Morales' land reform targets vast holdings of Bolivian opposition leader

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Herald Tribune/Associated Press

Morales' land reform targets vast holdings of Bolivian opposition leader
The Associated Press
Published: June 28, 2007


LA PAZ, Bolivia: The Bolivian government on Thursday began legal proceedings to seize the vast landholdings of a prominent opposition leader, saying the property was fraudulently obtained and should be given to a local Indian tribe.

Soybean oil magnate Branko Marinkovic, an outspoken critic of President Evo Morales, says the 64,250 acres (26,000 hectares) targeted by the government were obtained legally and are being used productively for ranching and agriculture — and that the fraud allegations are merely a political attack.

Morales pushed through a sweeping land reform bill last November granting his government power to seize idle or ill-gotten land. He has pledged to redistribute a staggering 77,000 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) among the country's long-oppressed Indian majority over the next five years.

The bill updated a 1996 initiative that had largely failed to sort out a centuries-old tangle of land titles in Bolivia's eastern lowlands, particularly in Santa Cruz state, where the Marinkovic family is among the largest land owners.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/29/america/LA-GEN-Bolivia-Land-Reform.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. Easy to grasp reference to inappropriately taken Bolivian land:

COLONEL HUGO BANZER
President of Bolivia

In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America.
(snip)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html





Banzer, right, and Pinochet

[Karenina]

2. ...

:popcorn:

[formercia]

3. The Real Catholic Church

People like Oscar Romero who tried to defend the little people.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Here's the last part of his very last sermon, delivered right before he was shot by a bullet

through the heart, fired by a sharpshooter hiding in a car.

You're so right: he's the REAL kind of hero who has carried the entire human race on his back, and in his heart, while others tried to destroy it.

~snip~

Amnesty International issued a press release in which it described the repression of the peasants, especially in the area of Chalatenango. The week's events confirm this report in spite of the fact the government denies it. As I entered the church, I was given a cable that says, "Amnesty International confirmed today that in El Salvador human rights are violated to extremes that have not been seen in other countries." That is what Patricio Fuentes (spokesman for the urgent action section for Central America in Swedish Amnesty International) said at a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua.

Fuentes confirmed that, during two weeks of investigations he carried out in El Salvador, he was able to establish that there had been eighty-three political assassinations between 10 and 14 March. He pointed out that Amnesty International recently condemned the government of El Salvador, alleging that it was responsible for six hundred political assassinations. The Salvadorean government defended itself against the charges, arguing that Amnesty International based its condemnation on unproved assumptions.

Fuentes said that Amnesty had established that in El Salvador human rights are violated to a worse degree than the repression in Chile after the coupe d'etat. The Salvadorean government also said that the six hundred dead were the result of armed confrontations between army troops and guerrillas. Fuentes said that during his stay u l El Salvador, he could see that the victims had been tortured before their deaths and mutilated afterward.

The spokesman of Amnesty International said that the victims' bodies characteristically appeared with the thumbs tied behind their backs. Corrosive liquids had been applied to the corpses to prevent identification of the victims by their relatives and to prevent international condemnation, the spokesman added. Nevertheless, the bodies were exhumed and the dead have been identified. Fuentes said that the repression carried out by the Salvadorean army was aimed at breaking the popular organizations through the assassination of their leaders in both town and country.

According to the spokesman of Amnesty International, at least three thousand five hundred peasants have fled from their homes to the capital to escape persecution. "We have complete lists in London and Sweden of young children and women who have been assassinated for being organized," Fuentes stated....

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.

The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity's common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength.

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/faculty/amcguire/romero.html