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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
Although mining, banking, and industry have been the
source of
the greatest Chilean fortunes since the early nineteenth
century,
rural society has occupied a much more central place in
the
nation's history. Until the 1930s, most of the population
lived in
rural areas, and most upper-class families, whatever the
origin of
their wealth, owned rural land.
Until recently, large landholdings (
latifundios--see
Glossary)
were a characteristic feature of rural society. The
latifundia pattern of landownership originated in
the
Spanish crown's early colonial practice of giving land
grants, some
of them huge, to soldiers involved in the conquest and to
the Roman
Catholic Church. By the late eighteenth century, the most
important
lands of the Central Valley were held in large haciendas
by
families with noble titles that were all inherited by the
elder son
under the
mayorazgo
system (see Glossary). All such
titles
were abolished with Chile's adoption of a republican form
of
government after independence, and new laws of inheritance
eventually ended the practice of primogeniture. This led
to the
creation of a market for rural properties and to their
division as
they were inherited by family members. However, by the
midtwentieth century land transfers and divisions still had
not put an
end to ownership of large properties.
The typical large landholding was a complex
minisociety. Some
of its laborers lived on the estate year-round, and they
or their
family members worked as needed in exchange for the right
to
cultivate a portion of the land for themselves and to
graze their
animals in specified fields. Among the rural poor, their
families
enjoyed better living conditions. Other workers, a
majority in
times of strong demand for labor, especially during the
harvest,
lived in rural towns and villages or on small properties
they held
independently (whether legally or not) at the edges of the
large
farms. These holdings were usually insufficient to
maintain a
family adequately, and its members therefore would seek
employment
in the large rural enterprises. When needed, other rural
workers
were recruited from among migrants who would come during
the summer
from other parts of the country. The large rural
enterprises
included stores where people could buy a variety of goods,
chapels
where priests would say mass, and dispensaries for primary
medical
attention. In addition to the sometimes ornate houses of
the
proprietors, which generally were occupied only during the
summer
months, there were houses for the administrators,
mechanics,
accountants, enologists (if wine was produced),
blacksmiths, and
others who constituted the professional and skilled labor
forces of
the enterprise.
Beginning in the 1950s, the large rural properties
became the
target of heightened criticism by reformist politicians
and
economists. They noted that the uneven distribution of
land
contributed to social inequality and that the large
landholdings
were highly inefficient agricultural producers. During the
governments of presidents Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-70),
who
established a
reformed sector (see
Glossary), and Salvador
Allende
Gossens (1970-73), an extensive land reform program was
carried
out. It basically did away with the large rural properties
on prime
agricultural (nonforested) lands. Thus, whereas in 1965
fully 55
percent of all agricultural lands (measured as basic
irrigated
hectares--BIH) were held in 4,876 properties of more than
eighty
hectares each, by 1973 there were only 260 such properties
left,
covering only 2.7 percent of all BIH. The expropriations
covered 40
percent of all the nation's BIH.
The military government put an end to the agrarian
reform
program, as well as to the technical assistance given to
the
beneficiaries of the expropriations. It also returned to
previous
owners some of the land that had not yet been formally
transferred.
In addition, it distributed individual titles among
residents of
the peasant communities sponsored by the Allende
government's
agrarian reform program. Moreover, the military government
permitted the sale of any rural property, including the
small
family farms created by the agrarian reform. This policy
led to new
changes in land tenancy, which did not, however,
reconstitute the
large landholdings to the same extent as before the
agrarian
reform. Instead, it favored an expansion of medium-sized
holdings.
After all the changes, very small holdings of less than
five
hectares still accounted for about 10 percent of
agricultural area.
The largest holdings, of more than eighty hectares, were
far from
restored to their prior importance, at only 18 percent of
the total
area. If a primary purpose of the agrarian reform had been
to
create a better distribution of the agricultural land,
after much
turmoil and change the data indicate that this had been
achieved
(see
table 6, Appendix).
The remarkable transformations in land tenancy that
started in
the mid-1960s were accompanied by other great changes in
agriculture. These led to much more intensive land use,
with the
accelerated incorporation of modern technologies.
Labor-service
tenancy and share-cropping arrangements as a source of
agricultural
labor have disappeared from commercial farming,
substituted by
wage-earning workers living mainly in towns or small rural
properties. The number of self-employed workers in
agriculture has
also increased with the land tenancy changes.
The rural network of mainly dirt roads was expanded to
permit
access to new farms and logging areas. Concurrently,
small-town
entrepreneurs were quick to respond to new opportunities
by
establishing bus routes along these expanded roads,
thereby
facilitating the rural population's access to schools and
sources
of employment. By the 1980s, the peasantry was for the
first time
overwhelmingly literate, with attendance at primary
schools by its
children virtually universal
(see Education
, this ch.).
Data as of March 1994
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