The 34th Anniversary Celebration March, Thursday March 6th.

34 Years of Agrarian Reform: A New Path Forward

On Thursday, May 6th, the MPR-12 member organization The Confederation of Federations of the Salvadoran Agrarian Reform (CONFRAS), celebrated 34 years since the first agrarian reform was approved and implemented in El Salvador. The following is a press release breifly detailing the history of the agrarian reform, the challenges that the Salvadoran agricultural cooperatives have had to overcome, and their vision for a future of environmental, economic, sociocultural, and political progress in El Salvador. 

 

At 34 years old, the agrarian reform survives because we, this union of cooperatives, defend it.

34 years ago, on March 6, 1980, the “Revolutionary Government” applied Decree 154, in what is known as the First Phase of Land Reform. That day, 329 properties larger than 500 hectares (350 acres) were appropriated.Phase I expropriated 207, 853 hectares (144,130 acres) of surplus land, which were then transferred to 31,250 landless rural families.

 

The first obstacles to land reform:

The Second Phase of Land Reform would have gone even further, as it was designed to expropriate surplus properties larger than 250 acres in land quality “A” and 375 acres in land quality “B” and “C”. This second phase was not implemented because the more progressive elements of the First Government Junta were purged. In the same maneuvering of the far right, 18 days after the land transfer, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the main ally of the peasant class, was killed. In November of that same year, Enrique Álvarez Córdova, who was Minister of Agriculture and the promoter of Agrarian Reform, was also killed.

What came next was the application of Decree 207 on April 28, 1980, in the National Bank for Agricultural Land ( FINATA ) was established for the purchase of plots that were assigned to 37,900 peasant families who were renting. With Decree 207, 238,730 acres were purchased.

 

The Second Blow to the Agrarian Reform

The agrarian reform process stalled when ARENA won the majority of seats in the Legislative and municipal elections of March 1982. Those elections were to elect a Constitutional Assembly, which drafted a new constitution that is still in use today. This Magna Carta, which was ratified December 20, 1983, expanded the property limit for landowners to 421 acres. A surplus of these 421 acres, as explained in Article 105 of the Constitution, were to be expropriated and transferred in the first three years of operation of the Constitution. ARENA prevented this law from being enforced, even though it was also part of the Peace Accords that were signed on January 16, 1992.

 

ARENA’s Agrarian Counter-Reform

Between 1989 and 2009, agricultural cooperatives suffered the ruthless policy of dismantling the production and destruction of their social organization units. This 20-year period of agrarian counter reform, of anti-cooperativism, in which even the concept of agrarian reform was forgotten language and the word was almost banned in official documents. Cooperatives that are still around today survive because of the development of consciousness amongst and by the members.

In April 1991 a massive allotment campaign began through Decree 747. Along with the allotment, the incumbent government privatized the national bank, with small cooperatives and individual producers considered ineligible for credit and, in addition, interest rates rose along with the increasing production costs. At the same time, the government closed the Institute for Supplies Control (IRA), where farmers could sell their products with guaranteed prices. All this was accompanied by the removal of price controls on imports, reducing tariffs on imported agricultural products and the virtual disappearance of CENTA, The National Center for Agricultural and Forestry Technology.

During the government of Armando Calderón Sol, in 1998, and after a long struggle by cooperatives, 85% of the agricultural- bank debt was canceled. But a decree liberalizing the land market of cooperatives, Decree 719, was approved, and since then many cooperatives have disappeared.

During the government of Francisco Flores, agricultural cooperatives were cornered and forced by the ISTA, The Salvadoran Institute for Agricultural Transformation, to sell or return land to pay down debt.  Many cooperatives collapsed and the rest were completely abandoned by the government. Hatred of the peasantry was such that, in April 2001, powerful businessmen and ARENA activists stole a shipment of 11,000 pounds of fertilizer donated by Japan to be delivered to small farmers affected by the earthquakes. The big bet of Flores was accelerated FTA negotiations with the United States, even forsook the agricultural sector. With Antonio Saca, the situation continued much the same.

 

A new stage

Since June 2009, beneficiaries of cooperatives born of the agrarian reform have felt a great relief from ARENAs destructive pressure. They have been able to work more freely and in better conditions with the agricultural and livestock programs funded by the new government.

In this new stage, we were even able to win an ideological battle against the right. On January 31 2013, the Legislative Assembly’s Decree 289 declared March 6 as the “National Day of Agrarian Reform,” and was announced in the Official Gazette on February 22, 2013.

After 34 years of implementation, agrarian reform requires new policies to continue its recovery and we hope that the next FMLN government deepens its land productivity and distribution reforms.

We have proposed that when the new government takes office on June 1, they resume the agrarian reform process with a more comprehensive view focusing on building food sovereignty. This new comprehensiveness must be founded on 5 pillars:

• Associative or cooperative production, with agro-ecological and agro-industrial technologies.

• Democratic organization, in which power dynamics are conscious of and geared towards gender equality and the effective participation of young people.

• The education and training of cooperative leadership to be involved in production, management and union processes, and the strategic management of the organization.

• Organizational and economic sustainability, in time and cooperative space.

• The construction of popular power, to impulse a new economic, social, political and cultural model, replacing the old system that reproduces rampant individual gain.

 

San Salvador, March 6, 2014

 

 

 

A cooperative member at the anniversary march.
A cooperative member at the anniversary march.
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