In 1950, Bolivia had three million inhabitants and 70 percent were illiterate. Eighty percent of the population lived in the west. And mining was the country’s main activity.
The political revolution of 1952 was a major turning point in the history of Bolivia, an event that has left a lasting legacy up to today.
It was the beginning of historic changes that transformed the lives of Bolivia’s campesinos or peasant farmers.
The period leading up to the revolution was marked by growing social unrest and a plunging economy.
During this era the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) emerged as the dominant opposition force, popular due to its support for greater indigenous rights.
In the 1951 election the party won a clear majority but were prevented from taking power by the outgoing president. The army installed General Hugo Ballivian Rojas as President but that didn’t stop the unrest.
On April 9, 1952, the MNR led a successful revolt. The army surrendered and the MNR's Paz Estenssoro took over as president on April 16, 1952 setting in motion great changes for Bolivia.
Months later the universal vote was passed allowing women to vote for the first time. The country’s mines were nationalized, and free education and health programs were launched. But the most important development happened the following year on August 2, 1953 when the Agrarian Reform Law was passed.
The law abolished forced labor and established a program of distribution of rural property from the powerful landlords to the Indigenous peasants. Up until then most of the land was unequally distributed.
‘’It was a great injustice what happened to our campesino ancestors under neo-liberal governments and dictators,’’ recalls Feliciano Vega Monte, from Bolivia’s Federation of Campesino Workers, CSUTBC.
During this period four percent of landowners owned more than 80 percent of the land.
‘’During the dictatorship, especially in Western Bolivia, the landlords had established great land estates. A governor like Leopoldo Fernandez in Pando had up to 500,000 hectares while the small farmers had to survive with little plots,’’ Vega Monte told teleSUR.
That system of semi-feudal exploitation ended when the new agrarian law was passed in 1953 and real change had begun.
Land titles were issued to Bolivia’s peasant farmers for the first time. Finally they were granted ownership to the land they and their ancestors had toiled on for generations.
Historian Fernando Cajías says the revolution "marked a process of change but it was a frustrated revolution with many contradictions because it did not achieve its desired objectives in principle," according to Cajías.
‘’The MNR started off very well and ended badly because of corruption." says the historian.
By the start of the 1970’s just 45 percent of native indigenous farmers had received their land deeds.
A succession of dictatorships slowed down the process and this backlog largely continued up until the early 1990’s.
When President Evo Morales took office in 2006 one of his major early policies was to strengthen land rights for the campesinos.
Morales wanted to start his own “agrarian revolution’’ and he made it his mission to complete the land reform program that started half a century earlier.
The administration was determined to identify who had a legal right to every acre of land in Bolivia. Its mission was to hand the landless ownership of unused land and distribute up to 20 million hectares among the poor.
In the decade since Morales became president his policies have undoubtedly helped the country’s poor and landless claim ownership.
From 1953-1992 business owners controlled almost 40 million hectares or 68 percent of all the land in the Andean country. By 2015 they had just 8 million hectares (10 percent) while campesino farmers controlled almost 20 million hectares, accounting for 26 percent of land rights.
Another lasting legacy of the early agrarian reforms has been the transformation in property rights for Bolivia’s traditional women or cholitas.
Until 1993 Bolivia’s female farmers, known as campesinas, legally owned less than 10 percent of the land.
‘’Before the deeds to the land was always held exclusively in the names of our husbands, grandfathers, fathers and brothers,’’ Luisa Scalluco, an Aymaran campesina representative told teleSUR.
‘’But thanks to current President Evo Morales campesina women can finally own their own land and hold the titles to their property.’’
According to the most recent data between 1996 and 2016 the numbers of Bolivian women with access to their own land registered in their own names, increased to 46 percent.
This year the focus of the Bolivian government is on sustainable and local food production.
It aims to be the sole producer of its own food by 2020, which means major investment in small producers in the western highlands and for non-traditional exporters.
The government will invest more than $US40 million in the local food industry to boost production. In 2015, food production increased by 25 percent from 2014 and the aim is to exceed these targets in the short term.
One area ripe for expansion is Bolivia’s soya industry. It represents Bolivia’s third-biggest source of foreign exchange after gas and mining.
The Morales’ administration plans to increase the area of land under cultivation for the soya bean from 2.7 million hectares in 2014 to 4.5 million hectares by 2020.
Bolivia’s planning minister, René Orellana, announced in 2015 out of $48 billion dollars in planned public investments by 2020, more than $5 billion would be invested in agriculture.
These ambitious plans for the future of Bolivia’s agro-industry have come a long way from the agrarian reforms in the 1950’s.
‘’The peasant farmer has always fought for liberation,’’ says campesino representative Feliciano Vega Monte.
That much-sought after freedom has led to many changes. Now that the campesinos have their own land, their struggle in 2016 is to survive as farmers.
With prices down across all major Bolivian commodities, many small farmers are fighting for survival to make sure they’re not swallowed up by big industrial farms.
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