Flower in the Gun Barrel Tutsi was defined as a Tutsi if he owned more than ten cows. A Hutu owned less than ten cows and usually worked in the fields. Creating an ethnic class and empowering the Tutsi as "upper class" created hatred and jealousy between these newly imposed "tribes". In 1959, the Belgians left Rwanda and Hutus quickly took over the government. There was a series of battles between the Hutu and the Tutsi between 1959 and 1994, during which Tutsis would often take sanctuary in churches in order to survive. Knowing this, the Hutu government in 1994 forged partnerships with several Catholic
Hutu of Rwandan national unity, but has been criticized as an attempt at historical revisionism. Still others suggest that the two groups are related but not identical, and that differences between them were exacerbated by Europeans, or by a gradual, natural split, as those who owned cattle became known as Tutsi and those who did not became Hutu. Mahmood Mamdani states that the Belgian colonial power designated people as Tutsi or Hutu on the basis of cattle ownership, physical measurements and church records. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Hutu and Tutsi are really separate groups or not;