Chavez foes slam land grants - 'Agrarian Reform' and "Land Redistribution' in Venezuela

WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | October 28, 2003 | Reed Lindsay

[Tailgunner Joe]

It was not President Hugo Chavez's inflammatory rhetoric alone that incited opposition against him in Venezuela.

The all-consuming campaign to oust Mr. Chavez was triggered in November 2001, when he approved a series of laws meant to reshape the economy and reduce poverty.

[livius]

Zimbabwe west. Watch for famines.

[SauronOfMordor]

Chaves' power will be complete when he has destroyed independent domestic agriculture. Then he will control all food imports, and any who oppose him will starve -- as is happening in Zimbabwe

[Beck_isright]

Dear Mr. Bush:

Tear down the wall being built to our south. Latin America is the last great hope for communism. Canada has pandered and surrendered. Europe is nothing but a bunch of pansies. Africa was the testing ground. China and Cuba will spread their poison throughout Latin America and every man, woman and child in America are at risk. Do something. Please.

[Restorer]

I doubt many could object to the theory behind this reform.

It sounds to me like distributing unproductive public land to poor people is a good idea.

It is also true that much of the "privately-owned" land in Latin America was essentially stolen by the present owners or their ancestors through corrupt methods.

But I suspect the Zimbabwe analogy is the most accurate one. In the long run, it's the productive ranches that will be expropriated, and oddly enough Chavez cronies will somehow wind up owning them. Which is about how many of the present owners, or their ancestors, gained title to begin with.

[livius]

Yes, I think things have rapidly gone from bad to worse. I didn't realize he was going to start implementing this part of his "plan" so soon.

Ping to CW.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***Under the law, the land distributed to the peasants is still owned by the state, and the government must encourage the formation of peasant cooperatives and collective farms, where the state is to provide housing, health care and education. The law also gives the government power to dictate how private land can be used, based on soil conditions and the country's food-security needs.

Critics argue that the law violates the right to private property and is a throwback to state-planned communist economies.

"The model of the collective farm doesn't respond to our reality," said Roque Carmona, founder of Campesino Alliance, a nonprofit organization that helps small-scale farmers. "It looks good on paper, nothing more."

Government officials maintain that the ban on giving up ownership of state property is an attempt to avoid the failures of past land reforms in Venezuela and elsewhere, in which small farmers who lacked credit or government support eventually had to sell their plots to large landowners.

They also argue that forming peasant cooperatives is the only way campesinos can compete with large agribusinesses.

Mr. Chavez has defended the law in terms of social justice and by appealing to the need for "food security," mandated by the constitution passed in 1999 during his first year as president. ***

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There it is. Cuba II

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More from yesterday - War of Images Illustrates Colliding Views of Chavez ***CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 21 -- Pedro Leon Zapata and Regulo Perez are lifelong friends and artistic rivals. Each has enjoyed a perch on the editorial pages of the nation's leading newspapers where, for decades, they have published political caricatures skewering the powerful.

They are also leading lights in Venezuela's modern art movement, one of the most important in Latin America. Zapata, in particular, has captured the public imagination with his fanciful murals and canvases that have recently taken on a distinctly anti-government shade.

Today, while still friends, Zapata and Perez are also antagonists in the political drama that is moving toward a climax.

Squinting behind thick, oval glasses, Zapata, 74, said the intense political debate compelled him to express his opposition to President Hugo Chavez in his painting, and he now uses the Venezuelan flag as "an emblem of opposition."

Perez, 73, running his fingers through a shock of gray hair, said he has tried to defend the president by using the flag as a "fascist symbol" in a series of paintings portraying the opposition movement as elitist and mercenary.

In art, as in life here, Chavez has become a challenge.

Once faithfully leftist and mostly detached from political life, Venezuela's modern art community is now deeply divided over Chavez and his populist program to lift up the country's poor. Not since the years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when the artistic left fractured over Venezuela's own short-lived guerrilla movement, has the insular art world here been so shaken. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Castro Closes Ranks With Friendly Leaders Mugabe, Chavez *** Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - who faces his own headaches at home, where last week he announced new plans by opponents to topple him - joined Castro and in a fiery speech criticized leaders of powerful industrialized nations for promising grand solutions yet doing nothing to solve developing nations' grave environmental and financial problems.

"What they have done is absolutely insignificant given the gravity of the problem," Chavez said, blaming globalization and failed neoliberal economic policies. "Neoliberalism has been defeated," Chavez proclaimed to audience applause. "Now we're going to bury it, starting this century."

Chavez and Castro are strong political allies and close friends. Chavez thanked the Cuban leader for technological assistance that he said helped sharply reduce Venezuela's illiteracy rates. Chavez contends that an "oligarchy" bent on ousting a democratically elected leader has sabotaged his efforts to fight for the poor.

The 13 heads of state and government from Africa and the Caribbean attending the U.N. conference also included the presidents of Zimbabwe, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Namibia and the prime ministers of Lesotho, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Many of the Africa presidents in attendance hail from countries whose independence struggles were aided by Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Coming to Cuba is to come to a country where there are true friends of Africa," Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said. Mugabe is the target of widespread international criticism. Zimbabwe was suspended for a year from the decision-making councils of the Commonwealth of Britain and its former terrorities because of concerns about human rights and disputed presidential elections Mugabe narrowly won last year.***