Hernando de Soto has sought to summarize the proposals put forward at the video The Mystery of Capital of the Amazonian Indians, saying that "the problem is economic Amazon rather than ethnic. " Here we argue that the true source of the problem is political.
Hernando de Soto has been placed on the public agenda, once again, the view that the economist has of the causes of economic underdevelopment of peoples, this time led to the area of \u200b\u200bAmazonian native communities. Here are a few comments.
1. According to De Soto, qualifications and standards that the state gives communities "are nothing more than pieces of paper." If it were so, the problem is the state and governments to issue laws that do not give these titles and rules (and institutions that register or protect) the range, according to De Soto, should have. The value of securities that the State grants to communities has nothing to do with any intrinsic characteristic of communal property.
2. A "good title" (to use the phrase of De Soto) granted to a natural or legal person is not at all automatic access to credit, capital, insurance and other benefits associated with De Soto titling individual. The grant or withhold credit or insurance is a decision that entities made based on a number of conditions, and the title is just one of them. That's why there are tens of thousands of smallholders in rural and urban throughout the country, taking individual titles and two-good sanitation precisely those claims that De Soto to the villagers, "do not have access to credit. Banks simply do not pay.
3. One of the cases of De Soto is the only way to access to credit is mortgaging the property. However, for decades, the guarantee demanded by the development banks (including the defunct Banco Agrario) for loans to farmers has been the crop (agricultural garment). The prestige of the state development bank originated in a context of economic crisis (the eighties) and particularly during the first government mismanagement APRA (1985-1990). This vilification continued, and as part of the neoliberal anti-state propaganda later. 4. In fact, more than the legal characteristics of the commons, the problem of fon-do of the weakness of the property that both seeks to clarify De Soto has to do with the fact that the State recognizes more rights to companies seeking concessions for the extraction of nonrenewable resources, as any owner-be it individual or communal, Creole, or native-month-tizo.
The most notorious example of this is Tambogrande. Farmers in the colonization San Lorenzo (Piura) are individual owners with all of the law, fully integrated into the market, and the international market in addition, they are exporting, are not poor villagers with a collective title and tenuous ties to the market. However, it was only thanks to the enormous pressure of public opinion and farmers, who had to move for months and advocacy campaigns and media to protest the exploitation of minerals that were below the town of Tambogrande and part growing area, the mining company left the Manhattan area.
The problem of weak property, then, is political, because the value of the property depends on the rules sanctioned by the state: this is the left to them to multinational mining companies more rights than landowners, whether it be communal or individual property.
5. De Soto himself implicitly acknowledges this in the video, saying it highest ranking property is one that is home to the rights guaranteed by international treaties signed between Peru and the country where the company is incorporated - which, coupled with guarantees other legal persons, gives, in his words, the character of a "super property" -. Recognizes that property rights foreign firms are more valid than the properties registered in Peru, is irrelevant whether this is private, communal or any other form. Here, the only "mystery" to be noted are the rules of the game-laws, anti-cough-that governments set to benefit foreign companies to the detriment of nationals.
Once again it is a political problem, not a problem arising from the character "communal", "native" or "traditional" property.
6. The ground rules for access to natural resources that could be changed perfectly without having to give ownership subsoil, communities or private owners have preferential rights over resources found beneath the surface of the ground from which they own. We cite only two possible mechanisms, by way of example: one, establishing legal requirements to allow negotiations between companies and those with land rights are more balanced, and two, that these owners are ex officio members of shareholders companies and share its benefits (even though it might limit their ability to intervene in some decisions.)
7. In short, the problem that "mystery" seeks to unravel Hernando de Soto is political and not a consequence of any property inherent in communal ownership, which, by its very essence, the villagers were prevented from accessing external resources to enhance their economic development.
La Revista Agraria 111, September 2009
