Agrarian Capitalism and Struglle Over Hegemony in Bolivian Lowland

Agrarian Capitalism and Struggles over Hegemony in the Bolivian Lowlands
Author(s): Gabriela Valdivia

Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 37, No. 4, BOLIVIA UNDER MORALES. Part 2.
NATIONAL AGENDA, REGIONAL CHALLENGES, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR HEGEMONY
(July 2010), pp. 67-87
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Agrarian Capitalism and Struggles over
Hegemony in the Bolivian Lowlands
by
Qabriela Valdivia
In 2006, President Morales announced that his administration would end land
inequality in Bolivia. Agrarian elites in the lowlands department of Santa Cruz, known
as the economic engine of Bolivian agriculture, strongly oppose this position and have
vowed to counter it to safeguard the agrarian order. Prom visions of a capitalist moral
compass of production to the promotion of sector unity to safeguard production, agrarian
elites are seeking to maintain a hegemony that allows them to control the agrarian sector
in the lowlands. Attention to the ways in which agrarian elites ground their struggles
over agrarian hegemony is necessary for evaluating the possibilities for the resource
democracy advocated by the current administration.
Keywords: Hegemony, Agrarian change, Capitalist agriculture, Agrarian elites,

Bolivian lowlands
In May 2006, President Evo Morales promised to rectify the profound land
inequality that exists in Bolivia. While this project is supported by historically
disadvantaged groups in Bolivia, staunch opposition is prominent among
agrarian elites in the Department of Santa Cruz, where large landholdings,
land speculation, and deep-seated struggles over resources contentiously
coexist (Hecht, 2005). These actors see Morales's proposal as a challenge to
what they call "Cruceno institutionality": hard-fought for, locally governed
politico-economic relations that have allowed the development of capitalist
agriculture in Santa Cruz. The Morales challenge against the agrarian order in
the lowlands is being taken seriously by agrarian elites, who argue that it goes
against the moral constitution of Cruceno agriculture. This paper examines
the views of these elites and the insights they provide into the agrarian pro
duction order in the lowlands.11 draw on archival research and 130 interviews
conducted in La Paz and Santa Cruz between 2007 and 2009 with former
members of Congress, nongovernmental organizations, officers of the Instituto
Nacional de Reforma Agraria (Institute of Agrarian Reform?INRA), officers
Gabriela Valdivia is an assistant professor of geography at the University of North Carolina,

Chapel Hill. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship (Award
#706750). The Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan pro
vided institutional support. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this
issue for their constructive comments and the people in Bolivia who opened their doors to this
research and allowed her to learn from their struggles and perspectives. She is especially grate
ful to Gonzalo Vasquez (FENCA) and Bishelly Elias (CIPCA) for institutional support and Ana
Isabel Ortiz for her invaluable help in conducting focus groups and systematizing information.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 173, Vol. 37 No. 4, July 2010 67-87
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X10373354
? 2010 Latin American Perspectives
67
68 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
and members of the Camara Agropecuaria del Oriente (Agricultural Chamber

of Commerce of Eastern Bolivia?CAO), and other lowlands agriculturalists
not affiliated with the CAO.
HEGEMONY AND THE STUDY OF ELITES
"Hegemony ... is the control of essentially heterogeneous, discontinuous,

non-identical, and unequal geographies of human habitation and effort"
(Said, 2002 [1995]: 467-468). The study of agrarian elites is the study of power
relations. Power relations are often described in terms of domination, the
mobilization by individuals of a range of cultural and material resources (e.g.,
wealth, status) to force their interests on others (Mills, 2000 [1956]), or in
terms of resistance to such domination (Scott, 1985). In this sense, power is
locatable: identifiable within certain individuals through specific mechanisms
and relationships and observable through its effects on individuals. Yet, dom
ination and resistance do not exist in a vacuum. They are part and parcel of
institutions that reproduce hegemony, sociocultural structures that guide the
way members of society interact (based on what the dominant classes see as
"natural" cultural, racial, and economic differences) and consent to inequality,
exploitation, and dispossession as inevitable (see Hart, 2006; Sparke, 2008).
Consent to these so-called natural and inevitable interactions between classes
is never automatic; the dominant classes must continuously broker compro
mises with others to maintain the status quo (Gramsci, 2005 [1971]; Hall,
Morley, and Chen, 1996).
In Latin America, structures that support capitalist agriculture guide
members of society to consent, first, to the existence of distinct, unequal
agrarian classes (such as terratenientes or landowners, colonos or agricultural
laborers, and campesinos or peasants) and, second, to the exploitation and dis
possession of some (laborers and peasants) for the benefit of those with greater
access to political and economic resources (landowners) (Bobrow-Strain,
2007; Bryceson, Kay, and Mooij, 2000; Paige, 1997). Formal institutions (e.g.,
laws that emphasize private property, top-down governance, market com
petitiveness, and profit generation) as well as informal relations of produc
tion (e.g., compadrazgo,2 paternalism, patron-client relations) (Dore, 2006;
Pena and Boschetti, 2008) are examples of the structures that shape this
acceptance of the "natural order" (or hegemony) of capitalist relations of
agrarian production. This paper calls attention to these sorts of formal and
informal structures to examine how the Bolivian lowlands have become a
world of distinct agrarian classes and the struggles taking place to maintain
this order. The first section examines the emergence of agrarian classes and
the mobilization of resources that attributed "distinction" (Bourdieu, 1984) to
capitalist agriculture in the lowlands. This is followed by an analysis of the
reforms promoted by the Morales administration, specifically, the drafting
of a new agrarian law. The next section examines how agrarian elites are
responding to the prospect of institutional change brought on by the new
law. The conclusion highlights the relevance of situating agrarian elites'
responses to change.
Valdivia / AGRARIAN CAPITALISM AND HEGEMONY 69
PRODUCING HEGEMONY IN THE LOWLANDS
The Bolivian state played a fundamental role in the establishment of agrarian

classes in the lowlands. The land reform of 1953, conducted by the Mov
imiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement?
MNR) and brought on by pressure from highland peasants (Gotkowitz, 2007),
set the stage for the establishment of capitalist agriculture in the lowlands.
Between 1953 and 1964, the MNR used land reform to promote state-led
development in the lowlands. It did so in two ways. First, it encouraged land
poor and landless highland peasants to "march to the east" to settle land
(plots between 20 and 50 ha) in the lowlands and make it produce to feed the
nation (Antezana, 1969; Malloy, 1970). By 1980, highland colonists accounted
for 41 percent of the population in Santa Cruz (Pena, 2007). Second, it granted
landholdings ranging from 500 to 50,000 ha to "capitalist entrepreneurs," local
elites, and those with close ties to political parties in power to encourage export
agriculture (Villafuerte, 2002). Santa Cruz experienced uncontrolled, illegal
land granting under this second scheme (Sandoval, 2003).
Between 1955 and 1960, the Bolivian state channeled resources through the
Inter-American Agricultural Service (a U.S.-funded agricultural research and
extension scheme), specifically technology, credits, and infrastructure, to
modernize agriculture. Most was invested in large-scale production in Santa
Cruz. By 1961, close to 50,000 ha of rice and 80,000 ha of sugar had been sown
(Roca, 1981). Meanwhile, since the 1950s, hydrocarbon royalties had been
adding to the wealth derived from agricultural investments, increasing the
capital that circulated through Santa Cruz (Pena, 2007).
The land allocation policies fostered by the Bolivian government resulted in
a skewed land distribution. The first mechanism of land settlement, oriented
toward Andean migrants of rural origin, created a large class of small land
holders (typically referred to as "small producers") that produced for the
national market and often depended on outsourcing its labor in order to sup
port household economies (Ormachea, 2007). The second mechanism con
centrated larger landholdings in the hands of a smaller class of capitalist
entrepreneurs ("large producers") that was oriented toward export agricul
ture. As the latest agrarian census (1984) indicates, farm units over 200 ha (or
approximately 6 percent of the total units) occupied almost 84 percent of the
total land surface in Santa Cruz (Table 1). Balderrama (2002), in a study spon
sored by the INRA and the Danish government, shows a similar trend between
1953 and 2002: farm units under 50 ha (38 percent of total units) received
6.3 percent of total land surface distributed during that time period, while
empresas (agricultural enterprises) over 500 ha (7.7 percent of the total units)
were assigned 52.6 percent of the total land distributed. Soruco (2008) sug
gests that of land allocations greater than 10,000 ha granted between 1952 and
1994, 81.26 percent were to private individuals, 8.66 percent to agri-business
enterprises, and 10.01 percent to small-producer cooperatives. While uneven
land distribution is the primary axis of agrarian classes, class difference is also
reproduced through the tacit recognition that different classes have different
racial characteristics, agrarian practices, and economic power: small produc
ers are of highland and rural origin and subsistence-oriented and have less
TABLE 1
Land Tenure in Santa Cruz, 1984
Farm Units Surface
Size of Landholding (hectares) Number Percentage Hectares Percentage
Less than 50 31,639 74.71 366,304.44 6.64

50 to 199 8,084 19.09 531,105.38 9.61
200 to 999 1,476 3.49 625,544.22 11.32
1,000 and above 1,146 2.71 4,002,142.27 72.43
Total 42,345 100.00 5,525,093.31 100.00
Source: Agrarian Census of 1984, cited in Sandoval (2003: 47).
access to capital for investment; large producers are Crucenos or Andea

white/mestizos and profit-oriented and have access to capital.
State-led capitalism furthered class differentiation by fostering the uneve
distribution of capital investments. Fiscal incentives, agricultural credits, roa
building, and foreign aid during military regimes in the 1970s promoted th
growth of large agro-export enterprises (cotton and sugar) and the develop
ment of local institutions that catered to their needs (Pena, 2007). During th
government of Hugo Banzer (1971-1978), a partnership between governmen
officials, Cruceno agro-industrialists, and military personnel allowed agrar
ian capitalists to secure credit and land for the growth of their individual
enterprises.3
Large-scale, export-oriented agriculture (e.g., sugar and soy) grew as
result and led to a parallel increase in demand for labor. A shortage of loc
labor supply prompted a search for workers in other parts of the country.
Workers came primarily from highland departments that were experiencin
high unemployment and economic contraction, mainly Potosi, Chuquisaca,
and Oruro. Securing the labor pool depended on contratistas (independent
recruiters who secure labor contracts between individuals seeking employ
ment and employers) and enganche.4 Initially, the high labor demand and shor
supply proved to be quite profitable for workers, some of whom used their
pay to buy land in the lowlands. High labor demand also led to a floatin
population of highland-born landless agricultural workers with permanent
residence in the lowlands (Pacheco, 1994). By 1976, 63 percent of salarie
workers in Bolivia were located in the lowlands and 45 percent in Santa Cru
(Pacheco and Ormachea, 2000).
THE "INTERNATIONALIZATION'' OF AGRICULTURE
In the mid-1980s, state-led capitalism promoted growth but also high fisca
deficits (Sandoval, 2003). After an economically tumultuous period of hype
inflation and the return to democracy in 1985, the Bolivian government imple
mented a "New Economy," a free-market model of production and trade tha
would open production and services to foreign investors. The resulting influ
of foreign capital?specifically, Argentine, Brazilian, and U.S. investors?led
to what agrarian elites refer to as the "internationalization" of the lowlands
Agrarian capitalists who until then had depended on the state to support their
economy now looked to transnational capital to maintain it. Internationalization
further channeled incoming capital to export-oriented, larger landholders
(Gill, 1987). Projects sponsored by the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund, and the Inter-American Bank, for example, promoted extensive defor
estation and land appropriation in the name of agricultural development,
specifically for soy production (Perez, 2007). The most significant of these was
the World Bank's Lowlands Project, which financed new "areas of expansion"
east of the city of Santa Cruz (essentially, the appropriation and clearing of
state land and land used by the Ayoreo, Guarani, and Guarayos peoples) and
infrastructure that vertically integrated the international trade in soy. In addi
tion, USAID, through the PL-480 program, funded extension and seed pro
grams and technological improvements that allowed more than one harvest a
year and reduced labor requirements (Kreidler et al., 2004).
The results legitimized Santa Cruz's reputation as an "engine of produc
tion." While in 1988 the surface cultivated in soy was 70,000 ha, by 1994 it had
grown to 307,000 ha. Santa Cruz accounted for 97 percent of the total produc
tion of soy in Bolivia (Sandoval, 2003). The manufacturing and commerce
sectors also flourished with the influx of capital. By the mid-1990s, Brazilian,
Argentine, and Peruvian industrial conglomerates and casas comerciales (trad
ing houses) dominated the agricultural complex, financing loans for soy
production, providing agricultural inputs to producers (fertilizers, pesticides,
seeds), and later collecting and transforming their product for further
commercialization.
Today's soy producers recognize that success in commercial agriculture
resulted from this greater international investment, increased productivity,
and above-normal international prices. Further private investment in cultiva
tion technologies, large mechanized equipment, "direct sow" techniques
(already implemented in Argentina and Brazil), and the use of herbicides
(and, much later, genetically modified soy varieties) followed, leading to a boom
in production in the mid-1990s. Thus, to the Cruceno agricultural elites, pri
vate investors (particularly, Brazilian agri-businesses) are responsible for the
economic success of the Cruceno model of production. The profit generated
by soy?the "golden bean" (Perez, 2007)?contributed to never-before-seen
economic growth, prompting many to feel that modernity was achieved
through private and transnational, not state, investment.5
Less recognized is the fact that growth in the soy complex also deepened
inequalities among producers. Growth in the soy sector, for example, increased
differences between small, medium-sized, and large producers based on
access to land and capital?a pattern initiated with the land distribution pro
cesses of 1953 and continued through state incentives in the 1960s and 1970s.6
Large soy producers have significantly greater access to investment capital;
they capture loans at lower interest rates to invest in production and partici
pate in vertically integrated systems of production that allow them to trans
form and commercialize value-added products such as soy flour and oil (Ortiz
and Soliz, 2007). They are also able to mortgage land to secure larger invest
ment loans. Small producers, on the other hand, are risky investments for
lenders and pay higher interest on loans for the purchase of the same basic
inputs (e.g., seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides). Their status as small producers,
according to the law, prohibits them from mortgaging land, which is consid
ered "family patrimony." Once small producers yield to an intermediary, they
do not participate in transformation or commercialization, and this limits their
ability to negotiate prices (Ortiz and Soliz, 2007).
The internationalization of the lowlands in the early 1990s also led to struc
tural inequalities associated with changes in the labor market. All producer
classes in the lowlands?small, medium-sized, and large?hire salaried work
ers, though their hiring patterns vary according to production needs and
access to capital. Often, small producers support each other by sharing pro
duction costs, rented machinery, and hired labor (Ortiz and Soliz, 2007). Medium
sized and large producers, having greater access to capital, own their equipment
(and rent it out) and often maintain a proletarianized and specialized work
force (Ormachea, 2007). Moreover, the technification of production that resulted
from internationalization reduced larger producers' need for labor in the soy
sector (Pacheco, 1994)7 Demand decreased for jornaleros (salaried workers)
employed in cultivation, sowing, and land clearing and increased for skilled
workers such as machinery operators and individuals with experience in
industrial processing. Together with the "flexibilization" of labor contracts in
1989 (in number of hours worked, pay, and type of work according to the
needs of employers) and the entrenchment of enganche, the regional decline
in labor demand limited the ability of workers to negotiate employment terms
vis-a-vis employers (Pacheco and Ormachea, 2000).
Class differentiation also increased with land dispossession. Many small
producers sold their land because it had lost its fertility or because they could
not afford to cover the costs of production or repay their debts. More eco
nomically powerful producers bought and rehabilitated these "tired"
lands, which led to land consolidation. The newly landless producers
sought to acquire new lands farther from roads, thus further expanding the
agricultural frontier (Pacheco and Mertens, 2004), became landless work
ers, or moved to urban areas. Similarly, some indigenous groups lost lands
as self-interested leaders sold communally held lands to private individu
als (primarily, large-scale producers) without community consent, in exchange
for personal favors and/or political alliances (Ormachea, 2007; Postero, 2007;
Rojas, 2008).
In the face of the increasing dispossession associated with internationaliza
tion, lowlands indigenous groups in the 1980s organized against agricultural
expansion. Armed with the language of citizenship and the expectations of
rights that it implied, in 1990 lowlands indigenous activists marched from the
lowlands to La Paz to demand recognition of their culture and territories
(Postero, 2007). This highly publicized March for Territory and Dignity pushed
the "indigenous issue" onto the national agenda and provided urgency for
reforms. In response to this escalating pressure and growing evidence of ille
gal land appropriation, in 1992 a new set of state and civil society representa
tives was charged with creating a more "technical" and "inclusive" land law.
Law 1715 (the INRA Law) was approved in 1996 amidst intense mobilizations
and criticism. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada hailed the new law as a
mechanism of social transformation that would end the rampant corruption
that had developed in the lowlands (NotiSur, 1996).
A MORE "TECHNICAL" AND "INCLUSIVE" REFORM
The INRA Law sought to provide juridical security over property, recognize
the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, establish principles
of sustainability as a way of securing access to land, and create a new set of
institutions through which to manage land issues in a transparent manner.
Above all, it aimed to perfect the right to property according to the agrarian
divisions existing in the lowlands. Article 2 of its General Dispositions identi
fies the actors that can claim the right to land according to social background
(indigenous and nonindigenous) and size of landholding (large, medium
sized, and small). Medium-sized and large landholders are actors with full
property rights. Small producers and indigenous groups do not have full
property rights. Small landholders cannot transfer or sell land because, accord
ing to Article 169 of the constitution, small landholdings are "family patri
mony." Indigenous territories are recognized as communally held property
that cannot be transferred.
The INRA Law introduces three "technical principles" through which the
right to land is to be perfected: the function of the property, the "best uses" of
the land, and saneamiento, the provision of clear title to land through proper
measurement. Article 2 identifies the function of the property as the way
of assessing how it is being used. Small and communal landholdings are
expected to fulfill a social function: supporting the reproduction of house
holds and the economic development of individuals. If land is not visibly used
or lived on or is abandoned, it is subject to expropriation. Medium-sized and
large landholdings, in contrast, must fulfill a socioeconomic function: the
"sustainable use of land for the development of agri-business, forestry, and
other productive activities, as well as for the conservation and protection of
biodiversity, research, and ecotourism, and according to its best use capacity,
for the benefit of society, the collective, and its owner." Evidence that supports
the right to land includes both actual and future uses. The performance of
actual work is not necessary; evidence of future or potential uses (such as
cattle birth certificates) and promises of greater production (e.g., plans for
improvements) also guarantee the right to land. Article 52 also recognizes
timely tax payments as fulfilling a socioeconomic function (small and indige
nous landholders are tax-exempt) even if the land is not actively being used.
Expropriation occurs when land is not being worked and tax payment is not
evident, and reversion occurs if the work is "detrimental to the general pub
lic." The "best use of land" is determined by a land-use plan for each depart
ment devised by the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Environment
with the goal of governing the sustainable transformation of land. A set of
technical norms and maps, the land-use plan establishes the spatioecological
"limiting factors"?topography, drainage systems, soil structure and chemis
try, vegetation, rivers, lakes, rangelands, etc.?that will determine the "use
capacity" of land. On the basis of this plan, a property-ordering plan can be
devised for individual medium-sized and large properties to identify their
present and future "best uses." Not following one plan or the other may result
in the loss of the right to land. Finally, saneamiento involves the production of
cadastral surveys that map the boundaries of "properly functioning" property.
It is conceptualized as a "healing process" that ends the irregular granting of

land for undisclosed purposes by binding together geographic location, sur
face delimitations, and the fulfillment of a function into a legal land title. The
process was expected to be completed by 2006.
Despite its technical principles, the INRA Law has been modified, chal
lenged, and redefined to fit a series of interests and has not led to the expected
change in the lowlands. In 1997, for example, a year after its approval, President
Banzer reduced tax requirements for large properties, thus saving large pro
ducers in Santa Cruz from paying any significant taxes. He went on to reshuffle
the personnel established under the previous administration to carry out land
reform, effectively putting land reform on the back burner (Urioste, 2005;
Yashar, 2005). Subsequent governments did not restore the property tax to its
original level, indicating a lack of political will to effect change in the agrarian
sector. As of 2006?10 years after the INRA Law was signed?of the 106,751,
723 ha of land slated for titling, 10.7 percent had been titled, 32.6 percent were
"in process," and 56.7 percent had not yet been surveyed. In Santa Cruz, only
11.1 percent of the land had been titled (INRA, 2006).8
When Morales assumed the presidency in 2006, he set out to reform the
INRA Law. Following months of conflict and negotiation, Law 3545, the Ley
de Reconduction (Extension Law), was approved.9 It emphasizes a return to
state oversight in matters of land distribution, redefines natural resources as
state property, and tightens the INRA Law's fundamental principles to effect
changes in land consolidation and labor relations in the lowlands. It extends
Article 2 to define areas to be regulated ("effective cultivation," "fallow," "ille
gal clearing," "livestock," "forestry," and "ecological services"), thus mapping
specific agrarian practices to a set of detailed authorized spatial and temporal
"categories of use." It also eliminates timely tax payments and evidence of
future use as guarantees of the right to property, instead establishing that the
function of land must be assessed through recurring (every two years) field
inspections by INRA personnel. Thus, Law 3545 introduces temporal disci
pline to the right to land among medium-sized and large landholdings. Once
a property is titled, the state retains the right to subject it to a continuous pro
cess of use verification to assess whether it is being employed according to "its
best use." If evaluated as "unproductive," land is subject to expropriation,
regardless of the possession of title.
Law 3545 also oversees labor relations with the goal of ending exploitative
labor recruitment. For example, it stipulates that a landowner employing
individuals for permanent or temporary labor must follow procedures that
register salaries, length of hire, and benefits covered by employers. If such
procedures are not followed or if irregularities?such as forced labor or
unpaid services?are identified, the employer is subject to an investigation,
reflecting the constitutional principle that employment should not be detri
mental to the general public or the collective. The new law also allows popular
movements, departmental and municipal authorities, indigenous federations,
unions, and communities to participate in saneamiento, reversion, expropria
tion, and land-granting. For example, an individual accused of illegally
appropriating land or of not meeting the guidelines of appropriate labor is
subject to investigation. This effort at greater inclusion is framed as a way to
TABLE 2
Examples of Extensive Land Grants in Santa Cruz
Owner Number of Grants Hectares Province
Antelo Family 12 116,647 Nuflo de Chavez

Jaime Villarroel Duran 6 19,490 Cordillera
Gutierrez family 5 98,874 Cordillera
Paz Hurtado family 5 76,000 Obispo Santiestevan
Saavedra Bruno family 9 31,309 German Bush y Velasco
Nelly Paz de Barbery 3 20,877 Obispo Santiestevan
Source: INRA, cited in Romero Bonifaz (2008:121).
"democratize agrarian processes" and meant to speed up the assignment of

property (Almaraz, 2006).
Finally, the new law provides that saneamiento can draw on the historica
record of land tenure to check false land right claims and land acquisition
by fraud. According to Romero Bonifaz (2008), INRA archives show th
1,270 individuals received over 5.7 million ha in the lowlands, which sugges
the illegal allocation of multiple landholdings to individuals and famili
(Table 2). In 2006, a "black list" of latifundistas circulated through the print
media estimated that 90.8 percent of Bolivia's productive lands had bee
assigned to groups in power (Constituyente Soberana, 2006). These cases ar
still under investigation, and it is unclear how many will be affected by th
new law, as the process of establishing titles is long and conflictive and has yet
to be completed in the region.
Opposition to the Law 3545 is strong among those who represent th
Cruceno agro-complex, such as the CAO.
THE AGRARIAN ELITES' RESPONSE

TO INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Since its beginnings in 1964, the CAO has successfully lobbied the Bolivia
government for credit allocations and price levels that benefit lowlands pro
ducers (Gill, 1987). Today it is a major Cruceno institution that claims to re
resent close to 70,000 agrarian capitalists from 16 producer organizations
ranging from fruit growers to cattle ranchers.10 Of these, 70 percent are consi
ered small, 24 percent medium-sized, and 6 percent large. Not all small pr
ducers in the lowlands are affiliated with the CAO; some are affiliated wit
other locally based organizations (e.g., agrarian syndicates, associations, an
cooperatives) that they see as better reflecting their interests. Despite the fact th
the CAO considers itself to represent the interests of commercial agricultur
regardless of scale of production?and that a significant proportion of its
constituency is small producers, its policies and loyalties have historically
served larger producers, often contributing to "internal class frontiers" tha
reproduce the marginalization of some members by those with more influen
within the organization.11 Moreover, its current board of directors, which large
shapes the organization's views on change in the lowlands, is dominate
by large landholders. Three tendencies define the CAO's position on the

"natural" order of agrarian production: selective memories, apolitical argu
ments, and (fractured) sector unity.
SELECTIVE MEMORIES OF THE CAPITALIST SELF
On July 31, 2008, the president of the CAO, Mauricio Roca, in an address
to representatives of his constituency, declared the lowlands agrarian sector
in crisis. The rate of increase of land under cultivation had declined from
16.5 percent in 2004 to -3.2 percent in 2008 (CAO, 2009). Roca, a rice producer
with a family history of landed privilege in Santa Cruz, cited chronic problems
in transportation infrastructure, losses due to climatic effects, and a lack of
adequate access to energy resources and markets as crippling Cruceno agri
culture. Above all, he argued that policies spearheaded by Morales were at the
heart of this crisis of production. First, he said, the "nationalization" of the gas
industry in 2006 had dismantled established networks of diesel distribution
and led to moments of diesel scarcity that interfered with timely harvesting
and commercialization schedules. Second, Law 3545 had made producers afraid
to invest because there was no assurance that the land they had title to would
remain theirs. Finally, the Morales administration's program on food sover
eignty and security, which guaranteed a "fair price" for basic foodstuffs, lim
ited the export of a variety of agricultural products (to counter the rising price
of food products in the Bolivian market), and opened Bolivia's protected mar
kets to food imports (rice, wheat, soy products, maize, and meat), was viewed
by Cruceno producers as compromising their competitiveness in the interna
tional and national markets.
Variously described as "political impositions," a "lack of a state production
vision," and the "politicization of realities," the changes promoted by the
Morales administration are seen as dangerous. The CAO suggests that the
central government, in its effort to improve the conditions of indigenous
and campesino Bolivians, fails to understand the "production realities of
the lowlands." These "realities" are the centrality of private property, access
to international markets, and control of the factors of production?the foun
dations of capitalist agriculture. State intervention, moreover, places at risk
an important tenet of the capitalist self: the right to produce at liberty. The
reforms challenge the principle of production as a natural right of this
agrarian class.
Underpinning these views is the position that agrarian capitalists have
a right to the factors of production because they "have worked for them."
For example, according to Tadeo,12 who arrived from Oruro in 1964 with
only "the clothes on his back" to work in sugarcane fields and now is a
medium-sized soy producer, the central government does not understand
that to succeed in the lowlands people have to be "willing to work hard."
When asked why not all who work hard are now successful like him,
Tadeo responded that they are lazy and do not have a "vocation of produc
tion." The problem is, he explained, that the current government is spon
soring a culture of poverty; it "is not helping them be more productive. . . .
It is Evo [Morales] giving money to his followers. That is their costumbre
[their way of doing things]: they expect the government to do things for
them. They are disorganized, there is no responsibility. They are poor

because of their costumbres."
Tadeo's representations of a class of "successful producers" and "the poor"
in Santa Cruz allude to an epistemology of the self that reproduces polarized
and hierarchical concepts about Cruceno agriculture?hard work, a vocation
of production, organization, and responsibility?and its Other, the Andean
campesino restrained by paternalistic relations of production dominated by a
patron-state. Hegemony relies on these noneconomistic explanations to inter
pret the differences between agrarian classes and to explain their relationships
with each other. In Tadeo's view, people from the highlands know nothing
about hard work; they "are used to herding llamas, not working seven days a
week, under the hot sun, with the diseases and mosquitoes you have here."
David, another medium-sized soy producer, originally from Potosi, recalls
that his father had learned to be an agriculturalist a chicotazo (being beaten by
a heavy leather whip) while working as a temporary laborer in Argentina.
According to David, many have failed in their attempts to make a living in the
lowlands because they did not acquire "the dedication to production" from
these experiences. From his father, he learned about hiring people for harvest
ing soy (prior to mechanization), "training them into hard work," and paying
them for their work so that they could succeed, too. In both Tadeo's and
David's accounts there are descriptions of the violence and exploitation that
characterize agrarian relations and expressions of their willingness to suffer
from these because they are "necessary" (even unavoidable) for success.
As I continued to probe this association between "those who don't make it"
and "productive entrepreneurs" and the rationales that explain exploitation
as a "fact of life," it became clear that the production of racial, economic, and
cultural difference lies at the heart of the discourse of capitalist production in
Santa Cruz. Becoming a successful capitalist, at least for some, allowed the
possibility of transcending the boundaries of the agrarian classes. For exam
ple, both Tadeo and David drew on their past lives and experiences in telling
their stories of success: from having no land to their name when they arrived
as Andean migrants to their improvement, through their own hard work and
investment, to their present condition as Cruceno producers who own large
tracts of land, employ a proletarianized, specialized labor force (of from two to
six employees), and occupy leadership positions in agrarian institutions. They
see themselves as having overcome the hierarchy of agricultural production
(i.e., from laborer to land-poor campesino to successful capitalist) by accept
ing the inevitability of capitalist relations of production.13 Their positions on
"success" are grounded in stories of production and progress that rely on a
"partial amnesia" about the inequalities that are part and parcel of capitalist
agriculture.
I describe this positioning as a partial amnesia because capitalist growth in
Santa Cruz is built upon labor exploitation and land dispossession (Ormachea,
2007; Romero Bonifaz, 2008). The structures that govern hired labor in the
agricultural sector of Santa Cruz work toward a continued power inequality
between employers and workers that is seldom reported in narratives of
capitalist "successes" (Bedoya and Bedoya, 2004; Pacheco and Ormachea,
2000; Pacheco, 1994). While this relationship stems from structures of produc
tion associated with plantation systems, these structures were given new life
through laws of labor flexibilization in the late 1980s that provided the legal
framework for limiting juridical guarantees for laborers. According to the
Confederation of Rural Workers of Bolivia (Confederation de Trabajadores
Asalariados Rurales de Bolivia?CTARB), labor arrangements perpetuate a
situation in which most laborers have no guarantee of decent working condi
tions or pay or that due process will be followed in the negotiation of work
contracts, though these conditions vary according to the employer (CTARB,
2009). The sugar sector exemplifies these inequalities (Simon, 1980). A survey
conducted by Pacheco (1994), for example, found that among larger sugar
enterprises (plantations over 50 ha) in Santa Cruz, 63 percent of the labor force
was hired through a contratista and involved some form of enganche. Bedoya
and Bedoya (2004) estimate that 63 percent of sugarcane field workers (zafreros)
are subject to coerced labor contracts and that 28,000 of temporary workers
(85 percent of zafreros) gain these contracts through enganche and peonaje
(collective work contracts). Despite this wide range of estimates (63 percent
vs. 85 percent), the trend seems to be that forced labor contracts are heavily
used in recruiting temporary workers. While some workers have organized
into unions to secure better working conditions, better access to education,
health services, and social security, and reduced dependence on enganche,
many others have been unable to do so. Thus, suggesting that the position
of the temporary worker is a positive experience, as David and Tadeo do,
despite the inequalities that temporary labor structures reproduce, relies on
"forgetting" the limited rights available to workers and the fact that very few
workers actually "make it."
THE CAPITALIST SELF AS "APOLITICAL"
While achievement through hard work is seen as a cultural distinction

that overcomes class divisions, the capitalist self defends the status quo
using what it considers "apolitical" and "technical" arguments. The CAO,
for example, argues that Law 3545 "politicizes" capitalist production.
According to medium-sized and large producers, temporal regulation of the
right to property hinders capitalist production because it fails to recognize
its dynamic spatio-temporal adaptations to changes in environmental and
market conditions. For the CAO, the new parameters for the verification of
the function of property overlook the fact that production is determined by
"unpreventable factors" such as plagues, international prices, and climatic
disasters and that these shape a producer's decision to employ land in any
given year. The verification of the land's socioeconomic function every two
years without attention to the "temporalities of production" introduces the
possibility that the landowner may be found "failing to produce" according
to the law. While these statements could easily be deployed to hide illegal
land acquisitions, loss of the right to produce is rated by medium-sized and
large producers as one of the most important risks associated with the
Morales administration. Thus, their concerns center on the way changes in
the law and its definition of property could, in the last instance, limit their
viability as producers?regardless of whether they are producing on legally
acquired lands. To date, no cases of expropriation in the lowlands have
taken place.
These are the "technical" arguments at the core of the CAO's opposition
to reform. By focusing solely on the factors of production (how much land,
technology, and credit are available and how these are affected by agrarian
reform), the CAO obscures the sociopolitical world within which production
is embedded. This is clear in its response to the inclusion of labor relations
in the evaluation of socioeconomic function. The CAO sees the focus on labor
relations as unnecessary?even misguided?because these relations are not
fundamental to the circulation of capital. In other words, it is investment in
technology, the clearing of lands appropriated (legally and illegally), and the
creation of protected markets that have made Cruceno agriculture successful.
Rectifying land distribution patterns and the nature of labor relations as the
Morales administration is attempting to do is not conducive to Cruceno suc
cess; it is "politics." The following quotation from one of the CAO's officers
exemplifies the structural dissonance that underpins the politics of making
labor relations visible:
Now they [the government] say it is about labor. Slavery and exploitation. In the
new law . . . labor irregularities can affect your property rights. You don't have
contracts, you didn't pay bonuses, you can't be godfather to your worker's
kids.... In many places, the landowner is the one that goes to the market, buys
things for the workers, pays in advance. Can't do that now. Can't give gifts. You
have to register them [workers] with the appropriate labor institutions.... If you
don't have them registered, with a registration card and all that, you are not fol
lowing the law; you are harming the collective. . . . And they [workers] have to
go register themselves, too. . . . Workers don't want to be registered. They don't
want to pay taxes. They want their money!... Before, they [INRA] checked how
many cows you have. Now, an entire page of the field evaluation form is about
your labor relations, how many workers you have.
This quotation suggests that a landlord-worker relationship based on com

padrazgo is alive in some agrarian enterprises in the lowlands. According to
the director of the INRA, Juan Carlos Rojas, reports have surfaced suggesting
that, in the easternmost portion of Santa Cruz, paternalistic relations in which
landowners provide housing, food, and gifts to employees in exchange for
work, loyalty, and consent to feudal-like terms of employment are leading to
forced labor and permanent involuntary captivity, both of which are unconsti
tutional (Rojas, 2008). When asked about these reports, the CAO's officer dis
missed them as exaggerations meant to feed conflict. He proceeded to justify
compadrazgo as something that, by virtue of being "engrained in the social
fabric of the region," is hardly internally questioned. He played down these
relations of power and stressed that their outcomes (e.g., worker welfare) were
inevitable elements of the moral constitution of capitalist production. In this
imaginary, the patron is a benevolent boss who knows best how to take care of
his laborers?better than they can. While aware of the problematic nature of
compadrazgo, he perceived it as offering the most benefits for all?workers
and employers. This is a position in which status (i.e., as landlord or employer)
stands for authority and for knowing better than members of other classes and
the state, which translates into exploitative labor contracts that workers are not
able to terminate as easily as employers do. Capitalist employers thus become
"benevolent despots," a position that is inconsistent with the view of a capital
ist self that values individual autonomy. This moral inconsistency has led not
only to labor exploitation but to a redefinition of workers' basic freedoms in

terms of what employers and the structures that reproduce their hegemony
consider most beneficial for profit generation. In this sense, taking care of the
social reproduction of workers is limited to buying things for them, giving
them pay advances, and providing political protection that maintains their
status but not investing in its improvement. My further probing into these
issues of inequality resulted in quizzical looks and inquiries about my inten
tions. Examining the "natural order" of capitalist agriculture seemed like pry
ing into the cracks and contradictions of the Cruceno agrarian self.
SECTOR UNITY: A MATTER OF "PRODUCTION, NOT POLITICS"
The CAO's position of protecting the productive sector is closely linked to

the movement for autonomy in Santa Cruz, an effort to secure the local right
to administer and execute governance decisions over local resources and
uphold regional and local institutions as the overseers of development (Eaton,
2007; Urenda, 2006). The CAO has assumed leadership in the movement, pub
licly articulating the Cruceno model of production with the need to establish
a stronger, local government that is impervious to "state abuses." These views
highlight the shifting relationship between the state and agrarian elites. While
between the 1960s and the late 1990s the state was a pivotal supporter of the
hegemonic view of elite-led capitalist agriculture, the Morales administration
maintains the opposite view of agrarian hegemony: agriculture is state-led
and small-producer-oriented.
One of the CAO's strategies for safeguarding hegemony is to enhance sec
tor unity by breaking down barriers between agrarian classes. Critics of
autonomy rightly highlight the problematic nature of a C AO-led agrarian sec
tor (Soruco, 2008), but it would be disingenuous to ignore the discursive
power of the principle of unity. Hegemony relies on the configuration of an
agrarian reality in which all classes see the potential of cross-class alliances
under common leadership (Gramsci, 1995 [1926]). The actions of the CAO's
leadership seem to indicate that interclass unity is in the best interest of all.
They have sought to promote a common position based on protection from a
central government that "lacks an understanding of the productive realities of
the lowlands." Drawing on "unity in production" and an ethic of "produc
tion, not politics," the CAO officers, over the years, have visited communities
of small producers, organized workshops, and inquired about their needs and
challenges.
For example, in a board meeting with the Federacion Nacional de
Cooperativas Arroceras (Federation of Rice Grower Cooperatives?FENCA)
in 2008, the CAO officials wanted to "know about the realities of rice produc
tion," highlighted that they were "respectful of the ideological position of
producers," and argued that, despite differences, they were "working toward
solutions for all, unlike the central government." This may be one of the
CAO's most effective strategies for strengthening alliances across agrarian
classes, as small-scale producers in the lowlands are ambivalent about their
position in the clash between state and Cruceno sovereignties. As Morales
emphasizes the allocation of land in favor of those who do not have it (a posi
tion greatly celebrated in the highlands), some lowlands small producers are
fearful of the repercussions of having more individuals claiming rights in the

region. Thus, they have expressed the possibility of a stronger alliance with
the CAO as a way to protect their lot from new, state-sponsored immigrants.
FENCA members, however, also consider an affiliation with the CAO a
liability in the current political climate of conjunctural political loyalties. The
CAO's ability to fulfill its production-oriented promises (e.g., securing technical
assistance, transportation networks, and better prices for the small producer) is
tied to the resources of its more dominant members, typically those who
oppose the Morales administration. Thus, lobbying for small producers ?the
rural base of the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism?
MAS), Morales's political party, is like requesting help for those who are
against the CAO's elite. Moreover, the CAO's attempt to strengthen its posi
tion among small producers is complicated by paternalistic relations of com
padrazgo. It is making efforts, at least on the surface, to break down class
frontiers through promises of "strength in unity" and by providing infrastruc
ture and technology to all producers, large and small. In other words, it prom
ises a contract of compadrazgo with its affiliated members: it takes care of its
employees /subordinates and offers security in exchange for their consent at
this decisive political conjuncture. But there is no guarantee that its promises
will materialize. According to members of the FENCA, the CAO's promises to
the small producer are not new; the 1990s and early 2000s were marked by
moments when small producers mobilized in the name of sector unity but the
CAO failed to enhance small-scale production. Small producers see that the
CAO, once it secures its political goals, "forgets" about the small producer.
Paternalism also colors other ways in which the CAO attempts to broker
alliances with small producers, some that seem far from "technical" argu
ments. Nowhere is this clearer than in the dynamics of power struggles
among small-scale producers. The current moment of institutional change in
Bolivia has highlighted divisions not only between agrarian classes but also
within them?for example, between small-scale producers who support the
government of Evo Morales and the MAS and those who, for various reasons,
did not gain the political power they expected during the rise of the MAS. For
the CAO, these internal frictions offer the possibility of strengthening its social
contracts with some small producers.14 The experience of Patricio, a former
leader of the Union Federation of Colonizers of Santa Cruz and one of the
founders of the Landless Movement in Bolivia, is one such case.
Patricio is a union leader, originally from Cochabamba, who became an
agricultural colonizer in Santa Cruz. In 2000 he met Morales, and together,
along with a few other union leaders, they formed a federation that would
channel the claims of all agricultural colonizers and fight against abuses per
petrated against campesinos in Bolivia. When Morales was elected president,
Patricio believed that he and his followers would receive posts in the Bolivian
government. Other union leaders had made bids for the positions he desired,
however, and he and his followers did not become part of the new administra
tion. He retaliated by publicly accusing Morales of clientelism and withdraw
ing from the MAS. In 2006 he advocated protest against the "injustices" and
"unconstitutional behavior" of the Morales administration. His repositioning
earned him the label of "deserter" and had repercussions: he received death
threats, his house was set on fire, and his family was threatened for attempting
to discredit the leadership of the movement. As he and other former MAS

members in Santa Cruz said, "In the countryside, you can't talk against the
MAS?it's social suicide." Statements such as these are indicative of the depth
of the struggles against the existing hegemony and the elite represented by the
CAO, of the support the Morales hegemonic project has among many small
producers in the lowlands, and of the long-standing marginalization associ
ated with dispossession and labor exploitation committed by the very groups
that the CAO represents. Thus this sort of intraclass violence must be under
stood in the historical context of class domination in Bolivia. Patricio's charges
against the MAS were interpreted as speaking against the rural base of the
movement and its effort to put an end to a historical subaltern position.
Multiple incidents of much worse violence against campesinos in Santa Cruz,
perpetrated by those who defend the interests of the agrarian elites, have also
been documented (Bolpress, 2005; Gustafson, 2006). Violence is not a property
of the rural base but a symptom of the escalating struggle for hegemony
within and between classes. Patricio's repositioning also shows that selec
tively forgetting the inequalities generated by capitalist agriculture in pursuit
of personal gain is not limited to the agrarian elites.
In this context, the CAO emerged as Patricio's potential ally. Once when
I was interviewing the CAO's officers, Patricio appeared before them to solicit
funds for an ampliado (a community assembly). Despite his extensive political
leadership experience and his highly publicized accusations against Morales,
he performed a submissive subjectivity accepting of the "natural order" of
patron-client relations with the CAO officer. He adopted what seemed to me
the script and body language of respeto, a confirmation of unequal social rela
tions (shuffling feet, downcast eyes, submissive tones) that shows "respect"
for those in power and used the language of the ruego (humble request). The
CAO officer also participated in the performance of class hierarchies. For all
intents and purposes, he seemed willing to help. He greeted Patricio politely
and listened to his request. He made telephone calls to ask if such funds were
possible, telling Patricio, "Look what you have turned me into! Now I work
for you, you have me gestionando (doing administrative work)." The CAO's
officer performed the role of the patron, shouldering the burden of searching
for funds. Patricio was asked to come back the next day; the CAO officer was
going to "pass his hat around and see what fell in." After Patricio left, I asked
the CAO officer why the CAO would go to the trouble of helping him out. He
answered, "This is power. If I help him now, he owes us. If I call him and tell
him to mobilize his people, he will. That is what the CAO gains."
No funds had fallen into the hat when Patricio returned the next day. The
CAO officer told him that nobody was returning his calls: "My hands are
tied." Patricio asked for the president of the CAO and even the prefect of
Santa Cruz?in an effort to get to a "bigger" patron?but the officer responded
that they were both out of reach. The CAO officer ended the conversation by
saying that without his superior's consent, he couldn't release funds even if
they existed. This outcome is not surprising. The CAO is not a real patron,
even if it desired this status, and Patricio is not one of its employees. Yet it
speaks of the asymmetrical relations that continue to reproduce the class fron
tiers of the CAO, relations that have not been overcome through the strategy
of "sector unity." On the way out of the CAO's building, I ran into Patricio. As
we chatted, he commented on his exchange with the CAO's officer: "You see
how they are? They have money to pay people to mobilize, to close roads, to
take over institutions. But they won't give you money. They will pay you to
mobilize because they need you, but when it is about our organization, they
don't have money." This example of failed class alliances could be read in two
ways: first, as a failure of the CAO to broker sector unity (the CAO's officer
was unable to persuade its members to negotiate with Patricio?an opportu
nity for maintaining hegemony was missed) and second, as evidence that,
given Patricio's diminishing political influence, supporting his request was
too risky for the CAO. For hegemony to be maintained, the right alliances?
with the right political and intellectual leaders?must be pursued.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper has called attention to the conditions that led to the existing
order of agrarian production in the Bolivian lowlands. Class struggles over
this order are expressed in the intimate spaces of social institutions, such as
patron-client relations, as well as in more formal spaces of interaction, such as
through agrarian law. I have focused on the responses of agrarian elites to
state-directed change in the Bolivian lowlands, including examples of the
positionings, arguments, and strategies pursued, to offer an interpretation of
the role of agrarian elites in the production of hegemony. From the cultivation
of capitalism as the desirable mechanism for creating wealth and the unques
tioned nature of agrarian classes to the encouragement of sector unity as the
moral compass of capitalist agriculture, agrarian elites and their representa
tives are seeking to maintain relationships that allow them to govern the agri
cultural sector in the lowlands.
Hegemony, though precarious, is established in several ways: first, through
constructions of a defense of Cruceno agriculture that focuses on the "techni
cal" arguments while obscuring the dispossession and exploitation associated
with capitalist success; second, through a focus on land, capital, and markets
as unquestioned "production realities" and on the way in which current
reforms put these factors "at risk"; and, finally, through promises of unity in
the agrarian sector, though this unity is often undermined by paternalistic
relations of dependence and failed social contracts, as the natural way to face
moments of crisis.
The CAO's arguments, which represent the position of the dominant
agrarian classes, are not all fictional accounts that hide true motives or con
scious lies but inseparable from the uneven social, political, and economic
processes that have nurtured capitalist agriculture in the lowlands. Often,
interviewees understood that change was impending, but the terms in which
change is introduced and the ways in which it seeks to unglue the world of
privilege, political power, and landed monopoly in the lowlands will be con
tested every step of the way as elites attempt to minimize losses.
As the examples here suggest, there are no guarantees for the dominant
agrarian classes. The political economy that shaped modernization and, later,
internationalization in the lowlands is part and parcel of the ways in which
the Cruceno model became the proper order of production in the lowlands.
Views of the agrarian capitalist self as the subject of agrarian history con
struct a present of the lowlands based on private and foreign actors while at
the same time obscuring the pivotal role of the state in producing lowlands
hegemony. The policies advocated by the Morales administration destabilize
these subjectivities and the conditions that led to their condensation. As a
result, the agrarian elites seem to be in a precarious situation in terms of repro
ducing hegemony precisely because the state is not supporting their position as
it did during the heyday of production between the 1960s and the early 2000s.
Members of the CAO hope that the changes taking place are not structural
and are taking advantage of this opportunity of political upheaval to build a
regional identity that, most likely, will not lead to an alternative organization
of resource governance. Supporters of the MAS are also attempting to shift
agrarian hegemony in the lowlands by supporting the position of the Morales
administration in the region. Thus far, however, social improvement in the
lowlands remains to be seen.
NOTES
1. While dispossession and patterns of uneven development in Bolivia are widely re

nized (Albro, 2006; Hylton, Thompson, and Gilly, 2007; Kohl and Farthing, 2006; Postero, 2
Webber, 2008), less is known about how elites participate in these processes.
2. Compadrazgo is a fictive kinship relationship established through godparenting and use
to intensify and extend existing relationships. In agrarian contexts, it involves social contrac
that bind the exchange of labor or other economic and political support for social protection
3. Nearly 42 percent of the 43,086,654 ha allocated between 1952 and 1993 were assign
during the Banzer government (Soruco, 2008). This period coincides with the development
clandestine cocaine economy in Santa Cruz. The presence of large, unregulated expanse
land, together with uncontrolled land markets, helped many to join the growing ruling Cru
bourgeoisie?though not necessarily to become members of an agrarian class (Gill, 1987).
4. Enganche is a labor contract in which the laborer is paid an advance and cannot termin
employment at will or seek other employment without incurring exorbitant debt.
5. Since 2007, Morales has sought to make the agrarian process more inclusive. One su
effort has been the creation of the Empresa de Apoyo a la Production de Alimentos (Enterpr
for the Support of Food Production?EMAPA), a state enterprise that subsidizes small produce
and offers an alternative to vertically integrated systems of commercialization dominate
larger producers. Results are mixed, however, because of the uneven application of the progr
and the unexpected costs of running such an enterprise.
6. Of the approximately 14,000 soy producers in the lowlands, 75 percent are conside
"small" (with landholdings less than 80 ha), 23 percent "medium-sized" (80 to 500 ha), a
2 percent "large" (above 500 ha) (ANAPO, 2007). Large producers are mostly Brazilians attra
by relatively cheap land and labor, favorable investment conditions, and the promise of lucra
markets.
7. Pacheco and Ormachea (2000) point out that there are no adequate estimates of the actual
number of permanent salaried workers in Santa Cruz.
8. Most of it is indigenous territories surveyed and titled with help from the European Union.
9. For a technical analysis comparing the INRA Law and Law 3545, see Guzman et al. (2008).
10. These include the Departmental Poultry Association (ADA), the National Association of
Cotton Producers (ADEPA), the Departmental Association of Hog Breeders (ADEPOR), the
National Association of Soy and Wheat Producers (ANAPO), the Association of Vegetable and
Fruit Growers (ASOHFRUT), the Federation of Sugarcane Growers of Santa Cruz (FCSC), the
Federation of Milk Producers (FEDEPLE), the Federation of Cattle-Ranchers of Santa Cruz
(FEGASACRUZ), the National Federation of Rice Grower Cooperatives (FENCA), the Association
of Maize, Sorghum, and Bean Producers (PROMASOR), the Association of Rice Producers
(ASPAR), the Association of Sugarcane Growers (ASOCANA), the Association of Sugarcane
Producers (SOCA), the Guabira Sugar Producers' Union (UCG), Guabira S.A., and Unagro S.A.
11. FENCA members disapprove of the CAO's lack of interest in the small producer. Many
members see it as overwhelmingly favoring more economically powerful partners.
12.1 use pseudonyms to identify interviewees who are not elected officials or public leaders.
13. For example, the current president of the Asociacion Nacional de Productores de
Oleaginosas y Trigo (ANAPO), which represents soy producers, is the first Andean migrant to
hold a leadership position in the organization.
14. While political divisions within classes warrant a fuller explanation, here I focus solely on
the role of internal class conflicts in the CAO's strategies for hegemony.
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Agrarian Capitalism and Struglle Over Hegemony in Bolivian Lowland

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Agrarian Capitalism and Struglle Over Hegemony in Bolivian Lowland

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Agrarian Capitalism and Struggles over Hegemony in the Bolivian Lowlands

Author(s): Gabriela Valdivia

Keywords: Hegemony, Agrarian change, Capitalist agriculture, Agrarian elites,

Gabriela Valdivia is an assistant professor of geography at the University of North Carolina,

and members of the Camara Agropecuaria del Oriente (Agricultural Chamber

HEGEMONY AND THE STUDY OF ELITES

"Hegemony ... is the control of essentially heterogeneous, discontinuous,

PRODUCING HEGEMONY IN THE LOWLANDS

The Bolivian state played a fundamental role in the establishment of agrarian

Farm Units Surface

Size of Landholding (hectares) Number Percentage Hectares Percentage

Less than 50 31,639 74.71 366,304.44 6.64

access to capital for investment; large producers are Crucenos or Andea

THE "INTERNATIONALIZATION'' OF AGRICULTURE

A MORE "TECHNICAL" AND "INCLUSIVE" REFORM

It is conceptualized as a "healing process" that ends the irregular granting of

Antelo Family 12 116,647 Nuflo de Chavez

"democratize agrarian processes" and meant to speed up the assignment of

THE AGRARIAN ELITES' RESPONSE

by large landholders. Three tendencies define the CAO's position on the

SELECTIVE MEMORIES OF THE CAPITALIST SELF

them. They are disorganized, there is no responsibility. They are poor

THE CAPITALIST SELF AS "APOLITICAL"

While achievement through hard work is seen as a cultural distinction

This quotation suggests that a landlord-worker relationship based on com

only to labor exploitation but to a redefinition of workers' basic freedoms in

SECTOR UNITY: A MATTER OF "PRODUCTION, NOT POLITICS"

The CAO's position of protecting the productive sector is closely linked to

fearful of the repercussions of having more individuals claiming rights in the

to discredit the leadership of the movement. As he and other former MAS

1. While dispossession and patterns of uneven development in Bolivia are widely re

Pena, Claudia and Alejandra Boschetti

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