Land Reform

Last week, the Los Angeles Times gleefully reported that a crowd in Sabaneta, Venezuela, had looted a food warehouse belonging to the state-owned Mercal grocery-store chain.

The real story of Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ is to be found in the rich complexities of policies such as agrarian reform and how these policies take shape on the ground in local contexts. An interview with a land reform organizer provides the necessary context.

“It is not possible [to accept] the continued massacre of our campesinos ”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared on August 6, “The chiefs of police must respond to these acts... if they feel incapable they must resign.”

In the middle of the modern, concrete city of Caracas, Venezuela, Noralí Verenzuela is standing in a garden dressed in jeans and work boots. She is the director of the Organopónico Bolivar I, the first urban, organic garden to show its green face in the heart of the city of Caracas, Venezuela.

The Urban Land Committees represent one of Venezuela’s most interesting and significant developments. The success or failure of these Committees could be one of the most important factors determining how transformative the current process will be for Venezuela.

I am writing to you from the bolivarian planes in the state of Barinas, in the centre of Venezuela. I am here doing a "recorrido" [tour], as they say, to learn about the agrarian reform process in Venezuela. I am impressed. I am very impressed.

Marcela Maspero of the pro-Chavez union federation UNT and José Gregorio Villarroel of the Labor Ministry explain to Green Left Weekly's Frederico Fuentes how they see the recent intensification of expropriations of idle land and businesses.

I decided I would go to El Charcote, near San Carlos, as I had heard that there was a land dispute between a wealthy English Company and some campesino families who had occupied the land. I thought that perhaps our solidarity group could do something to support the campesinos in their struggle to stay on the land.

Flying below the radar of most Venezuela observers, both pro- and anti-Chavez, Venezuela is undergoing a quiet revolution, in which urban land reform promises to dramatically improve the lives of millions of Venezuela’s poor. The urban land reform is functioning as a catalyst for the unprecedented mobilization of Venezuela’s barrios.

The Venezuelan government under President Hugo Chavez is the only government in Latin America, and perhaps even in the world, that is currently trying to pursue an ambitious land and agrarian reform program. A review and assessment of the land reform program's strengths and weaknesses.