Bolivian Indians see rocky exodus from serfdom

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivian Indians see rocky exodus from serfdom
By FRANK BAJAK
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 2, 2010; 11:07 AM

LAGUNILLAS, Bolivia -- Juan Vasquez didn't have much of a childhood. He never went to school, began to work as a ranch hand at age 12, married three years later and has nine children.

But in all his 55 years, Vasquez says with moistening eyes, he never got paid - not unless a daily meal from a communal pot can be called compensation; or a twice-yearly allotment of used clothing.

"I didn't know what it was to earn money," Vasquez says through a half-set of teeth stained evergreen from chewing coca leaf.

With re-election last month of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, and with Indians of Vasquez's Guarani people winning seats in congress for the first time, the end may soon be at hand for a system the U.N. has classified as "forced labor and servitude."

Though the Guarani account for only about 85,000 of Bolivia's more than 6 million Indians, they have been the most downtrodden, and that makes them a priority for Morales in his mission of eradicating all vestiges of colonial repression.

For now, several thousand newly "liberated" Guarani, including Vasquez, live in a penniless limbo, waiting for the government to make good on its promises to give them land.

But Bolivia already has taken giant steps toward ending a centuries-old legacy of what Morales calls endemic mistreatment of its third-largest ethnic group by white overlords.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/02/AR2010010200771.html

[patrick t. cakes]

1. thats change i can believe in...(n/t)

[Judi Lynn]

2. You may want to read what part US American Ronald Larsen has to do with this mess.

He went there as a Peace Corps worker and ended up owning FIVE enormous ranches.

http://machetera.files.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2008/04/larsens.jpg

Larsen and his US Montana U. fraternity boy lad, Dunsten, who also was Mr. Bolivia a few years ago. His child, little Dunsten doesn't believe the people who were not allowed to even walk on Bolivian sidewalks until 1952, even though their taxes paid for them, the indigenous Bolivians, the people of the majority, should be allowed to be President because they are not as educated as he is.

Landowners’ Rebellion: Slavery and Saneamiento in Bolivia
Written by Alexander van Schaick
Monday, 28 April 2008

In recent weeks, cattle ranchers and landowners in Bolivia’s Cordillera province, located in the south of the department of Santa Cruz, resorted to blockades and violence in order to halt the work of Bolivia’s National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA – Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria). As a referendum on Departmental Autonomy for Santa Cruz draws near, the conflict calls into question the central government’s ability to enforce the law in the Bolivian lowlands.

The dispute centers on the region of Alto Parapetí, south of the provincial capital of Camiri, where INRA is currently trying to carry out land reform and create an indigenous territory for the Guaraní indigenous people. Additionally, it claims various communities of Guaraní live and work on white or mestizo-owned ranches in conditions of semi-slavery.

For nine days landowners and their supporters blockaded major highways and virtually sealed off Alto Parapetí. The blockades continued until Bolivia’s Vice-minister of Land, Alejandro Almaráz, left the region on April 18. At the end of February, Ronald Larsen, a major landowner in Santa Cruz, and other ranchers took Almaráz hostage at gunpoint for several hours when he and other government officials tried to enter the region.

~snip~
Following the incident, on the evening of February 29, the Vice-minister of Land, Almaráz, the national director of INRA, Rojas, the President of the APG, Wilson Changaraya, and other INRA officials entered Alto Parapetí. Their goal was to notify property owners that the saneamiento process was commencing. According to an interview with Almaráz and accounts published in the press, as the INRA vehicle drove by the property “Caraparicito,” a large cattle ranch owned by an American, Ronald Larsen, they came across a tractor blocking the road.

A group of landowners surrounded their vehicle, led by Larsen, who was armed with a revolver and a rifle. Larsen proceeded to shoot out the tires of the INRA vehicle to prevent the escape of the land reform officials. He reportedly yelled, "Now we are going to carry out community justice on you." He ordered the INRA vehicle to be dragged onto his property with the tractor. Later, he bragged to Almaráz that he had shot and killed three robbers that had come on to his property and no authority had ever found out. Another local landowner, Lino Medrano, allegedly threatened "No one is going to leave here alive, now blood will run.” Two members of the INRA team escaped to Camiri, where they obtained reinforcements who returned and freed the remaining INRA officials after their eight-hour ordeal.

Interestingly, no immediate action was taken against Larsen. According to Almaráz, witnesses are giving testimony before the public prosecutor of Camiri in order to bring a case against Ronald and Duston Larsen for sedition, criminal association, impeding and extorting official government activity, attempted murder, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1254/1/

http://snsimages.tribune.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2010-01/51404200.jpg

FILE - This Nov. 28, 2006 file photo shows a protester tied to a rope and a chain as a symbolic protest against the working conditions of the indigenous Guarani people, during a rally demanding land reform in La Paz, Bolivia. Bolivia already has made giants steps toward ending a centuries-old legacy of mistreatment of its third-largest ethnic group by white overlords. But for now, several thousand Guarani live in a penniless limbo waiting for the government to make good on its promises to give land to Indians who have broken free of a life the U.N. has classified as "forced labor and servitude." (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri, File) (DADO GALDIERI, AP / November 28, 2006)


U.S. Rancher in Bolivia Showdown
By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky/La Paz Friday, May. 02, 2008

In his native Montana, Ronald Larsen's current legal straits might be the stuff of an old-fashioned Western movie: A cattle rancher who believes the government and its allies are unfairly trying to seize his land, and picks up a rifle to signal his displeasure. But in contemporary Bolivia, where Larsen makes his home, his recent clash with the authorities is but another instance of rising tension over land-ownership between, on the one hand, left-wing President Evo Morales and his supporters among Bolivia's indigenous population, and on the other, political opponents backed by the country's wealthy eastern elite.

"A small group of ranchers is preventing us from carrying out rightful land reform in the eastern region of Santa Cruz," says Bolivia's Vice Minister of Land, Alejandro Almaraz, who accuses Larsen of attacking his convoy this spring. "U.S.-born Ronald Larsen is leading this violent resistance." But critics counter that Morales is hyping the case to build support ahead of Sunday's referendum in Santa Cruz, where opposition parties are pressing for autonomy from the central government — and ahead of a constitutional referendum later this year on changes that include capping the amount of land that can be owned by a single individual in Bolivia.

Both the autonomy and land-reform issues have sparked violent unrest over the past year, pitting the largely white farmers and ranchers of Bolivia's more affluent lowland east against the impoverished indigenous majority who back Morales, himself an Aymara Indian and the nation's first indigenous President. Little surprise, then, that a national furor has erupted over a confrontation involving government officials and Larsen, 64, who along with his two sons, owns 17 properties totaling 141,000 acres throughout Bolivia, three times as much land as the country's largest city. (Larsen insists his holdings amount to less than 25,000 acres.)

Last month, when Almaraz and aides tried to pass through Larsen's Santa Cruz property — they insist it was the only route by which to reach to nearby indigenous Guarani residents to whom they were delivering land deeds — witnesses say the caravan was fired on by Larsen and his son Duston, 29. The incident was followed by two weeks of rancher roadblocks and violent protests that left 40 indigenous people injured.

Larsen, who arrived in Bolivia in 1968, told a La Paz newspaper that Almaraz's vehicle had entered his property at around 3 a.m. Almaraz, he said, "had not presented any identification. He was drunk and being abusive ... I quieted him with a bullet to his tire. That's the story." But the government insists this wasn't Larsen's first run-in with Almaraz: the rancher is accused of kidnapping the vice minister for eight hours in February. The two alleged incidents prompted the government to file a criminal complaint of "sedition, robbery and other crimes" against Larsen and his son two weeks ago. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to press formal charges. Neither father nor son has responded publicly to the accusations, and neither responded to repeated requests by TIME for comment.

U.S.-educated Duston Larsen, referring to Morales' efforts to empower Bolivia's indigenous, wrote on his MySpace page in 2007, "I used to think democracy was the best form to govern a country but ... should a larger more uneducated group of people (70%) be in charge of making decisions, running a country and voting?" The fact that Duston, in 2004, won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant, in the eyes of many government supporters, puts him in the company of the country's European-oriented elite. (That same year, Miss Bolivia, Gabriela Oviedo, also from the country's east, suggested Bolivia shouldn't be considered an indigenous nation: "I'm from the other side of the country. We are tall, and we are white people, and we know English.") Morales backers say it is precisely this disdain for the indigenous that is driving what they call the secessionist agenda behind Sunday's autonomy referendum — which is not legally sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or recognized by the Organization of American States. But autonomy supporters say they're only seeking states' rights on questions such as taxation, police and public works. "This is a historic demand based on long-standing differences with a La Paz-based central government," says Edilberto Osinaga, managing director of the Chamber of Eastern Farmers.

More:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1737244,00.html

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0a3M4ipaZe9Tm/610x.jpg

Reuters Pictures 18 months ago
Bolivian Guarani men eat lunch at the Caraparicto ranch, property of U.S.-born rancher Ronald Larsen, near the town of Camiri June 10, 2008. Together with other land owners in eastern Bolivia, Larsen has vowed to fight plans by the leftist government of Evo Morales to seize large, "idle" land holdings to redistribute them among the poor. Picture taken June 10, 2008.

American Rancher Resists Land Reform Plans in Bolivia
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: May 9, 2008

CARAPARICITO, Bolivia — From the time Ronald Larsen drove his pickup truck here from his native Montana in 1969 and bought a sprawling cattle ranch for a song, he lived a quiet life in remote southeastern Bolivia, farming corn, herding cattle and amassing vast land holdings.

But now Mr. Larsen, 63, has suddenly been thrust into the public eye in Bolivia, finding himself in the middle of a battle between President Evo Morales, who plans to break up large rural estates, and the wealthy light-skinned elite in eastern Bolivia, which is chafing at Mr. Morales’s land reform project to the point of discussing secession.

After armed standoffs with land-reform officials at his ranch this year, Mr. Larsen made it clear which side he was on, emerging as a figure celebrated in rebellious Santa Cruz Province and loathed by Mr. Morales’s government, which wants to reduce ties to the United States.

“I just spent 40 years in this country working my land in an honest fashion,” said Mr. Larsen, who resembled Clint Eastwood with his weathered features and lanky frame. “They’re taking it away over my dead body.”

Mr. Larsen’s standoffs with the central government, replete with rifles, cowboys and Guaraní Indians, might sound like something out of the Old West. In fact, the battle playing out in the cattle pastures and gas-rich hills of his ranch, amid claims of forced servitude of Guaraní workers in the remote region, exemplifies Bolivia’s wild east.

Tensions here erupted one day in February when Alejandro Almaraz, the deputy land minister, arrived before dawn at the entrance to Mr. Larsen’s Hacienda Caraparicito to carry out an inspection, a step usually taken before the government seizes ranches and redistributes them among indigenous farmers.

Both sides differ as to what happened, but everyone agrees that some violence ensued. “I didn’t want this guy making any trouble, so I shut him up with a shot at one of his tires,” Mr. Larsen was quoted as saying last month by La Razón, Bolivia’s main daily newspaper.

Mr. Almaraz said he was kidnapped and held for a day on Mr. Larsen’s ranch. He responded to the incident by identifying the American rancher and his son Duston in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery and other crimes.”

Faced with a legal tussle over the standoff, Mr. Larsen now claims that he did not shoot at Mr. Almaraz’s vehicle. “The tires were punched out with sharpened screwdrivers,” Mr. Larsen said. “If I’d have been shooting at people that day, there would have been dead and injured.”

At stake is the 37,000-acre Caraparicito ranch, which Mr. Larsen bought in 1969 for $55,000, and other holdings of more than 104,000 acres, the government estimates. Mr. Larsen, who as a protective measure transferred ownership of almost all his land to his three sons, who are Bolivian citizens, declined to say how much land his family owned.

With his reserved demeanor, Mr. Larsen, a descendant of Danish immigrants to the Midwest, made it seem as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have moved to Bolivia in the 1960s, after he got bored working as a department store manager.

“A buddy of mine in the Peace Corps told me Bolivia was a good place to invest,” he said.

His quiet style contrasts with that of his oldest son, Duston, born in Bolivia, reared in Nebraska and educated at Montana State University. While Mr. Larsen prefers to lie low at the family home in Santa Cruz, the provincial capital, Duston, 29, has been in the spotlight since moving here in 2004.

Within months of his arrival, he won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant. He compensated for his American-accented Spanish at the finale by shouting, “Viva Bolivia!” before the stunned judges. Shortly afterward, he was cast as himself in a Bolivian comedy about cocaine smuggling entitled “Who Killed the White Llama?”

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/americas/09bolivia.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_GEDUTlyzpkI/SCSenUaRReI/AAAAAAAAAVs/deIeCWubL7c/s320/DUSTON_LARSEN_MT19_001.jpg
http://www.steiner7.com.nyud.net:8090/bolivia04/images/santacruz4/IMG_8382.jpg

Little Dunsten Larsen, Mr. Bolivia

[classysassy]

3. From the north pole to the south pole

The originals people (Indians to the loss invaders),have been murdered , their land stolen since the white man arrived,and the thieves continue their onslaught.But there will come a time when payment will come due,the crooks kith and kin will pay dearly.