VENEZUELA: Speeding Up Agrarian Reform

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jan 6 2005 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government plans to accelerate its land reform efforts this year, by first carrying out an exhaustive nationwide inventory of rural property, land ownership, land use and productivity levels.

The plans will include “interventions” of hundreds of farms on state-owned land and private estates, including a British-owned ranch named “El Charcote”.

Agriculture Minister Arnoldo Márquez said “there is no intention to subjugate anyone. The ‘interventions’ will entail a ‘diagnosis’ as part of the inventory, determining the limits of the property and where it is located, who owns it, what condition it is in, the productivity level, and what is produced there.”

In addition, “if the land is poorly managed or part of it has been left unproductive, the owners will be charged a special tax,” he added.

Eliézer Otaiza, president of the governmental National Land Institute (INTI), explained that during the inventory, “anyone who is unable to demonstrate that they hold legal title to ‘their’ land” will face the possibility of having the property occupied and redistributed by the state.

Landowners must show INTI that they use their rural property efficiently. If they are unable to do so, their farms are to be put under observation, and a programme aimed at improving production will be agreed on, while the landholders will be fined for unproductive land.

The inspection will cover more than 40,000 farms and rural estates around the country.

Otaiza said some 600 cases have already been identified in which those living on the land have been unable to show that they are the legal owners, including 56 properties that were classified as “latifundia” (great landed estates) because they cover more than 5,000 hectares.

One such property is the 13,000-hectare “El Charcote” cattle ranch in the state of Cojedes in the plains to the northwest of the Orinoco River, some 200 km southwest of Caracas.

The ranch is owned by a British company, the Vestey Group, which has major cattle ranching and sugar cane farming interests in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, as well as an international food product business.

“The entire machinery of the state, with the armed forces and the police, will show up at ‘El Charcote’ on Jan. 8 to carry out the first operation of the ‘Free Land and Men’ mission,” the prosecutor of the state of Cojedes, Alexis Ortiz, said this week.

“We will verify the ownership of that estate, and to what use the land has been put,” he added.

“Free Land and Men” was a slogan used by Gen. Ezequiel Zamora, a 19th century Venezuelan campesino (peasant) leader who fought for land reform and social equality.

Zamora is greatly admired by President Hugo Chávez, who has described some of his rural projects as “Zamorano”.

According to Diana dos Santos, the president of Agropecuaria Flora, a Venezuelan subsidiary of the Vestey Group, 80 percent of “El Charcote” has been occupied by landless campesinos in the past five years, despite which “we are still the country’s top beef producer.”

“We have been in Venezuela for 100 years, and we want to be here 100 more,” she added.

Venezuela carried out agrarian reform in the 1960s, to combat the heavy concentration of land ownership, similar to what is seen throughout Latin America, and several million hectares were distributed to 230,000 families.

Nevertheless, the ownership of rural property became even more concentrated, and by 1998, large landholders owned 42 percent of Venezuela’s farmland, compared to 23 percent in 1958, according to a study by PROVEA, a prominent local human rights group.

Another fact that is often cited by the government and activists is that this South American country of 25 million consumes more imported than locally produced food.

Chávez has frequently complained that this country, which is so rich in fertile farmland, has to import staples like beans, corn, milk, sugar, beef or chicken, while “tens of thousands of campesinos do not even have a tiny plot of land” on which to grow food.

In 2001, the left-leaning Chávez signed a law-decree to reform the question of rural property ownership, triggering a major clash with large landholders and the private sector in general.

The business community’s opposition to this and other measures taken by Chávez led Fedecámaras, the main business association, to seek the removal of the president – first through a short-lived coup d’etat in April 2002, then a two-month business shutdown in December 2002-January 2003, and finally, in August 2004, a recall referendum in which Chávez took 59 percent of the vote.

Under the new land law, INTI has distributed more than two million hectares to around 100,000 families. In some cases the land has been claimed by ranchers who have even resorted to violence, and several rural activists and human rights defenders have been murdered.

During the campaign for the October election for state governors and mayors – in which Chávez and his allies won a landslide victory – the president declared a “war on the latifundia” and urged all of his allies to take urgent measures to “democratise” rural property ownership and land use.

In the last few days of December, governors Johnny Yánez of Cojedes, José Briceño of the northeastern state of Monagas, and Carlos Giménez of the northwestern state of Yaracuy – all Chávez allies – issued decrees for the “intervention” of farms in their regions.

The governors gave their assurances that there would be no forced expropriation of property, even though that is permitted by the constitution – rewritten in 1999 – in cases of “public or social need”, as long as proper indemnification is paid.

“We do not want to trample on anyone’s rights, and we are not expropriating any land, but are using our force to put things in order, because there is a legal limbo surrounding the questions of unproductive land and the latifundium,” said Yánez.

Briceño, who ordered the “intervention” of 25 farms with a combined total of 50,000 hectares, including some that are owned by the governmental Corporación de Guayana, said the aim is to “assess the condition of some properties, in order to reactivate their productivity in favour of food security for Venezuelans.”

Governor Giménez’s decree, meanwhile, only targets public lands, while other governors are also preparing “interventions”, which will be officially approved by the national government this week, according to Márquez and Otaiza.

Venezuelan authorities admit that the state does not know how much land it owns. When plots began to be handed out to landless campesinos two years ago, the ranchers’ association asked INTI to distribute 13 million hectares of public property to the landless farmers.

Otaiza estimates that “there are more than 10 million hectares of unproductive farmland in the country, part of which is in private hands.”

In the case of “El Charcote”, said prosecutor Ortiz, “at least 3,500 hectares are public property. Part of that land has been occupied (by landless campesinos) and another part of it is still lying fallow.”

He added that the imminent intervention by the authorities “will in no way interrupt the ranch’s activities.”