Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

VENEZUELA: New Wave of Rural Property Redistribution

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Sep 29 2005 (IPS) - In front of the television cameras, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used a map to show the proposed division of the La Marqueseña rural estate into three parts: one portion as a buffer zone around a dam, another to be left to the current owner, and a third for setting up a company owned by the State and a cooperative of small farmers.

The measure was part of a new offensive by the Chávez administration against latifundia or large landed estates. As in much of Latin America, land ownership is heavily concentrated in Venezuela.

According to the National Land Institute, which oversees the government’s land reform and redistribution efforts, 60 percent of arable property belongs to just two percent of landowners.

In the past three weeks, ranches and agribusiness establishments have been occupied, and the government has urged mayors to expropriate empty lots, prompting protests from the business community against “the confiscation of private property.”

“Either the latifundium dies or I die in the attempt,” declared Chávez in the latest edition of his Sunday radio and TV programme Aló Presidente, aired from a spot on the La Marqueseña ranch.

Surrounded by local residents and sitting next to special guest Joao Pedro Stédile, one of the leaders of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), Chávez made a public offer to rancher Carlos Azpúrua, who owns La Marqueseña.

The president said that of the ranch’s total 8,490 hectares, Azpúrua could keep 1,500; 2,700 would remain a buffer zone around the dam and reservoir; and the rest would go to a new company called “Florentino”.

Florentino would initially be managed by 80 families, and would receive 23 million dollars from the State over the next three years to grow crops, raise livestock, and run a centre for the genetic improvement of cattle.

Azpúrua said he would continue the legal battle for his land in the fertile plains of southwestern Venezuela, “which is not idle, because we have 7,500 head of cattle and 400 hectares of crops, while the rest is a protective area around the dam.”

The government’s proposal will only be accepted “if it is clearly demonstrated that this is not private property,” he added.

The local press reported that Chávez and Azpúrua met Monday in the ranch house, where they agreed to await the verdict to be handed down by the courts.

In an interview he gave before he was elected president, in 1998, Chávez told historian Agustín Blanco that part of the La Marqueseña land had belonged to his great-grandfather Pedro Pérez, a veteran of the civil wars fought a century ago, who later lost his property.

In his Sunday programme, Chávez said that no one could prove without a doubt their legal claim to the land in question. “There has been speculation that I want to recuperate it for my family. That’s not true. It will be for the people,” he maintained.

Azpúrua says he holds title deeds to the land, which are the last in an unbroken chain of documents that can be traced all the way back to the 17th century.

La Marqueseña is one of the six large land holdings in Venezuela’s plains region that have been affected by the expropriation of land in the last six weeks.

A total of 1,541 families belonging to 67 cooperatives will be settled on the 175,000 hectares that were seized, said Agriculture Minister Antonio Albarrán.

Another 317 properties that have been classified as latifundia or unproductive land are also being studied and might be redistributed this year, the minister added.

After inspecting 2,150 large land holdings totalling more than seven million hectares of land, the government classified 3.7 million hectares as latifundia and is getting ready to seize 2.4 million, according to the National Land Institute.

Under the land law enacted by Chávez in 2001, estates over a certain size are first charged punitive taxes for leaving land lying unproductive, after which the government can intervene and expropriate idle land.

In addition, the state is repossessing state land that was illegally occupied by large landholders, for redistribution to campesinos (peasant farmers), mainly through the formation of cooperatives and collective farms, on the argument that this is the only way they can compete with large-scale agribusiness interests.

The redistributed land remains in the hands of the State, which offers the new cooperatives – or “social production companies” – housing, health care, education and soft credits.

But former Supreme Court justice Román Duque told IPS that “for any decision to be taken involving public or private land, the property must first be classified and assigned a specific use, in order for the owners to know how their land is supposed to be used and what products it should be dedicated to producing. But that has not happened, which means the land law was not respected in the case of the recently seized properties,” he maintained.

The business community fought in court to have the land law repealed, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Despite their opposition to the land law, however, some large landowners and their lawyers have invoked it to argue that the government is going beyond its reach.

According to Duque, both the land law and the constitution have been violated by the property seizures, “because action is taken against the landowners for leaving their land unproductive, which presupposes private ownership, and later, when the final decision is handed down, it is stated that the land must be repossessed as if it had been public property in the first place.”

Regional governors who identify with Chávez have also decreed the expropriation of land and agribusiness ventures: a plant owned by the food giant Heinz in the eastern state of Monagas, and silos and a plant belonging to Alimentos Polar, one of Venezuela’s biggest food companies, in the southwestern state of Barinas.

Only Heinz was offered indemnification by the governor: 100,000 dollars (it was demanding 500,000).

The Los Maiceros de la Revolución cooperative made up of former employees of Alimentos Polar helped organise the occupation of the installations, and requested that they be expropriated by decree, which was done on Monday by Governor Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, the president’s father, on the argument that the silos and plant were no longer being used.

Lorenzo Mendoza, the president of Alimentos Polar – who is listed by Forbes magazine as the 139th richest person in the world – complained Tuesday that the expropriation of the company’s installations in Barinas was “unjust and disconcerting.”

Under Venezuela’s constitution and national laws, which prohibit the confiscation of property, expropriations carried out for the public good must be accompanied by timely indemnification, if property ownership has been legally established.

But the issue of legal ownership lies at the heart of the matter. Historians note that during the civil wars that raged during the 19th century in Venezuela, many landholders expanded their property by fencing in public and communal land.

Up to now, landowners had to show that there was an unbroken chain of title dating back to 1848, when a law on uncultivated common land and communal land was passed, to prove their property ownership, according to the National Land Institute.

But the president has now moved the limit back to 1821, when Venezuela did not yet exist as an independent republic, but formed part of the “Greater Colombia”.

Business associations have protested “the threats and actions against private property, which is consecrated as a right in the constitution, and is being violated by the occupations and expropriations,” in the words of rancher José Luis Betancourt, president of the Fedecámaras business federation.

At a public assembly held in Barinas, the leftist Chávez said “a new model of collective property is taking shape in Venezuela,” in which the campesinos are allowed to work the land, but are not granted title deeds, that are held by the State.

Minister of Popular Economy Elías Jaua clarified that “private property is recognised by the constitution and we have no plans to eliminate it…What we are interested in is democratising property and moving towards alternative or complementary forms of ownership. No one has anything to be scared of.”

In 1961, an ambitious agrarian reform programme was launched in this South American country, and several million hectares were distributed to hundreds of thousands of campesinos, during a period when one-third of the country’s total inhabitants – seven million at the time – lived in the countryside.

But the land reform effort did not eliminate the latifundium, nor did it prevent Venezuela from having to import over half of its food for decades or curb the rural exodus to urban areas, where 90 percent of the current population of 26 million now lives.

Official figures show that the State imported 6,000 tons a month of milk and a similar amount of beef this year.

Most of the imported milk and beef has gone to the government network of markets that sell subsidised foodstuffs to the poor.

The passage of the land law triggered protests by business – Betancourt tore up a copy of the law in front of the television cameras – as well as street demonstrations.

In late 2004, in the wake of resounding victories in the presidential recall referendum (organised by the anti-Chávez opposition movement) and in the regional and local elections, the president stepped up the effort to redistribute property belonging to the country’s large landowners.

In January, the government seized land belonging to the El Charcote cattle ranch, owned by the Vestey Group, a British food company.

“We want to negotiate with the landowners,” Chávez said recently. “Those who occupy 10,000 hectares but only work 2,000 will be left those 2,000, and the rest will be turned over to campesino cooperatives and companies. If someone does not want to negotiate, we will send in the army with a legal warrant.”