Venezuelanalysis.com reported on July 11 that the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez has set aside $10 million to compensate the families of campesino (peasant) leaders assassinated in the period since Venezuela’s land reform program began in 2001. Assassins hired by landowners have murdered more than 170 peasant leaders, peasant organisations claim. According to agriculture and land minister Elias Jaua, the funds will be spent on projects to improve the standard of living of the victims’ families and to make sure that “those guilty for the killings pay for their crimes”. Since the launch of the land reform program, some 1.5 million people have received plots of land, sometimes in areas of state-owned land claimed by large landowners who have violently resisted the redistribution.

From Green Left Weekly, July 19, 2006.
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