Let’s sue the conquistadors
A hedge fund’s campaign risks bringing free-trade deals into disrepute
SCATTERED across rural Peru are the ruins of thousands of casas hacienda (estate houses), reduced to broken porticos and crumbled walls. These decayed structures recall one of the most radical land reforms ever undertaken in a noncommunist country. In the 1970s a leftist military government expropriated 15,286 rural properties and 9m hectares (22m acres) of land. It was a heavy-handed response to gross inequality in landholding and near-servile labour relations that stemmed from the Spanish conquest.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Let’s sue the conquistadors”
From the July 16th 2016 edition
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