Reparation policies for peasants and rural workers «exonerados de la tierra» in Chile

Abstract

This article analyzes the reparations policy for peasants and rural workers «exonerated» from agrarian reform lands (1964-1973), their incorporation into the category of politically exonerated persons in Law 19.234 (1993), and its subsequent modifications. The policies implemented in Chile after the 1973 coup by the military government to dismantle the agrarian reform process progressively excluded various groups of peasants and rural workers from the land expropriated by Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-70) and Salvador Allende Gossens (1970-73) governments. A series of decree laws and the repeal in 1989 of Law 16,640 resulted in thousands of peasants or rural workers losing land, employment, and housing. The policies undertaken in the name of national reconciliation after 1990 and the historical practices of Chilean governments regarding policies (presidential decrees and leyes de gracia intended to «reconcile» conflicting groups after internal political conflicts from the early nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century) allow us to better understand the measures applied to the ex-land reform beneficiaries, who were incorporated into Law 19.234 by defining them as «politically exonerated» persons eligible for reparation for political repression under the military government.