Evening star., 1961-09-19
FALCONS NEW SQUIRE FOR 1862
SOUTH AMERICAS PLIGHT
Social Injustice Stirs
Bitterness, Clashes

Bitternes:
BY EDWARD M. KENNEDY
North American Newspaper Alliance
BOSTON, Sept. 19.-It is diff
ficult to talk about democrac!
to a Latin-American peasant
who is wondering whether HI
will go to bed hungry tonight.
In the elemental logic o.
hunger and desperation, bullets
are faster than ballots.
why talk of laws?" asked
a peasant in Colombia where
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Third Of q Seriesl
81 incidents of violence hac
been reported in the country
side since the beginning of the
year There are many land
reform laws in Latin America
But where is there any real
land reform?"
What good are promises?'
asked a Peruvian peasant
The landowners break them
and the government kills you
if you complain"
Case of Crop Seizure
He was referring to an in
cident of a local farm known
as the Hacienda Huorpra where
three peasants we're shot and
killed, four wounded, and sew
eral others herded into custody
charged with having been in
volved in a peasant attack on
an army outpost. I investi-
gated the facts and found them
to be shockingly different:
The hacienda was a 1,400-
acre estate leased for an an
nual sum equivalent in Ameri-
can money to $3.50. This en-
titled the leaseholder to the
use of the land and to the
labor, four days each week, of
the go peasant families who,
in return, were allowed to
sharecrop certain small parcels
Unable to scratch a living from
the poor soil on their land, the
peasants-240 men, women and
children-aSked permission to
plant corn on an unused area,
The leaSeholder. agreed, but
when the corn was grown, the
landowner entered with armed
guards, seized the crop and
those who protested were killed,
wounded or imprisoned.
Land Price Raised
More subtle, but equally
frustrating, has been the dis
heartening experience of peas
ants in many projects that
began as adventures in social
reform and ended with the
accent on dollars rather than
sense:
For example, through the
combined efforts of Cornell
University and the Peruvian
government, a group of peas
ants co-operated in the So
called Vicos Project in the
valley of the Callejon de Huay-
las. Through scientific planting
and breeding combined with
intelligent soil conservation and
anti = erosion techniques, the
entire area was greatly i'm
proved and the peasants care
fully saved their extra profits
to meet the 1857 estimate of
the ultimate cost of the land
100000 pesos. But in 1860, a
government agency told the
peasants the land would cost
7 million peSoS-a sum hope
lessly beyond their reach.
The same problems, fruStra-
ton, and distrust that have
aroused peasants in Columbia
and Peru exist, in greater or
less degree, in most parts of
Latin America. In northeastern
Brazil, for example, Francesca
Juliao has formed the powerful
Peasant League which may
emerge as one of the dominant
political forces in that country.
The purpose of the peasant
league is to achieve ownership
of land for the members. This
would appear to be the exact
opposite of communism, and
yet many in Latin America in
siSt that Juliao is a dangerous
opportunist financed, at least
in part, by the Communists
Others fear Juliao may use his
faithful peasants as the instru-
ments of a new dictatorship
along the lines of the Peron
adventure in Argentina.
Rank and File Opinion
l talked with members of the
Peasant League and came away
with the impression that any
sinister motives on the part of
the leaders-if there are any
are not shared by the rank and
file. l asked one what he
thought of the agrarian re-
form program in Cuba. He
answered:
1T is no better than what
we now have. 1t is communal
land. When I own my own
land I can make four or five
times as much as working on
hacienda no matter what
they call a hacienda"
Student Movement a Factor
AS the peasants go, it is
confidently predicted by many
Latin American experts, 81
Latin America will go. Some