Jorge Morelli
@jorgemorelli1
jorgemorelli.blogspot.com
At San Cristobal National University in Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru,
where Shining Path was born, people shape today a new
paradigm of thought and have made a definitive turn. Huamanga discusses the idea of property today.
"From beggars to owners" is the name the University staff assigned to the conference to which Hernando de Soto and Miguel Vega Alvear
-former president of Confiep, the largest peruvian corporate association- were invited by the Huamanga
university proffessors last Saturday, december 7, 2019.
Property is the core
of the matter. The rest of the debate –local
and global- is just about who should own the natural resources.
The peruvian Constitution settled
the matter long ago. Natural resources are a “heritage of the nation”, meaning the strategic resources for the 21st century – copper, lithium, glod, even water– belong
to all peruvians.
However, systematic blocking of these resources by
the andean communities of
Peru, who
have control of the surface land on top of them, shows that the system is flawed. And dialogue is just not enough to mend it.
and the university intellectuals
who finally read today their political language and back them, is that the ownership of those natural resources of the subsoil must belong to
amendment to propose to the
country such a change. But it must be noted that it is an uncertain road.
If the subsoil was only owned by those who control the land on top on them, the natural resources would no longer belong to all Peruvians, but only to
as unfair to all the resto of Peruvians, including among them
even the communities who do not have natural resources under their land, and who, not
withsatnding, do have exactly the same rights to participate in the profits of the
strategic resources. It is likely
that they will not agree and neither will
Peruvians at large.
In order to be
fair to the andean communities with
natural resources beneath their land, however, there is no need whatsoever to change the Peruvian Constitution.
of an uncertain outcome. It may be achieved in a much
simpler way through giving the land on top of all natural resources their fair market value.
Not the price the company estimates, however,
nor the price the Government dims appropriate,
neither the one the community
would like. None of them is actually know. Only the market –supply and
demand- can determine impartially what the value of that land may be. Only the market is able to do so
in a way that may be acceptable to all.
can actually do the
job. Just as it is the global market the mechanism to determine in an impartial way what the value of the natural resources below may be.
A constitutional reform, like the one
the communities would like, is of course a possible
road as well and it
should be proposed today. It has been, after all, since long ago the rule in
the United State, for instance, and perhaps in time it will become the constitutional
rule in Peru as well. But this undoubtedly will take a very long time.
But why choose an uncertain path if there is another road, fair for all Peruvians, that may provide even
short term results for all andean communities in
Peru and South America with natural resources under their land?
Property is the main road -the force of change-. This is what Hernando de Soto and Miguel Vega Alvear shared
with a full auditorium at the aula magna of the old university that was the symbol of an era that lies finally in the past.
Andean communities have
waited long enough. They should not have to wait any longer.
