Peasants

YULIN, China -- The final straw for many villagers in this region came in the early summer, when local officials demanded the equivalent of $10,000 in taxes for a new irrigation system.The village in north-central Shaanxi Province had already been assessed a one-time irrigation tax of $25,000, so no one could figure out how officials could need more money so soon. The answer quickly leaked out: Nearly half the original levy had been squandered by corrupt bureaucrats on banquets and junkets.

ALGIERS, Algeria -- They killed two of her three brothers and shot dead her mother, a pious 55-year-old who made her living packing eggs into cartons.Now the killers want Houria Zaidat, too.The death threat came in a penciled message explaining why the 23-year-old woman from Algiers' working-class suburb of Harraga, the country's female judo champion since 1992, was being targeted."Death to those women who do not wear the veil," it said. "Death to women who practice sports."In Algeria, once promising and prosperous, a dirty war has been waged for the past four years to create a pure Islamic state.

COLONIA LUZ Y ESPERANZA, Paraguay -- The name of this Mennonite colony, set amid the red-dirt soybean fields and palm trees of rural eastern Paraguay, is Light and Hope. But there is little of either.Land-hungry peasants toting shotguns have come into the colony's fields, seeking to evict the American-born Mennonites from the land.The Rev. Philip Eichorn, the colony's minister and leader, has been shot at and forced to get police protection. Thefts of everything from farm equipment to animals are rampant.

ON THE FUYANG ROAD, China -- From a distance the peasants look like a straggly army, thousands of them spreading out into the fields along the road, loosely organized around red flags flapping from thin bamboo poles.In the long light of a winter morning they trudge through the dirt, struggling to level the land that will become a highway leading to a boomtown 20 miles north. They could be a road crew in any developing country except that here in China they are acting out a milleniums-old ritual: putting in weeks of unpaid, forced work -- usually known as corvee labor.

Sometimes, a good children's book can clarify very complicated public policy issues.Last week, I checked out from the library a copy of "Stone Soup," a classic children's story written and illustrated by Marcia Brown and first published in 1947.At a time when questions such as "Why am I paying taxes for education, Social Security, welfare, agricultural subsidies and other programs that don't benefit me?" dominate the public debate, this book is a good antidote.For those who have never had the pleasure of reading this delightful book, I will recount the story.

XIAXI, China -- At first glance, this village in the Yangtze valley shows how 15 years of economic reforms have made China's 800 million peasants richer than ever.Its residents enjoy rising incomes. Some have saved to build houses. Plans for a new technology park promise high-paying construction jobs for the village's young men.But Xiaxi also shows why China is suffering its most serious agricultural crisis in decades. For like thousands of other villages, Xiaxi is losing its farmers to the cities and losing its arable land to development and neglect.

"An Unforgettable Summer," which opens today at the Charles in rotation with "Ladybird, Ladybird," is the rare film that tries the tricky narrative device of the faux naive narrator. In other words, from the bland title downward, it appears to be a sentimental look back at a wondrous childhood event, which the narrator, now the grown son of the family in question, still treasures. But as his memoir progresses we realize what he doesn't -- that the events are terrifying, depressing, depraved and resonant.

BEIJING -- In most countries, Ji Jianguo would be a model citizen: The 22-year-old works long hours selling fruit at a little stand in suburban Beijing, he sends money back home to his parents and is putting aside a bit more so he can start a business.But in China, Mr. Ji is part of a huge problem: a growing wave of uncontrolled migrant labor, one of the largest demographic movements in Chinese history that poses a serious challenge to the Communist regime.Recently driven off his family's land in Anhui because of a flood, Mr. Ji is one of 10 million peasants expected to leave their farms this year, adding to the 80 million who are already living in shantytowns on the edge of China's big cities and along the coast.

MEXICO CITY -- Barely three months after winning a trade pact that was supposed to catapult his country into the 21st century, the regime of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari looked more like a devastated Humpty-Dumpty last week.With the stunning peasant revolt in Chiapas state still unsettled, the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party's (PRI) for president was assassinated at a rally in a poor section of Tijuana on Wednesday night.Many wondered if the momentum toward progress could be put together again, or whether, in choosing a successor to the assassinated Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, the old guard would prevail with its old undemocratic inclinations.

SUPPORTERS of economic liberalization argue that free trade promotes democracy.But often it does not, and recent experiences in southern Mexico show all too clearly why.In democracies, citizens are likely to press for attention to their nomic needs, especially during hard times. This means businesses must be willing to negotiate with workers over wages, working conditions, corporate practices and environmental policies.But in an intensely competitive global economy, businesses are reluctant to invest in places where they face such negotiations and governments prefer to keep people from questioning the economic rules.