Land to the Tiller
Land to the tiller ( English land in farmers' hands ) programs were distributing land reforms in the period of the Cold War, in South Vietnam and in El Salvador .
South Vietnam
In March 1970, President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu passed the Land to the Tiller Act, which subsequently legalized the land actually allocated by the FNL to the farmers and villagers of the South Vietnamese agricultural areas. To this end, an application was made to the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), whereupon the government paid compensation to the expropriated landowners, which the majority of the recipients accepted without complaint. The maximum area that could be acquired in this way was 15 hectares per person. (The slogan, “In South Vietnam the hearts and convictions of the farmers are to be won” was extended to “In South Vietnam the hearts are to be won over hectares”. At the end of 1973 the government of South Vietnam had land titles for 1.2 million hectares distributed around 950,000 beneficiaries, exceeding the original goal of distributing one million hectares.
Resistances
The measures of the legalization program were classified according to land quality in so-called corps (harvests) from I to IV. Relatively few parcels of land quality Corp I and Corp II areas were distributed. In the mountainous areas, the government made no serious attempts to implement the program. In the lowlands, there was stubborn opposition from local officials and latifundists who, along with the scarcity of farmland and non-agricultural employment opportunities, countered the legalization project.
In the coastal areas, considerable parts of the farm workers who worked on the Quality Corp I and Corp II remained in lease or wage employment. Some villagers argued that the Land to the Tiller program was causing injustice against them. A small number of dispossessed latifundists still lived in the villages and had to wait a year or more for compensation. Some soldiers who were deployed outside their village had temporarily leased their land and had to give up their land. Occasionally, latifundists and local officials used tricks to prevent the distribution of Corps III and Corps IV quality land.
scope
The program was adopted in the Mekong Delta and the provinces around Saigon . In the Mekong Delta, new property titles were distributed for half of the area of the rice cultivated area.
Economic improvements
The population in provinces with soil quality Corps I and Corps II was much lower than in provinces with soil quality Corps III and Corps IV, which is why the legalization program affected large parts of the farmers. The legalization program reduced the land used by tenants by 60% within three years. This may be due to the fact that the latifundists no longer leased land for fear of expropriation. It has been widely recognized that the Land for the Tiller program has improved the economic situation of millions of farmers. The recipients of the land titles no longer had to fear that the rent for their parcels would be demanded. The latifundists received adequate compensation without having to continue collecting the leases. After US forces took control of a village, the first visitor was usually the absent landowner trying to collect the outstanding rent. Charles Callison examined the legalizations in the Mekong Delta, according to his surveys, the compensation paid was mostly described by the recipients as fair.
Scientific accompanying program
Henry Bush was an employee of Control Data Corporation which created a scientific support program for the Land for the tiller program. In 44 villages in the Mekong Delta controlled and surveyed by government forces, it was found in the first half of 1972 that 89% of the new land titleholders stated that life in their villages had improved since the legalization program was initiated. two percent said life in the villages had deteriorated.
boundary conditions
There have been complaints that rice traders formed cartels to defraud the farmers. In the late 1960s, the opportunity for loans in the villages was improved. Many villagers received government loans for agricultural production at cheap rates. The titles obtained through the legalization program could be loaned. In some cases, creditworthiness and income led to investments in machinery and agricultural supplies, which increased productivity and thus income.
Feudal system
The latifundists had feudal power over the tenants and treated them like serfs . They worked from sunrise to sunset, were obliged to work free of charge at ceremonial festivals and had to bring rice or chickens with them for the sacrificial ceremony. The Việt Minh expropriated and expelled them, with the legalization program their reduced social role in the villages was formally reproduced.
Complementary to the Strategic Hamlet Program
The transfer of the land title increased the social status of the recipients, but did not exceed that of the village officials; these social changes had no mass effect. Prosperity, security, and freedom from oppressive authorities were key motives. In addition, there was legalization in a familiar environment of family and friends and the spirits of ancestors, which was preferred to deportation to Strategic Hamlets .
Smallholder mentality
The Land to the Tiller legalization had different influences on the political attitudes in the affected villages. The ratings ranged from none to an improvement in attitudes towards the government. That the government tried to buy the hearts of farmers in order to find more support in rural areas was seen as a positive move. Higher incomes and the possibility of living in ancestral land improved attitudes towards government at least to a moderate extent. Henry Bush concluded in 1971 based on 550 interviews , which with POW Vietcong, and passers-by in the Long An Province were made that legalizing acts psychologically that beneficiaries in the event of FNL victory would come under suspicion of collaboration with the South Vietnamese system .
The relative prosperity in the government-controlled areas made the system more popular. Areas under closer government control are more prosperous, said Ed Brady , a Vietnamese- speaking US military advisor, as part of the 1965-1971 Phoenix Program . Interview with Ed Brady
El Salvador
The land for the tiller concept for El Salvador was developed from 1961 to 1968 in the time of the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and, in his capacity as President of the World Bank, was flanked by it from 1968 to 1981. By 1976, attempts had been made to get Colonel Arturo Armando Molina to run a Land for the Tiller program in El Salvador. The Partido de Conciliación Nacional turned out to be too dependent on the land oligarchy, which is why Carlos Humberto Romero was put out of office on October 15, 1979. The distributive land reform was carried out in El Salvador under the Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno . In Salvador, a number of Asymmetric Warfare tactics from the Vietnam War were repeated; in the case of Operation Phoenix and Land for the tiller , no new names were chosen for them. In El Salvador, the program was legally sanctioned by a constitutional reform in 1982. There is Article 105, which restricts property to 245 hectares from the ground up. The Instituto Salvadoreño de Transformación Agraria (ISTA) was founded to handle the land transfer . The conflict between Agujero de oro and USAID over the Land for the tiller program culminated in the San Salvador Sheraton murder on January 3, 1981 . Through the parts of Reforma Agraria that were carried out, around 40% of the farmers who formally met the requirements were able to acquire land. The land had to be bought from them and they received loans supported by state banks, the land was taken as security.
Individual evidence
- ↑ USAID, United States Economic Assistance to South Vietnam, 1954-75 , Vol. II, P. 257.
- ^ Thomas Thayer, War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam , Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985, p. 242.
- ^ Charles Stuart Callison, Land-to-the-Tiller in the Mekong Delta: Economic, Social, and Political Effects of Land Reform in Four Villages of South Vietnam (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), p. 215.
- ↑ Henry Bush, Gordon Messegee, and Roger Russell, The Impact of the Land to the Tiller Program in the Mekong Delta Control Data Corporation, Saigon 1972, p. 43
- ^ A b Callison, Land-to-the-Tiller in the Mekong Delta , p. 224.
- ^ Jewett Burr, Land to the Tiller: Land Redistribution in South Viet Nam, 1970-1973 Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1976, p. 302
- ↑ Interview with Edward Thomas Brady based on Mark Moyar, "Villager attitudes during the final decade of the Vietnam War" ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2009 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Presented at 1996 Vietnam Symposium "After the Cold War: Reassessing Vietnam" ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2009 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ envio August 1983, ¿Pacificar o liberar a los campesinos? Reforma Agraria en El Salvador y Nicaragua
