Reforming The Agrarian Reform In Bolivia

After a successful land reform started in 1953 that massively and peacefully redistributed land to peasant fanners, at present Bolivia faces a very unequal agrarian structure again. Land reconcentration and tenure insecurity in the country's lowlands are the result of distortionary land allocation practices based on an Agrarian Reform Law not designed for a land settlement process. The reforms of 1993-97 address the challenges of equity, tenure security, and recognition of land rights of lowland indigenous peoples. Rather than adopting a strictly land market liberalization reform, as many Latin American countries have done recently, Bolivia has implemented a reform with multiple components: a re-definition of the socio-economic function of land, creation of a special indigenous peoples tenure regime, modification of fiscal land allocation rules, initiation of a ten-year land regularization process, and creation of a new conflict resolution framework. Although the Bolivian agrarian reforms will not have a major impact in reducing rural poverty, they will promote a more equitable and efficient land tenure structure in two ways. First, the October 1996 INRA Law explicitly recognizes the preferential access to fiscal lands by indigenous groups. And second, as tenure security increases over time and large landholders start paying the land tax, rural land markets will become more dynamic and transparent. This will stimulate a more efficient tenure structure based on small and medium farms. Eventually, the reforms may need to be consolidated by modifying the Law to allow greater flexibility in changing tenure regimes and by strengthening the cadastre, registry, and municipal institutional frameworks of land administration.