Bolivia court upholds seizure of US man's ranch

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivia court upholds seizure of US man's ranch
By CARLOS VALDEZ Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
Aug. 2, 2010, 10:58PM

LA PAZ, Bolivia — A Bolivian court has upheld a government decision to seize a ranch from a U.S. cattleman and his family on the grounds they treated workers as virtual slaves, an official announced Monday

The National Agrarian Tribunal rejected a challenge by Ronald Larsen, a 65-year-old from Montana who has owned the 58-square-mile (15,000-hectare) ranch nearly four decades, deputy land minister Juan Manuel Pinto said at a news conference.

Pinto said the Caraparicito ranch would revert to Guarani Indians, traditional inhabitants of Bolivia's southeastern region, known as the Chaco.

He said the ranch and an adjacent 15-square-mile (3,790-hectare) spread owned by an unrelated family, the Chavezes, would be cleared by authorities and divided among 2,000 Guarani families.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/latinamerica/7136508.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Background on Ronald Larsen:

"Reuters Pictures 25 months ago
Bolivian Guarani men eat lunch at the Caraparicto ranch, property of U.S.-born rancher Ronald Larsen, near the town of Camiri June 10, 2008."





Larsen's son, Duston, "Mr. Bolivia 2004"



"Reuters Pictures 25 months ago
Guaranis are seen near Caraparicto land , property of U.S.-born rancher Ronald Larsen, near the town of Camiri June 10, 2008. "
Landowners' Rebellion: Slavery and Saneamiento in Bolivia
Written by Alexander van Schaick
Monday, 28 April 2008 09:23

In recent weeks, cattle ranchers and landowners in Bolivia's Cordillera province, located in the south of the department of Santa Cruz, resorted to blockades and violence in order to halt the work of Bolivia's National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA - Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria). As a referendum on Departmental Autonomy for Santa Cruz draws near, the conflict calls into question the central government's ability to enforce the law in the Bolivian lowlands.

The dispute centers on the region of Alto Parapetí, south of the provincial capital of Camiri, where INRA is currently trying to carry out land reform and create an indigenous territory for the Guaraní indigenous people. Additionally, it claims various communities of Guaraní live and work on white or mestizo-owned ranches in conditions of semi-slavery.

For nine days landowners and their supporters blockaded major highways and virtually sealed off Alto Parapetí. The blockades continued until Bolivia's Vice-minister of Land, Alejandro Almaráz, left the region on April 18. At the end of February, Ronald Larsen, a major landowner in Santa Cruz, and other ranchers took Almaráz hostage at gunpoint for several hours when he and other government officials tried to enter the region.

An Incomplete Land Reform

In the 1990s and up to the present, the Guaraní Nation and Bolivia's other lowland indigenous peoples mobilized to force the national government to recognize their right to their ancestral territories. In 1996, the first administration of Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada passed a land reform law that gave Bolivia's indigenous people the opportunity to claim their Communal Territory of Origin (Territorio Comunitario de Origen or TCO).

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1254/1/

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U.S. Rancher in Bolivia Showdown
Friday, May. 02, 2008 By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY/LA PAZ

In his native Montana, Ronald Larsen's current legal straits might be the stuff of an old-fashioned Western movie: A cattle rancher who believes the government and its allies are unfairly trying to seize his land, and picks up a rifle to signal his displeasure. But in contemporary Bolivia, where Larsen makes his home, his recent clash with the authorities is but another instance of rising tension over land-ownership between, on the one hand, left-wing President Evo Morales and his supporters among Bolivia's indigenous population, and on the other, political opponents backed by the country's wealthy eastern elite.
(snip)

Both the autonomy and land-reform issues have sparked violent unrest over the past year, pitting the largely white farmers and ranchers of Bolivia's more affluent lowland east against the impoverished indigenous majority who back Morales, himself an Aymara Indian and the nation's first indigenous President. Little surprise, then, that a national furor has erupted over a confrontation involving government officials and Larsen, 64, who along with his two sons, owns 17 properties totaling 141,000 acres throughout Bolivia, three times as much land as the country's largest city. (Larsen insists his holdings amount to less than 25,000 acres.)

Last month, when Almaraz and aides tried to pass through Larsen's Santa Cruz property — they insist it was the only route by which to reach to nearby indigenous Guarani residents to whom they were delivering land deeds — witnesses say the caravan was fired on by Larsen and his son Duston, 29. The incident was followed by two weeks of rancher roadblocks and violent protests that left 40 indigenous people injured.

Larsen, who arrived in Bolivia in 1968, told a La Paz newspaper that Almaraz's vehicle had entered his property at around 3 a.m. Almaraz, he said, "had not presented any identification. He was drunk and being abusive ... I quieted him with a bullet to his tire. That's the story." But the government insists this wasn't Larsen's first run-in with Almaraz: the rancher is accused of kidnapping the vice minister for eight hours in February. The two alleged incidents prompted the government to file a criminal complaint of "sedition, robbery and other crimes" against Larsen and his son two weeks ago. Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to press formal charges. Neither father nor son has responded publicly to the accusations, and neither responded to repeated requests by TIME for comment.

U.S.-educated Duston Larsen, referring to Morales' efforts to empower Bolivia's indigenous, wrote on his Myspace page in 2007, "I used to think democracy was the best form to govern a country but ... should a larger more uneducated group of people (70%) be in charge of making decisions, running a country and voting?" The fact that Duston, in 2004, won the Mr. Bolivia beauty pageant, in the eyes of many government supporters, puts him in the company of the country's European-oriented elite. (That same year, Miss Bolivia, Gabriela Oviedo, also from the country's east, suggested Bolivia shouldn't be considered an indigenous nation: "I'm from the other side of the country. We are tall, and we are white people, and we know English.) Morales backers say it is precisely this disdain for the indigenous that is driving what they call the secessionist agenda behind Sunday's autonomy referendum — which is not legally sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or recognized by the Organization of American States. But autonomy supporters say they're only seeking states' rights on questions such as taxation, police and public works. "This is a historic demand based on long-standing differences with a La Paz-based central government," says Edilberto Osinaga, managing director of the Chamber of Eastern Farmers.

More:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1737244,00.html?xid=rss-world