Bolivia starts "land revolution" amid owners' ire

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, June 4 (Reuters) Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales, took a first step toward handing over a fifth of the country's territory to poor farmers, a day after angry landowners vowed to form self-defense groups.

Morales chose the eastern city of Santa Cruz, the landowners' power base in Bolivia's agricultural heartland, to award 60 titles to 7.8 million acres (3.1 million hectares) of former government land to some of the poor peasants who support him.

''The historical enemies of the poor must accept this land revolution,'' Morales said at a ceremony in a square packed with thousands of indigenous people yesterday.

Morales, a coca farmer from a peasant background, unveiled the land reform program on May 1, the same day he nationalized the oil industry in South America's poorest country.

Although Morales' oil nationalization plans have worried foreign investors and stoked fears in Washington of continuing a leftward, nationalist trend begun by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, criticism at home has not been widespread.

But his land reform plans have laid bare fault lines in a country where the Roman Catholic Church estimates a handful of families own 90 percent of all farmland, while 3 million indigenous peasant farmers share the rest.

TALKS BREAK DOWN Government pledges to redistribute only idle land and avoid massive seizures have failed to reassure landowners, and talks broke down between the government and landowners on Friday.

Jose Cespedes, a leader of a farm group in eastern Santa Cruz, told local television late on Friday that landowners would form committees to defend properties in the region, home to vast cattle ranches and soy plantations.

''If the law of the land doesn't defend us, we have the right to seek defense mechanisms,'' Cespedes said.

Cespedes did not say whether the groups would be armed, and government officials said earlier this week they would not tolerate ''delinquent groups''.

Bolivia has seen only isolated invasions of farms by landless peasants in recent years.

At first, the government said it planned to hand over up to 12 million acres (5 million hectares) of state property to indigenous groups. It then planned to identify idle private farmland for possible later distribution.

The government said in newspaper advertisements on Wednesday it had raised its target to 48 million acres (20 million hectares), or almost a fifth of Bolivia's entire territory, within five years.

Morales' opponents have charged him with electioneering ahead of an election next month for a constituent assembly. If he gains control, Morales has pledged to ''redirect'' a land reform program begun 53 years ago that focused on the western highlands but left large eastern plantations mostly untouched.

Reuters PDS VP0440