Bolivia leader redistributes land

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

Bolivia's President Evo Morales has handed over thousands of hectares of land seized from large-scale owners to indigenous farmers.

Mr Morales said the move would encourage people to put country over profit and would end human rights violations against indigenous people.

He had accused the previous owners of abusing workers and misusing the land.

Bolivians voted in a new constitution in January aimed at empowering the country's indigenous majority.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7944564.stm

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Sorta like giving nobid contracts to the indigenous ones. Good on him. n/t

[liberalmuse]

2. Looks like South America may go the way of Chavez.

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (before Chavez started getting full of himself). I'm still reserving most of my judgment since you really can't get the whole story from the American press re: South American leaders. That being said, I'm really having a difficult time seeing anything wrong with giving land back to the people it was unjustly taken away from. It's hard to have sympathy for the wealthy anywhere when they abuse their power and sink their own country because of their own greed and corruption.

[Mika]

6. And Chavez learned this from Cuba.

Cuba was the vanguard nation in rejecting the IMF World Bank dictum, with success. The nations of Latin America's new 'Axis of Good' have Cuba to learn from (the good and the mistakes).

[Bok_Tukalo]

3. That didn't work out well when Mugabe did it

Perhaps Bolivia has a better process for such an action that will not destroy that nation's agricultural sector.

[PDJane]

4. Mugabe did something else.....

He moved out white farmers, cut down the crops, and moved people from the cities to the farms. Less like Chavez and more like Pol Pot.

That's not what Morales is doing. The indigenous farmers were working for multinationals, and being treated as slave labour.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Racist right-wingers make every attempt to compare actions by ALL non-Caucasian leftist leaders

to Mugabe.

People can smell that underhanded tactic a mile away.

Take the time to become acquainted with the facts about Bolivia and Venezuela's actual history. You're not getting any younger. Might as well operate from a base in reality if you insist upon trying to discuss real situations.

Bolivians AND Venezuelans elected their leaders fully consciously, and you need to respect their choices.

[L. Coyote]

5. I once did this in a revolution, giving land back to the chattelled peasants. It was a fun job.

When we first went to the first hacienda we liberated, people were living in the corners of the animal corrals in little stone huts the size of a king bed and about four feet high. One of the
"new owners" of the collective we established said, "We have waited 400 years to get our land back, and today we got it back." That moment is soooo seared into my mind. Imagine what a day that liberation was for them, after 400 years of slavery.

[Judi Lynn]

9. With any luck that lies ahead in Bolivia's future, too. Amazing you've been through this.

It would be a life altering experience, no doubt whatsoever.

[Vidar]

7. Viva Evo!

[bitchkitty]

10. Viva Evo!

Somebody already said it, but I'll say it again. Viva Evo! Viva Evo thousands upon thousands of times!

[JitterbugPerfume]

11. and I will say it too!

Viva Evo! He does my Socialist heart good!

[bvar22]

12. "Absentee Landlords" were a problem in Venezuela.

Foreign corporations owned HUGE tracks of land (plantations) from the Colonial days.
The Indigenous people were used as slaves to work these plantations, and the profits were shipped overseas.

I assume Bolivia has the same problem.

The reforms sweeping across South America are the BIGGEST story NOT reported in the US Media.
It looks like El Salvador has Voted Out their Right Wing Oligarchs this weekend.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3783511

The Mexican Aristocracy barely managed to steal the last election. They won't succeed next time.

VIVA Democracy!
We could use some here.

[Idealism]

13. All of South America has the problem of the landed gentry

It includes less than two dozen families who own literally 80% of the land on the continent and transnational corporations who own mining/fishing/farming rights to certain tracts of land, too. Now that Venezuela and Bolivia are fighting back, the worst offender in this category is Argentina. I hope you see headway made against the elites who own the country, but it is a slow climb.