ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some fragments of the contemporary history of the peasant community of Catacaos in Peru. For historical reasons Latin America has had, and has a highly unequal distribution of land, with large haciendas existing alongside small peasant farms many of which are agglomerated into peasant communities. The struggle for tierra is also a struggle over access to water and other means to cultivate the land: in short the right to wrestle for a decent living. The small peasant farms and the relatively equal distribution of the land are the outcome of an impressive historical process of repeasantization. The form of the latifundio, the large, export-oriented farm enterprise, provides a textbook example of the process of depeasantization—not only because it directly deprives peasants of access to land and water, but also because it damages, if not closes down, the prospects of many other peasant families. In 1969 the military government of Velasco-Alvarado declared a radical and nation-wide land reform.
