Land grab fears spread among Japanese in Bolivia

Land grab fears spread among Japanese in Bolivia

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, BY ARI HIRAYAMA, 11.06.2009

"SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia--Moves by the government to usurp large parcels of land from the wealthy and redistribute the property to the underprivileged have caused jitters among Japanese immigrants in Bolivia.

President Evo Morales said in March he would hand over 38,000 hectares of land the government had confiscated from big ranches belonging to estate holders, including U.S. owners, in Bolivia's wealthy eastern lowlands.

"There are people... who don't want to abandon large land ownership. Those people should voluntarily give up their land to people who have none," said the country's first indigenous president.

The leftist leader, an Aymara Indian, enjoys enormous popularity among native groups that have suffered generations of discrimination in the poverty-stricken but resource-rich country.

Such is the support he commands that Japanese immigrants who settled under the 1956 Immigration Agreement between Bolivia and Japan and their kin now fear the policy could accelerate demands by indigenous groups for a restoration of other land, too. That would threaten their legal right to own private land.

The new Constitution approved in January sets an upper limit for land ownership of 5,000 hectares.

However, smaller land plots can be expropriated, the law says, when they are lying idle or held for speculation or investment.

While Morales says that legal land ownership will be respected, there have been many cases since January of indigenous people occupying farmland and claiming ownership by liberally interpreting the Constitution.

Japanese settlers in the San Juan colony in Santa Cruz Department worry that chunks of their land will be taken away, even though none of the colony's roughly 800 residents owns estates of 5,000 hectares or larger. Indigenous people continue to build houses on their property and block the roads, demanding the "return" of the land.

Last September, when confrontation over the new Constitution intensified, an indigenous leader urged fellow locals over the radio to ostracize foreigners from their colonies.

"All we can do is to find a way to live together, avoiding friction," said Isamu Kondo, 51, the general manager of a local agricultural cooperative. Kondo has been inviting the local indigenous community to attend agricultural workshops and ekiden relay races.

But Choei Yara, 64, who lives in the Okinawa colony, comprising about 800 people from Okinawa Prefecture, is wary. He sleeps with a gun next to his pillow, he said.

"I wish the Japanese government would press the Bolivian government to protect the lives and land of immigrants. But I don't think they are doing their job," he says.

On a visit to Japan in March 2007, Morales promised that the government would not threaten the agriculture and security of Japanese immigrants.

But Santiago A. Nishizawa, 43, a lawyer from San Juan, has questioned the sincerity of this pledge.

"I doubt if the Morales administration, backed by indigenous peoples, would forcibly expel people who illegally occupied the private land (of Japanese settlers)," he said.

The new Constitution also prohibits foreigners from newly acquiring state land, but defines the terms "foreigners" and "state land" ambiguously.

About 14,000 Bolivians with Japanese ancestry live in Bolivia, aside from the 1,600 settlers living in the San Juan and Okinawa colonies.(IHT/Asahi: June 11,2009)°