Agrarian Reform and the Class Struggle in Chile

Agrarian Reform and the Class Struggle in ChileAuthor(s): Cristóbal KayReviewed work(s):Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 3, Peasants, Capital Accumulation and RuralUnderdevelopment (Summer, 1978), pp. 117-142Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2633144 .Accessed: 22/04/2012 18:56

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AGRARIAN REFORM AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN CHILE

by Crist6bal Kay*

It is my intention in this article to bring forward and analyze the main discussion points raised in the literature on the Chilean agrarian reform. I think that the Chilean case provides many relevant issues which are of general interest to students of agrarian reforms in Latin America.

The Christian Democrat government (1964-1970) introduced the land reform legislation in order to modernize and consolidate the capitalist mode of production. The Unidad Popular (UP) government (1970-1973) attempted to use that same legislation to destroy the capitalist relations as a first step towards the transition to socialism. Thus the Chilean case represents problems of reformist as well as radical types of agrarian reforms and even provides a good case study of agrarian counter-reform after the military coup which overthrew the Allende government in 1973. In the first part of this article, various theses con- cerning the conservative or radical character of the peasantry in the class struggle are analyzed. In the second part, I highlight the main problems of the agrarian reform under Christian Democracy, and in the third part, I explore the contradictions which UP faced in trying to use the same land reform legislation for revolutionary purposes.

IS THE PEASANTRY A RADICAL OR CONSERVATIVE FORCE?

Agrarian reforms are more frequently implemented for political rather than economic reasons. It is thus crucial under bourgeois democracy for political groups to assess correctly which social sectors they can count on for support. Despite the overriding importance of correctly assessing this question for the Christian Democrat and the UP governments (particularly the latter because of its electoral road to socialism), surprisingly few studies have tackled this question. One likely deterrent is the complexity of the problem. It is not my central purpose to answer this question here but to provide for the benefit of future research some theoretical background and empirical information on the main arguments given for the conservatism or radicalism of the Chilean peasantry.

Some General Theses The conservatism or radicalism of different peasant groups' depends on a

*The author teaches in the Department of International Economic Studies at the Univer- sity of Glascow. 'The division of the peasants into different groups is beset with difficulties. The fact that some peasants are small landowners, sharecroppers, and seasonal wage laborers at the same time does not make the problem easier. Authors not only undertake different types of categorizations but

117

118 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

variety of factors - their relationship to the means of production (land and capital); whether they hire or sell labor power; the level of development of the productive forces, particularly the degree to which the market and commer- cialism have penetrated the rural sector; their degree of organization and class consciousness; their degree of subordination to the power structure; the alliances they establish with other rural and, in particular, urban groups.

In a period of genuine agrarian reform, the picture becomes even more complex as many of the above-mentioned factors change, and thus the type and degree of political mobilization of the various peasant groups also under- goes change. Thus, for example, land redistribution changes the pattern of dif- ferential access to land. The implementation of an agrarian reform often re- quires active peasant support, as it is likely to be fiercely resisted by those whose land is expropriated. For this reason, governments encourage peasant organizations to increase their power base and, in some cases, may lessen peasant repression and redirect the repressive apparatus of the state to check resistance by landlords. Thus an agrarian reform can bring about a change in the political alliances between social classes and can be used by sectors of the urban bourgeoisie to challenge the political hegemony of the landlord class. The growth and the mobilization of peasant organizations are likely to affect peasant consciousness and influence their political behavior.

It is also important to distinguish between types of agrarian reforms, for they can be aimed at developing and strengthening the capitalist mode of production or at initiating a process of transition to socialism. As each of these agrarian reforms implies radically different political solutions, each relies on different social forces. The Christian Democrat agrarian reform in Chile can be characterized as reformist and that of the Popular Unity as radical although the latter retained many elements of the former.

According to some theories (see Wolf, 1969; Alavi, 1969), the middle peas- ant2 is initially the most active force mobilizing for change in the countryside and is more likely than the landless peasant to join revolutionary movements. This is because middle peasants have a greater degree of "tactical leverage," being less dependent on landlords for their livelihood and not so directly under their political domination. They are thus in a better position to initiate confron- tation as they have some independent resources at their disposal. Furthermore, middle peasants whose livelihood depends on producing a marketable surplus are more affected by market fluctuations, and periods of crisis thwart their aspiration of becoming rich peasants.3 Their economic discontent provides a even use different definitions for the same elements of a particular categorization. This might be

because the original definitions are inadequate conceptually or because they are inadequate for

the analysis of a particular historical situation and/or region. For example, Engels (1964:425-426)

defines the small peasant as a proprietor or tenant, but mainly the former, of a piece of land which

is neither larger than what he can cultivate with his family labor nor smaller than what is required

for obtaining his sustenance. Meanwhile Alavi (1965;244) and Wolf (1969) classify this same kind

of peasant (excluding the tenant) as a middle peasant or an indepentent smallholder. It goes be-

yond the scope of this paper to analyze this problem of conceptualization and categorization of

the peasantry. Therefore, only essential and minimal definitions are provided further on. Peasant

studies have still not managed to adequately conceptualize the peasantry!

'In the literature on the subject, the "middle peasant" is generally defined as that peasant who

owns sufficient land to gainfully employ and sustain all family members. He may employ some

outside labor but relies essentially on family labor for his productive activity. He is thus consider-

ed an independent producer in the sense that he is not required to rent land from landlords or

engage in outside wage employment to secure his livelihood.

:"Rich peasants" generally refer to farmers who exploit the labor of others. They own sufficient

land to hire wage laborers who provide most of the labor requirements of the enterprise. Family

labor, however, is also engaged in the farming operations.

KAY:AGRARIAN REFORM AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN CHILE 119

basis for radical action. However, the opposite, i.e. an improvement in the economic position of the peasantry, can also lead to revolt as peasants attempt to maximize expanding opportunities (Moore, 1967). The development of capitalism and commercialization affects the middle peasant as landlords expand their enterprises by appropriating communal land and/or increasing rents, thereby inhibiting the expansion of the middle peasant and endangering the livelihood of the small Deasant.'

Other authors (Marx, 1967; Engels, 1964) sustain that the landed peasantry is essentially a conservative force because the isolated nature of their productive process does not establish any organizational links which represent their class interests. Furthermore, they are a declining force since the majority will become proletarians and only a few will merge into the bourgeoisie (rich peasantry) and exploit labor (Marx, 1967). The main force of change in the countryside is depicted as the rural proletariat whose movement will increase in strength as it establishes an alliance with the urban proletariat (Engels, 1969: preface). Snowden (1972) also challenges the "radical middle peasantry" thesis. He argues that the small and middle peasantry are conservative groups especially in areas of capitalist agricultural development. Looking at the Italian case, he shows how in a situation of economic crisis - inflation, increasing rural wages, and a growing socialist threat from the rural and urban proletariat - the middle peasantry, in particular, turned fascist. They supported the fascist party because it promised, and seemed more able, to secure their property rights which they felt to be under attack. The day workers (braccianti) and the fixed-wage laborers under contract (salariati) were particularly well organized, mainly by the Socialist Party, and militant, as their previous stable bond to the land had been broken by their proletarianization.

The analysis of concrete situations shows that it is impossible to say in the abstract which thesis has greater validity. The action of a particular peasant group is likely to vary according to the nature of the dominant mode of production. Thus the middle peasantry may be a revolutionary force during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a conservative force in capitalism, a fascist force under the threat of socialism (or capitalism in crisis) and a reactionary force under socialism. Geneletti (1967) considers the distinction between developed and underdeveloped countries relevant to the discussion since, according to him, small owners (middle peasants) are conservative in the former countries and radical in the latter.

Peasant Groups In examining which of the two theses is most relevant to the Chilean case,

no easy answer can be given. The political action of the various peasant groups changed as the process of agrarian reform developed, particularly as the UP tried to radicalize a reformist agrarian reform. The Chilean experience seems to more closely approximate the Italian situation than that of most underdeveloped countries. In those few underdeveloped countries which are highly ur- banized and dominated by capitalist agriculture with a large rural proletariat, the most dynamic force in the countryside will probably be the rural proletariat (Argentina, and less clearly Venezuela and Cuba). In those underdeveloped countries where a large proportion of the peasantry are Indian and/or non- Indian but with some sort of communal organization (Mexico, Bolivia, Peru), it is these groups of peasants which have been or are the most explosive force, 4By "small peasant" I mean that peasant who owns insufficient land for gainfully employing all family labor and for securing his subsistence. In order to obtain the latter, some family members usually engage in outside wage employment - often of a seasonal kind - and/or land is rented from landlords either on a sharecropping or labor-service (corv6e) basis. Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


especially when they have experienced encroachment on their communal land by the hacienda system, and increasing population pressure means that they are unable to secure a livelihood from their scarce land resources.

The discussion of the revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary) role of the peasantry is further confused because many authors do not clearly distinguish between the various peasant groups or fail to characterize them accurately. For example, some writers have tended to associate tenants and sharecroppers with middle peasants without further analysis. Whether this is correct or not depends on the amount of the means of production at their disposal and on whether they hire labor and, if so, how much. A tentative social stratification of the Chilean rural sector is presented in Table 1. I have not presented here in great detail the complexities of the rural class structure in Chile as space is limited.5 However, some general comments about Table 1 are necessary. The equivalent of the middle peasantry in the literature corresponds to the small bourgeoisie. They are owners of farms between 5 and 20 BIH6, employing on average 2 to 4 people (of which one may be a hired laborer) and commercializ- ing over half their production. The minifundistas (small peasants) are not even able to gainfully employ all their family members, and a high percentage are forced to seek seasonal wage employment as occasional afuerinos. Some of the minifundistas in the La Frontera and Los Lagos regions are Mapuche Indians. Inquilinos are semi-proletarians; approximately half their income is derived from a tenancy and half from wage employment on the estate. Afuerinos proper are considered sub-proletarians because the majority have no stable employment, are frequently unemployed, and some are migrants. They are the poorest of the rural laborers and constitute approximately 15 percent of the active rural population.

Radicalism of Peasant Groups A complete answer to the question of which peasant group has most force-

fully favored change in the social system relations of production and in the system of property relations in Chile would require a historical analysis. (The excellent and well documented study by Loveman (1976) provides such a historical view.) In this paper I shall limit myself to the agrarian reform period. Urzuia (1969) can be considered a proponent of the middle peasant radicalism thesis or perhaps more appropriately of the smallowners. He concludes from his study of the Maule basin in 1965 that smallowners (minifundistas) are less subordinated than sharecroppers, day laborers, and estate laborers, and this explains their greater radicalism. Lehmann has sharply rebuked Urzuia's study and argues that the smallowners have not mobilized themselves nor have they put forward claims which entail structural change. On the contrary, it is the estate laborers who are more willing to organize and engage in social conflict (Lehmann, 1970: 1952). The only smallowners who mobilize and participate in 'For further details about the composition and features of the labor force of large haciendas, see

Ramirez (1968); Schejtman (1970); Kay (1971) and Smith (1975). For the varied character of the

afuerinos (seasonal wage workers), see Zemelman (1971) and Bloom (1973). A general analysis of the class structure in the countryside is provided by Klein (1973), and the links between landlords

and the large industrial and commercial capitalist is explored by Ratcliff (1973) and Zeitlin and Ratcliff (1975).

6BIH stands for "basic irrigated hectare" ( hectarea de riego basica - HRB). Land of different

quality is transformed into a standard quality unit of land - the BIH. The BIH is a very good

quality land, and therefore farms with low quality land become much smaller in size when ex-

pressed in BIH instead of the normal ordinary hectare. When the size of farms is expressed in BIH, this allows for precise and meaningful comparisons of their dimensions as the differing quali-

ties of land are taken into account.


radical actions are the Mapuche Indians and they have no settlements in the Maule region covered by Urzuia's study.7

Table 1

Rural Social Stratifications in Chile, 1965

Producers and active agricultural po- Average size pultuatipon of enter-

Levels of bourgeoisie and proletariat Levels of peasantry pulation prise (BIH)-

Landlords and large bourgeoisie (owners of farms over 80 BIH; over 12 laborers are employed) 1.5 234.8

Big-middle bourgeoisie (owners of farms between 40 and 80 BIH; 8-12 laborers are employed) 1.6 56.3

Small-middle bourgeoisie (owners of farms between 20 and 40 BIH; 4-8 laborers are employed) Rich peasants 2.3 28.0

Administrators, employees and overseers 3.9 ?

Small bourgeoisie (owners of farms between 5 and 20 BIH; 2-4 workers) Middle peasants 8.8 9.8

Poor Peasants:

Subsistence producers: minifundistas (owners of less than 5 BIH; less than 2 workers) and larger medieros small peasants 38.9 1.1**

Semi-proletarians: inquilinos partially landless medieros peasants and smaller 8.1 0.5-0.8***

Proletarians and sub-proletarians: volun- landless tarios, obreros agricolas and afuerinos peasants proper 34.9 0

Total 100.0

* BIH stands for basic irrigated hectares (HRB: hectareas de riego basicas). The BIH is a standard hectare weighted according to productive quality. * * Refers only to minifundistas. Larger medieros have on average larger size enterprises (BIH) *** Refers to inquilinos only. The figure is an estimate. Smaller medieros have on average larger size enterprises (BIH) than inquilinos but (they) the medieros have to pay a 50 percent crop rent.

Sources: Data are rough estimates based on Chile, 1969; CIDA, 1966; and Barraclough, 1972:111-2

'Urzua's book, however, also deals with Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Peru and Guatemala from which he concludes that the most violent conflicts between landlords and peasants happened when independent smallowners intervened to pursue radical objectives. Rural wage laborers were more re- luctant to rebel and when they did so pursued more conservative goals and used more moderate means (Urzua, 1969:52). While this general conclusion may be valid for some of the other countries he studies, it does not hold for the Chilean case, except for the Mapuche region. Latin American Perspectivos: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


Petras and Zeitlin (1968) are early proponents of the "radical agricultural proletariat" thesis as applied to Chile. Their findings show that the higher the percentage of wage labor in the municipality's agricultural labor force, the higher the male vote for Allende in the 1958 and 1964 presidential elections. (Allende being the candidate of the Socialist-Communist Frente de Accion Popular - FRAP). Furthermore, they observed that the higher the proportion of agricultural proprietors in the municipality's labor force, the lower the Al- lende vote. Among the reasons given for the more radical political behavior of wage laborers is that their interests (higher wages) are more easily perceived and defended than the conflicting interests which smallholders have with latifundistas. Furthermore wage workers have a powerful weapon of struggle the strike - that is denied the smallholders.

Of particular interest is Petras' and Zeitlin's reasoning that as left wing parties are likely to select wage laborers in the countryside as organizational targets, they help to create the relationship between proletarianization and radicalism (1968:266). Thus, not only the differing relationship of peasant groups to the means of production has to be considered but also the influence of political agitation on the shaping of peasant consciousness.8 Petras and Zei- tlin have explored one aspect of this hypothesis in another study (1967) dealing with the relationship between miners' political consciousness and agrarian radicalism. It is known that mining centers are traditional left-wing strong- holds and among the most highly organized and politically conscious working- class areas in Chile. Mining cadres belonging to Marxist parties have helped to organize peasants in the surrounding countryside. Family members and migra- tory workers also spread radical political influence to nearby rural areas. The empirical findings of the Petras and Zeitlin article show that the male vote of the agricultural municipalities adjoining the mining centers show a higher percent of the male vote for Allende (in 1958 and 1964) than non-adjoining municipalities. However, the evidence they present is insufficient to conclude that "the mining and adjoining areas develop a distinct political culture, radical and socialist in content, that tends to eliminate the importance of class differences in the peasantry and unite the peasants across class lines" (Petras and Zeitlin, 1967:585). The evidence is inadequate because the authors fail to analyze the composition of the peasantry in the agricultural municipalities. It might be that those areas surrounding the mining centers contain a larger proportion of landless peasants than those which are more distant. More importantly, judging by the UP experience, their conclusion that class differences among the peasantry would be eliminated through the development of a socialist consciousness seems rather over-optimistic and far-fetched.

Further support for the radical rural proletariat thesis is provided by Chin- chilla (1973). She attempts to assess the level of political awareness of different sectors of the agrarian labor force immediately prior to the 1965 agrarian reform. The conclusion she reaches is "that temporary wage laborers from outside the agrarian estate (afuerinos) were more likely to have voted for Allende and identify with communist or socialist parties than any other category of fundo laborers" (Chinchilla and Sternberg, 1974: 112). Of those who voted, 60 percent of afuerinos said they voted for Allende, compared to 35 percent of voluntarios, 22 percent of inquilinos, 10 percent of empleados (employees) and 5 percent of minifundistas.

The impact of the agrarian reform on the consciousness, mobilization, and participation of the various peasant groups is partially explored throughout the

'It would be interesting to pursue this hypothesis further for the agrarian reform period, particu-

larly during the campaigns of concientization by both the left and right during the UP government. So far no major study has tackled this question.


remainder of this article.

THE LAND REFORM DURING THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT GOVERNMENT (1965-1970)

The aims of the Christian Democrat land reform were to increase agricultural production and productivity, to create 100,000 new peasant proprietors by expropriating the inefficient latifundia and to incorporate the peasantry more actively into the economic, social, and political decision-making processes of the country. This latter aim was to be achieved not only through the expropriation process but also by organizing the peasantry into unions.

The Modernization of the Private Farm Sector

In assessing the economic performance of the land reform during the Christian Democrat administration, it is often pointed out that agricultural output increased on average by 4.6 percent per annum between 1965 and 1968, which is three times the rate of growth of the two previous decades (Barra- clough, 1971). However, it is perhaps ironic that this growth was mainly achieved by the private commercial farm sector and not by the reformed units (i.e. the expropriated farm sector). Swift (1971), in a book which claims to be an economic study of the Christian Democrat land reform, weakly concludes that in relation to production on the expropriated farms (the asentamiento), "we therefore do not state positively that there has been no change, but rather that there is insufficient evidence to support a claim that there has been a change" (1971:107). Furthermore, "with regards to the impact of the reform on the rest of agriculture, it can be stated that output data are consistent with, but do not conclusively support, an interpretation that an increase in output could have resulted from a desire to forestall expropriation" (1971:68). The failure of Swift to reach any definite conclusions on such crucial economic matters greatly limits the usefulness of her work.

Contrary to Swift, Ringlien (1971) provides evidence that landowners, under the threat of expropriation and encouraged by government assurances that in the case of expropriation new investments would be fully reimbursed in cash, actually significantly increased investment and output. The conclusion reached by Ringlien,9 taken together with other evidence such as cheap government credits, facilities for importing agricultural machinery and equipment to the middle and large landowners, and a favorable agricultural price policy, in- dicate that the primary purpose of the Christian Democrat land reform was aimed not at expropriating the latifundio (large landed estate) but at making it more productive. The government encouraged large landowners to become ef- ficient commercial farmers with a carrot and stick policy which limited its commitment to expropriate to the inefficient landlord, thereby revealing its political intention to expropriate the latifundio only on a minor scale. Even though the amount of land controlled by the farmers above 80 BIH (legal definition of latifundio) fell from 55.3 percent in 1965 to 16.7 percent in 1970, most of this land remained in private ownership either as the result of subdivisions by landlords to avoid expropriation or through the granting of a farm of less than 80 BIH to the landlords where the latifundio was expropriated. This explains the almost trebling in the percentage of land in the 40 to 80 B3IH farm sector - making it the dominant farm sector - and the relatively small percentage of land in the reformed sector in 1970 (see Table 2). 9Smith (1975:99) criticizes Ringlien for his inadequate statistical analysis. Nevertheless Smith does

not seem to disagree with Ringlien's conclusions as he uses them together with other arguments for explaining his own empirical results. Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summeo 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


Table 2

Impact of the Agrarian Reform on the Land Tenure Structure in Chile

Farm Sector 1965 1970 1973 by size of Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage farm in BIH* of farms of land* of farms of land* of farms of land*

Less than 5 81.4 9.7 79.7 9.7 79.2 9.7 5 to 20 11.5 12.7 11.3 12.7 11.2 12.8 20 to 40 3.0 9.5 2.9 9.5 3.4 12.0 40 to 80 2.1 12.8 4.6 33.8 3.8 25.3 More than 80 2.0 55.3 0.9 16.7 0. 0. Reformed sector 0. 0. 0.6 17.6 2.4 40.2 Total 100. 100. 100. 100. 100. 100.

*Land is expressed in BIH, i.e. basic irrigated hectares

Sources: All data are estimates except for 1965. Data elaborated by author from various sources, among them Chile, 1969; ICIRA, 1972; and Stanfield, 1976.

The government's policy of modernization was greatly favored by the new leadership of the Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura (SNA), the landlords' asso- ciation, which launched a productivity campaign among its members so as to bypass the land reform (Gomez, 1972). Landlords also escaped expropriation by dividing their estates in various properties of less than 80 BIH. In 1967 Presi- dent Frei was forced to introduce new regulations to limit this often fictitious process of sub-division. In the end, only 1,408 farms were expropriated during his six-year term in office, i.e. about a quarter of the total number of farms liable to expropriation (CORA, 1970). (All farms above 80 BIH could be expropriated.) Furthermore, when expropriation did occur, landlords were able to retain part of their latifundio, usually up to 80 BIH, although under certain conditions the legal minimum was 40 BIH and sometimes even none. Over half of those whose land was expropriated were able to keep a small farm which was called reserva, the location of which they were allowed to choose. Lan- dlords, of course, kept the best land together with the building complexes and machinery. Often the beneficiaries were left with no buildings and machinery

only the bare land or "tierra pelada," as the peasants called (Smith, 1975:135).

The Differentiation of the Peasantry The new organizational structure which emerged from the expropriated

latifundio was the asentamiento (settlement), a type of rural cooperative. The asentamiento was to be a transitional organization which, after a trial period of three to five years, would give the beneficiaries, called asentados (literally the settled), the choice of determining if they wanted to continue as a cooperative enterprise, if they preferred to divide the land into individual family plots, or if they wanted to form a mixed enterprise. The asentamiento was a system which maintained and even increased economic and social inequality among rural laborers. At the end of the Christian Democrat administration only about 30,000 (6 percent approximately of total rural workers) out of the 100,000 peasants who had been promised land were settled (ICIRA, 1972: Cuadro Anexo 10). The asentados gained control over 17.6 percent of total land (see Table 2), averaging about 10 irrigated hectares per beneficiary. An asentado had access on average to an estimated six to nine times more land expressed in BIH than the average minifundista. Furthermore, over a third of the rural labor force was still landless (Bloom, 1973).

The asentamiento also maintained the differences between the various


types of laborers. The inquilinos kept their rights of usufruct over a plot of land and pasture, while the voluntarios remained with no, or only minor, access to production fringe benefits. Furthermore, the inquilinos, now asentados, enjoyed full rights in the administrative council of the asentamiento, whereas the voluntarios, now socios (partners), had only right of voice but not of vote. (Until 1968 the voluntarios had no rights whatsoever in the asentamiento and were employed as seasonal wage laborers by the asentados). A third category of laborers, the afuerinos (literally the outsiders), who as seasonal laborers had supplied up to half of the work force during the harvesting period, were left out completely from the asentamiento. In some cases the asentados continued to employ these afuerinos for a traditional wage, thus transforming themselves into "nuevos patrones" (new landlords).

The Class Struggle It is with the unionization policy that the Christian Democrat government

scored their major reformist success (Affonso et al., 1970). The number of rural workers belonging to unions increased from about 2,000 to 140,000 (over a third of the rural wage laborers) by the end of the Frei administration (see Table 3). About two thirds of these unionized rural laborers belonged to Christian Dem- ocrat controlled unions. The Christian Democrat government was also quite successful in organizing smallholders into cooperatives, pre-cooperatives and peasant committees (Comite de Pequefios Agricultores) reaching around 100,000 members, about a third of the smallholders (Falaha, 1970: 7,8).

Table 3 Membership of Rural Unions in Chile

Name of National 1965 1967 1970 1971 1972** Organization*

Libertad - 15,411 29,132 34,715 43,798 Triunfo Campesino - 26,827 64,003 51,070 62,073 Ranquil - 10,961 43,867 102,299 132,294 Unidad Obrero-Campe-

sina - 0 0 29,355 39,675 Provincias Agrarias

Unidas - 0 1,686 1,219 1,788 Federaci6n Sargento

Candelaria - 1,219 1,605 2,241 2,989

Total 2,118 54,418 140,293 220,899 282,617

*Triunfo Campesino was linked to the Christian Democrat Party. Libertad and Sargento Candelar- ia tended to support the Christian Democrats; Ranquil and Unidad Obrero-Campesina were linked to UP parties; and Provincias Agrarias Unidas was linked to the National Party and today is backed by the military government.

**No official data are available for 1973.

Sources: FEES, 1972; G6mez, 1975:31,61,62

How far did this political incorporation of the peasantry lead to political stability as the Christian Democrats expected, or to what extent was it a factor of political instability? Lehmann (1971) takes the view that unionization was one of the major factors of political instability, in as much as it intensified the pressures for expropriation. Marin takes the opposite view: "In practice, the agrarian reform, the peasant unionization . . . did not result from peasant Latin American Perspectives: Issue l18, Summor 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


pressures or mobilization but from the needs of one fraction of a divided bourgeoisie to gain the peasantry's political support. This helps to explain why such a vast and accelerated a process of union organization did not constitute at any moment a mobilizing agent of the expropriation process" (1973:54).

Lehmann would dispute Marin's assertion that unions were not a mobilizing force behind the expropriation process, although he concedes that "unions have not as yet tried to take expropriations into their own hands. [But] I did not find one organized group of workers who had not put in a petition for the expropriation of the farm on which they worked and leaders regarded this as one of the most important roles of the unions" (1971:384). Marnn provides some empirical evidence to back up his assertion. He observes that less than a tenth of rural conflicts, which had as their primary objective expropriation, were carried out through strike action and that tomas (land seizures) were responsible for rural conflicts demanding expropriation (1973:61). Unfortunately Marin does not fully answer the crucial question of who organized the tomas. He does say, however, that union demands were largely confined to claims about wages and work conditions. During the last years of the Frei government, left- wing controlled peasant unions, however, were beginning to exploit the feel- ings of frustration of those peasants who had been left out of the land reform, and they did encourage more drastic action by supporting seizures of estates. But the Frei government forcefully responded to land occupations by ordering evictions. However, its stated policy of "predio tomado no sera expropriado" ("seized estate will not be expropriated") was not always successful. This did not prevent tomas from escalating dramatically during the last two years of the Frei administration, and the number of strikes more than doubled during the last three years of the Christian Democrat government (see Table 4).

What were the causes of this explosion in peasant conflicts, and who were the main participants? According to Petras and Zemelman (1972:xi), "the emergence of an alert and active peasantry is probably the result of the emergence of a more tolerant political ambience (the absence of violent repression), of succcessful organizing efforts, and in part at least by the peasants' own struggle." Unfortunately the authors provided no background information on the way in which the hacienda Culipran (object of their empirical study) was worked prior to its occupation in 1965. Nor do they attempt to "weight" the above mentioned factors, as Redclift (1975:137) points out. However, Redclift goes too far in his criticism when he states that their above-mentioned state- ment "obscures more than it reveals." Although Petras and Zemelman fail to analyze the social relations of production of Culiprain, they do point out that peasants revolted because of the estate's process of modernization. The landlord suddenly substituted money wages for kind payments (regalias) - especially usufruct of land. The peasants' desire to expand petty commodity production conflicted with the modernization initiated by the landlord. However, this cannot be the complete answer as many other estates were also proletar- ianizing their inquilinos, and they were not all seized. Among other interven- ing factors, the authors highlight the historical contacts between the Culipran workers and the Socialist Party - a fact not without irony considering the capitalist entrepreneurial aims of the peasants.

In 1971 Petras and Zemelman briefly revisited Culipran which had since been expropriated (as a result of seizure) and transformed into an asentamien- to. They discovered that "the once insurgent peasants [had] turned entrepre- neurs exploiting labor and accumulating property and capital at the expense of their former compaheros" (fellow workers, who did not gain access to land) (1972:ii). It follows that the Christian Democrats were forming a privileged group of peasants, the asentados, who would eventually become a petty bour-


geoisie and act as a buffer for the social tensions resulting from the conflicts between the rural bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Asentados provided a loyal base of support for the Christian Democrat Party through their control over the Federacion de Asentamientos and through the asentamiento's dependence on the state for credits and subsidies. It appears that the government was willing to subsidize the asentamientos in return for their political allegiance.

The Culipran case illustrates my point about the growing conservatism of ;asentados, although this need not always be so as their bourgeoisification was encouraged by the government's policy and by the predominance of the capitalist mode of production. In this sense the peasantry is neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary as its political action depends greatly on charges in the mode of production and in the national political system.

Table 4 Number of Strilkes and Farm Seizures in Chile

Year Number of strikes Number of farm seizures 1963 13 0 1964 45 0 1965 142 13 1966 586 18 1967 693 9 1968 648 26 1969 1,127 148 1970 1,580 456 1971 1,054 1,278 1972 796 307* 1973 316** n.a.

*This figure only indicates the farm seizures until March 1972. If it is assumed that 25 percent of seizures occur during the first three months of the year (a conservative assumption as in 1971, 33 percent of seizures happened during the same period in that year), then it can be estimated that at least 1,228 seizures took place during the whole year, i.e. a similar number to the previous year. **Until September 10, 1973

Sources: Klein, 1972 and G6mez, 1975:57,58

The only study which systematically attempts to analyze the influence of the agrarian reform on the peasants' voting behavior in Chile is by Kaufman (1972). Unfortunately the data exends only to 1967 when municipal elections took place. No clear pattern of voting behavior emerges in rural communes which would enable one to assess the impact of the agrarian reform. What is significant is that the establishment of asentamientos did not particularly enhance peasant support for the Christian Democrat Party. Although that party in all likelihood gained votes from the asentados, its losses came from afuerinos, those excluded from the land redistribution. Nevertheless, Kaufman observes no relation between the Marxist parties' gains and losses and the "proletarian" rural communes, at least during 1965-1967. But he thinks that "as the reform is extended . . . the Christian Democrat Party may be expected to lose landless workers to the FRAP (the left-wing parties) and some new proprietors to the right" (1972:130). Thus it appears that not only the left competed for the peasant vote but also the right, leaving the Christian Democrats with little to show for their unionization and land distribution efforts.

As the expropriation and unionization processes advanced, those peasant groups excluded, especially the afuerinos and Mapuche Indians, became rest- Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


less with the pace and content of these processes. Tomas escalated violently and strikes spread throughout the countryside. Thus the Christian Democrat Party was faced with a situation in which, on the one hand, the rural bourgeoisie (and perhaps sectors of the petty-bourgeoisie) largely supported the right- wing candidate, Alessandri, in the 1970 presidential elections due to the increasing rural unrest and higher wage costs; whereas the rural workers shifted their support to Allende as a result of increasing dissatisfaction with the Chris- tian Democrat government's limited agrarian reform.

AGRARIAN REFORM DURING THE UP GOVERNMENT (1970-1973) When the UP was elected to office, it had to design an agrarian policy

which would attempt to solve the many problems of the Chilean rural sector in such a way that it would not contradict and, if possible, facilitate its strategy of transition to socialism. Furthermore, the UP required an active base of support from the majority of the peasantry so as to be able to challenge and defeat the political domination of the bourgeoisie. The problem for the policymakers was a difficult one, as there were few historical experiences (to say the least) which showed a majority of the peasantry fully behind a socialist transformation in the countryside. In most socialist revolutions peasants supported the expropriation of landlords and perhaps rich peasants, but the formation of collectives and the development of a national centralized planning system were not well received. Most socialist revolutions had an initial bourgeois democratic phase which meant that at first land was distributed to the peasants in the form of private property. Only at a later stage was the rural sector socialized amidst many difficulties.

Although the revolutionary forces in Chile had not captured power, a bourgeois democratic phase was not appropriate from a socialist perspective for a variety of reasons. Contrary to the cases of Russia, China, and Cuba, Chile had already a relatively advanced bourgeois democratic system. Furthermore, three quarters of its population was urban, and the mining and industrial working class was numerous and well organized. The existence of Marxist parties for various decades and the development of class consciousness of the urban proletariat made the struggle for socialism feasible. Historical experience and the immediate lessons of the Christian Democrat agrarian reform showed that the private and even capitalist cooperative distribution of land to peasants created formidable obstacles to a subsequent socialization policy. In Chile a socialist agrarian policy could have gained powerful support from a majority of the peasantry due to their massive proletarianization since the 1930s and especially the 1950s (Kay, 1977). It is argued that the predominance of rural proletarians in Cuba greatly facilitated the rural sector's socialization (Martinez-Alier, 1977).

An essential element which the UP's agrarian policy had to settle was not only how and which peasant groups were easier to mobilize initially but also which would actively struggle for the seizure of power and for a socialist transformation in the countryside. It is my contention that one of the crucial weaknesses of the UP's agrarian policy was to center its mobilization and land distribution policy on the same peasant group as the Christian Democrats and in so doing failed to incorporate those peasant groups which should have been the backbone of a socialist strategy due to their greater revolutionary potential.

The main aim of the UP's agrarian policy was to eliminate the latifundio by expropriating all farms above 80 BIH, regardless of whether they were well farmed or not. This reflected the UP's political will of destroying what it considered to be one of the main enemies of a socialist transformation of society - the latifundista class. However, the government was prepared to economi-


cally support what Chonchol (1971)10 calls "the medium producers" which he defined as those farmers who owned between 20 to 80 BIH. The UP promised to overcome many of the shortcomings and injustices fostered by the asentamiento and hinted that expropriated farms would be grouped together to form regional cooperatives. Another important aspect of agricultural policy was to be the transfer of resources from other economic sectors to the rural sector for investment, reversing the traditional trend. Chonchol (1971) pointed out that this agrarian policy could only work successfully if greater participation was given to the peasantry in shaping agrarian policies. For this purpose the UP proposed the formation of consejos campesinos (peasant councils) which would integrate different peasant groups (minifundistas, asentados, afuerinos, etc.) at the local, provincial and national levels. These aims of the UP's agrarian policy, taken by themselves, were certainly not socialist at this stage as they did not contemplate the full socialization of agriculture nor the abolition of the capitalist market and its replacement by a socialist planning system.

Towards a Socialist Reformed Sector? In the first year of Allende's government about 1,300 farms (see Table 4)

were forcefully occupied by peasants largely demanding expropriation - a large number considering that only 1,408 latifundia had been expropriated before by Frei. Although the UP government was against tomas, it was not willing to use the repressive apparatus of the state against the peasants but instead responded to their demands by accelerating expropriations. Within two years the latifundio ceased to exist as almost all farms over 80 BIH had been expropriated. However, the organization of the reformed sector proved to be a more difficult task for the government.

The UP government was well aware of the limitations and inequalities of the asentamiento, but it took over half a year before an alternative organization was agreed upon. This was the Centro de Reforma Agraria (CERA) which would bring together various neighboring expropriated latifundios so as to ra- tionalize the use of infrastructure and capital equipment and to incorporate landless seasonal laborers who had traditionally worked on these farms. The CERA was to be characterized by its greater internal equality - all members would have equal rights on the administrative council and equal but restricted rights to production fringe benefits - and the emphasis of the CERA was to develop the collective economy. Economic differences, arising from different productive capacities, would be reduced by socializing the surplus of each CERA through the contribution of a percentage of profits to a regional development fund (CORA, 1971). Thus with the CERA the government sought to tackle the problem of the peasant differentiation by incorporating the sub-proletariat into the reformed sector by equalizing and reducing their access to individual plots of land, by increasing the importance of the collective income and minim- izing wage differentials and, finally, by trying to capture the ground rent and distribute it to the underprivileged rural communities.

In theory the CERA was both economically rational and politically correct with regard to a possible socialist transformation of agriculture. Predictably the CERA was not well received by the asentados, nor unfortunately did it gain widespread acceptance from the resident laborers of the estates. Some parties of the UP coalition argued that the CERA was too advanced an organization 10Chonchol was one of the main driving forces behind the Christian Democrat land reform. He was head of INDAP, the Peasant Promotion Agency, until he resigned in 1968 when he disagreed with the government over the slow pace at which the land reform was proceeding. Subsequently he left the Christian Democrat Party and was one of the founders of the MAPU Party, which joined the UP coalition. He became Minister of Agriculture during the Allende government. Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V. No. 3


because it clashed with the high degree of peasant differentiation, the peasants' attachment to the boundaries of the hacienda and their low socialist consciousness. Without denying the existence of these obstacles, it is my view that the most crucial obstacle was the lack of unity among the UP regarding the CERA (Roxborough, 1974), thus practically leaving it to the cadres of the So- cialist Party and to some extent of the Movimiento de Accion Popular Unitario (MAPU) party to promote the creation of CERAs while facing the systematic political opposition from the opposition parties and the Federacion de Asenta- mientos. The lack of unified support for the CERA from the UP parties meant that insufficient cadres were available for explaining the purposes and func- tioning of the CERA and for listening to the suggestions of the peasants. This lack of adequate communication between peasants, the few loyal government officials, and the political cadres meant that peasants regarded the CERA as an imposition. Effective propaganda mounted by the opposition parties through its vast party machinery and its dominant control over the mass media fueled these peasant sentiments and instilled false fears about the CERA.

Some authors, like Loveman (1976) to a certain extent, have argued that all peasants were opposed to the CERA and the state farms, Centros de Produc- ci6n (CEPROs), and that they all had come to favor the asentamiento. Such an analysis fails to distinguish between the different interests of the various peasant groups. It is of course not surprising to find that the permanent workers of the expropriated latifundio, having become accustomed to the idea of their privileged position on the asentamiento, were unwilling to accept the outside seasonal laborers with equal rights on the farm as this would reduce production fringe benefits (regalias productivas) and the share in profits for each member. But if the government had organized and mobilized the seasonal and unemployed rural labor force, which were a much larger group than the asentados and inquilinos, it would have gained majority grass-root support for the CERA, as this group, lacking the capital and tradition of managing a peasant economy, had a greater interest in developing a collective economy. This sub- proletarian group probably also began to realize, as a result of the Christian Democrat experience, that only with the CERA and CEPRO could they ever hope to benefit from the expropriation process. Only the development of a collective economy could absorb significant numbers of new laborers. However, the government did not mobilize this sizeable group in the countryside, probably fearing that such a vast mobilization would escape their control, jeopardize the attempt to neutralize "the medium producers," and unbalance the "Chilean road to socialism."

The government therefore reached a compromise solution with the establishment of the comite campesino which became the most widespread reformed unit. The comite was similar to the asentamiento but eliminated the differences between members, giving all equal rights in the running of the farm and in the distribution of production fringe benefits. It still left out the seasonal laborers who could be incorporated as full members only if the majority of permanent laborers so wished. Economically the most successful reformed units were often the CEPROs and the "intervened" farms. The CEPROs were state farms which were established on those expropriated latifundios with an agro-industrial character (e.g., a wood complex) or had to tackle with complex technical processes (e.g., stock breeding). The CEPROs were financed by the state and run by its technical experts. Agricultural laborers were paid a fixed daily cash wage (Maffei, 1973).

Those farms which experienced a major labor conflict were intervened bv the state and an interventor was appointed who ran the farm in the name of the owner. Interventions were convenient because the government could take


over the management of the farm much more quickly than under the lengthy legal process of expropriating and because the owner could not remove his capital equipment (Maffei and Marchetti, 1972a). These farms became almost a new type of reformed unit as they often remained intervened for years before being slowly expropriated.

The difficulties of controlling such a vast and rapid expropriation process, not only because of insufficient bureaucratic resources but also because of a greater independence of the peasantry from state patronage, allowed for a spontaneous expansion of the peasant economy within the reformed sector which was not complementary to, but in opposition to, the collective economy (Lehmann, 1974a). This tendency for the peasant economy to expand was not wholly due to the traditional desire of peasants for land but largely the result of insufficient resources and incentives to develop the collective economy. The lack of farm machinery and implements to cultivate the collective lands is explained by the legal nature of the expropriations in which landlords retained most of the capital equipment. Seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides were also scarce.

The problem of incentives is more complex. Peasants of the reformed sector were paid a monthly anticipo (advance) by CORA - the agrarian reform corporation - which was supposed to be deducted at the end of the agricultural year from profits, the remainder being distributed to each member according to days worked on the collective. However, due to the initial lack of capital (and often also lack of adequate management), the reformed units ran into large debts with CORA and were unable to repay them at the end of the year. The government did not enforce a strict debt repayment policy for fear of losing peasant support. Attempts to do so had failed. Thus peasants came to view the payment of anticipos as an acquired right, thus in actual fact receiving a monthly wage. The amount paid in anticipo did not vary according to hours worked, number of days worked, or tasks performed. Neither did it discrimi- nate between the economic performance of the collectives, as anticipos were paid regardless of the size of the financial loss of the reformed unit. Thus these three factors - lack of administrative resources, of capital equipment, and of incentive systems - conspired against the development of the collective economy. Peasants preferred to develop their own peasant enterprise, since their efforts were directly rewarded according to economic result. Furthermore, as the black market spread, peasants had the additional incentive of selling the produce of their household plot at prices way above the official ones. Part of the produce of the collective was sold through the state commercial channels at official prices, thereby discouraging the development of the collective. Peas- ants of the reformed sector, however, did not want to legally subdivide the collective as this would have eliminated the monthly advances and state benefits which they were receiving. Furthermore they would have had to pay off the accumulated debts and pay for the land."

After two years in government, the UP proclaimed that all latifundia had been expropriated; no doubt an achievement of historical significance (see Ta- ble 2). However, some authors doubted that the latifundia had really disap- peared or that the latifundistas were the only enemies of a socialist transformation in the countryside. The government, probably for political reasons, de-

"The above-mentioned problems of the reformed sector are analyzed by ICIRA (1972); Brevis (1973); Marchetti (1975); G6mez (1973); and Lehmann (1974b). The ICIRA study is by far the most complete, though often repetitive and uncoordinated, assessment of the UP's land reform. The key ideas of this voluminous report can be found in the article by Barraclough and Affonso (1973) and an abridged version of this crucial and comprehensive ICIRA report has been edited by Barra- clough and Fernandez (1974). Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


fined the latifundium as any farm which exceeded 80 BIH. According to this legal definition the latifundia had certainly been abolished. If the latifundia is, however, defined as a land-tenure system in which a landlord economy coex- ists in a complex of conflicting relationships with a peasant economy, then it could be argued that the latifundia system had re-emerged in the reformed sector for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. What is even worse, the expropriation process had often left unchanged the wasteful land-use pat- terns and farming systems of the old latifundia. In some cases the land left idle or as natural pasture even increased, thus aggravating the problems of inefficient exploitation associated with latifundism. It is unlikely that the estimated fall in output of 10 to 15 percent in 1973 was attributed to the middle-size latifundia and the smaller units as sustained by Chinchilla and Steinberg (1974:125), but for the above-mentioned reasons, it is far more likely that the reformed sector was responsible.

Peasant Mobilization and Consciousness

After having expropriated most estates above 80 BIH in size, the UP government did not want to intensify further the rural class struggle. (On the number of occupations and strikes, see Table 4.) They therefore tended to argue that the abolition of the latifundia meant that the class enemy in the countryside had been successfully beaten, thereby allowing the demobilization of the peasantry. However, for the peasants themselves the private latifundia still existed, as evidenced by the large number of farm seizures of properties below 80 BIH, which are estimated to have been almost a third of total occupations (G6mez, 1975: 59). This revealed that for some peasants the class enemy was not only the traditional latifundista but also the large and medium capitalist landed bourgeoisie which the Christian Democrat land reform had encouraged if not created. The peasants were, in a political sense, correct in widening the definition of the latifundia, since the class enemy in the countryside had not automatically vanished with the expropriations. Many landlords survived on their prosperous reservas, which were dubbed "small latifundias" by the peasants. More importantly, the middle rural bourgeoisie not only had developed economically but they were becoming increasingly militant against the UP. The government understimated the difficulties of forging an alliance or at least securing the neutrality of the small and small-middle agrarian bourgeoisie. The latter progressively shifted into the fold of the militant opposition as a result of the dynamics of the class struggle.

Arroyo (1972) criticizes the politically "reformist" and legal definition of latifundia adopted by the UP government and supports the "revolutionary" definition which some peasant groups had embraced. Arroyo states that for a government committed to socialism, the expropriation of all latifundia is insufficient. He argues that although a socialist transformation in the countryside depends on what happens in society at large, it is necessary to confront the remaining enemies of a socialist transformation in the rural sector, i.e. the new rural bourgeoisie which paradoxically had emerged strengthened and mobilized from the land reform process. They had doubled in numbers as a result of the subdivision of haciendas and the creation of reservas and formed new organizations such as the national union Confederacion de Sindicatos de Em- pleadores Agrfcolas de Chile (CONSEMACH) in 1967 which, together with the other landlords' organizations - Consorico de Sociededes Agrfcolas del Sur (CAS) and SNA - supported and organized counter-tomas to recapture land seized by the peasants. The membership of the century-old SNA suddenly increased from 1,722 in 1964 to 4,388 in 1969, and the newly formed CONSE-


MACH reached 9,803 members in 1969 (G6mez, 1972:41-43). Landlords had transferred their capital into the rural commercial sector, established agro-in- dustries and even in some cases provided farm machinery, equipment, and services to the reformed sector. The new rural bourgeoisie also profited from shortages by moving their capital into black-marketeering. Thus, landlords were still able to extract a surplus from the peasantry of the reformed sector through their control of capital. Unfortunately little is known about this new rural bourgeoisie which constituted the main opposition group to Allende in the countryside and is now dominating rural society.'2

Given the dominant control still exercised by capital and above all the increasing degree of organization and militancy displayed by the rural bourgeoisie against the Unidad Popular government, the question of mobilizing, organizing, and developing the class consciousness of the peasantry became an even more urgent task for the UP. The UP had not expected militant opposition from the middle bourgeoisie and sectors of the small bourgeoisie. The government charged that those who organized the land seizures were partially to blame. Indeed it could be argued, as Gomez (1975:594) does, that as some of the occupations happened on medium farms, this led to their right-wing radicalization.'3 Other factors also contributed, like the skillful manipulation by the opposition media of the tomas, spreading fear and insecurity among those farmers whose land the government had guaranteed it would never expropriate.

Thus it cannot be denied that the tomas did influence the radicalization of the middle bourgeoisie. However, for a government committed to initiate a transition to socialism, this was practically inevitable. After all, a large part of the middle bourgeoisie were former latifundistas or otherwise products of the Christian Democrat agrarian reform. If the UP had recognized this, it might have supported the farm seizures. Furthermore, if the government had pro- ceeded more quickly with the expropriations and opened the doors of the reformed sector to the afuerinos, many of the tomas would have been avoided. If the UP parties had directed the organization of the farm seizures, they could have avoided the occupation of farms belonging to the small and some medium farmers. This would have been likely, as organization means direction - clear selection of the enemy and control. As the UP did not use major repressive force, this was perhaps the only way it could ensure some degree of control over the tomas.

The organization of tomas, as well as of strikes, presented many advantages from a socialist perspective (Bengoa, 1972). Turning first to the strikes, it is important to notice that their character changed during the UP period, and solidarity strikes (those carried out in support of grievances on other farms) became increasingly more important. Almost 40 percent of rural strikes in 1971 were of this kind as compared to only a few before (Klein, 1972). This revealed a greater degree of organization and class consciousness among rural laborers. Chinchilla (1973) in her study on peasant consciousness in 1966 notes that strikes enhance solidarity and class consciousness, but unfortunately in her article with Sternberg (1974:113) they fail to analyze strikes and, more importantly, tomas as factors which have a crucial impact on conscientization.

Tomas often involved more than one estate. and rural laborers who were "The valuable article by Zeitlin et a]. (1976) on the political relationship between large landowners and large non-landed capitalists unfortunately does not deal with the changes in this relationship as a result of the agrarian reform. "3Nevertheless a study (Bases para el analisis . . . 1972) of the 1972 electoral results in three prov- inces of the Central Valley failed to observe any significant changes in the voting behavior of various municipalities in which different types of agricultural enterprises predominated. It analyzed selected data from 1964, 1970, 1971 and 1972 and could not reach any definite conclusion as to the effect of the agrarian reform on voting behavior. Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


not resident laborers of the seized estate increasingly participated (Klein, 1973). This helped to overcome traditional cleavages and fragmentation between peasants, as the experience of the toma brought various groups together for mutual help in carrying out the occupation (Roxborough, 1977). It particularly brought the afuerinos into the picture. According to the research by Chinchilla (1973), the afuerinos were the peasant stratum which came nearest to express- ing a socialist consciousness or at least the most likely to support a socialist transformation. Also the high degree of interaction generated by collective seizure between the participants belonging to adjacent or nearby estates presented advantages for the organization of CERAs, i.e. bringing together various expropriated farms and incorporating afuerinos into them.

The government was clearly in a dilemma. Many of the tomas occurred because of the limitations of the agrarian reform law. Landlords could legally dismantle their estates and delay expropriation by appealing to the agrarian tribunals. The UP did not have the required majority in Congress to change the law which would have made many tomas unnecessary, nor could the government repress the peasants for fear of losing their support. The government could not organize or support tomas (as these were illegal), and to do so would contradict its "constitutional road to socialism." But as I have argued, the tomas clearly helped to develop socialist forces and facilitated the spread of collectives. This crucial contradiction is best expressed in the taped interview which Peter Winn made with a peasant union leader who had been one of the organizers of the large-scale estate seizures in the Melipilla area during April and May 1972. "Although tomas are illegal, what can we do about it? We have to break the laws if we want a workers' government in the future. If we are not able to pass over this legal wall that the 'momios' (popular denomination for reactionaries) have built, we will never be able to do anything, because there is no law yet which favors the workers. In order to achieve justice we have to go beyond the limits of the law" (free translation and interpretation mine).

This need to "go for broke," i.e., change the bourgeois constitution by capturing power, is also expressed by Chinchilla and Sternberg (1974:126). This same peasant leader a year and a half before the coup d'etat already had a clear picture of what could happen in the future. "The peasants who got land, thanks to the agrarian reform, shouldn't think that the land is theirs, they shouldn't feel secure as we are all peasants, and if reaction wins us one day, it will win us all. The peasants who got land will also fall. We are all in the same boat. We are trying to make them conscious of this." Here the interviewed also expressed his uneasiness over some signs of lack of solidarity, political demobilization, and increasing weakness of some peasant organizations which could be observed in those areas where the expropriation process had been completed. The change in the social relations of production of the beneficiaries, from proletariats to petty producers, often resulted in their leaving the unions, and problems of organizing production became their main preoccupation. This cycle of mobilization (solidarity and radicalism) and demobilization (in- dividualism and possible conservatism) made it even more imperative for the UP to organize and take advantage of the radical mobilization phase for the capture of power. The Transition to Socialism and the Question of Power

Lehmann's article (1972) still remains the most comprehensive attempt to place the Chilean agricultural sector within the perspective of a possible socialist transformation. Lehmann emphasizes that in the initial stage of the transition period in Allende's Chile, a capitalist rationality must be developed within the reformed sector if production is to be substantially increased. This increase in production is necessary for sustaining the income distribution policy and for


making available foreign exchange to the state industrial sector. While I would agree that the collectivization of agriculture is in itself an insufficient condition and will not necessarily lead to a socialist agriculture, I disagree with Leh- mann's emphasis on production as the main task for the rural sector in securing a transition to socialism. The problem with Lehmann's argument is that he reduces the political role of the peasantry in the struggle for power to an economic function. And the problem of power is crucial in that it is only after the revolutionary forces have gained control over all the state apparatuses (in- cluding the armed forces!) that a transition to socialism can start, not only in the rural sector but in society at large.

Contrary to Lehmann, I do not think that reverting to a capitalist rationality in the reformed sector is the correct solution for the production problem from the perspective of a transition process, as it creates more political problems than it solves. Even if one admits that the social characteristics of the peasants of the reformed sector and their degree of political consciousness were not such as to permit the introduction of advanced forms of collective farm organization, I would not go along with his proposition that therefore a small rural bourgeoisie must be created in the reformed sector. Although such a policy might solve economic problems (and even that is not assured), it would produce far greater political obstacles in the struggle for power and socialism.

Lehmann's position results from his underestimating the possibility of changing the social relations of production within the reformed sector towards a collective type and of bringing about changes in consciousness which would result in active support for the socialist revolution. As I have already partially argued and continue to stress, one need not accept Lehmann's pessimistic conclusions. A different agrarian policy could have resulted in the reformed sector (CERAs, CEPROs, and intervened farms) with the peasant councils playing a more strategic role in the struggle for power. Steenland (1974:129) also takes the view that the problem of power (mobilization) is more important than production (alliance with middle classes) for securing a transition to socialism.

My differences with Lehmann are also tactical. He sees the problem of production as crucial for securing the urban working-class support. In the Chilean context (and perhaps in others as well), the urban working class is the key class in a socialist seizure of power, but I would strongly dispute that agricultural production determined their willingness to support a socialist position. Despite the fall in production during 1973 (which has been generally exaggerat- ed), the availability of food per capita in 1973 was only marginally below that of 1970 (Pilot, 1975), since it was compensated with increasing imports. Ob- viously balance of payment problems would in the future have put a stop to increased food imports. Nevertheless, the problem during 1972 and 1973 was one of distribution. But despite the supply difficulties and the long tiresome queues during the last years of its power, the UP increased its electoral strength significantly in the 1973 congressional elections. I think that the problem of production and distribution was beginning to be resolved by the government when it was overthrown. However, even if this had not been the case, in a country like Chile in which less than 10 percent of the gross national product is contributed by agriculture, the problem of agricultural production does not become the key for determining the agrarian policy and the question of power. In this sense the analogy with the Russian or Chinese revolution and the arguments of Preobrazhensky with regard to the importance of the "primitive socialist accumulation," in which the surplus for industrialization and the strengthening of the industrial proletariat would come from agriculture, are misplaced. Latin American Perspectives: Issue 18, Summer 1978, Vol. V, No. 3


Thus, although the problem of agricultural production was undoubtedly important, even more important was the question of capturing power for the transition to socialism. Therefore, the intensification of the class struggle in the countryside could not be postponed for a later stage. The UP should have further mobilized the peasantry, particularly by organizing the tomas instead of opposing them.

The government should also have further developed the peasantry's organizations - especially the peasant councils - so as to have combatted more effectively the increasingly violent militancy of the rural bourgeoisie. Although peasant councils were formed, they neither received the necessary economic support nor the political backing from the government to make them an effective weapon in the class struggle. Furthermore, due to their bureaucratic constitution, they at first tended to be dominated by asentados (who were largely Christian Democrat supporters) thereby under-representing precisely those proletarian and sub-proletarian groups (voluntarios, obreros agricolas and afuerinos) which had a greater class interest in confronting the rural bourgeoisie. Maffei and Marchetti (1972b) present various well documented case studies of consejos which, when dominated by those rural proletarians, were more radically active than those dominated by landed peasants. However, which political group helped to organize them was also of crucial importance. The exception were consejos dominated by Mapuche Indians who, although of landed peasant character, were initially in the forefront of the rural class struggle with their large-scale occupations of land which they claimed had been theirs in the past. Their justified claim of land restitution thus set them apart from other peasant groups and explains their radical behavior [see Lehmann's (1974a) section on the Mapuche movement in Cautin province]. Later with the formation of consejos por la base (grass roots councils), as opposed to the earlier creation of consejos por decretos (councils by decree), the lack of repre- sentativeness of the earlier councils was partially rectified. Although this resulted in intensification of peasant mobilizations in some areas, the rural trade unions remained the most important force behind the mobilizations. This is partially explained by the far greater financial and political backing which the trade unions received in relation to the peasant councils.

This mobilization of the proletarian and sub-proletarian groups within the peasantry could have become a powerful element in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary groups within the rural bourgeoisie, besides facilitating the subsequent socialization of the reformed sector. The peasants had already revealed their ability to confront the rural bourgeoisie with their massive estate seizures which forced the government to greatly accelerate the expropriation process. It was also due to peasant pressure that the UP government was beginning to selectively expropriate farms in the 40 to 80 BIH bracket, thus de- parting from their former pledge to support the "medium producers." It is trag- ically ironic that the UP did not mobilize nor did it incorporate the afuerinos,'4 as this was the peasant sector most closely identified with a socialist revolution. [Chinchilla and Sternberg (1974:126) make the same point.]

I am, however, under no illusion that such a "proletarian power" policy of peasant organization and mobilization would by itself have resulted in the vic- tory of the revolutionary forces. I have examined elsewhere (1976) the problems inherent to the "constitutional road to socialism" as a strategy to power, '4Steenland (1974:137) does not take up this point because he grossly overestimates the membership of afuerinos in the reformed sector. He puts the figure at 50 percent! No reliable data exists on the social composition of the reformed sector but various case studies and other secondary sources would lead me to an estimate of 3 to maximum 8 per cent. Steenland seems to confuse afuerinos with voluntarios and wrongly thinks that both are wage workers from outside the farm.


and it may be sufficient to say here that the revolution was gained or lost with the urban working class, especially in Chile where only 25 percent of the population was rural. I thus disagree with Loveman's (1976) thesis that Chile's for- mal bourgeois democracy rested upon the repression of the peasantry. It is a suggestive and novel thesis with which I can sympathize in view of the exploitation, repression, and extreme poverty of the peasantry. But I cannot agree with it, as the process of capital accumulation in Chile rests above all on the economic exploitation (in a Marxist sense) of the urban working class. The forces which led to the military overthrow of Allende responded primarily to the challenge posed by the political mobilization of the urban working class (particularly the cordones industriales) and only secondarily to the agrarian reform. It was the former group which was the greatest threat to the economic and political hegemony of capital (both national and foreign) due to its strategic place in the economy and its firmer commitment to a socialist alternative.

What were then the main achievements of the UP? Briefly I would say they were the following: the emergence of a growing political consciousness in the peasantry, the creation of a new land-tenure structure, the extension of unionization and a great improvement in the peasants' standard of living. The new political consciousness expressed itself in tomas, greater peasant solidarity in conflicts, and in an increasing share of the unionized peasantry supporting the UP. As for the organization of the peasantry, rural union members doubled (see Table 3), and peasant councils were created in most rural municipalities of the country. The new land-tenure structure (see Table 2) incorporated half of the total irrigated land (40 percent of the land in terms of BIH) into the reformed sector but comprised only roughly 20 percent of the total rural labor force. The problem of minifundism still existed with approximately 40 percent of the total rural labor force obtaining a subsistence income from it. The medium and big rural bourgeoisie (the owners of 20 to 80 BIH farms) continued to thrive, controlling over 40 percent of total BIH land, employing slightly over 20 percent of the rural labor force, and providing well over half of the agricultural products in the market (Barraclough and Affonso, 1973). The economic policies, together with expropriations, significantly raised peasants living stand- ards, although affecting unequally different peasant groups.

The Allende government certainly stretched the Christian Democrat land reform legislation to its limits, and its achievements were impressive, but only the capture of complete power in society could have opened the road to a socialist transformation in the countryside and the society at large. The UP's strategy and tactics to attain power were inadequate to meet the counter-revolutionary challenge and resulted in its violent overthrow and in a tragic process of agrarian counter-reform for the peasantry.

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Agrarian Reform and the Class Struggle in Chile

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