Two Views of Justice Fuel Bolivian Land Battle

"Now I only have four bodyguards, who I pay to look after me and my family," he said, "but not the land."

Farm guards are a touchy subject around here. After a Santa Cruz agricultural group suggested this month that self-defense squadrons might be the best way to resist what they consider unjust reforms, the government responded by saying it would not tolerate private armies roaming the countryside. Masanori Toguchi, a farmer who helps operate a grain mill across the road from Yara's store, said he recently hired a team of armed guards, effectively clearing out a group of landless peasants who had taken over a portion of his property. The guards are "more or less trained," he said. He wasn't sure where his lawyer found them.

"They don't have phones, and they're kind of hidden," Toguchi said. "We don't really know who they are."

Promises of Land

From Yara's store, a dirt road winds for about 10 miles between freshly planted wheat fields before surrendering to weedy overgrowth. After cutting through the middle of a field of nine-foot-high sugarcane, a clearing comes into view: a dirt expanse dotted with dozens of shacks made of sticks and palm fronds. Of the few hundred people living here, about 80 count themselves as members of the landless federation.

Carmelo Ortiz is one. With eight children, his one-room hut is too crowded, so one afternoon last week he searched for fronds for a half-completed addition he hopes to finish in the next couple of months. His daughter wrung a shirt dry over a plastic bucket of cloudy water. One of his sons, stepping out of the dim hut and blinking in the sun, picked a square of mud from his cutoff jeans.

When he can, Ortiz helps local landowners in their fields, earning about $4 for a day's work. But he has dreams of being his own boss, growing his own crops, on his own piece of land. He was part of the group that took over part of Toguchi's land for three months earlier this year, and he was with them when they decided to retreat after hearing about the armed guards. Just last month, he said, he saw guards on another farmer's property shoot at a group of peasants.

Why a farmer who already has a lot of land would get so worked up over sharing part of it, he and others said, is unfathomable to the campesinos in the village.

"God created the resource of land," said Luciano Winchaca, a local campesino advocate who has helped the Landless Movement with its quest for land. "It should be divided equally for everyone, not be given to somebody because they speak better Spanish or come from a certain family. We all have the same rights. These people don't understand the will of God."

That said, most of the landless here say things have never been better. When Morales was elected in December, Ortiz and his neighbors threw a party that lasted all night. With his promises to redistribute the wealth of Bolivia among the poor, Morales is nothing short of a folk hero in the village of Okinawa.

"Everything is changing for the campesino," said Ortiz, 40, who is confident he will get a plot of land in the coming months. "We have hope now -- we haven't had that with any government in the history of this country."

Large-scale land reform has been tried in the past in Bolivia, and it failed miserably because of a lack of resources and political will. The country's first agrarian reform plan was passed in 1953, and another was tried in 1996. After nearly $100 million was spent in an attempt to redistribute 250 million acres during the past 10 years, only 17 percent of the target areas changed hands.

Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez -- an ideological ally of Morales who has promoted smaller-scale land reform in his country -- has pledged financial support. But Bolivia will have to find a lot more money to keep the current effort from joining the long list of failed agrarian reforms in Latin America.

If Ortiz gets a piece of land, for example, he will still need equipment to work it and money for additional supplies and seeds. Ortiz calculates that for each acre of land, he would need about $200. He's not sure where that money would come from, and the government has not yet offered specific details on credit and support programs for the new landowners.

"I have lived like this all my life," Ortiz said, nodding to his hut, where his 8-year-old son was helping his 12-year-old daughter carry water. "But we can't live like this forever."