TIERRA Foundation: metropolisation with peasant and indigenous exclusion

According to Urioste, the other side of the story is “stagnation and decline of rural economies, the sustained de-ruralisation of the country as a result of the expansion of global agribusiness model that favors the export of agricultural raw materials as commodities.”

The authors of the UNDP report also recognize that “many of the conditions of today’s urban Bolivia have their origins in the development of rural areas, characterized by a long history of migration between regions and particularly rural-urban migrations”.

Hence it follows “the importance of addressing rural development policies, interventions focused on decelerating urbanization and the consolidation of the process of land redistribution, among others, in order to achieve a balanced development throughout the national territory”.

The countryside issue in Bolivia

There is nowadays a new rurality in Bolivia, characterized by being ageing and feminized, indigenous and mestizo, multi-active and seasonal, marginal and of low-productivity.  To understand it, says Urioste, it is necessary to trace the causes and origins of de-ruralisation.

 “The increasing expulsion from the countryside to the cities caused by the stagnation of productivity and agricultural production of peasant origin, land fragmentation (and the resulting irreversible impacts on the environment), the absence of incentives, but above all macroeconomic conditions that make food production profitable and attractive” are among the main causes and origins of de-ruralisation, explians the researcher.

These factors force farmers and indigenous to develop survival strategies “based on agricultural and non-agricultural multi-employment, on part-time agriculture, on self-exploitation of family labor especially of women, and the temporary or permanent multi-residence (as one who lives in the city but retains ownership of their lands) which leads to a marginal land use”.

According to Urioste, a historical "anti-peasant state" with the resulting abandonment of the countryside has existed in Bolivia: “a lack of proactive public policies for sustainable rural development after the land-distribution following the far-reaching 1953 agrarian reform;farmers abandoned to their fate since the monetary stabilization of 1985 (21060 Supreme Decree) which– to date – turns the Bolivian economy into one of the most open to imports; peasants abandoned to their fate amid strong currency devaluations in neighboring countries making it impossible to compete with contraband and the much lower prices of foreign products”.

However, in the last decade there have been significant efforts to improve material conditions in the countryside: expansion of irrigation coverage, rural feeder roads, almost universal access to electricity, gas in cylinders, precarious water systems for human consumption, minibus and public transportation rather than traditional trucks, etc. Although these achievements are still well below the producers’ needs.

Challenges, contradictions, setbacks

While there is a constitutional and legal recognition, the implementation of Indigenous Peasant Native Autonomies (AIOC, for its acronym in Spanish) is delayed, and “up until now there are very few experiences that are barely able to overcome the obstacles in the Framework Law of Autonomy”, warns the TIERRA Foundation researcher.

In addition, the surplus of coca leaf cultivation, and the production, consumption and trafficking of drugs appear to be closely related and “corrodes our human values, degrade our social behaviorand de-structure our economy, especially that of family food producers”.

Furthermore, while land restructuring is already virtually completed in the lands of the large Eastern and Amazonia companies, this is not the case with the lands of the peasants from the Andes.

Metropolisation with exclusions

As metropolis are growing rapidly and disorderly, so too does the food imports; urban and rural diets increasingly consists of junk food; concentration of land and foreign ownership increases in the east; agribusiness is shown by the capitalists and the authorities as the model to follow.

Urioste deplores “the use of transgenic and agrochemicals is being promoted directly from the official summits, the State proclamations that land reform has concluded, the squandering of huge sums of money made available on unnecessary nuclear power plants, that leaders of peasant organizations are being co-opted by the enjoyment of power, that legitimate grassroots organizations are being persecuted and disrupted, the irrigation programs, drinking water and local roads hold a narrow margin of the national budget”.

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La metropolización se da con exclusión campesina e indígena