WITH its horse-drawn buggies, farmhouses with manicured lawns and fields planted to the horizon with soya beans and sorghum, the Mennonite settlement at Manitoba in Bolivia's eastern lowlands feels like a tropical version of rural Ohio or Pennsylvania. That placid impression lasts until farmers start talking about their fears of President Evo Morales' plans for land reform. One year into an administration that intends to reverse centuries of subjugation of Bolivia's indigenous majority, Morales intends to redistribute as many as 48 million acres of land, considered idle or ill-gotten, through opaque purchase agreements, to hundreds of thousands of peasants. The project won approval last month in Congress, and thousands of Morales' supporters marched in La Paz, the capital, in celebration. But it has shaken Manitoba and Bolivia's 41 other Mennonite farming communities. "I read [the newspaper] El Deber - I know what's taking place in this country," said 22-year-old Gerardo Martens. "We simply want to know what will happen to us and our land."
Mennonites have carved new settlements out of the thick jungle of eastern Bolivia for more than 40 years, helping to create an agricultural frontier. Multinational companies rely on their soya bean and sunflower harvests to produce cooking oils and animal feed. These exports have transformed Bolivia's 40,000 Mennonites into relatively prosperous landowners. The German-speaking Mennonites trace their origins to the 16th century, with their name and beliefs derived from a Dutch Protestant reformist, Menno Simons. They migrated earlier to Russia, the United States, Canada, Belize and Mexico, and then some went to Bolivia, for the farming opportunities and religious freedom. While the degree of observance of Mennonite customs varies in each of these colonies, as they call them, the 2,500 people in Manitoba stitch their own clothing. They also eschew cars, electricity for their homes and rubber tyres for their tractors. Their only schooling is the study of scripture and other subjects in German until the age of 12.
Their families tend to be large, often with six to 12 children. With family farms generally limited to about 100 acres, population growth inevitably pushes families to search for new land to settle. This practice, often in areas where land titles are of murky provenance, is the main source of the Mennonites' concern about the government's plans. Farmers in Manitoba and nearby Chihuahua shuddered when speaking of the situation in El Cariño, a community more than six hours to the north where squatters have tried to occupy Mennonite farmland.
"We're fine because the title to our land is clear," said Franz Schmidt, an attendant at the bustling general store in Chihuahua. "But those people on the margins are the ones we're worrying about."
The Mennonites are Bolivian citizens, but generally avoid any involvement in politics. "We try not to say anything negative about the decisions made at the presidential palace," Martens said haltingly in German-accented Spanish. "We're afraid of being expelled from Bolivia." While details of Morales' land programme remain vague, the main thrust of the proposal would require its beneficiaries, though not current landowners, to own land on a communal instead of individual basis. In Manitoba, farms are owned by single families. A previous government tried agrarian reform in 1953, though subsequent lethargy and corruption in the distribution of land grants effectively concentrated nearly 90% of Bolivia's arable land among its wealthiest 10% of families.
When asked what the future held, one farmer, Abraham Wall, started out by describing the odyssey that brought him here. Born in northern Mexico and brought to Bolivia at the age of two by his parents, he moved from settlement to settlement before arriving in Manitoba in 1993. "Whether we stay in this spot," said Mr Wall, 40, as he was surrounded by six of his eight children, "that depends on Evo Morales."