Address by Carlos Mesa Gisbert
President of Bolivia

Mr President of IFAD, Directors of the International Land Coalition, Director of AECI in Bolivia, Ladies and Gentlemen gathered here today from Bolivia and the rest of the world,

I welcome the decision to hold this international meeting for the first time outside of Rome, the location of the Coalition's headquarters, and in particular here in this beautiful city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. I believe that, today more than ever, Santa Cruz is the focal point of our land issues and is likely to be the focal point for a solution to the land question in our country.

This international gathering gives me occasion to reflect on a reality that sometimes eludes our grasp, a deplorable reality in our country. Bolivia is a country of extreme poverty, a country beset by the gravest problems a society can face in terms of the fundamental issues of health, literacy, and access to land, potable water and basic services.

We in Bolivia cannot hold a debate on any issue without remembering, as a basic point of reference, that we are a poor society, a deeply unjust society in which discrimination is the norm rather than the exception. If we do not keep this in mind as we discuss, debate and resolve our problems, we will understand nothing and we will never arrive at real, structural solutions to those problems.

So the choice of this venue is very fitting. Not only because we are in a non-European country but because we are in a poor country that today confronts the land question as a fundamental, if not its most important, problem.

Access to land has become a critical issue for developing countries. Our ability to find ways to ensure fair and equitable access to land will determine our potential in years to come. We cannot overcome our essential difficulties unless we solve the land question.

What a paradox that Bolivia finds itself in this predicament. Few countries have made such enormous, important and wide-ranging efforts to solve this problem, not just in the recent past but over the course of several decades.

The agrarian reform undertaken in 1953 in Bolivia was one of the most important phenomena ever seen in Latin America and enabled our country to take a giant step in qualitative terms. A society still steeped in semi-slavery midway through the twentieth century surged towards modernity by giving access to land - in effect, returning a right taken away in the past - and opened up the possibility of bringing the great majority of the country into the economy.

Let us not forget that the great majority of Bolivian men and women are indigenous. Beyond the question - a debatable one - of how the 2001 National Population and Housing Census handled the self-identification of origins or identity with a particular indigenous people, 62% of Bolivians consider themselves indigenous. And this is extraordinarily significant. This agrarian reform that gave access to land, or returned the right to own land to those who had been divested of it over time, did not resolve the crux of the conflict with the passage of time. The agrarian reform process was planned mainly for the western part of Bolivia. For various reasons that do not bear mentioning now, it did not bring about the expected results, especially in human development and rural living conditions, and particularly in the highland plains and valleys.

At the same time, the political process of the 1952 revolution brought about a process of resettlement over very large areas, from the highland plains to human settlements in the east. This process generated a very significant Quechua and Aymara presence in the lowlands, in tandem with the lowland project undertaken by the World Bank and other international organizations in the mid-1960s. This in turn created a vision of a productive agro-industrial system in this region of the country.

The path of these two processes - the resettlement of the very poor who were being expelled from the highlands and valleys for various social and economic reasons, and an emerging policy to promote agro-industry - was crossed by the frequently arbitrary administration and redistribution of power, based on political favours and a highly questionable distribution of land during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

The military dictatorships that ruled Bolivia allowed for a ruinous management of the land distribution system that ended with the takeover of the National Agrarian Reform Institute - INRA - in the early 1990s. This gave rise to a very important debate on the land question, the advantages and disadvantages of agrarian reform, and how land access and distribution, and the State's role within it, should be undertaken. There was a shift from focusing exclusively on the Quechua and Aymara world towards including and recognizing the indigenous peoples of the east, highlands, north and south.

The indigenous march of 1990 brought a new awareness of the inclusion and recognition of indigenous peoples who, though a minority population group, were and continue to be very significant culturally, socially and politically. This culminated in the adoption of the new agrarian reform or INRA law, which included a number of important changes with respect to recognizing community property, today known as community lands of origin or TCOs, and a much more comprehensive structure for a country that since 1952 has undergone a process of west-east integration and linkages not hitherto seen.

The crucial point is that the INRA law gave rise to a series of pressures with respect to the responsibilities of large landowners, as well as legitimate demands by the latter that their contribution to the country's economic development be recognized. Our country's productivity and exports once revolved around mining and hydrocarbons, then soy products, then agro-industrial products, then oilseed chains. Today our realities have changed in terms of their strategic importance. I refer to agro-industry and to the political and economic pressures on this sector, so central to this debate.

Gradually, and in parallel, towards the end of the 1990s Bolivia saw the birth of the landless peasant movement , similar to movements in Brazil at around the same time. A first violent confrontation ensued in Panantí, in southern Bolivia, leaving deaths that have yet to be fully explained. This land dispute exploded into violence in a country that has worked on in-depth agrarian reform, that has put forward a policy of new settlements, that has tried to work out an agro-industrial development strategy and that, finally, has passed a law to modernize agrarian reform by striking a balance between the rights of the disadvantaged and the consolidation of legitimate productive agro-industrial development. These are the paradoxes of our difficult times.

One of the more complex issues facing our Government is precisely that of land, of radical groups of peasants or indigenous groups who believe they should have immediate access to land and in fact are taking over productive land, versus agro-industrial operators who want the Government to recognize their legal land rights and guarantee continued production without such interference. How to reconcile positions that are at opposite ends of the spectrum, unable to see the shades of grey where elements of agreement might be found?

While some are putting forward ultra-radical positions and systematically targeting productive land, not necessarily seeking legitimate land access for the poorest, others who were often granted land through an illegitimate and spurious process and have made it productive are calling urgently and at times violently upon the Bolivian State to intervene.

Given the violence Bolivia has seen in recent years, the current situation must be countered with an approach that favours peace, building conditions for peace and resolving conflicts and problems through dialogue and negotiation, no matter how difficult. This is the most important effort being deployed by our Government, faced with two radical positions that are deliberately creating an impossible dilemma such that violence is the only answer. Despite this situation, I will make every effort, as will our Government at every opportunity, to ensure that these conflicts and disputes are resolved through dialogue and negotiation.

Clearly, such conflicts are a sign that we must seek structural solutions. And we must do so without losing sight of the first point we alluded to: that Bolivia is a country of extreme poverty, exclusion, injustice and even racism that can emerge on both sides. In seeking those solutions, we must seek first and foremost to overcome injustice and exclusion and answer the legitimate demands of the poorest, in our great but complex nation.

A country of close to one million one hundred thousand square kilometres, it would seem, should be able to grant unlimited land to all. As we evaluate the situation we must take into account the percentage of land that is - or is in the process of becoming - desert, the fact that most lowlands are suited only for forest, the large areas with poor agricultural potential, the dangers of accelerating land depletion by expanding the agricultural frontier and the lack of an adequate policy for renewal or rotation, the increasingly complex requirements for making land productive given the realities of widespread slash-and-burn agriculture and the alternatives, increasing migratory pressures from west to east with unrealistic expectations that land will be available in the host areas. These are some of the many problems we face in this context.

We should avoid the false dynamic of artificial dilemmas that would force us to choose between agro-industrial production to guarantee food security and breaking up large estates or handing over land. I believe this is a false dilemma and concur with the documents published by the Coalition in this regard.

I believe that it is perfectly possible to achieve a situation where small and medium-sized producers operate efficiently - as they have done throughout our country's history - particularly with respect to food supply. Although it is true that agro-industry generates very large surpluses that allow for significant exports and bring in crucial revenues, it is no less true that small and medium-sized producers could underpin a recovery of the food autonomy that Bolivia, unbelievably, has lost. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is perfectly possible to grasp the need for an agro-industrial production scenario involving State guarantees and legal assurances alongside the increasingly imperative need for democratic land access by small producers with prospects for joining - as indeed they have done - the agro-industrial chain for grains and raising the productivity of food for domestic consumption.

The problem is far-reaching and complex, and we must face it calmly but with clear answers. There are a number of issues that need to be solved in the very short term, that depend on the good faith of all. The current situation is not ideal: it is fraught with tension and confrontation, and coloured with prejudice and emotion.

We need to tone down these attitudes and help all Bolivians understand - especially in an extraordinarily strategic region such as Santa Cruz - that it is possible, necessary and crucial to reconcile large-scale production and agro-industry over vast areas of land with small and medium-sized production. It is critical that we see today's radical positions as a deliberate attempt to force our country into an impossible confrontation.

We must break down these radical positions and seek a place for dialogue where all parties will have to make concessions, understanding that a rational approach is needed and that they cannot have everything. Many of the unfulfilled elements of the INRA law have to do precisely with pressures from the authorities not to address the essentials of the price to be paid for unproductive land, and the responsibility for the economic and social function of land and how this translates into reality.

Today we are gathered here to talk about land access for the poorest, for the dispossessed, and Bolivia is one of the countries where this is much needed. And despite the giant step we have taken, the road ahead is a very long one. I am convinced that you can help us through these reflections, and that we can learn from the responses and experiences of other nations.

We have often fallen into the trap of navel-gazing, of believing that our problems are unique. This has led to a tendency to reinvent the wheel every time we face specific circumstances. We have much to learn from the experiences of other nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia. You have walked paths very similar to our own. Ultimately, solving the problems inherent in poverty is the same here and everywhere in the world. Ultimately, the interests of the powerful look alike anywhere on the planet.

As the President of Bolivia I am aware that I have an obligation to answer both challenges: that of a society that wants to move towards modernization, boost productivity, secure agro-industrial development and seek new horizons for integration in a globalized world; as well as the challenge of answering the demands of the poorest, marginalized and long excluded, whose needs have not been met by the State.

Life in rural Bolivia continues to be a life of misery and torment in most cases. Human capital flees towards big cities and further impoverishment because, given our difficult terrain, we have been unable to keep up with providing needed drinking water, basic sanitation and electricity. Irrigation is another example. These are challenges we are far from meeting. We are not investing enough, perhaps because despite our best intentions we are unable to really focus on rural realities. Population growth in cities is as massive in Bolivia as in nearly all the developing nations in the past twenty-five years. At times our words and wishes for rural areas come face to face with their enormous demands. Here the secret - and I believe it is easy to answer in the case of Bolivia - is how we go about this. We need to find the way, and that way is the world of municipios .

If we are able to understand the municipio as an integrated space, as the territorial space of the urban and rural world; if we are able to see the municipio as the instrument we need for productive investment, then we are likely to attain the concept of land access, land management and management of elements fundamental to rural poverty. The territorial municipio is the legal instrument, institution and potential mechanism from the economic, social and naturally also political point of view, that will enable us to find ways to address the question of access to land and related issues.

I should like to end by recalling that in Bolivia, as elsewhere in the world, the concept of land transcends the economic. As we have heard today, it incorporates a spiritual dimension, a conception of life and a way of understanding the world. The Pachamama of western Bolivia is Mother Earth. To her we owe everything. She gave birth to us and to her we will return, with the hope that on the way we will have gained access to that Mother Earth we are all entitled to.