MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Landless peasants with 80 families occupy and take over farm in north of Uruguay
The landless peasants’ movement has reached Uruguay: the self called “shaggy” ones with eighty families, have taken over a 400 hectares farm in the extreme north of the country Artigas, and have been occupying the land since. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesWell, this certainly makes me want to rethink my plans to move to Uruguay. If one cannot be confident in ones title to his/her property, it cannot be a secure place to live. It will certainly lead to conflict.
Jan 17th, 2012 - 01:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0If you hold land as an asset you should loses.If you hold land as a production factor,you won't lose it in Uruquay.And that is a plus in a democracy.
Jan 17th, 2012 - 02:39 pm - Link - Report abuse 0A plus in democracy, my rear end! If I legally own a piece of land, it is mine to do with as I please, including “nothing”. if a country cannot or will not guarantee a man or woman's right to own and hold land, then it is not a “free country”. If the government gives a man the right to steal another man's property, simply because you don't think I'm putting that land to good use, as you might define it, then there is nothing to stop you from taking anything you may want. All you have to do is “rationalize” a good reason.
Jan 17th, 2012 - 03:22 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It's a national resource,as it was in UK in 1940/45.If its your land can you grow poppies if you want.No
Jan 17th, 2012 - 09:13 pm - Link - Report abuse 0No, but I should have the right to simply use it to ride my horse and enjoy the view or for a vacation spot. No one should have to right to steal my property, simply because I'm not growing something on it. That is theft, at the point of a gun. If this persists, I doubt Uruguay will have any possibility of attracting any investment.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 12:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0You would obviously have a small area to horse ride,but you should not be allowed to tie up a resource of production just because you personally are wealthy.That attitude is anti-social and you make your self sound like a traditional landowner which hopefully is a dying breed.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 10:54 am - Link - Report abuse 0And, your attitude is socilist/marxist. No thanks! There are places in this where a man actually has rights and is protected from thieves. Land, unless owned by the state, IS NOT A NATIONAL RESOURCE. It is a resource that is owned by someone and they have the right to use it in any way they choose, so long as that use does not cause harm to their neighbor... like burning sugar cane fields and having the soot float into my house or damage my crops, or raise pigs in a way that I am not polluted by them.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 01:35 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You, sir, advocate nothing more than theft and try to justify it as for the greater good. That can only result in totalitarianism. Eventually, even those like you, will end up with no rights. If that attitude prevails, Uruguay will rot in its own garden, because no one in the world will desire to do business with a country willingly ignores and denies the rights included in your constitution. Eventually, your philosophy will degenerate into others having the right to “appropriate” any of a mans property, cars, trucks, tractors, horse, whatever, just because you think they are not putting it to good use.
Appropriation of another mans property, without just compensation is theft, plain and simple. You can dress it up all you want, but it is theft.
I am in favor of strong property rights, but the issue is not as simple as laceja makes it out to be.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 03:44 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The issue in Uruguay is that when large tracts of land go unused, it can have a serious impact on the people and the nation because it is such a small country. Additionally, since few Uruguayans lack the financial resources to buy property, their is often no “local” interest involved. The land rush of a few years ago saw a lot of property purchased by Argentineans and Brazilians looking for a safe haven for their money.
Many of these foreigners have no interest in developing or maintaining their property. So the GDP drops and people who are already poor are now out of work. The Uruguayan government has instituted a “no use” tax on properties above a certain size to make this distasteful to foreign buyers, and the workers in this story are engaged in a kind of protest that is relatively common in South America.
I would add that there are no true property rights in many countries. For example, in the United States, if you don't pay your property taxes, you will lose your property, and furthermore the use of imminent domain in the U.S. is far more prevalent (and belligerent) than in Uruguay.
This is a difficult issue where the rights of the property owner, the people, and the interest of the country as a whole must somehow be balanced.
Unfortunately people use law as a neutral matter.If the law says “x”,so be it,they think.8# your post is excellent.What other need to think about,is when they use law to justify their actions as correct,they will need to answer a question.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 05:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Many people in the world have occupied some land since before capitalist and colonialist laws existed.Some still occupy this land but without capitalist title deeds(many in USA & Canada),but the question.whose land is it?
If the government fails to establish property rights that protect the owner and “the people”, then the voters have the option to vote a change that is equitable for everyone. One cannot simply say, “I'm going to squat on your land, because you don't use it the way I think you should”.
Jan 18th, 2012 - 10:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I understand the impact that buying up large tracts of land might have on a country. But, there are alternatives to simply taking over another man's property. The owner must be compensated, appropriately, for using his/her land. One cannot justify the thievery, just because some countries, like the US, allow it. It already sounds to me like the government of Uruguay is taking reasonable action to “encourage” owners to make some productive use of their land, through the “no use tax”, as chewhat mentioned. But, for one man to simply decide it is okay to steal another man's property is wrong. Besides, it is obvious this is being done, just because some people, the “Shaggies”, think they can take something,when no one is looking. It is still theft. If you want to use that land, you must compensate the owner. Just because the owner may be rich is not justification to take his/her property.
Sounds to me more like some folks think they can just take something for nothing. It's still theft!
Laceja,you didn't address the neutrality of the law point.
Jan 19th, 2012 - 01:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0But you are insisting on ownership/wealth as being the defining point.That is a totally selfish position.It is your justification for doing whatever you please with the land.If it unused(or even underused),then it is being held as an investment.You are happy for others to be dispossessed while the owner gets richer doing nothing.You are entitled to have that position but it is not socialist or Marxist to not agree with it,and you need to justify it morally,ethically, ect not just with a capitalist legal order
Yuleno, obviously, you simply think, if you are poor, someone else has the responsibility to provide for you. If you live in a country, where you are allowed to appropriate the property of someone else, without compensation, then you are a thief. I would not want to live in a country, where this is condoned. You should move to the USA... Mr. Obama is attempting to convert the US into exactly the kind of country, where you would want to live.
Jan 19th, 2012 - 04:44 pm - Link - Report abuse 0No laceja,I don't think you can do illegal acts because you are poor.I don't think you can do as you please just because your wealthy.When I buy something,I buy its use value,not it's use as an investment.
Jan 19th, 2012 - 11:35 pm - Link - Report abuse 0One of the problems of a capitalist system,is that money is used as a commodity in itself.Hence we have finance capitalism.How does this practise benefit society.
Yuleno, you need a lesson in economics. What you're talking about is not capitalism. What you are talking about is the endless money printing by the private banks, that call themselves “central banks”. They are private banks, who print the people's money and loan it back to them at interest. That is why you have a disappearing “middle class”. That is why poor people remain poor and cannot afford to ever buy their own land on which to live. It is not the rich people, who are imposing a poor life on others. The rich, who are not bankers, earn their wealth, through their labor. Just because someone is fortunate enough to have been in the right place at the right time to become wealthy, doesn't give anyone the right to look at them, sitting on their veranda, doing nothing, and say, I have the right to take what is his, because he is not making “proper” use of his possessions. It is not one man's responsibility to provide a job for another. If you want to use that rich man's property to make a living for yourself, then you have responsibility to compensate the owner, for the use of his property.
Jan 20th, 2012 - 12:39 am - Link - Report abuse 0Next time you visit your bank, just look around. You think they “earned” enough money to build that fine building by paying the depositors 1% on their deposits and loaning it out at 15-20% interest. That would be impossible. Every time a bank makes a loan, they count that loan as an “asset” and they loan out that same money to someone else... they print the money, by entering numbers into their computer. That is what causes people to become more poor every day. It is not the fault of that rich man, sitting on his veranda.
Eighty homeless families are so preoccupied with the struggle of daily living that they have very little opportunity to contribute to the prosperity of Uruguayan civilization. Sure, surmounting all barriers, it is possible that Earth's next Picasso or Einstein will be born among these formerly homeless families and bring uncountable wealth and pride to Uruguayan culture. Being more realistic, eighty formerly homeless families now placed in a productive agricultural environment will produce enough to support themselves and then live the dream of education for the children.
Jan 20th, 2012 - 02:10 am - Link - Report abuse 0The educated children will have smaller families and add to the cultural vitality of Uruguay instead of being zeros, or negative. Investment in their education, sanitation, water and health will profit Uruguay immensely. A positive feed-back loop develops in this scenario and nature begins to heal and provide increased bounty. Uruguay becomes a rich nation by providing peace and justice to every citizen.
This outlines the economy of tomorrow and it will happen despite resistance because the cosmos is on the side of shelter, health, prosperity and happiness for the bloom of human spirit that is as valid as the bloom of any flower anywhere on Earth. Vivir bien.
Well, I know of at least one guy, who won't be risking any investment into Uruguay.
Jan 20th, 2012 - 02:19 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Chao!
15# I'm glad you see things the way you do .Unfortunately other people don't see things the same way.They express it as they are poor and landless because they are lazy rather than dispossessed by others would think they are protected in there immoral behaviour by a system of law that protects the strong
Jan 20th, 2012 - 06:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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