HOW COMMUNISTS SABOTAGE AGRARIAN REFORM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03061A000300010014-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 29, 1998
• Sequence Number: 14
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP78-03061A000300010014-4
Perhaps the most pressing problem in the less developed countries of
Latin America is agrarian reform. Although the problem exists in other areas
of the world, the principal examples that follow have been taken from Latin
America because there the problem is most explosive and the Communists have
substantially contributed to prevent the governments from making any real
progress.
Unlike the United States during the period when the population was largely
rural, there is a dearth of new tillable land. A Chilean poet has described
South America as "una geografia loca" -- geography gone mad. Immense areas of
mountain, desert, steppe, and jungle are not suitable for agriculture at all,
and others can be brought into cultivation only at great expense, far beyond
the reach of the small farmer. The tropical rain forest of the Amazon basin,
once thought to have great agricultural potential, is now looked upon by eco-
nomic geographers as one of the world's great deserts.
Therefore, in the rural areas of Latin America, in the very places where
people would normally be expected to have enough to eat, even if they lacked
other necessities, the highest incidence of malnutrition and actual starvation
are to be found.
Contrary to what might be expected in view of the sparse Zt-hough rapidly
increasing] population per square mile, the foregoing geographic factors serve
to explain why Latin America has a food-deficit. More important, it is get-
ting worse. According to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Agri-
culture, all the major areas of the world have increased their output of grain
per person during the last 30 years -- from 5% to 51% per person -- except
Asia and Latin America, where it was down 2% and 16% respectively.
One of the factors that make agrarian reform an explosive issue in many
countries is the existence of so many starving, or near-starving, peasants
in close proximity to enormous estates, owned by wealthy families, sometimes
operated by overseers for absentee landlords. In many cases, such land is
prudently grazed by high-bred cattle of scientifically cultivated for a cash
crop like sugar or cotton. To divide up these prosperous enterprises and dole
them out to peasants who have neither the know-how nor the equipment to operate
them would lower the overall production of both foodstuffs and foreign exchange
earners.
In relatively few cases have governments been able to find more than a
partial solution to the problem and not too many have tried hard enough. More-
over, there is not enough suitable land, or enough money with which to buy it,
or facilities for training peasants to be independent farmers. In general
land-owners have resisted land reform and closed their eyes to mounting pres-
sures. Some governments, however, are making an effort. In Venezuela, for
example, 1+0,000 peasants have been settled on land bought and paid for by the
government.
Elsewhere, there is less cause for optimism. In Peru, an agrarian reform
bill has recently been passed which, viewed realistically, gives only small
hope of success. Mexico's agrarian reform of a generation and more ago has
been largely nullified by increase in population, deterioration of the soil,
and diP6~~~s(1?AeI$I-i3011`144~Oem so widely
used. Brazil has a problem commensurate with the magnitude of its area and
population.
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In these three countries -- Brazil, Mexico, and Peru -- Communist
organizers have embarked on an intensive campaign of agitation, not to sat-
isfy the peasants revindications, but rather use them as a political force
and to incite them to sieze by force land to which they have no claim. This
has brought about a series of clashes between the forces of law and order
and bands of land-hungry peasants, sometimes involving loss of life on both
sides.
In Brazil, violence has been slight compared with the large numbers of
peasants actually organized and Communist-led. The most spectacular activity
has been carried on by the Peasant Leagues (Ligas Camponesas), principally
In the Northeast. Originally organized in 1957, they were taken over in 1959
by Francisco Juliao, a radical lawyer with Castroite connections who is for
bloody revolution as the only means to bring about change. Juliao made fre-
quent trips to Cuba, received arms and cash from Castro, burned a few cane
fields, and for a time was almost in open revolt against the government. In
October, 1962, he was elected federal deputy from Pernambuco, which gave him
parliamentary immunity. After the military coup which overthrew President
Joao Goulart, Juliao went into hiding, but has since been arrested in spite
of his parliamentary immunity.
Less spectacular but more powerful is the Union of Agricultural Workers
of Brazil (ULTAB), led by the dominant, or pro-Moscow, fraction of the Com-
munist Party (PCB -- Partido Comunista do Brasil When the party decided to
develop peasants as a political force, they split with Juliao. ULTAB claims
over half-a-million members in 450 organizational units, as compared with
Juliao's claims of $0,000. Both figures are thought to be exaggerated. The
recent creation of a number of Catholic peasant organizations in Brazil is
cause for some optimism as a prevailing force.
In Mexico, agrarian reform has again become an issue. Starting some
fifty years ago, the revolutionary government seized large cattle ranches and
split them up into ejidos, or communal plots, patterned on the pre-Columbian
system of collective agriculture. According to most neutral observers, lack
of individual incentive was the principal cause of the failure of Mexico's
agrarian reform. Even those who were given small individual holdings, do not
own them outright. Under the Mexican constitution, all land ultimately be-
longs to the "nation," that is, to the government in power. Hence there is
not a complete incentive to invest in land improvement.
At the time that land reform was carried out in Mexico, certain large
productive ranches, or haciendas, were granted concessions of inafectabilidad,
that is, they were not affected by the agrarian reform law; they were exempt
from expropriation. Now the ejidos and small individual plots have worn out
or are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of the population. The landless,
or "surplus," peasants (Mexico has always had a surplus population, even in
the time of the Aztecs) are eyeing the large ranches, some over 100,000 hec-
tares (250,000 acres) in size. But the largest ranches are found in the great-
est drought areas and form self-contained agricultural units. They usually
represent a careful balance of such factors as water supply, grazing area,
number of cattle, and are more valuable to the economy of the country as large,
than as small, units.
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 Approved For Release 2001/08/08 : CIA-RDP78-03061A000300010014-4
Peasant violence in Mexico began to increase in late 1963, especially
in the northern and eastern states of Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.
It has usually taken the form of invasions of private lands by groups of
several hundred men, women, and children led by Communist or leftist agita-
tors. The Me;>ican Army, which is charged with maintaining order in such
cases, has so fax succeeded in ejecting the squatters with a minimum of blood-
shed. The most active elements in this agitation are members of the Communist-
lining Partido Popular Socialista (PPS) of Vicente Lombardo Toledano.
In Peru, the Indian communities of the high mountain valleys, where most
of the country's population live, are spreading into privately owned land with
an elemental force that challenges the capacity of the government to maintain
order. As a result of worn-out land, occasional droughts, unseasonable fre-
ezes, and over-population, famine conditions have existed intermittently for
many years in the Sierra. Most of the large stock farms are situated at
altitudes of 10,000 to 14,000 feet, and sometimes separated from centers of
governmental authority by almost impassable mountain barriers. This invit-
ing situation, has led to hundreds of invasions of private land in the past
five years, each one involving a violent clash with the Guardia Civil or the
army.
In a typical instance, a community of 500 to 1,000 Indians, including
women, children will occupy a privately owned grazing area with their scrubby
livestock. The owners of the land, in panic, send word to the nearest
Guardia Civil post but when the police arrive, perhaps a dozen strong, they
are met with a force that outnumbers them fifty to one. If the squatters
attack with stones and slings and sometimes firearms while the police use
tear gas, sabers, and finally their pistols. Such skirmishes always result
in casualties and usually several deaths, frequently a woman or a child,
since they are normally put in the vanguard of such a band.
More recently, violence has spread to the rice, sugar and cotton planta-
tions on the coast. In mid-January, according to a UPI despatch, an esti-
mated 30,000 Communist-led squatters occupied 17 cotton plantations along
the Piura river in northern Peru and, for a time, defied efforts of 220
police of the Guardia Civil to evict them. On approximately the same date,
back in the sierra, 12,000 campesinos (Indian peasants) paraded and held a
mass meeting in Cuzco. Their speakers threatened to kill all landowners.
At the core of each such group is a Communist, or at least a literate
Indian present carefully trained in agitation. The agitator is frequently
a lawyer from one of the larger towns of the sierra, who adds a rational di-
mension to the peasant's cause. The land, he will say, rightfully belongs
to the Indian community: it was stolen by its present occupants 100 years
ago, or by the Spaniards 400 years ago! This is complicated by the fact
that in Peru, as well as in other parts of Latin America, there is no satis-
factory system for. granting clear titles to land. Even where legal title is
backed up by possession over a period of a generation or more, faith in the
impartial administration of justice is so law that some people feel justified
in taking the law into their own hands.
Elsewhere in the world.. Communists have been less successful in exploit-
ing land reform to their own subversive ends. In India, the Nehru govern-
ment was able to eliminate the zamindari system, a method of land tenure
inheritA$p %d r W rg~ ft6l*ai` $8i8SA4i' O,SOMBW4-,series of
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lessees and sublessees. Now the peasant has more permanent tenure and pays
taxes directly to the government. In Japan, a successful agrarian reform
program was put into effect quickly after World War II, during the U. S.
military occupation. In Taiwan, the problem of payment for expropriated
land was solved by issuing twenty-year bonds tied to the price of two princi-
pal commodities and to stock in government-owned industries. The landlord
was thus assured that future payment for his land would not be in worthless,
inflated currency. More recently, the Shah of Iran sponsored a series of ~~
laws that combined to bring about what has been called the "white revolution"
(Iran's "White Revolution" Biweekly '#x-129, 18 Nov 63). The most important and
successful aspect of this legislation was that concerned with breaking up the
enormous holdings of feudal-type landlords and forming peasant cooperatives.
A measure of the magnitude of this agrarian reform is the cost: some $930
million.
All of the above agrarian reform programs have been successful because
they were carried out in the absence -- total or partial -- of any Communist
agitation except for India. Where the Communnists become concerned with
helping the landless peasant, they exploit the issues to their own ends and
so exacerbate antagonisms between the haves and the have-nots that true re-
form becomes difficult or impossible.
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