Gabriela Valdivia is an assistant professor of geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship (Award #706750). The Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan pro-vided institutional support. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this issue for their constructive comments and the people in Bolivia who opened their doors to this research and allowed her to learn from their struggles and perspectives. She is especially grate-ful to Gonzalo Vásquez (FENCA) and Bishelly Elías (CIPCA) for institutional support and Ana Isabel Ortíz for her invaluable help in conducting focus groups and systematizing information.
Agrarian Capitalism and Struggles over Hegemony in the Bolivian Lowlands
byGabriela Valdivia
In 2006, President Morales announced that his administration would end land inequality in Bolivia. Agrarian elites in the lowlands department of Santa Cruz, known as the economic engine of Bolivian agriculture, strongly oppose this position and have vowed to counter it to safeguard the agrarian order. From visions of a capitalist moral compass of production to the promotion of sector unity to safeguard production, agrarian elites are seeking to maintain a hegemony that allows them to control the agrarian sector in the lowlands. Attention to the ways in which agrarian elites ground their struggles over agrarian hegemony is necessary for evaluating the possibilities for the resource democracy advocated by the current administration.
In May 2006, President Evo Morales promised to rectify the profound land inequality that exists in Bolivia. While this project is supported by historically disadvantaged groups in Bolivia, staunch opposition is prominent among agrarian elites in the Department of Santa Cruz, where large landholdings, land speculation, and deep-seated struggles over resources contentiously coexist (Hecht, 2005). These actors see Morales’s proposal as a challenge to what they call “Cruceño institutionality”: hard-fought for, locally governed politico-economic relations that have allowed the development of capitalist agriculture in Santa Cruz. The Morales challenge against the agrarian order in the lowlands is being taken seriously by agrarian elites, who argue that it goes against the moral constitution of Cruceño agriculture. This paper examines the views of these elites and the insights they provide into the agrarian pro-duction order in the lowlands.1 I draw on archival research and 130 interviews conducted in La Paz and Santa Cruz between 2007 and 2009 with former members of Congress, nongovernmental organizations, officers of the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (Institute of Agrarian Reform—INRA), officers
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and members of the Cámara Agropecuaria del Oriente (Agricultural Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Bolivia—CAO), and other lowlands agriculturalists not affiliated with the CAO.
HEGEMONY AND THE STUDY OF ELITES
“Hegemony . . . is the control of essentially heterogeneous, discontinuous, non-identical, and unequal geographies of human habitation and effort” (Said, 2002 [1995]: 467–468). The study of agrarian elites is the study of power relations. Power relations are often described in terms of domination, the mobilization by individuals of a range of cultural and material resources (e.g., wealth, status) to force their interests on others (Mills, 2000 [1956]), or in terms of resistance to such domination (Scott, 1985). In this sense, power is locatable: identifiable within certain individuals through specific mechanisms and relationships and observable through its effects on individuals. Yet, dom-ination and resistance do not exist in a vacuum. They are part and parcel of institutions that reproduce hegemony, sociocultural structures that guide the way members of society interact (based on what the dominant classes see as “natural” cultural, racial, and economic differences) and consent to inequality, exploitation, and dispossession as inevitable (see Hart, 2006; Sparke, 2008). Consent to these so-called natural and inevitable interactions between classes is never automatic; the dominant classes must continuously broker compro-mises with others to maintain the status quo (Gramsci, 2005 [1971]; Hall, Morley, and Chen, 1996).
In Latin America, structures that support capitalist agriculture guide members of society to consent, first, to the existence of distinct, unequal agrarian classes (such as terratenientes or landowners, colonos or agricultural laborers, and campesinos or peasants) and, second, to the exploitation and dis-possession of some (laborers and peasants) for the benefit of those with greater access to political and economic resources (landowners) (Bobrow-Strain, 2007; Bryceson, Kay, and Mooij, 2000; Paige, 1997). Formal institutions (e.g., laws that emphasize private property, top-down governance, market com-petitiveness, and profit generation) as well as informal relations of produc-tion (e.g., compadrazgo,2 paternalism, patron-client relations) (Dore, 2006; Peña and Boschetti, 2008) are examples of the structures that shape this acceptance of the “natural order” (or hegemony) of capitalist relations of agrarian production. This paper calls attention to these sorts of formal and informal structures to examine how the Bolivian lowlands have become a world of distinct agrarian classes and the struggles taking place to maintain this order. The first section examines the emergence of agrarian classes and the mobilization of resources that attributed “distinction” (Bourdieu, 1984) to capitalist agriculture in the lowlands. This is followed by an analysis of the reforms promoted by the Morales administration, specifically, the drafting of a new agrarian law. The next section examines how agrarian elites are responding to the prospect of institutional change brought on by the new law. The conclusion highlights the relevance of situating agrarian elites’ responses to change.
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The Bolivian state played a fundamental role in the establishment of agrarian classes in the lowlands. The land reform of 1953, conducted by the Mov-imiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement—MNR) and brought on by pressure from highland peasants (Gotkowitz, 2007), set the stage for the establishment of capitalist agriculture in the lowlands. Between 1953 and 1964, the MNR used land reform to promote state-led development in the lowlands. It did so in two ways. First, it encouraged land-poor and landless highland peasants to “march to the east” to settle land (plots between 20 and 50 ha) in the lowlands and make it produce to feed the nation (Antezana, 1969; Malloy, 1970). By 1980, highland colonists accounted for 41 percent of the population in Santa Cruz (Peña, 2007). Second, it granted landholdings ranging from 500 to 50,000 ha to “capitalist entrepreneurs,” local elites, and those with close ties to political parties in power to encourage export agriculture (Villafuerte, 2002). Santa Cruz experienced uncontrolled, illegal land granting under this second scheme (Sandoval, 2003).
Between 1955 and 1960, the Bolivian state channeled resources through the Inter-American Agricultural Service (a U.S.-funded agricultural research and extension scheme), specifically technology, credits, and infrastructure, to modernize agriculture. Most was invested in large-scale production in Santa Cruz. By 1961, close to 50,000 ha of rice and 80,000 ha of sugar had been sown (Roca, 1981). Meanwhile, since the 1950s, hydrocarbon royalties had been adding to the wealth derived from agricultural investments, increasing the capital that circulated through Santa Cruz (Peña, 2007).
The land allocation policies fostered by the Bolivian government resulted in a skewed land distribution. The first mechanism of land settlement, oriented toward Andean migrants of rural origin, created a large class of small land-holders (typically referred to as “small producers”) that produced for the national market and often depended on outsourcing its labor in order to sup-port household economies (Ormachea, 2007). The second mechanism con-centrated larger landholdings in the hands of a smaller class of capitalist entrepreneurs (“large producers”) that was oriented toward export agricul-ture. As the latest agrarian census (1984) indicates, farm units over 200 ha (or approximately 6 percent of the total units) occupied almost 84 percent of the total land surface in Santa Cruz (Table 1). Balderrama (2002), in a study spon-sored by the INRA and the Danish government, shows a similar trend between 1953 and 2002: farm units under 50 ha (38 percent of total units) received 6.3 percent of total land surface distributed during that time period, while empresas (agricultural enterprises) over 500 ha (7.7 percent of the total units) were assigned 52.6 percent of the total land distributed. Soruco (2008) sug-gests that of land allocations greater than 10,000 ha granted between 1952 and 1994, 81.26 percent were to private individuals, 8.66 percent to agri-business enterprises, and 10.01 percent to small-producer cooperatives. While uneven land distribution is the primary axis of agrarian classes, class difference is also reproduced through the tacit recognition that different classes have different racial characteristics, agrarian practices, and economic power: small produc-ers are of highland and rural origin and subsistence-oriented and have less
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access to capital for investment; large producers are Cruceños or Andean white/mestizos and profit-oriented and have access to capital.
State-led capitalism furthered class differentiation by fostering the uneven distribution of capital investments. Fiscal incentives, agricultural credits, road building, and foreign aid during military regimes in the 1970s promoted the growth of large agro-export enterprises (cotton and sugar) and the develop-ment of local institutions that catered to their needs (Peña, 2007). During the government of Hugo Banzer (1971–1978), a partnership between government officials, Cruceño agro-industrialists, and military personnel allowed agrar-ian capitalists to secure credit and land for the growth of their individual enterprises.3
Large-scale, export-oriented agriculture (e.g., sugar and soy) grew as a result and led to a parallel increase in demand for labor. A shortage of local labor supply prompted a search for workers in other parts of the country. Workers came primarily from highland departments that were experiencing high unemployment and economic contraction, mainly Potosí, Chuquisaca, and Oruro. Securing the labor pool depended on contratistas (independent recruiters who secure labor contracts between individuals seeking employ-ment and employers) and enganche.4 Initially, the high labor demand and short supply proved to be quite profitable for workers, some of whom used their pay to buy land in the lowlands. High labor demand also led to a floating population of highland-born landless agricultural workers with permanent residence in the lowlands (Pacheco, 1994). By 1976, 63 percent of salaried workers in Bolivia were located in the lowlands and 45 percent in Santa Cruz (Pacheco and Ormachea, 2000).
THE “INTERNATIONALIZATION” OF AGRICULTURE
In the mid-1980s, state-led capitalism promoted growth but also high fiscal deficits (Sandoval, 2003). After an economically tumultuous period of hyper-inflation and the return to democracy in 1985, the Bolivian government imple-mented a “New Economy,” a free-market model of production and trade that would open production and services to foreign investors. The resulting influx of foreign capital—specifically, Argentine, Brazilian, and U.S. investors—led to what agrarian elites refer to as the “internationalization” of the lowlands.
TABLE 1
Land Tenure in Santa Cruz, 1984
Farm Units Surface
Size of Landholding (hectares) Number Percentage Hectares Percentage
Less than 50 31,639 74.71 366,304.44 6.6450 to 199 8,084 19.09 531,105.38 9.61200 to 999 1,476 3.49 625,544.22 11.321,000 and above 1,146 2.71 4,002,142.27 72.43Total 42,345 100.00 5,525,093.31 100.00
Source: Agrarian Census of 1984, cited in Sandoval (2003: 47).
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Agrarian capitalists who until then had depended on the state to support their economy now looked to transnational capital to maintain it. Internationalization further channeled incoming capital to export-oriented, larger landholders (Gill, 1987). Projects sponsored by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Bank, for example, promoted extensive defor-estation and land appropriation in the name of agricultural development, specifically for soy production (Pérez, 2007). The most significant of these was the World Bank’s Lowlands Project, which financed new “areas of expansion” east of the city of Santa Cruz (essentially, the appropriation and clearing of state land and land used by the Ayoreo, Guaraní, and Guarayos peoples) and infrastructure that vertically integrated the international trade in soy. In addi-tion, USAID, through the PL-480 program, funded extension and seed pro-grams and technological improvements that allowed more than one harvest a year and reduced labor requirements (Kreidler et al., 2004).
The results legitimized Santa Cruz’s reputation as an “engine of produc-tion.” While in 1988 the surface cultivated in soy was 70,000 ha, by 1994 it had grown to 307,000 ha. Santa Cruz accounted for 97 percent of the total produc-tion of soy in Bolivia (Sandoval, 2003). The manufacturing and commerce sectors also flourished with the influx of capital. By the mid-1990s, Brazilian, Argentine, and Peruvian industrial conglomerates and casas comerciales (trad-ing houses) dominated the agricultural complex, financing loans for soy production, providing agricultural inputs to producers (fertilizers, pesticides, seeds), and later collecting and transforming their product for further commercialization.
Today’s soy producers recognize that success in commercial agriculture resulted from this greater international investment, increased productivity, and above-normal international prices. Further private investment in cultiva-tion technologies, large mechanized equipment, “direct sow” techniques (already implemented in Argentina and Brazil), and the use of herbicides (and, much later, genetically modified soy varieties) followed, leading to a boom in production in the mid-1990s. Thus, to the Cruceño agricultural elites, pri-vate investors (particularly, Brazilian agri-businesses) are responsible for the economic success of the Cruceño model of production. The profit generated by soy—the “golden bean” (Pérez, 2007)—contributed to never-before-seen economic growth, prompting many to feel that modernity was achieved through private and transnational, not state, investment.5
Less recognized is the fact that growth in the soy complex also deepened inequalities among producers. Growth in the soy sector, for example, increased differences between small, medium-sized, and large producers based on access to land and capital—a pattern initiated with the land distribution pro-cesses of 1953 and continued through state incentives in the 1960s and 1970s.6 Large soy producers have significantly greater access to investment capital; they capture loans at lower interest rates to invest in production and partici-pate in vertically integrated systems of production that allow them to trans-form and commercialize value-added products such as soy flour and oil (Ortíz and Solíz, 2007). They are also able to mortgage land to secure larger invest-ment loans. Small producers, on the other hand, are risky investments for lenders and pay higher interest on loans for the purchase of the same basic inputs (e.g., seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides). Their status as small producers,
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according to the law, prohibits them from mortgaging land, which is consid-ered “family patrimony.” Once small producers yield to an intermediary, they do not participate in transformation or commercialization, and this limits their ability to negotiate prices (Ortíz and Solíz, 2007).
The internationalization of the lowlands in the early 1990s also led to struc-tural inequalities associated with changes in the labor market. All producer classes in the lowlands—small, medium-sized, and large—hire salaried work-ers, though their hiring patterns vary according to production needs and access to capital. Often, small producers support each other by sharing pro-duction costs, rented machinery, and hired labor (Ortíz and Solíz, 2007). Medium- sized and large producers, having greater access to capital, own their equipment (and rent it out) and often maintain a proletarianized and specialized work-force (Ormachea, 2007). Moreover, the technification of production that resulted from internationalization reduced larger producers’ need for labor in the soy sector (Pacheco, 1994).7 Demand decreased for jornaleros (salaried workers) employed in cultivation, sowing, and land clearing and increased for skilled workers such as machinery operators and individuals with experience in industrial processing. Together with the “flexibilization” of labor contracts in 1989 (in number of hours worked, pay, and type of work according to the needs of employers) and the entrenchment of enganche, the regional decline in labor demand limited the ability of workers to negotiate employment terms vis-à-vis employers (Pacheco and Ormachea, 2000).
Class differentiation also increased with land dispossession. Many small producers sold their land because it had lost its fertility or because they could not afford to cover the costs of production or repay their debts. More eco-nomically powerful producers bought and rehabilitated these “tired” lands, which led to land consolidation. The newly landless producers sought to acquire new lands farther from roads, thus further expanding the agricultural frontier (Pacheco and Mertens, 2004), became landless work-ers, or moved to urban areas. Similarly, some indigenous groups lost lands as self-interested leaders sold communally held lands to private individu-als (primarily, large-scale producers) without community consent, in exchange for personal favors and/or political alliances (Ormachea, 2007; Postero, 2007; Rojas, 2008).
In the face of the increasing dispossession associated with internationaliza-tion, lowlands indigenous groups in the 1980s organized against agricultural expansion. Armed with the language of citizenship and the expectations of rights that it implied, in 1990 lowlands indigenous activists marched from the lowlands to La Paz to demand recognition of their culture and territories (Postero, 2007). This highly publicized March for Territory and Dignity pushed the “indigenous issue” onto the national agenda and provided urgency for reforms. In response to this escalating pressure and growing evidence of ille-gal land appropriation, in 1992 a new set of state and civil society representa-tives was charged with creating a more “technical” and “inclusive” land law. Law 1715 (the INRA Law) was approved in 1996 amidst intense mobilizations and criticism. President Gonzálo Sánchez de Lozada hailed the new law as a mechanism of social transformation that would end the rampant corruption that had developed in the lowlands (NotiSur, 1996).
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The INRA Law sought to provide juridical security over property, recognize the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, establish principles of sustainability as a way of securing access to land, and create a new set of institutions through which to manage land issues in a transparent manner. Above all, it aimed to perfect the right to property according to the agrarian divisions existing in the lowlands. Article 2 of its General Dispositions identi-fies the actors that can claim the right to land according to social background (indigenous and nonindigenous) and size of landholding (large, medium-sized, and small). Medium-sized and large landholders are actors with full property rights. Small producers and indigenous groups do not have full property rights. Small landholders cannot transfer or sell land because, accord-ing to Article 169 of the constitution, small landholdings are “family patri-mony.” Indigenous territories are recognized as communally held property that cannot be transferred.
The INRA Law introduces three “technical principles” through which the right to land is to be perfected: the function of the property, the “best uses” of the land, and saneamiento, the provision of clear title to land through proper measurement. Article 2 identifies the function of the property as the way of assessing how it is being used. Small and communal landholdings are expected to fulfill a social function: supporting the reproduction of house-holds and the economic development of individuals. If land is not visibly used or lived on or is abandoned, it is subject to expropriation. Medium-sized and large landholdings, in contrast, must fulfill a socioeconomic function: the “sustainable use of land for the development of agri-business, forestry, and other productive activities, as well as for the conservation and protection of biodiversity, research, and ecotourism, and according to its best use capacity, for the benefit of society, the collective, and its owner.” Evidence that supports the right to land includes both actual and future uses. The performance of actual work is not necessary; evidence of future or potential uses (such as cattle birth certificates) and promises of greater production (e.g., plans for improvements) also guarantee the right to land. Article 52 also recognizes timely tax payments as fulfilling a socioeconomic function (small and indige-nous landholders are tax-exempt) even if the land is not actively being used. Expropriation occurs when land is not being worked and tax payment is not evident, and reversion occurs if the work is “detrimental to the general pub-lic.” The “best use of land” is determined by a land-use plan for each depart-ment devised by the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Environment with the goal of governing the sustainable transformation of land. A set of technical norms and maps, the land-use plan establishes the spatioecological “limiting factors”—topography, drainage systems, soil structure and chemis-try, vegetation, rivers, lakes, rangelands, etc.—that will determine the “use capacity” of land. On the basis of this plan, a property-ordering plan can be devised for individual medium-sized and large properties to identify their present and future “best uses.” Not following one plan or the other may result in the loss of the right to land. Finally, saneamiento involves the production of cadastral surveys that map the boundaries of “properly functioning” property.
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It is conceptualized as a “healing process” that ends the irregular granting of land for undisclosed purposes by binding together geographic location, sur-face delimitations, and the fulfillment of a function into a legal land title. The process was expected to be completed by 2006.
Despite its technical principles, the INRA Law has been modified, chal-lenged, and redefined to fit a series of interests and has not led to the expected change in the lowlands. In 1997, for example, a year after its approval, President Banzer reduced tax requirements for large properties, thus saving large pro-ducers in Santa Cruz from paying any significant taxes. He went on to reshuffle the personnel established under the previous administration to carry out land reform, effectively putting land reform on the back burner (Urioste, 2005; Yashar, 2005). Subsequent governments did not restore the property tax to its original level, indicating a lack of political will to effect change in the agrarian sector. As of 2006—10 years after the INRA Law was signed—of the 106,751, 723 ha of land slated for titling, 10.7 percent had been titled, 32.6 percent were “in process,” and 56.7 percent had not yet been surveyed. In Santa Cruz, only 11.1 percent of the land had been titled (INRA, 2006).8
When Morales assumed the presidency in 2006, he set out to reform the INRA Law. Following months of conflict and negotiation, Law 3545, the Ley de Reconducción (Extension Law), was approved.9 It emphasizes a return to state oversight in matters of land distribution, redefines natural resources as state property, and tightens the INRA Law’s fundamental principles to effect changes in land consolidation and labor relations in the lowlands. It extends Article 2 to define areas to be regulated (“effective cultivation,” “fallow,” “ille-gal clearing,” “livestock,” “forestry,” and “ecological services”), thus mapping specific agrarian practices to a set of detailed authorized spatial and temporal “categories of use.” It also eliminates timely tax payments and evidence of future use as guarantees of the right to property, instead establishing that the function of land must be assessed through recurring (every two years) field inspections by INRA personnel. Thus, Law 3545 introduces temporal disci-pline to the right to land among medium-sized and large landholdings. Once a property is titled, the state retains the right to subject it to a continuous pro-cess of use verification to assess whether it is being employed according to “its best use.” If evaluated as “unproductive,” land is subject to expropriation, regardless of the possession of title.
Law 3545 also oversees labor relations with the goal of ending exploitative labor recruitment. For example, it stipulates that a landowner employing individuals for permanent or temporary labor must follow procedures that register salaries, length of hire, and benefits covered by employers. If such procedures are not followed or if irregularities—such as forced labor or unpaid services—are identified, the employer is subject to an investigation, reflecting the constitutional principle that employment should not be detri-mental to the general public or the collective. The new law also allows popular movements, departmental and municipal authorities, indigenous federations, unions, and communities to participate in saneamiento, reversion, expropria-tion, and land-granting. For example, an individual accused of illegally appropriating land or of not meeting the guidelines of appropriate labor is subject to investigation. This effort at greater inclusion is framed as a way to
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“democratize agrarian processes” and meant to speed up the assignment of property (Almaráz, 2006).
Finally, the new law provides that saneamiento can draw on the historical record of land tenure to check false land right claims and land acquisition by fraud. According to Romero Bonifaz (2008), INRA archives show that 1,270 individuals received over 5.7 million ha in the lowlands, which suggests the illegal allocation of multiple landholdings to individuals and families (Table 2). In 2006, a “black list” of latifundistas circulated through the printed media estimated that 90.8 percent of Bolivia’s productive lands had been assigned to groups in power (Constituyente Soberana, 2006). These cases are still under investigation, and it is unclear how many will be affected by the new law, as the process of establishing titles is long and conflictive and has yet to be completed in the region.
Opposition to the Law 3545 is strong among those who represent the Cruceño agro-complex, such as the CAO.
THE AGRARIAN ELITES’ RESPONSE TO INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Since its beginnings in 1964, the CAO has successfully lobbied the Bolivian government for credit allocations and price levels that benefit lowlands pro-ducers (Gill, 1987). Today it is a major Cruceño institution that claims to rep-resent close to 70,000 agrarian capitalists from 16 producer organizations ranging from fruit growers to cattle ranchers.10 Of these, 70 percent are consid-ered small, 24 percent medium-sized, and 6 percent large. Not all small pro-ducers in the lowlands are affiliated with the CAO; some are affiliated with other locally based organizations (e.g., agrarian syndicates, associations, and cooperatives) that they see as better reflecting their interests. Despite the fact that the CAO considers itself to represent the interests of commercial agriculture—regardless of scale of production—and that a significant proportion of its constituency is small producers, its policies and loyalties have historically served larger producers, often contributing to “internal class frontiers” that reproduce the marginalization of some members by those with more influence within the organization.11 Moreover, its current board of directors, which largely shapes the organization’s views on change in the lowlands, is dominated
TABLE 2
Examples of Extensive Land Grants in Santa Cruz
Owner Number of Grants Hectares Province
Antelo Family 12 116,647 Ñuflo de ChávezJaime Villarroel Durán 6 19,490 CordilleraGutiérrez family 5 98,874 CordilleraPaz Hurtado family 5 76,000 Obispo SantiestevanSaavedra Bruno family 9 31,309 Germán Bush y VelascoNelly Paz de Barbery 3 20,877 Obispo Santiestevan
Source: INRA, cited in Romero Bonifaz (2008: 121).
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by large landholders. Three tendencies define the CAO’s position on the “natural” order of agrarian production: selective memories, apolitical argu-ments, and (fractured) sector unity.
SELECTIVE MEMORIES OF THE CAPITALIST SELF
On July 31, 2008, the president of the CAO, Mauricio Roca, in an address to representatives of his constituency, declared the lowlands agrarian sector in crisis. The rate of increase of land under cultivation had declined from 16.5 percent in 2004 to –3.2 percent in 2008 (CAO, 2009). Roca, a rice producer with a family history of landed privilege in Santa Cruz, cited chronic problems in transportation infrastructure, losses due to climatic effects, and a lack of adequate access to energy resources and markets as crippling Cruceño agri-culture. Above all, he argued that policies spearheaded by Morales were at the heart of this crisis of production. First, he said, the “nationalization” of the gas industry in 2006 had dismantled established networks of diesel distribution and led to moments of diesel scarcity that interfered with timely harvesting and commercialization schedules. Second, Law 3545 had made producers afraid to invest because there was no assurance that the land they had title to would remain theirs. Finally, the Morales administration’s program on food sover-eignty and security, which guaranteed a “fair price” for basic foodstuffs, lim-ited the export of a variety of agricultural products (to counter the rising price of food products in the Bolivian market), and opened Bolivia’s protected mar-kets to food imports (rice, wheat, soy products, maize, and meat), was viewed by Cruceño producers as compromising their competitiveness in the interna-tional and national markets.
Variously described as “political impositions,” a “lack of a state production vision,” and the “politicization of realities,” the changes promoted by the Morales administration are seen as dangerous. The CAO suggests that the central government, in its effort to improve the conditions of indigenous and campesino Bolivians, fails to understand the “production realities of the lowlands.” These “realities” are the centrality of private property, access to international markets, and control of the factors of production—the foun-dations of capitalist agriculture. State intervention, moreover, places at risk an important tenet of the capitalist self: the right to produce at liberty. The reforms challenge the principle of production as a natural right of this agrarian class.
Underpinning these views is the position that agrarian capitalists have a right to the factors of production because they “have worked for them.” For example, according to Tadeo,12 who arrived from Oruro in 1964 with only “the clothes on his back” to work in sugarcane fields and now is a medium-sized soy producer, the central government does not understand that to succeed in the lowlands people have to be “willing to work hard.” When asked why not all who work hard are now successful like him, Tadeo responded that they are lazy and do not have a “vocation of produc-tion.” The problem is, he explained, that the current government is spon-soring a culture of poverty; it “is not helping them be more productive. . . . It is Evo [Morales] giving money to his followers. That is their costumbre [their way of doing things]: they expect the government to do things for
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them. They are disorganized, there is no responsibility. They are poor because of their costumbres.”
Tadeo’s representations of a class of “successful producers” and “the poor” in Santa Cruz allude to an epistemology of the self that reproduces polarized and hierarchical concepts about Cruceño agriculture—hard work, a vocation of production, organization, and responsibility—and its Other, the Andean campesino restrained by paternalistic relations of production dominated by a patron-state. Hegemony relies on these noneconomistic explanations to inter-pret the differences between agrarian classes and to explain their relationships with each other. In Tadeo’s view, people from the highlands know nothing about hard work; they “are used to herding llamas, not working seven days a week, under the hot sun, with the diseases and mosquitoes you have here.” David, another medium-sized soy producer, originally from Potosí, recalls that his father had learned to be an agriculturalist a chicotazo (being beaten by a heavy leather whip) while working as a temporary laborer in Argentina. According to David, many have failed in their attempts to make a living in the lowlands because they did not acquire “the dedication to production” from these experiences. From his father, he learned about hiring people for harvest-ing soy (prior to mechanization), “training them into hard work,” and paying them for their work so that they could succeed, too. In both Tadeo’s and David’s accounts there are descriptions of the violence and exploitation that characterize agrarian relations and expressions of their willingness to suffer from these because they are “necessary” (even unavoidable) for success.
As I continued to probe this association between “those who don’t make it” and “productive entrepreneurs” and the rationales that explain exploitation as a “fact of life,” it became clear that the production of racial, economic, and cultural difference lies at the heart of the discourse of capitalist production in Santa Cruz. Becoming a successful capitalist, at least for some, allowed the possibility of transcending the boundaries of the agrarian classes. For exam-ple, both Tadeo and David drew on their past lives and experiences in telling their stories of success: from having no land to their name when they arrived as Andean migrants to their improvement, through their own hard work and investment, to their present condition as Cruceño producers who own large tracts of land, employ a proletarianized, specialized labor force (of from two to six employees), and occupy leadership positions in agrarian institutions. They see themselves as having overcome the hierarchy of agricultural production (i.e., from laborer to land-poor campesino to successful capitalist) by accept-ing the inevitability of capitalist relations of production.13 Their positions on “success” are grounded in stories of production and progress that rely on a “partial amnesia” about the inequalities that are part and parcel of capitalist agriculture.
I describe this positioning as a partial amnesia because capitalist growth in Santa Cruz is built upon labor exploitation and land dispossession (Ormachea, 2007; Romero Bonifaz, 2008). The structures that govern hired labor in the agricultural sector of Santa Cruz work toward a continued power inequality between employers and workers that is seldom reported in narratives of capitalist “successes” (Bedoya and Bedoya, 2004; Pacheco and Ormachea, 2000; Pacheco, 1994). While this relationship stems from structures of produc-tion associated with plantation systems, these structures were given new life
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through laws of labor flexibilization in the late 1980s that provided the legal framework for limiting juridical guarantees for laborers. According to the Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (Confederación de Trabajadores Asalariados Rurales de Bolivia—CTARB), labor arrangements perpetuate a situation in which most laborers have no guarantee of decent working condi-tions or pay or that due process will be followed in the negotiation of work contracts, though these conditions vary according to the employer (CTARB, 2009). The sugar sector exemplifies these inequalities (Simon, 1980). A survey conducted by Pacheco (1994), for example, found that among larger sugar enterprises (plantations over 50 ha) in Santa Cruz, 63 percent of the labor force was hired through a contratista and involved some form of enganche. Bedoya and Bedoya (2004) estimate that 63 percent of sugarcane field workers (zafreros) are subject to coerced labor contracts and that 28,000 of temporary workers (85 percent of zafreros) gain these contracts through enganche and peonaje (collective work contracts). Despite this wide range of estimates (63 percent vs. 85 percent), the trend seems to be that forced labor contracts are heavily used in recruiting temporary workers. While some workers have organized into unions to secure better working conditions, better access to education, health services, and social security, and reduced dependence on enganche, many others have been unable to do so. Thus, suggesting that the position of the temporary worker is a positive experience, as David and Tadeo do, despite the inequalities that temporary labor structures reproduce, relies on “forgetting” the limited rights available to workers and the fact that very few workers actually “make it.”
THE CAPITALIST SELF AS “APOLITICAL”
While achievement through hard work is seen as a cultural distinction that overcomes class divisions, the capitalist self defends the status quo using what it considers “apolitical” and “technical” arguments. The CAO, for example, argues that Law 3545 “politicizes” capitalist production. According to medium-sized and large producers, temporal regulation of the right to property hinders capitalist production because it fails to recognize its dynamic spatio-temporal adaptations to changes in environmental and market conditions. For the CAO, the new parameters for the verification of the function of property overlook the fact that production is determined by “unpreventable factors” such as plagues, international prices, and climatic disasters and that these shape a producer’s decision to employ land in any given year. The verification of the land’s socioeconomic function every two years without attention to the “temporalities of production” introduces the possibility that the landowner may be found “failing to produce” according to the law. While these statements could easily be deployed to hide illegal land acquisitions, loss of the right to produce is rated by medium-sized and large producers as one of the most important risks associated with the Morales administration. Thus, their concerns center on the way changes in the law and its definition of property could, in the last instance, limit their viability as producers—regardless of whether they are producing on legally acquired lands. To date, no cases of expropriation in the lowlands have taken place.
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These are the “technical” arguments at the core of the CAO’s opposition to reform. By focusing solely on the factors of production (how much land, technology, and credit are available and how these are affected by agrarian reform), the CAO obscures the sociopolitical world within which production is embedded. This is clear in its response to the inclusion of labor relations in the evaluation of socioeconomic function. The CAO sees the focus on labor relations as unnecessary—even misguided—because these relations are not fundamental to the circulation of capital. In other words, it is investment in technology, the clearing of lands appropriated (legally and illegally), and the creation of protected markets that have made Cruceño agriculture successful. Rectifying land distribution patterns and the nature of labor relations as the Morales administration is attempting to do is not conducive to Cruceño suc-cess; it is “politics.” The following quotation from one of the CAO’s officers exemplifies the structural dissonance that underpins the politics of making labor relations visible:
Now they [the government] say it is about labor. Slavery and exploitation. In the new law . . . labor irregularities can affect your property rights. You don’t have contracts, you didn’t pay bonuses, you can’t be godfather to your worker’s kids. . . . In many places, the landowner is the one that goes to the market, buys things for the workers, pays in advance. Can’t do that now. Can’t give gifts. You have to register them [workers] with the appropriate labor institutions. . . . If you don’t have them registered, with a registration card and all that, you are not fol-lowing the law; you are harming the collective. . . . And they [workers] have to go register themselves, too. . . . Workers don’t want to be registered. They don’t want to pay taxes. They want their money! . . . Before, they [INRA] checked how many cows you have. Now, an entire page of the field evaluation form is about your labor relations, how many workers you have.
This quotation suggests that a landlord-worker relationship based on com-padrazgo is alive in some agrarian enterprises in the lowlands. According to the director of the INRA, Juan Carlos Rojas, reports have surfaced suggesting that, in the easternmost portion of Santa Cruz, paternalistic relations in which landowners provide housing, food, and gifts to employees in exchange for work, loyalty, and consent to feudal-like terms of employment are leading to forced labor and permanent involuntary captivity, both of which are unconsti-tutional (Rojas, 2008). When asked about these reports, the CAO’s officer dis-missed them as exaggerations meant to feed conflict. He proceeded to justify compadrazgo as something that, by virtue of being “engrained in the social fabric of the region,” is hardly internally questioned. He played down these relations of power and stressed that their outcomes (e.g., worker welfare) were inevitable elements of the moral constitution of capitalist production. In this imaginary, the patron is a benevolent boss who knows best how to take care of his laborers—better than they can. While aware of the problematic nature of compadrazgo, he perceived it as offering the most benefits for all—workers and employers. This is a position in which status (i.e., as landlord or employer) stands for authority and for knowing better than members of other classes and the state, which translates into exploitative labor contracts that workers are not able to terminate as easily as employers do. Capitalist employers thus become “benevolent despots,” a position that is inconsistent with the view of a capital-ist self that values individual autonomy. This moral inconsistency has led not
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only to labor exploitation but to a redefinition of workers’ basic freedoms in terms of what employers and the structures that reproduce their hegemony consider most beneficial for profit generation. In this sense, taking care of the social reproduction of workers is limited to buying things for them, giving them pay advances, and providing political protection that maintains their status but not investing in its improvement. My further probing into these issues of inequality resulted in quizzical looks and inquiries about my inten-tions. Examining the “natural order” of capitalist agriculture seemed like pry-ing into the cracks and contradictions of the Cruceño agrarian self.
SECTOR UNITY: A MATTER OF “PRODUCTION, NOT POLITICS”
The CAO’s position of protecting the productive sector is closely linked to the movement for autonomy in Santa Cruz, an effort to secure the local right to administer and execute governance decisions over local resources and uphold regional and local institutions as the overseers of development (Eaton, 2007; Urenda, 2006). The CAO has assumed leadership in the movement, pub-licly articulating the Cruceño model of production with the need to establish a stronger, local government that is impervious to “state abuses.” These views highlight the shifting relationship between the state and agrarian elites. While between the 1960s and the late 1990s the state was a pivotal supporter of the hegemonic view of elite-led capitalist agriculture, the Morales administration maintains the opposite view of agrarian hegemony: agriculture is state-led and small-producer-oriented.
One of the CAO’s strategies for safeguarding hegemony is to enhance sec-tor unity by breaking down barriers between agrarian classes. Critics of autonomy rightly highlight the problematic nature of a CAO-led agrarian sec-tor (Soruco, 2008), but it would be disingenuous to ignore the discursive power of the principle of unity. Hegemony relies on the configuration of an agrarian reality in which all classes see the potential of cross-class alliances under common leadership (Gramsci, 1995 [1926]). The actions of the CAO’s leadership seem to indicate that interclass unity is in the best interest of all. They have sought to promote a common position based on protection from a central government that “lacks an understanding of the productive realities of the lowlands.” Drawing on “unity in production” and an ethic of “produc-tion, not politics,” the CAO officers, over the years, have visited communities of small producers, organized workshops, and inquired about their needs and challenges.
For example, in a board meeting with the Federación Nacional de Cooperativas Arroceras (Federation of Rice Grower Cooperatives—FENCA) in 2008, the CAO officials wanted to “know about the realities of rice produc-tion,” highlighted that they were “respectful of the ideological position of producers,” and argued that, despite differences, they were “working toward solutions for all, unlike the central government.” This may be one of the CAO’s most effective strategies for strengthening alliances across agrarian classes, as small-scale producers in the lowlands are ambivalent about their position in the clash between state and Cruceño sovereignties. As Morales emphasizes the allocation of land in favor of those who do not have it (a posi-tion greatly celebrated in the highlands), some lowlands small producers are
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fearful of the repercussions of having more individuals claiming rights in the region. Thus, they have expressed the possibility of a stronger alliance with the CAO as a way to protect their lot from new, state-sponsored immigrants.
FENCA members, however, also consider an affiliation with the CAO a liability in the current political climate of conjunctural political loyalties. The CAO’s ability to fulfill its production-oriented promises (e.g., securing technical assistance, transportation networks, and better prices for the small producer) is tied to the resources of its more dominant members, typically those who oppose the Morales administration. Thus, lobbying for small producers —the rural base of the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism—MAS), Morales’s political party, is like requesting help for those who are against the CAO’s elite. Moreover, the CAO’s attempt to strengthen its posi-tion among small producers is complicated by paternalistic relations of com-padrazgo. It is making efforts, at least on the surface, to break down class frontiers through promises of “strength in unity” and by providing infrastruc-ture and technology to all producers, large and small. In other words, it prom-ises a contract of compadrazgo with its affiliated members: it takes care of its employees/subordinates and offers security in exchange for their consent at this decisive political conjuncture. But there is no guarantee that its promises will materialize. According to members of the FENCA, the CAO’s promises to the small producer are not new; the 1990s and early 2000s were marked by moments when small producers mobilized in the name of sector unity but the CAO failed to enhance small-scale production. Small producers see that the CAO, once it secures its political goals, “forgets” about the small producer.
Paternalism also colors other ways in which the CAO attempts to broker alliances with small producers, some that seem far from “technical” argu-ments. Nowhere is this clearer than in the dynamics of power struggles among small-scale producers. The current moment of institutional change in Bolivia has highlighted divisions not only between agrarian classes but also within them—for example, between small-scale producers who support the government of Evo Morales and the MAS and those who, for various reasons, did not gain the political power they expected during the rise of the MAS. For the CAO, these internal frictions offer the possibility of strengthening its social contracts with some small producers.14 The experience of Patricio, a former leader of the Union Federation of Colonizers of Santa Cruz and one of the founders of the Landless Movement in Bolivia, is one such case.
Patricio is a union leader, originally from Cochabamba, who became an agricultural colonizer in Santa Cruz. In 2000 he met Morales, and together, along with a few other union leaders, they formed a federation that would channel the claims of all agricultural colonizers and fight against abuses per-petrated against campesinos in Bolivia. When Morales was elected president, Patricio believed that he and his followers would receive posts in the Bolivian government. Other union leaders had made bids for the positions he desired, however, and he and his followers did not become part of the new administra-tion. He retaliated by publicly accusing Morales of clientelism and withdraw-ing from the MAS. In 2006 he advocated protest against the “injustices” and “unconstitutional behavior” of the Morales administration. His repositioning earned him the label of “deserter” and had repercussions: he received death threats, his house was set on fire, and his family was threatened for attempting
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to discredit the leadership of the movement. As he and other former MAS members in Santa Cruz said, “In the countryside, you can’t talk against the MAS—it’s social suicide.” Statements such as these are indicative of the depth of the struggles against the existing hegemony and the elite represented by the CAO, of the support the Morales hegemonic project has among many small producers in the lowlands, and of the long-standing marginalization associ-ated with dispossession and labor exploitation committed by the very groups that the CAO represents. Thus this sort of intraclass violence must be under-stood in the historical context of class domination in Bolivia. Patricio’s charges against the MAS were interpreted as speaking against the rural base of the movement and its effort to put an end to a historical subaltern position. Multiple incidents of much worse violence against campesinos in Santa Cruz, perpetrated by those who defend the interests of the agrarian elites, have also been documented (Bolpress, 2005; Gustafson, 2006). Violence is not a property of the rural base but a symptom of the escalating struggle for hegemony within and between classes. Patricio’s repositioning also shows that selec-tively forgetting the inequalities generated by capitalist agriculture in pursuit of personal gain is not limited to the agrarian elites.
In this context, the CAO emerged as Patricio’s potential ally. Once when I was interviewing the CAO’s officers, Patricio appeared before them to solicit funds for an ampliado (a community assembly). Despite his extensive political leadership experience and his highly publicized accusations against Morales, he performed a submissive subjectivity accepting of the “natural order” of patron-client relations with the CAO officer. He adopted what seemed to me the script and body language of respeto, a confirmation of unequal social rela-tions (shuffling feet, downcast eyes, submissive tones) that shows “respect” for those in power and used the language of the ruego (humble request). The CAO officer also participated in the performance of class hierarchies. For all intents and purposes, he seemed willing to help. He greeted Patricio politely and listened to his request. He made telephone calls to ask if such funds were possible, telling Patricio, “Look what you have turned me into! Now I work for you, you have me gestionando (doing administrative work).” The CAO’s officer performed the role of the patron, shouldering the burden of searching for funds. Patricio was asked to come back the next day; the CAO officer was going to “pass his hat around and see what fell in.” After Patricio left, I asked the CAO officer why the CAO would go to the trouble of helping him out. He answered, “This is power. If I help him now, he owes us. If I call him and tell him to mobilize his people, he will. That is what the CAO gains.”
No funds had fallen into the hat when Patricio returned the next day. The CAO officer told him that nobody was returning his calls: “My hands are tied.” Patricio asked for the president of the CAO and even the prefect of Santa Cruz—in an effort to get to a “bigger” patron—but the officer responded that they were both out of reach. The CAO officer ended the conversation by saying that without his superior’s consent, he couldn’t release funds even if they existed. This outcome is not surprising. The CAO is not a real patron, even if it desired this status, and Patricio is not one of its employees. Yet it speaks of the asymmetrical relations that continue to reproduce the class fron-tiers of the CAO, relations that have not been overcome through the strategy of “sector unity.” On the way out of the CAO’s building, I ran into Patricio. As
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we chatted, he commented on his exchange with the CAO’s officer: “You see how they are? They have money to pay people to mobilize, to close roads, to take over institutions. But they won’t give you money. They will pay you to mobilize because they need you, but when it is about our organization, they don’t have money.” This example of failed class alliances could be read in two ways: first, as a failure of the CAO to broker sector unity (the CAO’s officer was unable to persuade its members to negotiate with Patricio—an opportu-nity for maintaining hegemony was missed) and second, as evidence that, given Patricio’s diminishing political influence, supporting his request was too risky for the CAO. For hegemony to be maintained, the right alliances—with the right political and intellectual leaders—must be pursued.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has called attention to the conditions that led to the existing order of agrarian production in the Bolivian lowlands. Class struggles over this order are expressed in the intimate spaces of social institutions, such as patron-client relations, as well as in more formal spaces of interaction, such as through agrarian law. I have focused on the responses of agrarian elites to state-directed change in the Bolivian lowlands, including examples of the positionings, arguments, and strategies pursued, to offer an interpretation of the role of agrarian elites in the production of hegemony. From the cultivation of capitalism as the desirable mechanism for creating wealth and the unques-tioned nature of agrarian classes to the encouragement of sector unity as the moral compass of capitalist agriculture, agrarian elites and their representa-tives are seeking to maintain relationships that allow them to govern the agri-cultural sector in the lowlands.
Hegemony, though precarious, is established in several ways: first, through constructions of a defense of Cruceño agriculture that focuses on the “techni-cal” arguments while obscuring the dispossession and exploitation associated with capitalist success; second, through a focus on land, capital, and markets as unquestioned “production realities” and on the way in which current reforms put these factors “at risk”; and, finally, through promises of unity in the agrarian sector, though this unity is often undermined by paternalistic relations of dependence and failed social contracts, as the natural way to face moments of crisis.
The CAO’s arguments, which represent the position of the dominant agrarian classes, are not all fictional accounts that hide true motives or con-scious lies but inseparable from the uneven social, political, and economic processes that have nurtured capitalist agriculture in the lowlands. Often, interviewees understood that change was impending, but the terms in which change is introduced and the ways in which it seeks to unglue the world of privilege, political power, and landed monopoly in the lowlands will be con-tested every step of the way as elites attempt to minimize losses.
As the examples here suggest, there are no guarantees for the dominant agrarian classes. The political economy that shaped modernization and, later, internationalization in the lowlands is part and parcel of the ways in which the Cruceño model became the proper order of production in the lowlands.
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Views of the agrarian capitalist self as the subject of agrarian history con-struct a present of the lowlands based on private and foreign actors while at the same time obscuring the pivotal role of the state in producing lowlands hegemony. The policies advocated by the Morales administration destabilize these subjectivities and the conditions that led to their condensation. As a result, the agrarian elites seem to be in a precarious situation in terms of repro-ducing hegemony precisely because the state is not supporting their position as it did during the heyday of production between the 1960s and the early 2000s.
Members of the CAO hope that the changes taking place are not structural and are taking advantage of this opportunity of political upheaval to build a regional identity that, most likely, will not lead to an alternative organization of resource governance. Supporters of the MAS are also attempting to shift agrarian hegemony in the lowlands by supporting the position of the Morales administration in the region. Thus far, however, social improvement in the lowlands remains to be seen.
NOTES
1. While dispossession and patterns of uneven development in Bolivia are widely recog-nized (Albro, 2006; Hylton, Thompson, and Gilly, 2007; Kohl and Farthing, 2006; Postero, 2007; Webber, 2008), less is known about how elites participate in these processes.
2. Compadrazgo is a fictive kinship relationship established through godparenting and used to intensify and extend existing relationships. In agrarian contexts, it involves social contracts that bind the exchange of labor or other economic and political support for social protection.
3. Nearly 42 percent of the 43,086,654 ha allocated between 1952 and 1993 were assigned during the Banzer government (Soruco, 2008). This period coincides with the development of a clandestine cocaine economy in Santa Cruz. The presence of large, unregulated expanses of land, together with uncontrolled land markets, helped many to join the growing ruling Cruceño bourgeoisie—though not necessarily to become members of an agrarian class (Gill, 1987).
4. Enganche is a labor contract in which the laborer is paid an advance and cannot terminate employment at will or seek other employment without incurring exorbitant debt.
5. Since 2007, Morales has sought to make the agrarian process more inclusive. One such effort has been the creation of the Empresa de Apoyo a la Producción de Alimentos (Enterprise for the Support of Food Production—EMAPA), a state enterprise that subsidizes small producers and offers an alternative to vertically integrated systems of commercialization dominated by larger producers. Results are mixed, however, because of the uneven application of the program and the unexpected costs of running such an enterprise.
6. Of the approximately 14,000 soy producers in the lowlands, 75 percent are considered “small” (with landholdings less than 80 ha), 23 percent “medium-sized” (80 to 500 ha), and 2 percent “large” (above 500 ha) (ANAPO, 2007). Large producers are mostly Brazilians attracted by relatively cheap land and labor, favorable investment conditions, and the promise of lucrative markets.
7. Pacheco and Ormachea (2000) point out that there are no adequate estimates of the actual number of permanent salaried workers in Santa Cruz.
8. Most of it is indigenous territories surveyed and titled with help from the European Union. 9. For a technical analysis comparing the INRA Law and Law 3545, see Guzmán et al. (2008).10. These include the Departmental Poultry Association (ADA), the National Association of
Cotton Producers (ADEPA), the Departmental Association of Hog Breeders (ADEPOR), the National Association of Soy and Wheat Producers (ANAPO), the Association of Vegetable and Fruit Growers (ASOHFRUT), the Federation of Sugarcane Growers of Santa Cruz (FCSC), the Federation of Milk Producers (FEDEPLE), the Federation of Cattle-Ranchers of Santa Cruz (FEGASACRUZ), the National Federation of Rice Grower Cooperatives (FENCA), the Association of Maize, Sorghum, and Bean Producers (PROMASOR), the Association of Rice Producers (ASPAR), the Association of Sugarcane Growers (ASOCAÑA), the Association of Sugarcane
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Producers (SOCA), the Guabirá Sugar Producers’ Union (UCG), Guabirá S.A., and Unagro S.A.11. FENCA members disapprove of the CAO’s lack of interest in the small producer. Many
members see it as overwhelmingly favoring more economically powerful partners.12. I use pseudonyms to identify interviewees who are not elected officials or public leaders.13. For example, the current president of the Asociación Nacional de Productores de
Oleaginosas y Trigo (ANAPO), which represents soy producers, is the first Andean migrant to hold a leadership position in the organization.
14. While political divisions within classes warrant a fuller explanation, here I focus solely on the role of internal class conflicts in the CAO’s strategies for hegemony.
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