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❖ 1 ❖ LIBERALIZATION AGAINST DEMOCRACY The sharing of resources within communal organizations and reliance on ties with powerful patrons were recurrent ways peasants strove to reduce risks and to improve their stability, and both were condoned and frequently supported by the state. —Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century In the mid-1990s, Tebourba, a large village in the fertile northwest region of Tunisia, began implementing land policies that were part of a structural adjustment program (SAP). The privatization of land was the ¤nal stage in the dismantling of the country’s socialist project, as the state attempted to complete market-oriented changes that it had begun cautiously in the early 1970s. State-managed agricultural production cooperatives had formed the core of Tunisian socialism, and Tebourba is located in the heart of a region dominated by these cooperatives. The privatization of state farms under Tunisia’s SAP involved a major shift in asset distribution, which caused considerable social and political turmoil. Large landholders were the primary bene¤ciaries of this land reform. The impact of these trends in Tebourba was re®ected in the attitudes expressed to me by local inhabitants while I was doing ¤eld work there in the 1990s; they are summed up in the following remarks made to me by three people in very different socioeconomic positions: A poor peasant: “The workers have become beggars. The sun shines on everyone. Normally the state looks after us all. Why give the land to the rich? They already have land. If you give them more they will no longer think of the poor. What are they going to do with more, buy another car? It’s no good. You ¤nd people with a thousand hectares while others won’t even have one hectare. The poor wanted land. Some farmers before got land and they’re doing well. [In the early 1970s, a small amount of state land was distributed to former cooperative workers.] If you have connections you can get land. Those who were ¤red like me always go to the administration asking for work. We tell them, “You ¤red us, so give me something to buy bread.”Nothing happens. The cooperative used to employ eighty people,but now only thirty work there. Those thirty are almost always women because they are paid less. They work for twelve hours a day with someone standing over them the whole time. Men require four dinars a day [at the time of this interview, one dinar equaled approximately one U.S. dollar] while the women work for three-something. You know the ministry tells them to pay us ¤ve dinars a day. “The poor will always stay poor around here. The poor lack rain and grass for their animals. The rich won’t allow them to graze on their land. Before you could graze your animals and they would also give you money. Now the rich don’t give you anything. I went to a rich farmer and asked for a little wheat. He said, “Get out, God will help you.” Another man, rich with a 404 truck, asked and he gave him the wheat. The rich and the administrators help each other. For example, the Hajj will give ten or twenty kilos of wheat to the poor, but he’ll give a lot more to the rich without them coming by. [“Hajj” means a person who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; here the speaker is referring to the largest local landowner.] “If there’s assistance from the state the "umda will give out 50 percent of it and give the rest to his friends or keep it. [An "umda (plural "umad) is a community or neighborhood leader. Formerly, the "umda would be a shaykh, or tribal leader. Currently, state agents ¤ll these positions with party loyalists, not all of whom are shuykh.] If you complain the "umda will create worse problems . To get assistance you go to the délégué [the local representative of the regional governor]. Before the délégué will help you, he asks the "umda. My four-year-old son needed medicine for heart disease, but the "umda said I didn’t need anything. That I’m doing ¤ne. If you go into my house you’ll know how poor I am. I went to the délégué when my son got sicker; he made the "umda deliver the money for medicine to my door.” An "umda: “The poor are reluctant to ask for...

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