Peruvian Agrarian Reform
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The
Agrarian Reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...
in
Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
was a process of
land reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...
redistribution initiated in the 1960s by struggles of rural workers (campesinos) for their land in the
Cusco Region Cusco, also spelled Cuzco (; ), is a department and region in Peru and is the fourth-largest department in the country, after Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It borders the departments of Ucayali on the north; Madre de Dios and Puno ...
, and legally implemented under General
Juan Velasco Alvarado Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian Army general, general who served as the President of Peru after a successful 1968 Peruvian coup d'état, coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency ...
in 1969 through three distinct laws. These land reform laws sought to redistribute large amounts of land that had once been owned by indigenous populations to the rural populations that lived and worked in the lands. The proposed laws promulgated in 1969 would attempt to change Peru´s agrarian infrastructure from being a system dominated by
haciendas A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman ''latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards) ...
. That system was characterized by the semi-feudal relationships between haciendas owned by private Spanish ''patrones'' which employed ''peones'', a large indigenous group, large cooperatives controlled by the Peruvian state, and areas of land owned indigenous communities (comunidades campesinas) that were recognized by the Peruvian government. The land reform was predominately focused on redistributing land from private haciendas to rural communities. For the former ''hacendados'', the government of Peru issued agrarian bonds as compensation for land expropriation.


Agrarian society before 1969

Agrarian society, in most rural areas, prior to the reform consisted of an extensive network of
hacienda A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman '' latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards ...
s, which were a result of extreme land concentration from colonial times where Spanish landlords were assigned large pieces of land that previously belonged to indigenous groups. The indigenous groups that previously owned and cultivated the lands became workers at these newly founded haciendas. Indigenous workers were unpaid or underpaid, some hacienda workers were given housing and food in exchange for their labor, and others were paid small wages and charged rent for their housing. After the independence of Peru, the few restrictions for landowners to protect the indigenous peasants were lifted, and the haciendas expanded largely at cost of the indigenous communities.Román Robles Mendoza: ''Legislación peruana sobre comunidades campesinas''. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), Lima 2002, pp. 61–68. In the years between 1900 and 1918, the
sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...
haciendas in
Chicama Valley Chicama Valley is an area located at north of the Valley of Moche in La Libertad Region, northern Peru, it has agricultural resources where one of the main products is cane of sugar; this valley has been formed on both sides of the Chicama Rive ...
in the
Department of La Libertad La Libertad (; in English language, English: ''The Liberty'') is a Regions of Peru, department and Regional Government of La Libertad, region in northwestern Peru. Formerly it was known as the Department of La Libertad ('). It is bordered by the L ...
were acquired by three industrial giants: the Larco brothers (related to the family of José A. Larco), Graham Rowe and Co (British export company) and the Gildemeister family (merchants from
Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (, ), is the capital of the States of Germany, German state of the Bremen (state), Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (), a two-city-state consisting of the c ...
). In the Peruvian constitution enacted in 1920 under
Augusto B. Leguía Augusto Bernardino Leguía y Salcedo (19 February 1863 – 6 February 1932) was a Peruvian politician who served as President of Peru from 1908 to 1912 and from 1919 to 1930, the latter term known as the " Oncenio" after its eleven-year length. ...
, indigenous communities were recognized as legal entities for the first time in Peruvian history, which gave them the right to land property and legal protection against expropriation by the haciendas. However, in the 1920s there was an uprising of
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...
peasants in the province of Anta against the landlords which was repressed by security forces. In 1936, the rights of the indigenous communities were also included in the Civil Code (Código Civil). The indigenous communities that could prove their historical existence as legal entities got land titles, which gave them legal protection against expropriation by the haciendas. By the year of 2000, 5660 communities were recognized.


Preceding agrarian reforms in Peru

In November 1962, the military government of
Ricardo Pérez Godoy Ricardo Pío Pérez Godoy (9 June 1905 – 26 July 1982) was a general of the Peruvian army who launched a coup d'état in July 1962, headed a military junta until March 1963 and served as the 47th President of Peru (1st President of the Militar ...
enacted the Agrarian Reform Law D.L. N° 14328. In 1963, the military government of Nicolás Lindley decreed the Agrarian Reform Law (Decreto Ley No 14444) creating the Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization (IRAC, Instituto de Reforma Agraria y Colonización) and started a process of Agrarian Reform in
La Convención Province LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...
and
Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ) were Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an ama ...
Valley (
Department of Cuzco Cusco, also spelled Cuzco (; ), is a department and region in Peru and is the fourth-largest department in the country, after Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It borders the departments of Ucayali on the north; Madre de Dios and Puno ...
), reacting to land occupations by peasants organized in the CCP ( Confederación Campesina del Perú) under the leadership of Hugo Blanco Galdós who were organizing a regional agrarian reform on the own, expelling the hacendados. The third agrarian reform law was adopted by the Peruvian Congress in 1964 when
Fernando Belaúnde Terry Fernando is a Spanish and Portuguese given name and a surname common in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Switzerland, and former Spanish or Portuguese colonies in Latin America, Africa and Asia (like the Philippines, India, and Sri Lanka). It is e ...
was president (Ley de Reforma Agraria N° 15037). This reform did not include the large estates on the northern coast, and its application was blocked by a Congress majority of APRA and the right-wing
Unión Nacional Odriista The Odriist National Union ( or UNO), was a political party in Peru founded in 1961 by former President General Manuel A. Odría. The party had Julio de la Piedra amongst its leaders. Development The party had its origins in Odría's military reg ...
.Román Robles Mendoza: ''Legislación peruana sobre comunidades campesinas''. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), Lima 2002, pp. 64–65. Up to 300.000 peasants in the Andes marched in protest for a real agrarian reform.Enrique Mayer: ''Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform.'' Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009, p. 17. In 1969, there were an estimated 700,000 families that did not own any land. Many of these families were indigenous and or low-income, worked in haciendas, and were predominately located in rural regions of Peru.


The Agrarian Reform by Juan Velasco Alvarado

A program of agrarian reform was resumed by the
Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru The Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces () was a military dictatorship that ruled Peru from 1968 to 1980 after a successful 1968 Peruvian coup d'état, coup d'état by the Armed Forces of Peru. Official Peruvian historiography refers to t ...
of general
Juan Velasco Alvarado Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian Army general, general who served as the President of Peru after a successful 1968 Peruvian coup d'état, coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency ...
who overthrew Belaúnde's government on 3 October 1968. On 24 June 1969, the Agrarian Reform Law (Decreto Ley N° 17716 de Ley de Reforma Agraria) was promulgated. The government declared the following objectives of the reform:
El proceso de reforma agraria, Objetivos de la reforma agrarian.
' Ministerio de Agricultura y Riego. Archived on 23 November 2020.
# Elimination of large estates (haciendas: ''latifundios'') and
smallholding A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technolo ...
(''minifundios'') # Formation of production cooperatives owned by peasants # Restructuring of traditional peasant communities # Formation of agriculture based on the common effort of the peasants # Creation of new markets by just distribution of entry which improves the acquisition power of marginalized populations # Parallel development of primary transformation industries in the field The agro-industrial complexes on the coast were the first to be expropriated. On 26 June 1969, two days after promulgation of the law, armed soldiers entered the sugar haciendas of the northern coast to take the installations and expel their owners. In contrast to Belaúnde's reform, no exemptions for owners of large estates were allowed. Between June 1969 and June 1979, more than 9 million hectares of land representing 15,826 lots were expropriated, benefitting some 370,000 families, much more than the approximately 1 million hectares from 546 haciendas in the time of Belaúnde's government. In the beginning, the expropriated estates were not distributed, but were left intact, concentrated and collectivized. 15,000 expropriated estates were transformed into 1,708 cooperatives. The expropriated landowners had to accept agrarian bonds within 20 to 30 years at an interest rate of 4 to 6% p.a. as compensation. Two types of cooperatives were formed: Agrarian Production Cooperatives (Cooperativas Agrarias de Producción, CAP) and Agrarian Societies of Social Interest (Sociedades Agrícolas de Interés Social, SAIS). The CAPs were formed mainly in the coastal
hacienda A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman '' latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards ...
s producing
cash crop A cash crop, also called profit crop, is an Agriculture, agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate a marketed crop from a staple crop ("subsi ...
s such as
sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...
,
cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
and
rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...
for the external as well as for the internal market, but also in the Andean region of Cuzco, among them the CAP José Zúñiga Letona at the former hacienda Huarán in the
Calca District Calca District is one of eight districts of the province Calca in Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southea ...
, where the film Kuntur Wachana was made, the cooperative of Ninamarca, whose first director was the famous peasant leader
Saturnino Huillca Quispe Saturnino is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian form of the name Saturninus. As a first name, it can refer to: *Saturnino Arrúa, Paraguayan footballer *Saturnino Herrán, Mexican painter *Saturnino Rustrián, Guatemalan road bicycle racer *Sat ...
, and the huge CAP Tupac Amaru II in Anta Province, which produced for the internal market. These cooperatives were owned by the agricultural workers in form of collective ownership. The SAIS were organized as cattle-holding cooperatives owned by agricultural workers grazing livestock and associated with traditional neighboring peasant communities. On 9 May 1972, Law Nº 19400 was promulgated, which dissolved the organizations of the hacendados: the National Agrarian Society (Sociedad Nacional Agraria, SNA), the Association of Stockbreeders (Asociación de Ganaderos) and the Association of Rice Producers (Asociación de Productores de Arroz). Instead, the organization of the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform, the National Agrarian Confederation of Peru ( Confederación Nacional Agraria, CNA), was founded on 3 October 1974. The ascription of the former haciendas to cooperatives controlled by bureaucrats and engineers led to great dissatisfaction among the indigenous peasants and the traditional peasant communities who wanted to get back their lands taken from them by the hacendados. Land occupations of cooperative lands started as early as 1973 in the huge cooperative “Tupac Amaru II” also called Machu Asnu (“Old Donkey”) in Anta Province (department of Cuzco), formed out of 105 former haciendas expropriated between 1971 and 1973. The leadership of the cooperative did not even speak the language of the peasants, Cuzco Quechua. The land occupations were organized by the oppositional peasant organization CCP, which had already occupied lands in the 1960s. In the following years, the lands of the cooperative were distributed among the indigenous communities, and in 1980, it was dissolved. Other land occupations took place in the department of Apurimac where the authorities had not even started expropriations of landlords.


The Downfall of Peruvian Agrarian Reform

The agrarian reform, initiated by Juan Velasco Alvarado, occurred from 1969 to 1978. The reform efforts were successful in redistributing land to indigenous communities, campesino communities, individual families, and to agricultural businesses and some corporate structures. The reform benefited approximately 334,108 of the around 700,000 families that did not own land in Peru prior to the reform. The start of the downfall of Peruvian Agrarian Reform was when Peru began to experience a severe economic depression around the mid 1970s which continued through the 1980s. This economic crisis resulted in high levels unemployment, inflation, and food shortages, and was in part caused by the economically protectionist policies and high spending of the Velasco regime and the increasing resistance to state actions from political opposition and business elites in Peru. With the Peruvian state on the verge of economic catastrophe, Velasco lost support from his former military allies resulting in the end of his regime and large scale reductions to land reform attempts. In 1975,
Juan Velasco Alvarado Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian Army general, general who served as the President of Peru after a successful 1968 Peruvian coup d'état, coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency ...
was removed from power in a
bloodless coup A nonviolent revolution is a revolution conducted primarily by unarmed civilians using tactics of civil resistance, including various forms of nonviolent protest, to bring about the departure of governments seen as entrenched and authoritarian ...
staged by
Francisco Morales Bermúdez Francisco Remigio Morales Bermúdez Cerruti (4 October 1921 – 14 July 2022) was a Peruvian politician and general who was the ''de facto'' President of Peru (2nd President of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces) between 1975 an ...
, Velasco's former Prime Minister and Minister of War. Morales was considered a political moderate by military leaders in Peru, who were looking to reduce the scope of the revolutionary actions of Velasco without entirely abandoning the revolutionary government. Francisco Morales Bermúdez undid many of the left-wing policies from the Velasco administration, and became a part of
Operation Condor Operation Condor (; ) was a campaign of political repression by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America, involving intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers in South America which fo ...
. Under Morales political regime, the expropriations of land (initiated by Velasco) continued, although in different areas, and the scope of the operation of seizing and redistributing land was greatly reduced. Morales was primarily focused on trying to resolve Peru's economic issues without losing the support of left-leaning Peruvians that supported the revolution. The Morales administration took out additional loans from the
International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...
, and maintained a greatly reduced version of formal land reform programs until 1978 when economic issues and civil unrest made it impossible to continue the operation, marking the end of attempts at agrarian reform in Peru.


Second government of Belaúnde Terry and government of Alan García

In 1980, the revolutionary government of Peru and Morales' Administration was unable to continue, and reinstated constitutional rule in Peru. Belaúnde, the president who was originally ousted by Velasco, won the first election in the newly established electoral system. According to Enrique Mayer, Fernando Belaúnde Terry “did his best to derail the agrarian reform”. Properties redistributed under Velasco and Morales were not returned to the oligarchies, but work-led cooperatives were converted into independent enterprises that could be easily dissolved by their members. In the following years, most of the cooperative land in the Andes was distributed among indigenous communities and smallholders, resulting in a radical restructuring of land distribution in Peru.Enrique Mayer: ''Ugly Stories of the Peruvian Agrarian Reform.'' Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009, pp. 28, 29. Peasants in the Andes, mostly organized in the CCP, recuperated lands by massive occupations, the last of which were the spectacular land occupations in the
Department of Puno Puno () is a department and region in southeastern Peru. It is the fifth largest department in Peru, after Cuzco, Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It is bordered by Bolivia on the east, the departments of Madre de Dios on the north, Cusc ...
between 1987 and 1989. By the end of the 1980s, according to Enrique Mayer, the indigenous communities (peasant communities) got most of the land in the Andes, and only partly the cooperatives had been a phase in between, for in many cases, the indigenous peasants of the former haciendas simply refused to turn them into cooperatives, and after that they got the land as a community directly. According to him, “the landowning class was totally eliminated from the countryside” in the highlands. Few cooperatives remained, such as the sheep-holding SAIS Tupac Amaru N° 1 located in Pachacayo (Junín) with more than 200,000 hectares of land as of 2012, still active in 2021 with 30,000 peasants and 16 associated communities. Some cooperatives were destroyed by actions of the Maoist
Shining Path The Shining Path (, SL), self-named the Communist Party of Peru (, abbr. PCP), is a far-left political party and guerrilla group in Peru, following Marxism–Leninism–Maoism and Gonzalo Thought. Academics often refer to the group as the ...
during the
internal conflict in Peru The internal conflict in Peru is an armed conflict between the Government of Peru and the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path. The conflict's main phase began on 17 May 1980 and ended in December 2000. From 1982 to 1997 the Túpac Amaru Rev ...
in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the regions of Ayacucho and Junín. This was the case with the sheep-holding SAIS “Cahuide” in Junín, which was later distributed among peasant communities and smallholders.


Alberto Fujimori

Under
Alberto Fujimori Alberto Kenji Fujimori Fujimori (26 July 1938 – 11 September 2024) was a Peruvian politician, professor, and engineer who served as the 54th president of Peru from 1990 to 2000.* * * * * * * Born in Lima, Fujimori was the country's fir ...
, Absalón Vásquez, the son of an agricultural worker at the sugar cooperative (CAP) of
Casa Grande Casa Grande ( O'odham: ''Wainom Wo:g'') is a city in Pinal County, approximately halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, in the U.S. state of Arizona. According to the 2020 census, the population of the city was 55,653. It is named after the Casa ...
in
Chicama Valley Chicama Valley is an area located at north of the Valley of Moche in La Libertad Region, northern Peru, it has agricultural resources where one of the main products is cane of sugar; this valley has been formed on both sides of the Chicama Rive ...
, became agricultural minister. He privatized the remaining sugar cooperatives in this traditional region of sugar production, which by then had been severely indebted to banks, and sold them to the agricultural corporations Gloria (Rodríguez Banda family), Wong and Oviedo at the end of the 1990s.
Perú: Tres grupos empresariales: Gloria, Wong y Oviedo son los nuevos barones del azúcar.
' Servindi, 27 August 2013.


References

{{reflist, 30em Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru Social history of Peru Economic history of Peru Legal history of Peru