Land Wars in Venezuela

Video Report (13:59 minutes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/wo...=1&oref=slogin

Quote:

The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.

For centuries, much of Venezuela’s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.

Mr. Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.

The violence has gone both ways in the struggle, with more than 160 peasants killed by hired gunmen in Venezuela, including several here in northwestern Yaracuy State, an epicenter of the land reform project, in recent years. Eight landowners have also been killed here.

“The oligarchy is always on the attack and trying to say you are no good,” Mr. Chávez said to squatters in a televised visit here. “They think they’re the owners of the world.”

As squatters forcefully seize lands and drive down production of sugar under government direction the end result has been a severe shortage in sugar products.

As Chavez's reforms continue is it worth the cost in human life and market efficiency for communal ownership and poverty empowerment?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Why else would they put his face up everywhere?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, a good solution to that would be to import more food and help finance the difference with the profits from sugar cane. It's this kind of short-sighted socially-driven planning that's going to cause serious setbacks for Venezuela's agriculture.

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There's nothing democratic about squatters seizing property and murdering the owners or getting murdered.

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I was speaking idiomatically.

So popular they smacked down his referendums and he's facing serious political scrutiny. Maybe he's got a lot of lifetime supporters in the Barrios but the political climate is neither as supportive or dangerous as his supporters and detractors make it out to be.

This doesn't explain why people should be getting murdered because Chavez can't do anything other than half-assed.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by juanzen

you should really be more specific with your statements brady, the recent referendum doesn't indicate his popularity because it was on a constitutional reform that was barely considered even legal to propose, one thing is that the population turns down one of his projects(I bet you don't even know the margin) and turning him down as a president. You don't even know what you are talking about when you say Barrio, this country is at around 90% poberty so what isn't a barrio here, sure you are correct about the political climate right now but what are your sources, american journalism? people are not getting murdered because of Chavez alone a president isn't the only one doing things for a government and you probably know that, besides I don't know how you can differentiate the amount of murders going on here if we haven't let any stats out in years, but hey you probably do know more than I do, it's not like I live there right?

Half-assing land reform and recognizing squatter's rights is stirring the pot, yes. If that policy gets landowners and squatters killed, it's the government's responsibility for those deaths.

As for whether you know more than I do, I could probably find another Venezuelan on the internet who would be claiming the opposite. I'd believe him a lot less, but your appeal to authority doesn't fly very far considering the divergent opinions of Venezuelans on the internet.

As for the deaths themselves, the number is cited in the story being directly related to the "land wars," but the source is American journalism, so I suppose I shouldn't put faith in the New York Times.

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