MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolivia: Land reform or clash?

Bolivia risks a new popular uprising, like protests over energy that toppled two governments in recent years, if Congress does not approve the administration's land reform bill, President Evo Morales said yesterday.

The opposition, which has a slight majority in the Senate, and business leaders oppose Morales' land reform bill, which would make it easier for the state to take over lands acquired illegally or not being used, and redistribute them among poor peasants.

The lower house of Congress, where Morales' Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party has a majority, passed the legislation late on Wednesday. The Senate will debate and vote on the bill next week.

"If some members of Congress don't want to modify the (agrarian) law like they didn't want to modify the hydrocarbons law in 2003, the people will rise up to modify those norms by force, in benefit of the majority," Morales said in a news conference.

Presidents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa were forced out in 2003 and 2005, respectively, by massive street protests calling for nationalization of the country's natural gas industry. Morales won presidential elections last year after campaigning on promises to nationalize the natural gas industry, and he decreed the nationalization in May.

Bolivia had a land reform in 1953, but according to recent government and Catholic Church reports, 90 percent of arable land is in the hands of a few hundred landowners.

A group of about 1,000 indigenous people from eastern Bolivia are marching 1,000 km to the capital to show support for land reform, and several unions have announced they will join the march.

Morales, the country's first indigenous president and a former coca grower, came to political prominence as a leader of protests by farmers of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, which is also used in teas and herbal remedies.

Morales said the government would respect properties legally obtained and that were productive, regardless of their size, but said non-producing estates would revert to the state for redistribution among "those most in need."

"There will not be consensus with the landholders, the owners of large estates, that's the underlying issue and I only believe in the power of the people, because that is the engine that drives history," he said.

The MAS party has 12 votes in the Senate, two less than needed to dominate the 27-member upper house.