The Case of Itakua in the Memory of the Comunarios

What follows are several accounts of what different comunarios told me they remembered from the time of the land struggle. What is interesting here is, on the one hand, the difference in focus between them, which reflect individuals’ different involvements in the events. On the other hand, however, there are certain recurrent elements in them which suggest that they were of particular importance to the people

Rogelio Torres

Don Rogelio was a man in his mid-forties who originated from Muyupampa, an area that is largely inhabited by Quechua people. He had held various official roles [cargos] in Cañón over time and at the time of my fieldwork occupied that of Education Officer [responsable para la educación]. Rogelio was happily married to a Guaraní woman, with whom he had five children; however, that did not stop him from feeling a bit like an outsider at times.

One day, I was talking to Rogelio about a planned project to build a new bungalow in the school. Wondering about space, I asked whether they would tear the central building down, which was very basic in its construction and therefore seemed most redundant to me. He said, maybe, but it had been the first building they had erected in the school and was therefore historical. I replied that I knew there was a lot of history to the place as a whole, and so we got talking about how they had first come over the hill from Itakua, in the night so as to avoid the patrones, to start constructing their houses. He said he had been the very first person to stay in Cañón, which had been very lonely. They had cleared spaces in the forest, as there had only been a narrow path through the canyon, and people had come from Urundaiti, Piedritas, and as far as Eiti and Alto Parapetí14to help them clear the space for theirchacosand houses. They had built the houses quickly, with the support of CIPCA who was helping them out with materials.

The patrón and his hired hands would come at times to try to get them out, but they just stayed on. The patrones were spending a lot of money on lawyers to get them out, but the

comunarios had stayed because they were in the right, so before the patrones had to sell all their cattle to pay for the legal fees, they finally gave up. The land in Cañón didn’t have an

14

Eiti and Alto Parapetí are different capitanías, or Guaraní districts, whereas Urundaiti and Piedritas are

owner, but thepatroneswere trying to get papers for it, which was, in fact, unlawful because there had been dispute over the land already before they got any papers of ownership, so they shouldn’t have applied for them in the first place. Rogelio and Filomena, his wife, agreed that the dispute had already started in 1991.

Once, a truck (camioneta) full of the patrón’s men had arrived and had wanted to cause trouble, but they hadn’t realised how many Guaraní there had been working in the fields and everywhere, so they had left quickly when they found themselves surrounded by some 150 men with machetes. Someone tried pulling a gun as well, but the comunarios threatened to ‘peel him like an onion’ with their machetes if he didn’t put the gun away, so he did.

Padre Iván, who was always defending the comunarios and helping them, was fearless, and one time someone had pointed a gun at his head too. Another guy working for Teko [Guaraní] had even video-documented a lot of what was going on in Cañón at the time.

After they had built their provisional houses, he and some others lived in Cañón for about two months before all the rest of the people followed. Again, CIPCA helped them in their final move by providing a camioneta in which everyone, inclusive of their animals and household belongings, was brought to Cañón.

They had all got together in the school building and decided who was going to build their house where. The only rule was to keep at least 100m distance between houses to avoid conflicts over chickens in neighbours’ gardens and such things. I asked whether there hadn’t been any disputes, and he told me that actually there had been one man who had wanted the spot of Filomena’s mother’s house so as to be closer to the centre [i.e., the school], but had ended up with a plot way at the other end of the village. I asked whether he still lived there, but Rogelio said that he had gone to Santa Cruz to live. A few other people had changed their minds about the location of their houses and so had taken their roofs and other things and gone somewhere else with them. I asked what had happened with the rest, and he said that at that point, the houses were built like his fence, with poles of wood only [wattle and daub], so it was easy to move them.

Caritas15 had given them the corrugated metal (calamina) for the roofs and some mesh (malla), but they were meant to provide concrete floors and doors and windows as well, which had never materialised because they had mysteriously run out of money before they could supply them. I asked how that could be, and what had happened to the money, and he said that the people in the organisation often went to work in them to put the money that went through them into their own pockets.

Rogelio referred to the two comunarios who had been in jail for two years, for allegedly stealing some 150 heads of cattle (which wasn’t true), and how they had got them out in the end with the help of lots of lawyers (in his talk, there had been about six – two in La Paz, two in Camiri, and two in Santa Cruz).

At first, they had had no water in Cañón, so they had to go to Itakua to fetch it during the night, since during the day they were all working. They’d only got their own water supply in 1996.

Rogelio also told a story of how, still in Itakua, thepatroneshad killed one of don Germán’s cows and burned down some trees which served as sleeping places for the chickens, so the poor chickens had to sleep on the ground.

I asked how the whole dispute had started, and he told me that they had wanted to build a school building [the shed or chapel of the documents], but that the patrones had said, ‘If they’re building that, they’ll never leave from here’. I asked whether thepatroneshad wanted them to leave, and he said, ‘Claro– of course!’ I asked why, but didn’t get a clear answer. He went on to say how the community had been on the land long before the patrones, which made me suggest that it was they who should have left. He said, yes, that was the idea at first, but ‘we’ [he always kept saying ‘we’, even when referring to the Guaraní ancestors] thought that the land wouldn’t be enough, so that’s why we came to Cañón instead.

Just a little before this conversation, Filomena had told me how it had in fact been the

patrones themselves who had suggested that they go to Cañón at first, because it was land 15_{Rogelio also mentioned ‘a project called “Visión Mundial”’ in this context; this actually referred to an NGO} rather than a project, i.e., the Bolivian incarnation of World Vision, which was conducting ‘Areal Development Projects’ (PDA) in Cañón geared especially towards the promotion of children’s rights and wellbeing (see Chapter 8).

‘without owner’ (sin dueño), but then had changed their minds and tried to say that it was in fact their land.

Elías Rocca

Elías was one of the original three implicated in the case of cattle theft that was initiated by the Palenque-Vannucci family. At the time of my fieldwork, he was working for Caritas and took pride in the fact that he had been involved in the project that finally gave the comunidad its own water supply. Elías was the owner of the only horse in Cañón, which he called

‘Papiraɨ’, (‘Little Daddy’). The following is the account of an interview which he gave me

specifically on the topic of Itakua.

The patrones had had no title for their property, but then managed to get some documents somehow qualifying them as the owners of Itakua, even though the people who lived on the land had lived there for a very long time, as had their grandparents. There used to be more families in Itakua than there were now in Cañón, between 30 and 40. Some left earlier and moved to Urundaiti, which used to be part of the same property, but the land there was scarce, so soon there was no space left for people to move to and the rest of the comunarios

stayed in Itakua.

They didn’t want to stay there, however, because the patrones didn’t want them to have cows, of which some families owned a few. This was not because of a lack of land, they simply didn’t want them to. So thecomunarios decided to leave, but wanted the patronesto pay them for the work they had carried out on the land (such as the construction of chacos

with neat wire fencing).

On the 25th of December of 1990, the owner (dueña) of the property, Olga Vannucci, requested a chapel to be built by the comunarios. They started work on it in April of 1991, but the dueña’s brother-in-law, Eloy Palenque, didn’t want them to build it because he thought that they would take the land away from the family if they did. Due to his influence, thedueñathen changed her mind and denied ever having given authorisation for the building of the chapel, and both sides took lawyers to defend their rights in the matter.

There was a trial, which was lost by thecomunariosbecause they had no written proof of the

comunarios to leave, so they went to Santa Cruz to take a lawyer (who was working for, or paid by, CIPCA) to appeal. They won a trial entitling them to stay on the land, but the

patrones appealed, and a ministry commission was sent from La Paz to see whether anyone really lived in Itakua and evaluate the situation. By then, the patrones had burned down all the trees around the houses, in the hope that the houses would catch fire too, which, however, they didn’t. The commission decided that thecomunarios should leave, but be paid for their work as requested; however, thepatronesdid not want that.

Christmas and New Year passed peacefully. In March, the lawyers went to Santa Cruz to see whether the Vannuccis really had a legal title for Itakua. They did have some documents, and the lawyers also found out that the Urundaiti land had been given (regalado) to the

comunariosto live on in the course of the 1953 Agrarian Reform.

In August 1992, Arsenio, Pablo, and Eugenio went to La Paz to look in the office of the Reforma Agraria whether the Palenque-Vannuccis really had a title to Cañón de Segura as they were claiming, and found out that they did not. By that time, the comunarios had become interested in Cañón, which they had ‘always known was there’. After their return, they called a meeting and told the rest of the comunariosthat Cañón was vacant land (tierra baldía), and they all decided to go there to live.

In September, the lawyers found out that Eloy Palenque had put in a solicitude for the land to be titled to his family, which was, however, annulled.

Two days after Arsenio, Pablo, and Eugenio’s return, the patrones returned with police to take Arsenio, Eugenio, Marcelo and Petrona Bruno to the prison in Camiri. They pretended to take them to Camiri to sign some documents, but this was only a pretext (engaño), and really they were locked up and accused of cattle theft. A woman employee of the Vannuccis wrote a letter of lies to claim that the four had stolen cattle, but none of it was true, and really they were taken because they were all leaders [‘capitanes’, that is, holding important positions in Itakua]: Arsenio was capitán, Eugenio secretary, Marcelo vocal, and Petrona leader of the women’s group.

The comunarios decided that Germán Medina [at the time of my fieldwork a high-ranking official in the Guaraní district of Kaami] should be the new capitán, and he started to

organise the move. Don Marcelo only stayed in jail for three months, then he was released because he claimed not to know anything about the land problem. At that point, there were two court cases going on already, and the patrones had started the one about the cattle because they saw that they were losing the land battle. Petrona also didn’t stay in jail long, but was released for being a woman and only had to report to Camiri once a week. The remaining two Bruno men stayed in jail as long as they did (two years) because the land battle had priority over the cattle case and was thus taken care of first.

In Cañón, meanwhile, the work had begun of clearing space for houses, which was carried out with the support of the APG and the resulting help of people from all kinds of neighbouringcomunidades, so when the last two comunariosgot out of jail, the houses were already built, of wattle and daub (tabique) at first. His family and those of Petrona, Germán, and Arsenio were the last ones to leave Itakua.

In the cattle case, lawyers came from Santa Cruz to interview the witnesses about the alleged theft, but those could not agree on the exact number, so they were revealed as liars. The accused went to Santa Cruz for a final hearing, but neither the Palenques nor their lawyers showed up, so the Brunos were cleared of the accusations. (One of their lawyers was from CIPCA and took care of the land case, another was hired by the accused themselves and took care of the cattle case.)

A transfer was done in La Paz, and the Vannucci’s request for the title to Cañón was annulled. Padre Iván, CIPCA, and possibly other sources helped pay for the trials, and some unspecified ‘organisation for the support of land matters’ (organisación de apoyo de la tierra) paid (or helped pay) the US$5.000 which the comunarios had to pay for the wire fencing and other work carried out by the Vannuccis in Cañón. All this was settled in a meeting in Camiri. Thepatronesnever paid anything for thecomunarios’ work on their land.

At the time of the move, various people left and went to live in other places because they were afraid. One of them was Jacinto who only returned in 2003. There is a video of the Itakua story (made by Teko Guaraní) that shows him cutting down trees for the patrones, as he was working for them at the time (‘cabalito se ve cortando árboles para los patrones’). I asked why he had been allowed to return, and Elías said, for the benefit of his children.

In the end, it all worked out well for thecomunarios though, because the land in Itakua over which they were fighting initially was only something like 100 hectares, whereas now they had close to 3,000 hectares.

In Elías’s words, all this was part of a ‘vision to accomplish’ (visión a lograr): to live free of the patrones. What the comunarios had already achieved was the improvement of their housing, a Caritas project carried out in 2001; the cattle project started in 1998; and the water supply system (2000), which was another Caritas project. Don Germán’s son Valerio also counted as one of the ‘accomplishments’, as he was a professional, the community’s very own first vet. He was meant to be finished with his studies soon, and then the comunarios

would start some sort of pig raising project. Of course, there was still a lot missing, but little by little things were improving.

Apolonia Medina

Doña Apolonia was the oldest person whom I interviewed about the Itakua case. She was a widow living next-door to her only son and his wife, accompanied by a granddaughter. Doña Apolonia ran a little business in Cañón, selling odds and ends such as cigarettes, sweets, and little plastic bottles of the ever-present sugarcane alcohol nicknamed ‘trago’. During my stay in Cañón, I came to greatly admire her wicked sense of humour, and making pottery with her and one of her daughters is one of my dearest memories of that time.

When asked about Itakua, she unfortunately claimed to have forgotten most of the events of the time of the move, but I was still glad she told me more than the ‘three words’ she had initially promised me.

Sadoth Palenque did not want the comunarios to keep animals; he would tell them, ‘This is not a comunidad (aquí no hay comunidad)’. He wanted them all to move to Urundaiti, but they were about 18 families, so there was no space for them all in Urundaiti.

In order to encourage the people to leave, Sadoth put barbed wire around the ravine where the people used to get water, and which was their only source of it. Don Jacinto was working for thepatrónall this time, helping him do the dirty work because he paid him. To get the water which they needed to live, the people crawled underneath the barbed wire, and one time

Apolonia’s shirt got ripped at the back, making her cry because of the pain. So she sent her little daughter instead, who could enter under the wire more easily, she herself holding up the wire for her.

Bubén Bruno wasmburuvichaat the time.

In Apolonia’s opinion, the owner (propietaria) of Itakua, doña Vannucci, was good, but it