Che Guevara and the Peaceful Revolution
I read an article on cnn.com about Bolivia’s land redistribution plan. The president, Evo Morales, who is of indigenous decent, helped pass a plan to give land back to native Bolivians (the article refers to them as “indians�). This would take land away from wealthy landowners of European decent. The article says that the land parcel could be about the size of Nebraska.
The article refers to the land as “unproductive.� The article didn’t mention what makes land productive or unproductive. If the land is unusable for agricultural reasons then this act could be meaningless. If the idea is that people can make ranches on this land that would be a very expensive prospect. Though “unproductive� could just refer to land that is not currently being allocated to agricultural means at this time.
When reading this article I couldn’t help but think of Che Guevara. He wanted indigenous people to be able to work the land without working as day laborers on other people’s land. Where he thought a revolution was necessary Morales chose a more stable political path. I think it’s ironic that this happened in the country in which Guevara died. I don’t know much about Guevara but this seems to be a very bold, arguably Marxist, move for Bolivia.
The irony of this information is that I didn’t find it on the front page of cnn.com. Granted it could have been front page yesterday, when I didn’t read the website but it’s becoming increasingly harder to find information about Latin America through regular news sources. I don’t know why that is but a huge story like this would seem to naturally gain international attention.
Read this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/11/29/bolivia.land.ap/index.html