Bolivian Senate OKs Sweeping Land Reform

Bolivian President Evo Morales speaks as Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera looks on during a meeting at the presidential palace in La Paz, Bolivia on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006. Bolivia's Senate on Tuesday night returned to session to pass Morales' far-reaching land reform law, ending a week-long boycott by opposition lawmakers meant to block the controversial bill.(AP Photo/Dado Galdieri) (Dado Galdieri - AP)

MAS controls the lower house of Congress, where the land reform bill passed earlier this month in a party-line vote.

Morales used a presidential decree in May to nationalize the country's oil and gas fields in an attempt to redistribute wealth in South America's poorest country.

On Tuesday, more than 3,000 Indian demonstrators, many in brightly colored woolen ponchos and straw hats trimmed with neon thread, filed down La Paz's steep streets to the city center.

Despite a journey which took some weeks, the marchers were in high spirits.

"We're exhausted, sure, but we are here to reclaim our rights from those speculators who have taken our lands all over the country," said Natalio Izaguirre, who hiked 18 days from his small village near Potosi, about 260 miles south, in sandals made from leather and old car tires.

Agribusiness leaders from Bolivia's eastern lowlands who oppose the bill have vowed to use force if necessary to defend their farms against government expropriation.

Morales has said the government will not seize productive land, but rather large tracts of Bolivia's sparsely populated east held by a handful of wealthy families.

The government has publicly accused some of Bolivia's most politically powerful families of large-scale land fraud, adding a layer of personal animosity to an already charged issue.

On Monday, an opposition senator from a prominent landowning family was caught on camera making an obscene gesture to pro-Morales demonstrators heckling him outside the Senate _ an act since replayed repeatedly on Bolivian television stations.