income, an increase in employment or a reduction in poverty among the peasant population.

Also, some say that, despite the increase in areas under cultivation, farm workers do not have the technological resources for their exploitation. For this reason, they have never been able to compete with the big agricultural monopolies.

What were the main achievements of the agrarian reforms in Latin America?

Social peace in the fields

Social peace in the fields was one of the main achievements of the agrarian reforms in Latin America. This peace was especially evident in the process of agrarian reform in Mexico. Land ownership patterns underwent changes during the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910.

In previous years, most of the land suitable for crops was in the hands of landed aristocrats. The peasant class that worked for them was not slaves

. However, they were under pressure from high debts that forced them to hand over their labor power to the landowners.

Due to the constant revolts that this caused, the Mexican government decided to pass a body of laws to support the agrarian reform programs in the country.

Initially, Aztec peasants received about 5.3 million hectares of land. The distribution was made among half a million people from 1500 different communities.

Subsequently, modifications have been made to this program. These have expanded the group of peasants benefited. In this way, almost all the peasants in the country are owners of small plots of land.

However, low production yields are still maintained. Despite this, riots over land allocation have diminished and the climate of social tranquility persists.

Greater attention to indigenous people engaged in agricultural activities

The Bolivian agrarian reform process is a representative case of the achievements of agrarian reforms in Latin America in terms of benefits for indigenous people. This began hand in hand with his revolution in 1952.

In this sense, their objectives were to put an end to the servitude system in the countryside, to incorporate the indigenous peasants into the consumer market and to return their communal lands to them.

In addition, he tried to modernize the production system and obtain financial support for small landowners.

Previously, 8.1% of Bolivian agricultural owners owned 95% of the total usable agricultural area.

The larger the land ownership, the smaller the area actually cultivated. The percentage of land use in the latifundia was minimal. In most cases it was below 1%.

According to government data, to reverse this, the Bolivian agrarian reform distributed 12 million hectares to 450,000 new indigenous owners in the period between 1952 and 1970.

According to the National Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA), until the beginning of 2013, a third of all regularized land was already in collective hands. These were controlled by indigenous and peasant organizations in the form of autonomous native community lands.

Also, 22% were in the form of individual or family plots by small farmers and "colonizers" (highland farmers who settled in the lowlands).

Together, the peasants and indigenous communities owned around 35 million hectares (55% of allotted lands).

Visibility of peasants to public opinion

In 1959, the government of Fidel Castro enacted its first agrarian reform law. This first law brought to the public eye a situation that had gone unnoticed until that moment.

Before the reform, about 80% of the best farmland was exploited by foreign companies with little benefit to Cubans.

These companies hired Cuban peasants and paid a salary for their work. By doing it this way, these farm workers appeared to public opinion as workers in a company and not as what they were: peasants without land to cultivate.

After the law was enacted, farmers began to exploit the lands donated by the government. They did it cooperatively in the so-called Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC).

This represented not only a dramatic change in land tenure, but also in labor relations.

On the other hand, its activities were made public through the annual production goals established by the government. All this contributed to its visibility, which is counted as one of the achievements of agrarian reforms in Latin America.

Increase in the political and union participation of the peasantry

Agricultural land adjudication processes are nothing new in Latin America. There are historical records that relate the distribution of land confiscated during the colony and given to patriotic servants or members of the liberating armies.

Similarly, there are similar stories that tell of slave rebellions and the eviction of landowners to later be distributed among the black population.

However, the formal processes of redistribution of arable land framed in the so-called agrarian reforms are events of more recent date. During the 20th century there were several of them.

From these processes, formal records of the main achievements of agrarian reforms in Latin America began to be kept.

In parallel, throughout Latin America peasant union organizations appeared that increased the political and union participation of farmers.

Among them are the agricultural cooperation societies (SOCAS) in Chile and the Federation of Cooperatives for Agrarian Reform (FECORAH) in Nicaragua.

Similarly, after the agrarian reforms, the Agrarian Production Cooperatives (CAPs) and the Rural Social Property Companies (ERPS) emerged in Peru.

In Bolivia and Brazil, trade union organizations were founded such as the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) and the National Confederación de Trabajadores de la Agricultura (CONTAG), respectively.

Likewise, organizations such as the Federation of National Agrarian Unions (FESIAN) of Costa Rica, the Central Campesina Salvadoreña (CCS) and the Paraguayan Peasant Movement (MCP) flourished.

References

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9. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (s / f). Peasant organizations in Latin America. Taken from fao.org.