According to two sources, the military government under Juan Velasco Alvarado introduced a new agrarian reform law in June 1969 (Latin American Newsletters 4 July 1969; New York Times 26 June 1969). Latin American Newsletters reported the following features of the new law:

The strikingly radical aspects of the new law were, in the first place, the government's boldness in tackling the extremely influential and hitherto untouchable sugar estates; secondly, in the ruling that compensation would be based on the proprietor's past declared value of the estate for tax purposes; and thirdly, in the relatively low proportion of cash included in such compensation. For the land itself cash will be paid according to a sliding scale with a top limit of 100,000 soles; the rest will be in 20-30 year bonds paying interest of 4-6 per cent. Cattle will be paid for in cash, but plant, installations and equipment will attract a maximum cash payment of one million soles, the rest being in 5 per cent bonds.

Large and efficient estates will not be split up but formed into cooperatives, as will traditional Indian communities, both to preserve their communal system and to prevent the formation of unproductive minifundia. On the coastal strip the maximum land holding permitted under the new law is 150 hectares, or 200 if the owner undertakes local infrastructure works, pays his taxes and offers his employees 10 per cent of his profits. In the sierra the maximum holding is between 15 and 55 hectares depending on the land's location, or double that in dry areas. On forest and pasture land this figure can rise to 1,500 hectares, or enough to graze 1,500 sheep.

An important aspect of the law concerns the use to which bonds may be put in developing industry. The government will provide the money for them to be changed into shares worth up to half the capital of a company devoted to industrial expansion, provided the owner finds the rest.

Several other sources provide information on the Alvarado government agrarian reforms.

In Peru: A Country Study, the following information on land reforms is provided:

The most striking and thorough reform imposed by the Velasco government was to eliminate all large private landholdings, converting most of them into cooperatives owned by prior workers on the estates. The reform was intended to destroy the basis of power of Peru's traditional elite and to foster a more cooperative society as an alternative to capitalism. Such socialpolitical purposes apparently dominated questions of agricultural production or any planned changes in patterns of land use. It was as if the questions of ownership were what mattered, not the consequences for output or rural incomes. In fact, the government soon created a system of price controls and monopoly food buying by state firms designed to hold down prices to urban consumers, no matter what the cost to rural producers.

As mentioned earlier, the cooperatives had very mixed success; and the majority were converted into individual private holdings during the 1980s. The conversions were authorized in 1980 by changes in the basic land reform legislation and were put into effect after majority votes of the cooperative members in each case. The preferences of the people involved at that point clearly went contrary to the intent of the original reform. But the whole set of changes was not a reversion to the pre-reform agrarian structure. In fact, the conversions left Peru with a far less unequal pattern of landownership than it had prior to the reform and with a much greater

role for family farming than ever before in its history (1993).

The UBC Press Website provides a summary of Tanya Korovkin's 1990 book entitled Politics of Agricultural Co-Operativism in Peru:

This book is a detailed analysis of the evolution of state-sponsored agricultural co-operativism in Peru, an Andean country with high levels of land concentration and widespread rural poverty. Most Peruvian agricultural co-operatives were organized during the military populist government of Velasco Alvarado which, after radical land reform, transformed expropriated estates into co-operatives. From the start, these projects became subject to multiple pressures that ranged from unfavourable government economic policies - designed to promote import-substitution industrialization at the expense of the agricultural sector - to the growth of the co-operative bureaucracy and the deterioration of labour discipline. A shift toward market-oriented economic strategies after the fall of the Velasco government aggravated the co-operatives' difficulties. Stabilization programs implemented by Velasco's successor, General Mortales Bermudez, and liberalization of the national economy by the civilian government of Belaunder Terry dealt a severe blow to Peru's co-operative agriculture. The ensuing crisis gave rise to political mobilization against the market-oriented economic policies. However, the effectiveness of this movement was undermined by a trend toward dissolution of agricultural co-operatives by many members who turned to individual/private agriculture as a solution (1999).

Marc Becker in a paper entitled Indigenismo and Indian Movements in Twentieth-Century Ecuador stated the following on land reform under the Alvarado régime:

The progressive military government of Velasco Alvarado in Peru, which held power from 1968 to 1975, is a classic example of the direction that indigenist policies take when they are institutionalized into a governmental structure. Velasco promulgated an Agrarian Reform law in 1969 which referred to Indigenous communities only as peasant communities. According to Marie-Chantal Barre, with this act the government "officialized the disappearance of Indians as Indians, recognizing them instead only as peasants." Barre notes, however, a contradiction in Velasco's indigenist policies. Whereas he solved "The Indian Question" by calling them peasants, in 1975 he also made Quechua an official language of Peru. In addition, his populist program relied on Indigenous symbolism and created programs with names such as "Plan Inca" and "Plan de Gobierno Tupac Amaru."

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. Please find below the list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Becker, Marc. 1995. Indigenismo and Indian Movements in Twentieth-Century Ecuador. http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/project/lasa95/becker.html [Accessed on 13 Sept. 1999]

Latin American Newsletters [London]. 4 July 1969. "Peru: A Coherent Programme at Last." (NEXIS)

New York Times. 26 June 1969. "President J. Velasco Alvardo, Peru, announces new land reform..." (NEXIS).

Peru: A Country Study. 1993. Washington, DC: US Department of Army. http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/petoc.html [Accessed on 13 Sept. 1999]

UBC Press. 1999. "Author List - K." http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/author/_k.htm [Accessed on 13 Sept. 1999]

The Europa World Year Book 1999. 1999.

Political Handbook of the World 1998. 1999.

Electronic Sources: IRB Databases, REFWORLD, LEXIS/NEXIS, Internet and WNC.