Some Basic Problems of the Agrarian Reform in Chile

Abstract

With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the proclamation of a land reform law by the revolutionary government during that year, the matter of agrarian tenure patterns became a prominent and controversial issue in Latin American politics. No one questioned the necessity of improving the productivity of Latin American agriculture. The debate, rather, centred on whether this improvement required a fundamental transformation of the socio-political-economic structure of the Latin American countryside. One faction, led by conservative agronomists and political figures, argued that the problem was essentially technical and could be solved best by substantial capital investments and improved educational programs. This group opposed openly or by inference basic social change in the socio-agricultural structure. The other faction, led by reforming agronomists and politicians, replied that modernization and improved living standards for the impoverished masses could be effected only through expropriations of the large estates or latifundios. They argued that few estate owners were interested in modernizing their operations and that the rural poor actually received few benefits when farming operations were modernized under the current Latin American social system.1 Because the Latin American oligarchies and United States commercial interests have substantial power throughout Latin America, the first approach to agrarian reform became dominant in the 1960's, despite the early concern over the Cuban land reforms and the original call in the Alliance for Progress Charter of Punta del Este for an effective transformation of unjust structures and systems of land tenure and use.2 In the last ten years, only Peru and Chile have effected reforms of the second variety. In Peru the military government has expropriated the latifundios