Peruvian Agrarian Reform

The Agrarian Reform in Peru was a process of land reform redistribution initiated in the 1960s by struggles of rural workers (campesinos) for their land in the Cusco Region, and legally implemented under General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1969 through three distinct laws. These land reform laws sought to redistribute large amounts of land that had once been owned by indigenous populations to the rural populations that lived and worked in the lands. The proposed laws promulgated in 1969 would attempt to change Peru´s agrarian infrastructure from being a system dominated by haciendas. Which was characterized by the semi-feudal relationships between haciendas owned by private Spanish patrones which employed peones, a large indigenous group, large cooperatives controlled by the Peruvian state, and areas of land owned indigenous communities (comunidades campesinas) that were recognized by the Peruvian government. The land reform was predominately focused on redistributing land from private haciendas to rural communities. For the former hacendados, the government of Peru issued agrarian bonds as compensation for land expropriation.