Editing Decree 900 (section)

==Legislation==
Árbenz began promoting [[agrarian reform]] soon after becoming president. He was aided politically by a renewed [[Guatemalan Party of Labour|Communist Party of Guatemala]] (PGT), which believed that some amount of capitalist development necessarily preceded a communist revolution. Árbenz accepted help from the PGT and its leaders were among his personal friends; however, he rejected some of their proposals, including a mandate for the organization of producer cooperatives.<ref name=Handy682>Handy, "The Most Precious Fruit of the Revolution" (1988) p. 682. "There were substantial differences, however, between Gutiérrez's suggestion and the law proposed by Arbenz, which came only after two weeks of discussion among his full cabinet, in which many moderates as well as radical activists were represented. Most important of the differences was that Gutiérrez's proposal had favored the organization of full producer cooperatives on the expropriated land. Arbenz's draft did not even mention the formation of cooperatives, while the law passed by congress allowed for, but did not stress, cooperatives."</ref>

The proposed law gained widespread support among peoples' organizations and in the national press, but was opposed by the Asociación General de Agricultores (AGA), which represented the existing landowners.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), pp. 455–458.</ref><ref>Handy, "The Most Precious Fruit of the Revolution" (1988) p. 682. "During the month that the proposed law was debated in congress, agrarian reform dominated the national dialogue. The revolutionary organizations, political parties, unions, and CNCG gave it their full support. Even the cautious and extremely influential newspaper ''El Imparcial'' gave agrarian reform limited support. The landowners' association attacked it vehemently, however."</ref>

Presented with a draft by the President, the Guatemalan Congress met on Saturdays and Sundays for five weeks.<ref name=Harbour13>Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), p. 13.</ref> Congress introduced some changes to Árbenz's version, most notably restoring the idea of cooperatives (although not to the degree proposed by the PGT).<ref name=Handy682/> Decree 900—''Ley de Reforma Agraria''—was passed on 17 June 1952 at 1:45 AM and signed into law by Árbenz on the same day.<ref name=Harbour13/> It called for {{cvt|603704|ha}} of farmland to be redistributed to 100,000 families.<ref name=Trefzger/> Specifically, it authorized the redistribution of all uncultivated land on estates larger than {{cvt|672|acres|disp=flip}}, and of land on estates sized from {{cvt|224|–|672|acres|disp=flip}}, on which less than two-thirds of the land was cultivated. It also specified total redistribution of the government owned ''fincas nacionales'', which contributed a quarter of the nation's coffee production.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), pp. 459–460.</ref>

Article 1 of the law reads:

<blockquote>The Agrarian Reform of the October Revolution intends to eliminate the feudal property structure in the countryside and develop relations of production that originate to develop the land to the form of operational and capitalist methods of production in agriculture and to prepare the way for the industrialization of Guatemala.<ref>Translated by Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), p. 28.</ref></blockquote>

Proponents of the law stated that it was intended to “eliminate all feudal type property...especially work-servitude and the remnant of slavery”.<ref>LaFeber, ''Inevitable Revolutions'' (1993), p. 118; citing [[Blanche Wiesen Cook]], ''The Declassified Eisenhower'' (Garden City, N.Y., 1981), p. 224; Neale J. Pearson, "Guatemala: The Peasant Union Movement, 1944–1954," in ''Latin American Peasant Movements'' ed. Henry A. Landsberger (Ithaca, 1969), p. 224.</ref> Decree 900 specifically abolished slavery, unpaid labor, work as payment of rent, and relocation of indigenous workers.<ref>Translated by Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), p. 29.</ref>

===Mechanisms===
The law did not redistribute land automatically. It created a National Agrarian Department (DAN), and required people without land to file requests with Local Agrarian Committees (CALs). CALs would then make decisions about how to reappropriate the land of major owners. Landowners could dispute these decisions, with an appeals process going all the way up to the President.<ref name=Trefzger/> The committees were formed from local groups, and intended to foster the spirit of community control and local political power. As suggested by the PGT, the law also gave new landowners the option of choosing lifetime tenure instead of private ownership, with the goal of preventing large landowners from simply buying back the land. The ''Fincas Nationales'' were available only through the lifetime tenure option.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), pp. 460–461. "Moreover, through the Departmental Agrarian Committees and the Local Agrarian Committees, Decree 900 sought to stimulate the participation of the peasants and the labour organizations, rather than to impose the reform from the top alone.</ref> According to [[José Manuel Fortuny]], a PGT leader who helped draft the legislation:

<blockquote>We [the PGT] proposed the creation of peasant committees [CALs] in order to lay the groundwork for the eventual radicalization of the peasantry. We talked to Arbenz about this, and he agreed with us. What we wanted was to foster the control of the reform from below. This would give the peasants a strong sense of their common needs. And if, from the system of lifetime tenure, cooperatives developed, the seeds of a more collective society would have been sown.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), p. 461.</ref></blockquote>

Finally, the law established a system for using bonds to compensate people who lost acres to peasants.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), p. 460.</ref> The property owners were paid in bonds which matured in 25 years; value of the land was based on claims made on the previous year's tax returns.<ref>Harbour, ''Creating a New Guatemala'' (2008), p. 18.</ref>

===Land, literacy and credit===
Credit for those receiving land was mandated by additional legislation in 1953, which also established a National Agrarian Bank (BNA). The government dispensed $3,371,185 in loans during 1953; $3,049,092 (around 90%) had been paid back by July 1954—a historically unusual success in lending.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), pp. 466–467. "In view of Guatemala's history, and of the severe economic and technical constraints faced by the government, the amount of credit provided by the CHN and the BNA in one year is remarkable. A 1965 report of the Organization of American States—not a radical group—concluded, 'The success of the agrarian credit policy was no less impressive than that of the land redistribution policy'."</ref>

Beginning in 1954, land and credit were supplemented by literacy programs—the third major plank of the reform program.<ref>Gleijeses, ''The Agrarian Reform of Jacobo Arbenz'' (1989), pp. 470–471. "Literacy, land, and credit were, they stressed, intimately connected: the peasants needed to read and write in order to "present their demands [for land], transact their business with the agrarian authorities, and deal with other problems such as writing to the Agrarian Committees, asking for credit from the Agrarian Bank, buying and selling their crops, etc."</ref>