Pablo Ospina Peralta
In 1994 
declared passed the land reform in Ecuador. The discovery Creole unfathomable values \u200b\u200bof inequality firmed just as research on the "Asian miracle" in South Korea, Taiwan or China, reveal that among the best kept secrets oriental potion for the "development" was precisely the equitable distribution of land and water. The gravediggers of land reform rode n mounted on the discourse of nostalgia for the supposed loss of the productive capacity of farms that were the "breadbasket" of the country in the hands of those who could not make it productive. In its most insane even managed to write without the slightest embarrassment, without being an actual climb blush on the cheeks, the Indians were the new landowners Tees country. 
(Photo: Sebastiao Salgado)
must be acknowledged that the city government does not land the subject of the same speech Duran Ballen ideologues, even when they rush to release all guilt and innocence bath to the best of their representatives, Alberto Dahik. Country Alliance has said, after three years of silence, there is injustice in land distribution in Ecuador. His proposed solution to the riddle of inequality is to allocate land two million hectares of "wasteland" to the needy farmers. This "solution" is a good example of the limitations of our revolution. There is a Duran Ballen advance on, but we are far from socialism Where to find the two million hectares? Where there are so many unproductive land?
The truth is that no such lands, except on the slopes of the mountains, moors and forests. The statistics reveal that agricultural land, currently in use are about three and a half million hectares of "forests and mountains" and two million "natural grasses" and moors. Maybe there was as much land in agricultural use but that would occupy more land unsuitable for agriculture. The "solution" citizen is very similar to that offered by the agrarian reform of the 1970's, delivered in settlement of 5 million hectares of forests on the slopes of the Andes or the Amazon. Give farmers the worst land and let the big business the best, flat lands, which have irrigation, roads, electricity and productive infrastructure.
The other big "solution" provided by the government, the purchase of land through loans to farmers, has the same problem. The Ecuador was one of the most successful land credit in the world: la que dirigió el FEPP desde 1991 y que permitió comprar casi un millón de hectáreas para los campesinos. ¿Cuál es el problema? Sencillamente que los campesinos no pueden costear, incluso con créditos, la compra de las mejores tierras. Solo pueden comprar tierras marginales, de laderas, sin infraestructura, alejadas de los centros de mercado. Es, por lo tanto, un buen mecanismo para reducir el conflicto agrario pero no soluciona la desigualdad.
En una palabra, no se puede resolver la desigualdad en el agro sin afectar las tierras productivas, es decir, sin poner un límite al tamaño de los predios y sin declarar expropiables las grandes propiedades que do not meet certain environmental requirements. But that is not to reduce the conflict but stoke. But the government is not willing to do because it needs an alliance with the only ones who can hold a real agrarian transformation project: the peasant and indigenous organizations.
