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.
Agrarian society before 1969
Agrarian society, in most rural areas, prior to the reform consisted of an extensive network of haciendas, which were a result of extreme land concentration from colonial times where Spanish landlords were assigned large pieces of land that previously belonged to indigenous groups. The indigenous groups that previously owned and cultivated the lands became workers at these newly founded haciendas. Indigenous workers were unpaid or underpaid, some hacienda workers were given housing and food in exchange for their labor, and others were paid small wages and charged rent for their housing.
After the independence of Peru, the few restrictions for landowners to protect the indigenous peasants were lifted, and the haciendas expanded largely at cost of the indigenous communities.
In the years between 1900 and 1918, the sugar cane haciendas in Chicama Valley in the Department of La Libertad were acquired by three industrial giants: the Larco brothers (related to the family of José A. Larco), Graham Rowe and Co (British export company) and the Gildemeister family (merchants from Bremen).
In the Peruvian constitution enacted in 1920 under Augusto B. Leguía, indigenous communities were recognized as legal entities for the first time in Peruvian history, which gave them the right to land property and legal protection against expropriation by the haciendas. However, in the 1920s there was an uprising of Quechua peasants in the province of Anta against the landlords which was repressed by security forces. In 1936, the rights of the indigenous communities were also included in the Civil Code (Código Civil). The indigenous communities that could prove their historical existence as legal entities got land titles, which gave them legal protection against expropriation by the haciendas. By the year of 2000, 5660 communities were recognized.
Preceding agrarian reforms in Peru
In November 1962, the military government of Ricardo Pérez Godoy enacted the Agrarian Reform Law D.L. N° 14328. In 1963, the military government of Nicolás Lindley decreed the Agrarian Reform Law (Decreto Ley No 14444) creating the Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization (IRAC, Instituto de Reforma Agraria y Colonización) and started a process of Agrarian Reform in La Convención Province and Lares Valley (Department of Cuzco), reacting to land occupations by peasants organized in the CCP (Confederación Campesina del Perú) under the leadership of Hugo Blanco Galdós who were organizing a regional agrarian reform on the own, expelling the hacendados. The third agrarian reform law was adopted by the Peruvian Congress in 1964 when Fernando Belaúnde Terry was president (Ley de Reforma Agraria N° 15037). This reform did not include the large estates on the northern coast, and its application was blocked by a Congress majority of APRA and the right-wing Unión Nacional Odriista. Up to 300.000 peasants in the Andes marched in protest for a real agrarian reform.
In 1969, there were an estimated 700,000 families that did not own any land. Many of these families were indigenous and or low-income, worked in haciendas, and were predominately located in rural regions of Peru.