More on the story from yesterdayEvo Morales, Bolivia's left-wing president, has launched a sweeping land reform plan by handing over about 9,600 square miles of state land to poor Indians. The move marked the start of Mr Morales's "agrarian revolution", just weeks after his government nationalised the natural gas industry, giving foreign-owned firms six months to negotiate new contracts or leave. "We want to change Bolivia together," Mr Morales told the thousands of Indians gathered in the eastern city of Santa Cruz to receive land titles.
"Getting back the land means we're getting back all the natural resources, we're nationalising all the natural resources."
Onlookers chanted "Evo" and waved Bolivian and rainbow whipala flags (yours for only $95.00 plus shipping), which represent 500 years of Indian struggle. The ceremony came after talks broke down between Mr Morales and agribusiness leaders over his reforms, which involves the distribution of 77,000 square miles of public land - an area roughly twice the size of Portugal - in the next five years. The government is studying the redistribution of unproductive private land, while one farmers' organisation has said it would form "self-defence" groups to prevent such seizures. The redistribution plans are heightening long-standing tension between the prosperous residents of Bolivia's agricultural lowlands and the poorer, mostly Indian people of the western high plains.
"The greatest need right now is the recuperation of our territory," Wilson Chacaray, a Guarani Indian leader, told the crowd. "The landowners, the foreign companies, the political parties that have dominated this country took our land from us and that's why we live in misery."