Document(s) 6 of 10

Brazil

Since its return to democratic rule in 1985, Brazil has been one of the main Latin American countries actively pursuing agrarian reform. In that year the Plano Nacional da Reforma Agrária-Nova Republica (PNRA-NR) was approved, affirming the government’s commitment to expropriate land with compensation in the interest of social justice.² Productive properties, irrespective of size, were exempt from expropriation. This commitment to agrarian reform and limitation on expropriation to properties that do not serve a social function was maintained in the 1988 Federal Constitution.

Agrarian reform was placed on the nation’s agenda once again largely as a result of the growing number of land occupations that began in the late 1970s. The landless movement, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), was officially constituted in 1984 and by the end of that decade was organizing in 22 of Brazil’s states. Its efforts have been supported nationally by the Comisão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), an NGO of the Catholic Church. The other main advocate of agrarian reform has been the rural workers’ union, Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG), made up of agricultural wage workers, tenants and family farmers, which since 1963 has been organized at the municipal, state and national levels. By the mid-1990s, it too was organizing land occupations and collaborating/competing with the MST to accelerate the pace of the agrarian reform. In addition, there are currently from 60 to 70 smaller organizations engaged in the struggle for land at the regional and state levels.

What is different about the issue of agrarian reform in Brazil compared with other Latin American countries is that it has strong support in urban areas and among the middle class. High rural-urban migration combined with the inability of industry to absorb new entrants has resulted in exceptionally high urban under- and un-employment, an explosion of crime, and a deterioration in the quality of urban life. Given Brazil’s extremely high concentration of land³ and the fact much of the land is unproductive, agrarian reform has the potential to create more direct and indirect rural jobs at lower cost than comparable investments in industry. Thus an agrarian reform of sufficient scope and depth, by raising rural incomes and reviving rural municipalities, is expected to reduce rural-urban migration and contribute to more balanced and equitable growth.⁴

The main opposition to agrarian reform has been the landlords’ lobby, the União Democrática Ruralista (UDR), which began as the anti-reform lobby within the national congress in the mid-1980s and later became a national organization. It is allied on most issues with the Confederação Nacional Agrária (CNA), the national association of state and municipal unions of agricultural employers. As a result of their combined influence, efforts at agrarian reform were minimal until 1995.

Largely in response to an escalation in land occupations by the social movements and to rural violence, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) the pace of land expropriation and organization of agrarian reform settlements increased substantially. While the extent of his government’s accomplishments has been a point of contention, there is little question that during the Cardoso period more land was expropriated and families benefited than during the whole 30 years of agrarian reform that preceded it. According to official data for the period between 1995 and September 2002, 635,035 families benefited from its various land reform efforts.⁵ In contrast, between 1964 and 1994 only 218,534 families were beneficiaries. The area expropriated, representing on the order of 20 million hectares, corresponds to approximately six per cent of the farmland reported in the 1995-96 agricultural census.⁶

The goal of the Cardoso government was to create viable family farmers. It pledged to provide each beneficiary family with a financing package that included a settlement grant and three credit lines under the Programa de Crédito Especial para la Reforma Agraria (PROCERA) (the agrarian reform credit program) for working capital and investments in social and productive infrastructure. The average costs of expropriation per parcel were initially quite high but, as a result of macro stability as well as concerted efforts to reduce the overvaluation of properties in the expropriation process, the average cost fell by over 50 per cent by 2001.⁷ In addition, in order to encourage the sale of unproductive land and its more efficient use, in 1996 the government increased the land tax on unused land, with the precise rate depending both on farm size and the degree of land utilization.⁸ This measure was complemented by efforts to modernize the rural land cadastre and institute a national land registry. These efforts, for example, have allowed for more precise identification of illegally titled national lands. Nonetheless, much remains to be done so that the land cadastre and registry support the development of more transparent markets.⁹

The Cardoso government also experimented with various means of decentralizing the agrarian reform. The most important initiative was the Cédula da Terra, a US$150 million pilot project in market-assisted land reform partially funded by the World Bank in five Northeastern states. In 1998 the Banco da Terra was also created with the expectation that the market-assisted program would be expanded nationally. The central idea behind the market-assisted land reform program is that, by replacing state expropriation of land with direct negotiations between buyers and seller, the process will be less confrontational and the price of land lower.¹⁰ The latter is expected because landowners are paid fully in cash rather than partly in government bonds and because beneficiaries will attempt to buy land cheaply since they must repay the government’s financing of the purchase.

The Banco da Terra differs from the Cédula da Terra program in that fighting poverty is not one of its objectives. Thus, potential beneficiaries with higher household incomes than allowed under the latter program may participate. Moreover, all financing is in the form of loans. The Cédula da Terra program has a flexible loan-grant financing scheme whereby each beneficiary receives a fixed sum. The portion that goes to purchase land is a loan, with the remainder constituting a grant. The grant portion is to cover settlement costs, the purchase of technical assistance and infrastructure investments. It is this portion that was funded by the initial World Bank loan of US$90 million. The government’s financing for the land purchase is to be repaid over 20 years at an interest rate of four per cent. The Cédula da Terra aimed to benefit 15,000 families over three years (1998-2000) with 400,000 hectares of land.¹¹

The market-assisted land reform program provoked major controversy with the social movements. They considered the federal government to be absolving itself of responsibility for land redistribution by decentralizing the process, and feared that the market-assisted program would eventually replace state expropriation of land. The MST, in particular, considered this a travesty, since it would reward landlords for their unjust concentration of land. Moreover, given the power of the landlord class at the state and local level, such devolution of responsibility would put land reform in the hands of precisely those who have traditionally opposed it and strengthen patron-client relations.¹²

In addition, the Cédula da Terra program was created at a moment of escalating tensions between the social movements and the state. Land occupations were at an all-time high between 1996 and 1999, reaching an average of around 500 annually.¹³ The state seized the initiative in 2000 by placing a two-year moratorium on investigating whether properties so occupied were eligible for expropriation and by automatically disqualifying participants in occupations as potential beneficiaries of the reform. This was accompanied by what the MST considered to be persecution of the movement, with a number of its leaders jailed on various charges and it being accused of the mal-appropriation of credit provided to the land reform settlements.¹⁴ Moreover, in order to reduce the role of the social movements in the selection of agrarian reform beneficiaries, the government launched a new beneficiary selection process in 2000 whereby those seeking land could apply directly to INCRA by filling out a form at the post office. The social movements responded by urging their members to apply for land, and over 750,000 people signed up.¹⁵

The government’s divide-and-rule strategy included persuading CONTAG to participate in a new variant of the market-assisted land reform strategy. In partnership with the World Bank, a US$400 million program, the Projeto de Crédito Fundiario e Combate a Pobreza Rural (PCPR) was designed to target the rural poor in 14 states. It differs from the Cédula da Terra program in that potential beneficiaries must be organized in legally recognized associations, such as CONTAG’s municipal-level unions.¹⁶ The program aims to benefit 50,000 families between 2002-04 and is administered by the state and municipal Sustainable Rural Development Councils in which CONTAG participates.

Still, CONTAG maintained its opposition to the idea of market-assisted land reform, especially the Banco da Terra.¹⁷ Along with the MST it is calling for a constitutional amendment that would set a maximum size limit on all farms, with those above 35 fiscal modules subject to expropriation. The latter demand has become the focus of a national campaign, one that is supported by the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT).

The need for a massive and relatively quick agrarian reform was always part of the campaign platform of Lula (Luis Inâcio da Silva) in his four bids for the presidency as the candidate of the PT. With his inauguration as president in 2003, expectations ran high that an expanded agrarian reform would be among his first initiatives. Instead, during his first six months in office Lula chose to concentrate on the poor and on family farmers. In mid-2003, initiatives were announced to increase food production for the internal market, expand rural employment and income, and end hunger.

The anti-hunger program (Fome Zero) aims to provide up to 44 million people with a food subsidy by 2006. Their increased demand for basic grains is to be met by unprecedented support for family based agriculture. A R$5.4 billion (Brazilian real) program, the Plano Safra 2003-04, includes a 50 per cent increase over previous years in the availability of credit for foodstuff production and the expansion of a number of credit lines under Programa Nacional de Fortalecimiento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF), including one for women farmers. In addition, the state marketing agency is to guarantee the purchase of all the production from land reform settlements and other family farmers at a guaranteed minimum price, with these food supplies to be made available directly to the Fome Zero program.¹⁸

While the social movements have welcomed this initiative and see it as necessary to consolidate the land reform settlements, they continue to press for expanded integral agrarian reform.¹⁹ They view with alarm the fact that INCRA’s budget for land acquisition was reduced during 2003 as the PT government struggled to fund its new social programs while meeting its debt service obligations and IMF macroeconomic targets.²⁰ In a proposal presented to Lula in July 2003, MST called for one million families to be given land between 2003 and 2006, as well as the immediate settlement of the 120,000 families currently in encampments.²¹ The government responded by promising for 2004 the largest budget for land acquisition in the history of the agrarian reform.²²

Brazil has been the main country engaged in significant land reform efforts in the 1990s. It offers a wealth of opportunities for future research, since it has distributed land under differing modalities as well as differing ways of organizing production. With respect to the latter, little research has been done comparing welfare outcomes on settlements constituted as production cooperatives with those characterized by individual family farming. What makes the Brazilian case particularly interesting is that the decision to form a production cooperative has not been imposed by agrarian reform planners “from above,” as in the agrarian reforms of the past. Rather, their promotion has been at the behest of the MST, with relatively little special assistance from the state. Moreover, besides facilitating the provision of infrastructure and other public goods, a number of production cooperatives have successfully developed agro-industrial activities, thus diversifying incomes and generating employment opportunities for family members such as women and youth.

Brazil is also the main country currently carrying out market-assisted alongside traditional agrarian reform efforts. Even though the impact of the negotiated model has not been properly evaluated, the experimental Cédula da Terra project was expanded nationally soon after its initiation. One of the positive outcomes of this model thus far, according to the World Bank PRR, is that land purchase prices are lower than under the traditional agrarian reform and that the program has expanded the range of land available for redistribution as well as expanding the range of potential beneficiaries and improving their welfare.²³ A recent article, based on an analysis of the same documents available to the World Bank, challenges these conclusions — particularly with regard to the welfare of beneficiaries.²⁴

One of the main points of contention worthy of further research is the beneficiary selection process. Advocates of the decentralized model argue that one of its benefits is “self-selection,” since only those with the skills and dedication to farming will come forward to buy land and take on a mortgage. Potential beneficiaries, however, are required to form an association to negotiate for the purchase of land and it is this association that is responsible for the mortgage as well as deciding upon the collective investments to be undertaken. Little attention was paid in the Cédula da Terra project to how these groups would be formed and whether they would have the internal cohesiveness to function as a community. In many cases the beneficiary selection process was manipulated by local elites, and many of these groups were formed instrumentally, to get access to the resources of the project, with little chance of sustainability. In the design of the second stage of the project (the PCPR) this was recognized as a potential weakness, and CONTAG and its municipal-level unions were given a prominent role in beneficiary selection and in organizing the associations.

Brazil thus offers a unique opportunity to study different kinds of agrarian reform settlements according to the way that they were formed and how this relates to their social cohesiveness and sustainability “e.g., traditional settlements formed through strong grassroots participation in the struggle for land under the leadership of the MST and CONTAG, as compared to those organized for the purpose of purchasing land at the behest of either local-level elites (the Cédula da Terra) or CONTAG (the PCPR)”.²⁵ Such a comparative framework would also be useful for answering the question of whether beneficiaries of the market-assisted program will be able to repay their land debts, and the impact of doing so on the welfare of beneficiary households.²⁶

Given the size of Brazil, it is particularly important in the study of this country that account be taken of its regional variations with respect to social and physical geography. A large number of case studies have been generated on the agrarian reform settlements throughout Brazil.²⁷ What remains to be done, to guide future research efforts, is a synthesis of the agrarian reform experience to date by region.

One of the potential benefits of the market-assisted program in Brazil is that it targets land that would not otherwise be eligible for expropriation; thus, a number of analysts consider it complementary to traditional land reform efforts. Moreover, the demand for land tends to centre on land located near major urban centres, where infrastructure is adequate. Nonetheless, it seems as if the bulk of unproductive land, that which is potentially subject to expropriation, is located in the central and other more inaccessible regions of the country. One of the major challenges facing the Lula government in furthering redistributive agrarian reform will be precisely this disjuncture. Solving it might indeed require enacting the proposed limit on absolute farm size, a measure that is most controversial.

Given the coexistence of different approaches to land policy and land reform, strong national research capacity and strong political will, Brazil offers a unique laboratory for studying land policy efforts. Key research issues over the coming years include:

• Comparing the trajectories of market-oriented, decentralized and redistributive land reforms, through poverty reduction and gender equity lenses.
• Tracking the outcomes of production cooperatives and individual farms, and the extent to which state support and internal social organization affect efficiency and welfare outcomes for beneficiaries.
• Situating different land reform experiments in their local contexts, including tracking the influences of local elites and social movements on outcomes.

The Andes

The countries of the Andean region also have complex histories of innovation and face enduring challenges in the area of land policy. In Bolivia, Colombia and Peru far-reaching land reforms were initiated in the post-World War Two period, to address historic inequities in the distribution of land, violent conflicts and the stagnation of the agricultural sector. During the 1990s more market-oriented reforms were instituted in several Andean countries. There has been innovation to address the special situation of Indigenous Peoples’ lands.²⁸ Yet there is continued social pressure for more far-reaching reforms, from Bolivia to Venezuela. The expansion of narcotics production has profoundly affected these processes. This section looks at current land policy debates in the Andean region, particularly in Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela, before closing with observations on possible research priorities.

In Bolivia a profound land reform was initiated in 1953, eliminating a semi-feudal system in the highlands whereby a small stratum of large landowners held the majority of smallholder Indigenous peasants in relations of extreme servitude. Those reforms reorganized traditional Indigenous communities into a new agrarian system but received scant state support in subsequent decades. State attention focused on opening the agricultural frontier and supporting agro-industry in the eastern plains. In the 1980s an intense debate emerged on the modernization of the 1953 law, against the backdrop of broader governmental economic liberalization measures. In 1996, Law 1715 created the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA). As a result of social pressure, the law combined new liberalization measures, entrenched the role of INRA and other state entities as important actors in land markets, strengthened the traditional land rights of Indigenous communities, and maintained the de jure ceiling on large landholdings.²⁹

The 1996 INRA Law has been criticized from several directions. Some Indigenous leaders, inspired by the 500 Years of Resistance Campaign in the early 1990s, are demanding an even more radical return to traditional norms and forms of social organization. Others are demanding greater emphasis on the “land to the tiller” principle of the 1953 agrarian reform. All advocate more state support for integrated rural development in the highlands. The Bolivian Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST) is demanding that excessive or illegally occupied lands in the eastern plains be redistributed to landless peasants. At the other end of the spectrum, large landowners are demanding the regularization of land holdings obtained during the 1970 and 1980s (in some cases under legally dubious circumstances), the reduction of property taxes and the provision of cheaper credit for their enterprises. Some landowners have formed private security forces to protect their assets against MST-led occupations. Deep divisions over the treatment of coca growers add fuel to this debate.³⁰ The stalemate between these positions is one factor that contributed to the social protests and the change of government in October 2003. The challenge for the Mesa government and its successors is to develop a viable strategy to address the situation of Indigenous peasants in the highlands and the conflictive mix of competing land policy demands in the east.³¹

In this context there has been a growth of research on land policy issues by Bolivian institutions in recent years. One line of work has been spearheaded by Fundación TIERRA Bolivia, in partnership with other research centres and civil society organizations. They have used participatory methods to examine the realities of land tenure, access and use in different parts of the country, and to develop policy proposals that could bridge antagonistic positions. Their work includes detailed recommendations for: reversing the fragmentation of small landholdings in the highlands through tripartite state, private sector and community partnerships; articulating state-led and community-based land title regularization initiatives; respecting Indigenous communities’ choices about land titling and social organization; reforming the INRA and promoting greater social oversight of its interventions; identifying illegally occupied lands in the eastern plains that could be redistributed to landless peasants, and supporting new land reform beneficiaries through integrated rural development packages; and stimulating land rental markets, to increase young persons’ and smallholders’ access to productive assets.³²

In Colombia, the participatory processes leading to the adoption of the 1991 Constitution opened the door to reforms in several fields, including the adoption of Agrarian Law 160 in 1994. That law codified reforms to liberalize land markets while fostering land ownership by poor peasants and agricultural workers through traditional means. Beneficiaries were slated to receive subsidies to purchase lands they had selected or lands whose transfer was negotiated with the intervention of the Instituto Colombiano de Reforma Agraria (INCORA). After 12 years of working the land and paying back their loans, beneficiaries would receive titles. Innovative elements included provisions for joint titling to couples, and giving priority to female household heads and other women displaced by violence.³³

The outcomes of this legislation have been mixed. The government obtained a U$50 million loan from the World Bank to finance decentralized implementation in five municipalities. This and other nationally supported local initiatives led to an increase in the number of land reform beneficiaries by 1996-1997. Yet some analysts argue that, since then, there has been a marked increase in the size of properties larger than 200 hectares, and a decrease in medium-sized properties.³⁴ By the year 2000, one study concluded that the law had been “incapable of reforming the agrarian structure in Colombia.”³⁵ Against this backdrop, INCORA was replaced by the Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural (INCODER). Some critics suggest that this institutional change will have little impact since it has not been complemented by a strategy to reactivate the peasant economy.³⁶ Moreover, these processes have not had an appreciable impact on the armed conflict or on the demand, by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia (FARC) and by most rural social movements, for more comprehensive land reforms.³⁷

One set of factors undermining land reform and rural development has been the spread of narcotics production in the countryside, the dramatic increase in appropriations and land purchases by drug barons to launder money from the drug trade, and the related expansion of paramilitary and guerrilla activities.³⁸ A Colombian expert estimates that since the early 1990s drug traffickers and their paramilitary allies have appropriated three to four million hectares of arable land — more than the government had redistributed in the previous 35 years.³⁹ In 1996 the government responded to this emerging challenge by passing Law 333, authorizing the forcible expropriation, without compensation, of lands and other assets illegally acquired by drug traffickers. The US-financed Plan Colombia also aims to reverse the growth of the narcotics sector through a combination of aggressive eradication, security measures, governance reforms and alternative rural development. Whether that strategy is working or is aggravating the situation is a matter of intense debate. What is clear is that devising a policy mix that might effectively reverse the agrarian counter-reform and the drug trade, address uneven rural development and resolve the armed conflict are profound and enduring challenges.

The Universidad Nacional is currently coordinating a major review of research, and research-policy linkages/gaps, in the domain of rural development in Colombia. A preliminary report documents an exceptionally rich tradition of research on land reform, on market-oriented approaches, on the institutions of agrarian policy implementation, on the agrarian counter-reform and the drug trade, on their links with internal displacement and conflict, on the situation of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean peoples’, on gender aspects and other matters. Many of these issues have been studied at the regional level, a crucial fact given the geographic diversity of Colombia. There have also been major policy research and dialogue initiatives in recent years, such as Misión Rural Colombia 1997-1998. The latter generated a large number of thematic studies and was supported by the international community, particularly by the Inter-American Development Bank.⁴⁰

The Universidad Nacional study will examine the impacts of this research on policy-making. The study will be completed in 2004, and should generate insights into research that could contribute to future policy-making. In the meantime, Colombia will be a terrain on which to observe the out-comes of market-oriented and more traditional land reform measures, and their coexistence with counter-reforms, the drug trade and violent conflict.

Venezuela has also come back onto the land policy agenda, particularly since the Chávez government passed a new Land Law in November 2001. That law aims to address problems of land tenure inequalities and the under-utilization of certain large landholdings, and promote increased national agricultural production and food security. In January 2002 the Instituto Nacional de Tierras (INTI) was created to lead its implementation. INTI coordinates its efforts with ministries responsible for taxation, agriculture, education and justice to foster an integrated approach to rural development.

The Institute’s activities have converged with the demands of numerous local land committees and intermediate organizations such as the Coordinadora Nacional Agraria. But according to a recently published analysis, INTI has also encountered resistance from officials in other ministries, regional governors, local landowners and their national business federations. Some landowners are allegedly hiring contract killers, some connected to Colombian paramilitary forces, to eliminate local peasant leaders. By August 2003 this program had transferred 1.34 million hectares of arable land to 62,000 families, with the objective of transferring another 700,000 hectares by 2005. This process has converged with wider political conflicts in Venezuela. Noting that the Land Law was one of the first pieces of legislation overturned by the (US-backed) coup-makers in April 2002, the author cites peasant activists who warned: “If they take all this away, there will be a civil war. . . .” ⁴¹

Taking these very different national situations into account, certain themes that lend themselves to comparative research emerge:

• What factors shape the implementation of mixed approaches to land legislation (combining certain liberalization measures with public sector intervention and the acceptance of customary institutions)? What impacts are these approaches having on patterns of land tenure concentration, Indigenous Peoples’ rights and gender equity?
• How are “new” land agencies like INRA, INCODER and INTI performing, and how are they being effectively supported by broader rural development policies?
• What is the changing interplay between narcotics production, armed violence, political struggle and land policies across the sub-region?
• What are the possible impacts of further trade liberalization, within a Free Trade Area in the Americas and through the World Trade Organization, on land tenure/access/use as well as on prospects for sustainable rural development?

While one should not pre-judge the conclusions of the Universidad Nacional study, the following issues may emerge as salient ones for further policy research in Colombia:

• What are the outcomes of Law 160, the implications of the creation of INCODER and the performance of beneficiaries over the short and long run? How is land tenure policy being or not being supported by broader rural development programs? How are national and local initiatives fitting together? The latter should include long-term tracking of the World Bank-funded decentralized pilot program. Criteria for assessing these initiatives should include poverty reduction and gender equity.
• What are the exact impacts of drug production/trafficking, money laundering and armed conflict on patterns of land tenure and land use? What are viable rural development and related policy alternatives?
• What are the outcomes of special legislation dealing with the land rights of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean Peoples?

In Bolivia, further research could address the following questions:

• What are the outcomes of the 1996 INRA Law, including the differential effects of INRA land tenure interventions in key regions, their articulation with local/customary regularization efforts, and their articulation with broader rural development initiatives?
• What is the potential for redistributing illegally occupied large holdings, and for implementing effective property taxation, particularly in the eastern plains?

Central America

Like other parts of the region, Central America has hosted a vast range of approaches to land policy. What distinguishes the isthmus from the rest of Latin America is perhaps the intimate connection between this range of land policies and armed conflict, especially in the twentieth century: from the 1932 Matanza directed partly against land reform organizers in El Salvador, to the mixed economy reforms adopted in Costa Rica after the 1948 Civil War, the land reforms and counter-reforms during the democratic opening and after the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the colonization schemes and redistributive land reforms pursued by military regimes as part of their counter-insurgency strategies in the 1970s and early 1980s, the social-market reforms adopted by the Sandinista government, and the market-assisted measures contemplated in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan peace accords. As such, in much of the sub-region, land policies have been or are still underpinned by peacebuilding and conflict prevention objectives, not just by the traditional goals of growth, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. Bearing this in mind, this section focuses on contemporary land policy processes in Guatemala, skims over processes in three other Central American countries, and ends by flagging opportunities for policy research in the sub-region.

The Guatemalan Peace Accords offer a framework for far-reaching transformations in agrarian laws, institutions and practices. The 1994 Resettlement Accord provides the basis for the reintegration of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) on the land and into the economy. The 1995 Accord on the Rights and Identity of Indigenous Peoples includes commitments to regularize the status of communal lands; guarantee Indigenous Peoples’ participation in decisions about the use of resources on those lands; develop mechanisms to deal with Indigenous communities’ land claims; and establish a mixed government-Indigenous commission to propose institutional solutions on these matters. The 1996 Socioeconomic Accord stipulates that the government will create a new land fund; develop active land markets; implement new land taxes; expand extension services for small and medium enterprises in rural areas; promote legal reforms to establish an accessible and secure juridical framework for property rights, including the creation of an agrarian and environmental jurisdiction; and establish an effective, decentralized cadastre and land registry.⁴² As such, the peace accords provide a framework akin to the comprehensive market-oriented approach advocated by the World Bank’s recent PRR.

Since 1996, important steps have been taken to implement these commitments. Most interested refugees and some IDPs have been resettled on new lands. The Dependencia Presidencial para la Resolución de Conflictos de Tierra (CONTIERRA) was established. A Comisión Paritaria de Tierra (COPART) was created, with representation from government officials and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, to negotiate the details of measures in the Indigenous and Socioeconomic accords. The first legislative proposal that emanated from COPART led to the establishment of a new Fondo de Tierras (FONTIERRAS) in 1997. By December 2001, with financing from the World Bank, USAID and other international agencies, FONTIERRAS had helped 10,416 landless families buy lands and begin working them. COPART also generated a draft law to create a cadastre and a draft law to create a new agrarian jurisdiction. Initiatives to create cadastres are underway in several departments. Because of grassroots pressure coordinated by the Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (CNOC), a broader dialogue on rural development was initiated in 2001. In the lead-up to the November 2003 elections, CNOC also launched a visible campaign for an integrated agrarian reform.

Yet reports by the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) provide a detailed account of inadequate compliance with these components of the peace accords.⁴³ Several streams of complementary research have also emerged to provide long-term monitoring of, and generate robust proposals for, peace implementation in this area of public policy. Three such lines of national research deserve mention. First, leading international and national researchers have collaborated to produce a series of publications that provide a fairly definitive historical account of agrarian policies in Guatemala, ethnographic studies of agrarian dynamics in different departments, and a synthesis of compliance with peace accord provisions in this domain. The latter demonstrates that, despite the steps noted above, the government has not allocated adequate resources to key institutions such as CONTIERRA and FONTIERRAS, Congress has not passed the laws to reform the cadastre and property registry or implement new land taxes, there has been no movement toward the regularization of Indigenous Peoples’ communal lands, and nothing has changed with regard to the inequitable distribution of land in the countryside. This line of national research was actively fostered and supported by MINUGUA.⁴⁴

The second line of research has focused on conjunctural challenges. These include participatory research on FONTIERRAS, undertaken by the Coordinación de ONG y Cooperativas (CONGCOOP) in partnership with CNOC. Their publications, which provide the first independent assessment of the Land Fund’s activities, were used effectively to advocate changes in the Fund’s practices. This research situates FONTIERRAS’ limitations in the context of wider market-assisted approaches to land policy, persuasively arguing that these are failing because they are not being accompanied by a corresponding strengthening of governmental fiscal, regulatory and service provision capacities.⁴⁵ A complementary line of participatory research was undertaken by the Comisión Nacional Permanente de Tierras (CNPT) of the Coordinación de Organizaciones del Pueblo Maya de Guatemala (COPMAGUA). This has yielded seminal analyses of existing judicial norms and institutions, a typology of agrarian conflicts, and foundational thinking for the draft laws on agrarian jurisdiction and regularization of Indigenous lands discussed in the COPART. Both strands of research were carried out with support from IDRC.⁴⁶

A third line of research has focused on the role of municipalities in managing communal lands. Based on ethnographic research in a sample of ten communities, FLACSO concluded that many communities have insufficient knowledge and capacity to manage natural resources on their ejido lands. The project yielded maps and resource inventories in most communities and recommended measures to strengthen the capacity of municipal governments and Indigenous communities to manage communal resources.⁴⁷ This research provides grounded insights into (and tools for) community-based land and wider natural resource management. In recent years this line of work seems to have connected with some of the complementary national-level initiatives described above, an important development given that research on local land management capacities is crucial to understanding the possibilities/constraints facing national land policy reforms.

The 1992 peace accords in El Salvador contained commitments to a Programa de Transferencia de Tierras (PTT) directed at ex-combatants, refugees and IDPs, as well as some other landless peasants in conflict zones. The PTT built on the significant agrarian reform that was initiated in 1980, as part of the counter-insurgency campaign. According to one analysis, the PTT was implemented successfully, directly benefiting 36,100 persons through the transfer of 103,200 hectares — 12 per cent of the arable land in El Salvador.⁴⁸ The PTT was complemented by the Programa de Seguridad Jurídica Rural (PROSEGUIR) to secure beneficiaries’ property rights. Yet programs helping beneficiaries to leverage these rights into sustainable development activities have apparently lacked adequate capacity-building components and timelines. Progress may have also been undermined by successive governments’ orthodox market-oriented macroeconomic policies. These may be leading to a re-concentration of land ownership and a new cycle of violence.⁴⁹ More research is needed to understand these tendencies and identify policy alternatives.

In Honduras, the basis for current land policies is the 1992 Ley de Modernización y Desarrollo Agrícola, which aimed to liberalize land and credit markets and stimulate rural investment and agricultural production. Critics see the law as a “counter-reform” because it encourages the privatization of cooperatively owned lands, yet it consolidates other aspects of the redistributive land reforms passed in 1975.⁵⁰ The l992 initiative was given new impetus by the reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Mitch, particularly by the establishment of the Programa Nacional para el Desarrollo Rural Sostenible (PRONADERS). The 2001 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper renewed commitments to improve security of access to land for small farmers and Indigenous Peoples by enlarging the mass land titling program, completing the agrarian and forest cadastre, modernizing the rural property registry, and implementing the access to land program.⁵¹ Agriculture and Environment roundtables (mesas) have been established to coordinate government, civil society and donor efforts in this sector. Yet the roundtables have not emerged as platforms for dynamic multi-stakeholder coordination. The government has tabled a draft land law, but some peasant organizations are raising questions about its likely impact on poverty reduction.⁵² In the light of these obstacles at the national level, many actors are focusing on promising local initiatives. Research could possibly foster better synergies between these initiatives and national discussions.⁵³

The redistributive land reforms implemented during the Nicaraguan Revolution affected 46.2 per cent of the arable land. Of this, 20.7 per cent were distributed to individuals, 13.9 per cent to collectives of various types, 11.7 per cent to state farms and 2.1 per cent to Indigenous communities.⁵⁴ Public sector credit and technical support services for small producers were also expanded during this period. During the 1990s the Chamorro and Alemán governments distributed additional lands to ex-combatants on both sides, restored lands to former owners who were seen to have been unjustly expropriated during the Revolution, completed the privatization of state farms and granted individual land titles to members of production cooperatives. Research suggests that the reforms of the 1990s generated greater security of tenure for many individuals, not only for wealthy landowners but also for historically disenfranchised constituencies such as women. Yet it also suggests that the dismantling of public credit and technical services has driven many small producers and cooperatives out of agriculture and led to a re-concentration of land ownership.⁵⁵

There is a striking gap between the tradition of solid research on land and agrarian issues in Nicaragua and the practices of recent governments. For example several years ago an extensive process of consultation and analysis led by the Universidad Centroamericana and the Ministry of Agriculture produced the foundations for a renewed rural development strategy. Yet the National Development Plan recently tabled by the Bolaños government largely ignored its findings and recommendations.⁵⁶ It is challenging, in such a context, to find fresh opportunities for influential policy research on land issues.

There is much room for comparative analyses of land policies in Central America, given the similarities (and interesting differences) between the region’s institutions. For example a recently published paper comparing market-assisted land reforms in the sub-region concludes that the difficulty of reaching the poor resulted mainly from the enduring inadequacy of public goods such as cadastres, property registries and agrarian tribunals.⁵⁷ This converges with the conclusions noted above from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The comparative study also concludes that in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the new land banks tend not to facilitate the incorporation of the poorest peasants into markets. Yet it repeats the common assumption that land rentals can be a step toward land ownership for the poor, without, however, providing fresh evidence on renters’ trajectories in practice.

In sum, in Central America there are interesting land policy initiatives and worrisome trends that are being tracked by research. Critical issues for the sub-region include the following questions:

• What impacts are land titling programs having across the region on poverty reduction, gender equity and the advancement of Indigenous Peoples’ rights?
• To what extent are the new land banks and funds opening markets to the poor?
• Why is it proving so difficult to provide these public goods?
• What initial indications exist regarding the effectiveness of promoting land rentals — again, from a pro-poor angle?
• Is there a strong trend toward the re-concentration of land ownership? If so, why?
• What are the possibilities for advancing land policy reform initiatives at the local level despite blockages at the national level? What are the limits to this strategy? What minimal factors need to align nationally and locally, to facilitate land policy reforms that meet key objectives such as poverty reduction and environmental sustainability? Why are these factors not aligning in most national contexts?
• Why are national policy dialogue mechanisms on land and broader agrarian policy issues, such as the Agricultural roundtable in Honduras and COPART in Guatemala, falling so short of their potential? What can be done to re-engage stakeholders such as the private sector and peasants’ associations in these forums?
• To what extent are these policies, practices and trends contributing to or undermining sustainable peacebuilding and conflict prevention, particularly in countries recently affected by war?

Research needs and opportunities for influence clearly vary by country. In Guatemala, enduring gaps suggest the need for:

• Systematically monitoring land and agrarian policy commitments, beyond the preliminary performance assessments of FONTIERRAS.
• Examining ways of reviving reforms to the national juridical framework, land taxes, the cadastre, land registry and public credit services, within the framework of market-oriented reforms or within the ambit of an integrated agrarian reform.
• Looking at these options through peacebuilding and conflict prevention lenses.
• Documenting and informing local capacities for land management, beyond the few communities already studied, and looking carefully at the potential synergies between such local processes and the agenda for national agrarian transformation.

Investing in this research will certainly be more attractive now since the Berger government has clearly demonstrated its intent and capacity to follow up on commitments pending from the Guatemalan peace accords.

Endnotes to National Policy and Practice

² The PNRA-NR built upon Brazil’s 1964 land law, the Estatuto da Terra (Law 4504). During the period of military rule (1963-85), little happened in the way of land reform, with successive military governments concentrating upon the modernization of the latifundio, through credit subsidies, and colonization of the Amazon (Hall, 1990).

³ Estimates based on the national agricultural censuses show the Gini coefficient remaining relatively stable between 1975 and 1995-96, at around 0.857, one of the highest coefficients of land concentration in Latin America (Sparovek, 2003, Table 6).

⁴ With the exception of the short-lived Fernando Collor regime (1990-92), successive governments have justified state intervention in the redistribution of land in these terms (Cardoso, 1997 and Sparovek, 2003).

⁵ This figure includes 579,733 families who benefited through the traditional land reform program administered by INCRA (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária); 51,608 through the Banco da Terra; and 3,694 in the PCPR (Projeto Crédito Fundiario e Combate a Pobreza Rural) program (MDA, 2002). See Sparovek (2003) on the debate over the accuracy of these figures.

⁶ MDA (2001). This report also cites 4,275 land reform settlements having been created between 1995 and 2001, with 584,655 beneficiary families, at a cost of R$13.2 billion.

⁷ Inflation dropped drastically as a result of the implementation of Brazil’s Plano Real in 1995, and was associated with approximately a 60 per cent decrease in land prices (Reydon and Plata, 2002). Between 1995 and 2001 the average price per hectare of land acquired by INCRA for agrarian reform purposes fell from R$382 to R$264 (Teófilo, et al., 2002, p.2). A major problem in further reducing the price of land for agrarian reform purposes is that the final price is often determined in the courts during the expropriation proceedings and judges have tended to favor landowners, particularly by over-valuing land improvements.

⁸ Implementation of the improved land tax scheme, however, has proceeded slowly and with difficulty (Reydon and Plata, 2002).

⁹ Some 100 million hectares of illegally titled national lands have thus far been identified. Approximately one-third of this area has been recuperated. The bulk of this area consists of forest reserves in the Amazon region, but some of this area is slated for new agrarian reform settlements (Teófilo, et al., 2002, pp. 10-11).

¹⁰ See Borras, et al. (2003) on how this model has been designed as a critique of state-led agrarian reform.

¹¹ The execution of the program has been slower than expected. As of 2001, 14,000 families had acquired 370,000 hectares of land, with the targeted number to be reached in 2002 (Teófilo, et al., 2002).

¹² MST (1998 and 2000).

¹³ While land occupations by the MST increased in this period, the sharp increase in occupations after 1996 was largely caused by the growing militancy of other social movements (Hammond 2001, Table 1).

¹⁴ Other sources of conflict with the social movements in this period pertained to the provision of credit (PROCERA was merged into PRONAF, the national credit program for family agriculture, and the volume of credit to the land reform settlements reduced) and technical assistance (the Lumiar program was abruptly ended) and support to family agriculture in general. There was also disagreement over the government’s intention to “emancipate” many of the older land reform settlements (Fernandes, 2001).

¹⁵ According to INCRA data, 145,382 of 745,859 valid applicants were interviewed and 70,035 of these applicants by mail were given land in the settlements during 2001-02 (MDA, 2002).

¹⁶ The lands targeted under this program are those not otherwise eligible for expropriation and smaller than 15 fiscal modules in size. Beneficiaries receive a 20-year loan, with a three-year grace period, at an interest rate of six per cent. As in the Cédula da Terra program, there is a flexible grant/loan financing mechanism, with funds not used to purchase land constituting a grant for investments in community infrastructure. It is this latter portion that is funded through the US$200.1 World Bank loan. Credit for working capital and technical assistance is to be provided through the government’s PRONAF program. See MDA (n.d.).

¹⁷ In the Grito da Terra 2002, CONTAG also advocated that those families who had registered for land via the post office be given land through the regular agrarian reform program and that priority attention be given to the regularization of the situation of squatters on public and private lands (CONTAG, 2002).

¹⁸ PRONAF (2003).

¹⁹ In this effort they are joined by the 43 NGOs and social movements making up the National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Justice in the Countryside. This group also lobbies for a maximum size limit being placed on the latifundia (Gonçalves, 2003).

²⁰ INCRA’s budget for land acquisition in 2003 was reduced from R$462 million to R$162 million. Between January and June only 9,500 families were settled on agrarian reform settlements, but only 2,500 were new families, the others already having been processed under the previous government (Zibechi, 2003).

²¹ The PT government has only promised to settle 60,000 families during 2003 (Weber, 2003 and MST, 2003).

²² Sant’anna (2003). In early November the technical team charged with this task presented a draft of the new Plano Nacional de Reforma Agrária to the PT Minister for Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto. The plan calls for one million families to be settled in new agrarian reform settlements over four years and for an integral agrarian reform, with due attention to the development of agro-industry, education, basic infrastructure, and training and technical assistance. MST Informa (November 7, 2003).

²³ Deininger (2003), p.148.

²⁴ Borras (2003). For a positive view of the Cédula da Terra program, see Souza Filho, Buainain, Silveira and Magalhães (2000), Buainain, Silveira and Teofilo (2000), and Buainain, Souza Filho, Silveira and Magalhães (2001). These authors conducted the only survey of beneficiary households (222 households in five states) very early in the program (1999).

²⁵ Another project that should be added to this comparison is the Banco da Terra, in which all the financing consists of credit. Not much has been written about this project; see Teófilo, et al. (2002) for a brief description. Carvalho (1998) offers an insightful conceptual framework for analyzing different forms of association under the Brazilian agrarian reform, emphasizing the factors that contribute to their social cohesiveness.

²⁶ See Tyler (2000) for a summary of various studies on this issue in the Brazilian case as well as a discussion of the problems repayment has presented for land banks of various types in other countries.

²⁷ For example, see the CD-Rom of the papers presented at the VI Congresso da Associação Latino-Americana de Sociologia Rural (ALASRU), Porto Alegre, November 2002.

²⁸ Van Dam (1999); Barie (2000); Morales (2000).

²⁹ Deere and León (2000).

³⁰ Urioste (2003).

31 Correspondence with Gonzalo Colque and Wilfredo Plata, Fundación TIERRA-Bolivia, November 13, 2003.

³² These recommendations have been shared with key audiences though a book, an accessible popular pamphlet, and in public presentations across the country over the past year. See Pacheco and Valda (2003); Consorcio Interinstitucional (2003); Fundación TIERRA (2003).

³³ Deere and León (2000).

³⁴ Rincón (1997); Heath & Deininger (1997); Machado (1998); Contraloría General de la República (2002) Mesa (1990).

³⁵ Deere and León (2001).

³⁶ Correspondence with Professor Absalón Machado, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, November 4, 2003. For his earlier analysis of Colombia’s incomplete rural development strategies, see Machado (1998).

³⁷ Fajardo (2002), and telephone interview with Juan Plata of COLCIENCIAS. October 8, 2003.

³⁸ Fajardo (2002, p.7)

³⁹ Alejandro Reyes, cited in Deere and León (2001, p.174).

⁴⁰ Salgado and Machado (2003).

⁴¹ Maurice Lemoine (2003).

⁴² These highlights do not represent all the commitments related to land and the agrarian question in the peace accords. For a more detailed summary see Palma, et al. (2002, pp. 93-101).

⁴³ MINUGUA (2000, 2003).

⁴⁴ See Palma et al. (2002, p.106-107) and the other volumes in this series, also posted on the MINUGUA website. For a much more detailed analysis of research on the agrarian question in Guatemala, see Camacho Nassar, 2004.

⁴⁵ CONGCOOP and CNOC (April 2002). See also the executive summary and the brilliant popular rendition of key messages under the same title, both published in September 2002.

⁴⁶ CNPT (2001 and 2002). See www.idrc.ca/peace for preliminary outputs.

⁴⁷ Thillet (2003). This research was also supported by IDRC.

⁴⁸ Alvarez (2001, pp. 38 and 76-86). See also McElhinny (2000).

⁴⁹ Alvarez (2001).

⁵⁰ Pino (1992) and Jansen (1998, pp. 81-106).

⁵¹ Honduras Interim PRSP (2001, pp. 69-74), on the IMF website: ww.imf.org/External/NP/prsp/2001/hnd/01/.

⁵² Correspondence with Rafael Alegría, International Director, Vía Campesina, October 10, 2003.

⁵³ The Socioeconomic and Environmental Development group at Zambrano tracks lessons learned from rural development initiatives at the municipal level, but this does not seem to include research on the impacts of land tenure initiatives. See for example Falk (2002) at http://www.rds.org.nh.

⁵⁴ CIERRA (1998).

⁵⁵ Deere and León (2000, pp. 201-205) and Cuadra Lira (2000).

⁵⁶ Correspondence with Elvira Cuadra Lira, November 12, 2003.

⁵⁷ Molina Cruz (2001).

Document(s) 6 of 10