Stuart Munckton
"We were living like slaves, and slaves don't make enough to eat", Venezuelan peasant Jesus Guerrero told the Miami Herald, as quoted in an April 25 article. Guerrero is one of hundreds of thousands of peasants to benefit from the land reform being carried out by the radical left-wing government led by President Hugo Chavez.
Reforming the highly unequal ownership and control of farmland in Venezuela's countryside is moving to the centre stage of the Bolivarian revolution in the country. In a country where 80% live in poverty, rural poverty is endemic. A census carried out following Chavez's victory in the presidential elections in 1998 revealed that 60% of the land was owned by just 1% of the population.
In order to counter this, the government has embarked on an program of redistribution. This has consisted mainly of allocating land titles from idel state-owned land. However, the government's December 2001 land reform law gives it the right to seize idle land holdings of more than 5000 hectares from large landowners and redistribute it peasants with little or no land.
Despite the law guaranteeing compensation at market value for expropriated land, the law has been violently opposed by large capitalist landowners. Dozens of peasant activists have been assassinated since the law was passed.
An important battle
The struggle for reform of land ownership has long been one of the most explosive issues in Latin America, where domination of farmland by a tiny minority, often multinational corporations producing "cash crops" such as sugar or coffee for the First World market, has condemned millions to misery. One of the first measures of the revolutionary government in Cuba following the 1959 overthrow of the US-backed Batista dictatorship was to redistribute land from the wealthy landowners, many of whom had fled the country, to previously landless peasants.
Aware that the success of the Cuban example was inspiring others in Latin America to revolt, the United States formed a plan for Latin America known as the "Alliance for Progress" in the early 1960s that offered minor reforms and concessions, including limited land reform. However, the basic political and economic structures were left untouched by the program, and large landowners continued to dominate.
According to a January 11 article posted at the Hands Off Venezuela website by Jorge Martin, 90% of the land redistributed in Venezuela in the 1960s has since been returned to large landowners. Chavez argues that this reform failed because peasants, without access to cheap credit, were forced into debt and eventually bankruptcy.
Accordingly, the current land reform is accompanied by access to cheap credit for those who win titles to land. Also, while those who are being granted land titles under current government policy have the right to work the land to their benefit, ownership ultimately resides in the state and peasants are unable to sell the land on.
One problem that has flowed from the domination of the farmland by a tiny capitalist elite producing for profit, not need, is that Venezuela imports up to 70% of its food needs. The January 15 Economist magazine reported that Chavez "says land reform will offer 'food security' as well as helping poorer peasants". To this end, the government is strongly encouraging the formation of cooperatives to farm the land titles they distribute in order to stimulate food production.
The land reform is also aimed at solving some of the problems in the cities. An explosion of rural poverty in the 1970s and 1980s led to mass migration into the cities (neoliberal policies in the region made this a continent-wide phenomena). Now, 90% of the population live in cities, many of them clustered in poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts. In order to both stimulate food production and solve the problems of the urban poor, the government has formulated a plan to encourage voluntary migration back to the countryside to form cooperatives to farm land redistributed by the government.
Who owns what?
According to Martin, so far 2.2 million hectares of land have been redistributed to peasant co-operatives. So far, all the land redistributed has belonged to the state, which, according to the Economist, is the largest single owner of land in Venezuela. No privately owned land, according to the government, has been expropriated.
Not all large landowners agree. There have been disputes about who owns what land, with the government redistributing idle land that some landowners have claimed. The National Land Institute (INTI) , established by Chavez to carry through the land reform, claims that in such cases the owners claims were fraudulent and the land really belonged to the state.
Many large landowners are also upset about invasions and occupation of their land by peasants encouraged by the government's policies. Large landowners accuse the government of supporting and defending such occupations. The president of the Ranchers Association in the state of Barinas, Giovanni Scelza, claimed in a September 21, 2003 article posted at the Food First website, that the authorities had responded to only one out of 95 requests to evict squatters from large landholdings.
In the lead up to last year's October regional elections, Chavez began to signal plans for a post-election offensive to significantly deepen the land reform and carry the 2001 law out to its completion. An October 25 article by Venezuela Analysis commentator Gregory Wilpert, reported that at a mass demonstration to celebrate the handing out of 3000 land titles in Petare, one of the poor neighbourhoods of Caracas, Chavez declared the government would "wage war against the large estates". Chavez said that while he would prefer to avoid conflict with the large landowners, he was willing to use the military to seize land if they refused to comply with the law. Chavez insisted throughout the election campaign that he expected all mayors and governors to make it a post-election priority to implement the land reform law.
Accelerating the process
A meeting held in early January of pro-Chavez state governors and mayors made plans to deepen the land reform. A January 5 Venezuela Analysis article reported that several state governments had passed decrees aiming to accelerate the land reform. Martin reported that at a mass rally on January 10 of more than 10 000 supporters, Chavez, speaking in front of a banner that read "Free land and men — war against the latifunda" [large landholdings], announced a new central decree to speed up the land reform.
Already, since October, more than 50,000 hectares have been redistributed. The mayor of Venezuela's second largest city, Maracaibo, has ordered the government to seize two swathes of privately owned idle land, according to a January 11 Associated Press article. The government is planning a massive sweep with 2000 officials of the countryside in order to force large landowners to prove they legitimately own the land they claim they do and to establish just how much land is being left idle.
Although Chavez has insisted that the government aims to reach amicable agreement with large landowners and to avoid forced expropriations, this new offensive is sending panic waves through the large landowners.
Two London-based publications — the Economist and the Financial Times — have run hysterical articles denouncing the new land reform offensive as a fundamental attack on the right to private property. The Economist headlined its article, "And now your ranch is ours", while the editorial in the January 13 FT spoke of "what is likely to be a number of Zimbabwe-style expropriations of big estates".
These papers are reflecting the outrage of the international agricultural elite, at a government denying them access to whatever land they want. One flash point, for example, is the landholdings of the British food company Vesty Group. Belonging to the family of Lord Vestey, this is a major meat and food multinational, which has been operating in South America for decades. It owns the El Charcote estate that produces 450,000 kilos of beef a year.
The Vestey Group claims that up to 80% of the El Charcote estate has been taken over by squatters: previously landless peasants who have moved in and started farming the land. The Vestey Group has insisted that the Venezuelan government take action against the squatters. However, the pro-Chavez governor for the state of Cojedes where the ranch is located, Jhonny Yanez, claims that the company does not have its papers in order and cannot prove it owns the land.
On January 8, Yanez headed the government's first "intervention" against a private ranch. According to the Economist, "the clatter of helicopters heralded the arrival of Yanez... accompanied by some 200 troops and heavily armed police commandos." A state commission has been established to work out what property is idle or not legally held, but the Economist claims Yanez has already begun bussing in potential members of a future cooperative.
The plans to carry out the land reform law to its completion, is part of a renewed push by the chavez government to deepen the social change that is necessary for the poor to reclaim the country. As Chavez has repeatedly asserted, the process of change has "just begun".
From Green Left Weekly, January 26, 2005.
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