ABSTRACT
Rural unrest has been spreading in recent years in different regions in Bolivia, which suggests that the agrarian and forestry legislation introduced in 1996 has failed to solve the problems that it was meant to address. This article examines the background to rural conflict in a specific region, the northern Bolivian Amazon. It reviews the rise and decline of the rubber trade and the subsequent emergence of the Brazil nut economy in the region. In this way it shows how free communities emerged alongside the estate system and compete for access to land and forest resources. This involves a discussion of the evolution of forms of labour recruitment and debt-peonage that takes issue with the neo-institutional economics perspective recently adopted by various authors and students of the region. It is argued that debt-peonage in the Amazon area can be viewed as a specific form of ‘captive’ simple commodity production, and that this sheds light on the struggle by rubber tappers for autonomy. The article concludes by analysing the 1996 agrarian and forestry legislation, and shows how its landlordbiased implementation made manifest the latent conflict between free communities and estate owners.
