Their principal aim was to have the Indians
settle on the land to practice sedentary
agriculture.^17 The role of the Missions has
been described as “frontier points to cap-
ture, convert, and reduce to civilisation
some of the less savage Indians, who as
neophytes learn the religion and customs of
the white man.”^18
In summary, during this time period, the
early republican governments essentially fol-
lowed the Spanish strategy of creating order
on, and control over, the Bolivian territory.
They confiscated large, previously indige-
nous common areas and redistributed them
among certain interest groups under private
ownership rights. As a result, the govern-
ment’s allocation of formal property rights
encroached on the informal property rights
of certain indigenous groups – the de facto
rules that these groups had developed to
co-exist with their neighbors and their
shared resources. These encroachments
created conflicts over property rights, which
most frequently resulted in indigenous
groups capitulating to the interests of the
more powerful colonisers.
The conditions for indigenous forest users
to enjoy secure forest tenure during this era
could not have been more inadequate, as
neither mutually recognised boundaries nor
legally empowered indigenous resource
users existed at the time. Moreover, the
intentions of government authorities and
local users with regard to the allocation of
property rights were at odds, making any
mutually beneficial enforcement of rights
impossible.
Centrally-planned economic devel-
opment (1953-1985)
The first post-revolution government in
Bolivia, led by Paz Estenssoro in 1952,
viewed the State’s role as that of a central
planner and coordinator of economic devel-
opment. During this period, mines and
other large corporations were nationalised.
According to historian Juan de la Mesa, the
Paz Estenssoro administration set the tone
for government interventions in the
Lowlands for the next three decades. By the
1970s, the central government’s public sec-
tor contained 520 agencies.^19The central government’s colonisation pro-
gramme consisted of aggressive land titling
with the objective of relocating scores of
landless people from the highlands to the
sparsely populated low-
lands. Settlers received a
conditional title of approxi-
mately 50 hectares on the
agricultural frontier.^20 The
centrally planned colonisa-
tion effort was an expen-
sive task, and as more and
more people migrated to
settle in the lowlands, less
and less government servic-
es became available for set-
tlers.^21 By the late 1950s,
the titling programme started showing signs
of heavy strain as the back-log of untitled
land grew quicker than government agen-
cies could inspect and issue new official
titles.The government’s capacity to respond to
local settlers’ demand for titles as well as
requests for technical support and infra-
structure development for agricultural pro-
duction was severely hampered by the polit-
ical instability that characterised Bolivian
rule in the post revolution era. For instance,
during the 18-year period between 1964
and 1982, of the twenty different govern-
ments in power, only five were civilian.
Despite obvious political differences
between the military and civilian govern-
ments during these years, all shared the
same centralist policy of government control
over the productive sectors.^22 The political
leaders’ vision of central government as the
crucial locus of power over the productive
sectors would characterise government untilConservation aas ccultural aand ppolitical ppractice
Informal aarrange-
ments aare sstill
prevalent sstrategies
for llowland ppopula-
tions tto ddeal wwith
tenure iinsecurity,
variable cclimatic
conditions, vvolatile
markets aand oother
risk ffactors