From narconews.com
On a grassy hillside of the Bolivian highlands, on a sunny day in June of this year, hundreds of peasant farmers celebrated two years of liberation. A bullfight, dancing, and food for all. Close, but just out of sight, sat the solitary ruins of the ex-hacienda of Collana - "a sign," according to the settlement's own account of their anniversary, “that, here, not even a trace of a patrón (landowner) remains." [1]The occupation two years ago of the large private estate, despite many obstacles the participants have faced, is in many ways a success story for the young but growing movement of landless peasants in Bolivia. Families who until 2003 had essentially been indentured servants in Bolivia's near-feudal countryside are living for the first time on their own terms. "With or without papers, the land was our grandparents' and now it is ours," stated Collana leader Dionisio Mamani in a recent article. [2] “With this, we are assuring a better life for our children.”
Here in Bolivia, the words "la tierra" (the land) imply more than a piece of the ground. They have hidden meanings - power, racism, violence, suffering, struggle and hope - depending on who is speaking them.
Bolivia may have gained international recognition for recent uprisings around water and gas, but this Guerra de la Tierra (Land War) is a daily bloody backdrop to the mass mobilizations that capture the world’s attention. It’s a battle for survival and sovereignty being waged in every corner of the country; a power conflict that is, in essence, rooted in colonial history of the white elite and the indigenous majority.
The national, 50,000-member-strong Landless Movement (Movimiento Sin Tierra, MST) has led the fight to equalize land ownership in a country where 90 percent of the population owns 7 percent of the cultivatable land, where campesinos (peasant farmers) primarily work as peons for large estates or have been forced to leave the countryside altogether. Over the past five years, MST has centralized the issue of landownership in country’s political agenda primarily by taking over owned land.
