Agrarian Reform director describes distribution of land in Nicaragua

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The following is an interview with Rafael Guerrero, national director of social organization of production of the Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA). The interview was conducted in Managua by Jeff Mackler on Nov. 4, 1986.

Socialist Action: What has hap -pened in Nicaragua since the new land reform decree in January 1986 in terms of the distribution of the land?

Rafael Guerrero: In mid-1985, the FSLN decided that in order to strengthen the workers' and peasants' alliance more land should be made available to the poor peasants without land and to those who have been displaced by the U.S. aggression.

From January to the present, 15,741 new peasant families received 573,750 acres of land. This represents the highest number of titles distributed in any year since 1981.

Of this total, 5900 families opted for individual titles to the land. The remaining beneficiaries organized themselves in var -ious forms of cooperative production, but not necessarily those forms promoted by the state.

This land was distributed to respond to the increased mobilizations for the land by the peasants.

S.A.: What form did zations take?

Guerrero: They took diverse forms. Usually, they were organized by the peasant organizations like the UNAG [National Union of Farmers and Ranchers].

But in some cases the peasants took over farms that were not subject to the agrarian reform program. They didn't follow the institutional mechanisms and instead just simply went ahead and took over the land.

S.A.: What is the response of the government when the peasants take over this land?

Guerrero: What we do is go and talk to the peasants and explain to them that the land that they have just taken over is not subject to confiscation as established by the reform law.

S.A.: Do the peasants usually agree. Does the conflict end there?

Guerrero: Normally it doesn't end there. At that point we have three choices: (1) Locate a nearby farm that can be assigned to the peasant families; (2) negotiate with the owner of the land for its purchase; or (3) see what possibility there is to reassign nearby state farms to the peasants. 10 SOCIALIST ACTION S.A.: Do you have any figures for the percentage of land distributed in 1986 that came from the state and private sectors?

Guerrero: Forty-six percent was taken from private producers who have been disinterested in the revolutionary process and have kept the land idle or unproductive. Forty-one percent of the distributed land was taken from the state sector.

Land that was negotiated and bought from the private owners and in turn given to the peasants amounted to 4 percent. This was the primary procedure used in 1984 and 1985 to respond to the demand for the land by those peasants displaced by the war.

At the same time, we distributed a small percentage of the land assigned to the cooperatives and turned it over to the landless peasants. These are cooperatives where there were too few families to work the land and where much of the land was underutilized. This contribution amounted to 3 percent.

S.A.: What happens to the state farms after land is taken away from them?

Guerrero: We are in the process of making the state farms more compact and efficient. Much of the state land is dispersed throughout the country, which makes the management of these units difficult and irrational.

So we are disbanding those state farms which the state is no longer able to administer due to the high production costs and countless other problems. These lands are reassigned.

S.A.: Have significant numbers of agricultural workers who worked on the state land lost their jobs?

Guerrero: No. The agricultural workers, organized in the ATC [Rural BOYCOTT ›ECEMBER 1986 Workers Association], are incorporated into other productive tasks on the same state farms. In other cases—usually the remote state farms-we have a situation where there aren't enough workers to make the farms run productively. So we transfer ATC members from the disbanded state farms to other units where their labor is needed.

We are consolidating the state farms into fewer and more efficient units without having to lose jobs.

S.A.: One of the features of the new 1986 agrarian reform law was that for the first time it allowed for the distribution of productive lands from the private sector. Was this modification due to the significant pressure for land by the peasants?

Guerrero: Let me clarify this measure. The spirit of the agrarian reform law is not to take the land away from the productive private sector. Our overall policy is to confiscate potentially productive lands that have been left idle or underutilized by unresponsive private producers.

The new January 1986 modifications to the law now give us the legal right to confiscate efficiently cultivated private lands. But only in extremely exceptional cases—in order to respond to the pressure for land—will we confiscate these lands.

The pressure for the land is a big problem. From 1981 to 1986, the agrarian reform program distributed 1.87 million acres to 60,272 families. But we estimate that there are still approximately 64,000 families who are waiting to receive land.

The deep economic crisis in Nicaragua is primarily hitting the salaried workers. This has meant an unexpected demand for land on the part of the agricultural workers of BOSTON SOCIALIST ACTION the private and state farms, who want to cultivate their own private plots.

S.A.: Does this include the workers in the industrial sector?

Guerrero: There are also some workers in the urban centers who have looked to the land as a way out of the drastic economic situation they face.

S.A.: How do you plan to go about distributing the land to the remaining 64,000 families?

Guerrero: Our goal is to benefit 15,000 families annually, using a flexible approach of land redistribution.

Thanks to our armed forces, we have recovered lands in the war zones that are now available for distribution.

In addition, there are cooperatives that have a lot of underutilized land. The idea is to convince or persuade the cooperative members to incorporate more members to work the land.

This measure is also necessary to fend off criticisms from certain opposition parties here in Nicaragua who say that land of the big private producers is being taken away and made available to the cooperatives, which are also not producing efficiently.

Another way to meet the needs of the landless families is to take more land away from the state farms. There are still more lands that can be given up by the state farms in the current process of con -solidation and reorganization.

But we are becoming more careful now about dismembering the state farms because we could come to the point of just simply doing away with the state farms altogether.

Our last alternative is to take more land from the private producers. We have decided this ranking of priorities because if all we did was just take the land from the large private landowners, this could lead to greater political tensions in the country that would erode the revolution.

S.A.: Do you have the 1986 figures on the distribution of cultivable land in Nicaragua?

Guerrero: Yes. The percentages are as follows:

• The large private producers (over 345 acres) represent 22 percent.

• The medium private producers (between 85 and 345 acres) represent 30 percent.

• The small private producers (less than 85 acres) represent 9 percent.

• The cooperatives represent 21 percent.

• The state farms represent 13 percent.

• And the war zones represent 5 percent.

S.A.: Is there any evidence that the peasants who do not have the land are turning against the government or are more receptive to the contras?

Guerrero: No, quite the contrary. Our evaluation of the land distribution this year is that our alliance with the peasantry has been strengthened. More peasants are participating in the defense efforts of the revolution. The peasant organizations have also grown in size and influence. And there is an increase in the political participation of the peasantry in the various committees on a local and district level.

S.A.: Concerning the private sector: Isn't there a danger that with its significant economic power the capitalist sector will strengthen and regenerate itself and attempt to express the political power it once had? What limitations has the state put on the right of the capitalists to produce and make a profit?

Guerrero: The state has confiscated the land that was deficiently culivated by the private producers and has also taken control over the distribution of agricultural pro -duction.

Foreign trade is controlled entirely by the state. The financial system is in the hands of the state. The private sector used to control these key sectors of the economy.

For us, what is decisive is not who owns the land. What is decisive is the control of the services and inputs for production and the key links in the commercialization and distribution of production.

So even if we still have a mixed economy—with medium and large private producers-this model of organization will ensure that everyone is producing for the revolution. This is what will keep the private producers in check.

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