The Hemisphere: On the Firing Line

Under its dusty pepper trees and somber eucalyptuses, the straggling town of Ucureña (altitude: 8,500 ft.), in Bolivia's Cochabamba Valley, is outwardly quaint and tranquil. Indian women in bright dresses and stovepipe hats of white straw dogtrot along its streets, with babies and water jugs lashed to their backs, just as their forebears did 100 years ago. But all Bolivia knows that Ucureña, by virtue of a turbulent role in the country's land-reform movement, is the symbol of the Indian farmer, now trying manfully to break away from centuries of serfdom and build...

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