Global Hermeneutics? - International Voices in Biblical Studies ...

28 GLOBAL HERMENEUTICS?
the root of this rural poverty is landlessness. But today land reform is too often
viewed as an atavistic throwback to the “immature” times of revolution and social
struggle. Now, it is argued, land tenure is best assured and shaped by markets and
modernisation for export. Yet these policies of the last twenty or so years hardly
have solved the problem of social injustice and just land tenure; rather they have
exacerbated them, often causing severe and violent conflicts. Nevertheless, if the
struggle for land reform is muted in comparison to previous years, land continues to
be a serious problem for Latin America’s peasant farmers and indigenous peoples. 15
According to the Organisation of American States (OAS):
Latin America has the greatest inequality in land tenure compared to the other
regions of the world. In the 70s and 80s...it was possible to find countries where
only 6 percent of the population had control of the land while 94 percent was
landless. In the same period at least 85 percent of the countries [showed] 60
percent (at times 70 percent as in Argentina and Brazil) of the population without
secure access to land. 16
Continuing, the OAS explains:
The pattern of land tenure in Latin America and the Caribbean shows that the
majority of the cultivable land is in the hands of a landowning elite and the State as
unproductive latifundium [large estates] while peasants and small farmers that
practice subsistence agriculture are concentrated in minifundium [micro estates]
and marginal land. 17
Furthermore indigenous people are especially affected because of the fortythree
million of them, “approximately ninety percent depend on the land and
natural resources for their subsistence.” Yet their territories are insecure and often
remain undefined legally.
The consequence of such unjust land tenure is evident: “Without access to land
and the conditions that permit tenure security, landless peasants and poor rural
communities will not have the possibility of bettering their means of subsistence”,
the OAS correctly explains. 18
This situation gave rise to the church’s concern for land as a justice issue in the
1970s (greatly inspired by the establishment of the Pastoral Land Commission of
the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil in 1975 with the purpose “to face the latent
15
M. D. Martins, El Banco Mundial y la tierra, ofensiva y resisrtencia en América
Latina, Afrina y Asia. (San José: DEI, 2005).
16
Organization of American States, “Tenencia de la Tierra: Compartiendo información
y experiencias para la sostenibilidad”. Serie de política 10 (abril 2006).
www.oas.org/dsd/policy_series/10_spa.pdf
17
Ibid.
18 Ibid.