Bolivia’s indigenous women continue struggle for land

Bolivia’s indigenous women continue struggle for land

By Sara Shahriari, Today correspondent

Story Published: Apr 6, 2010

Sandra Fernandez is a Quechua Indian from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Her grandparents raised corn and flowers, but like many other families here, the family grew and the land didn’t suffice to support them all. Fernandez is 40, a single mother of four; she has left her children behind and come to Bolivia’s jungle frontier in search of land.

Land is a hot commodity in impoverished agrarian Bolivia, where much of the country’s 60 percent indigenous population lives by farming small parcels.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, the country’s first Indian leader, was re-elected to a second term in December 2009. Morales makes land redistribution and titling a cornerstone of his presidency. The majority of the country’s land has long been owned by a powerful non-indigenous fraction of the population, whose holdings are concentrated in the country’s fertile eastern lowlands. Morales’ government is now giving government-owned and unused land to poor and landless people, like Fernandez, in an attempt to combat this monopolization of Bolivian soil.

The search for a parcel of those available acres she can call her own brought Fernandez to a camp in the jungle, where she lives with dozens of men and only two other women, trying to formalize their claim to land they’ve been offered. The people here are mostly Quechua or Aymara Indian farmers who either don’t own the land they work or whose parcels aren’t big enough to support them.

“I decided to fight for my living, for my land, and the opportunity to have my micro-business,” Fernandez said. “I want to dedicate myself to cultivating plants or raising animals.”

When groups of settlers go out to claim land, the government instructs only the head of each family to go. Normally, the one who sets out is the man, but when there are single women, children must be left with friends or relatives while she claims her land and builds a house.

Despite the small number of women in this camp, women’s land prospects are slowly improving in Bolivia. The Morales government, first elected in 2006, has made it a priority to put women’s names on titles. But progress comes slowly. From 1997 – 2008, 47 percent of titles granted to individuals have been in the name of a man only, while 20 percent were in a woman’s name. The remaining titles went to a man and a woman.

La Coordinadora de la Mujer is a non-governmental organization based in La Paz that works with women to improve their knowledge about land rights. Pilar Uriona, director of investigative programs at La Coordinadora, said discriminatory laws as well as cultural values among Bolivians have contributed to a radical imbalance between the number of men and women who hold land titles.

For example, until 1996 widows were the only women allowed to inherit land, which left most rural indigenous women vulnerable to destitution if the male title-holder decided not to share land access. Additionally, in many highland indigenous communities land ownership is a person’s power base, placing women at a disadvantage when it comes to making decisions within the community.

Even with a wave of government support of women’s right to land ownership, challenges persist. “The principal problem with getting a title is that many women don’t have an identity card,” Uriona said. “To have a card, you need money. Only the national police give the card, and that means you have to travel.” Though it may cost only $15 for a woman to travel to a region’s capital and obtain a card, in a country where many families in the country earn $100 a month, that is a daunting amount.

While Morales’ party, Movement Toward Socialism, vows to continue prioritizing women’s land rights, it is difficult to tell how these ideas are playing out. That’s because the vast majority of land titled in the past 13 years, nearly 44 million acres, has been titled collectively instead of individually. These collective titles often go to indigenous communities, which under Bolivia’s 2009 constitution gained extensive rights to self-government.

How these independent communities will develop their own legal systems, and how these systems will mesh with the federal system remains to be developed. What this means for women also remains to be seen. Very little information exists on how women’s property rights are being promoted within the diverse indigenous communities across Bolivia.

Esteban Sanjines directs programs in the Fundación TIERRA Regional Altiplano, an NGO that deals with land reform and use in Bolivia. To Sanjines, Bolivia is in the midst of a process of change with uncertain outcomes. While great tracts of land are now legally squared away, the legal processes that will govern the people on that land remain in doubt. “The Constitution has generated concepts that lead to better prospects for indigenous people and for women. The challenge now is how these ideas are going to function.”