By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS -- New force appears to have been injected into President Hugo Chavez's once much-vaunted and controversial policy of expropriating rural land which his officials deem to be lying idle or not being put to productive use.

The policy, set out under a Land Law in 2003, was initially presented as a much-needed measure on behalf of the rural poor against privileged large landowners colloquially known throughout South America as "latifundistas." The intention then was that the land would be put under state ownership and then handed over to rural workers or worked jointly with them under a system of "co-management."

But in more recent times, the policy has lain largely fallow as Chavez's takeover trail switched in other directions, not least among them key economic sectors such as oil, petrochemicals, steel, telecommunications and food processing. A s has been the case with land nationalization, those industrial "expropriations" -- partial or otherwise, but always leaving the state in majority control -- have stirred up a string of compensation disputes.

Agricultural and Land Minister Elias Jaua has suddenly resurrected the battle to "recover" agricultural land with quite a degree of gusto. The minister turned up in Zulia state, west Venezuela, to announce that the government had just taken control of 31 farms covering 1,752 hectares across the country.

Jaua made his announcement in Zulia, a state which lies on the border with Colombia in north-western Venezuela, and which has been under the political control of the Opposition for years. The minister said the farmland seized in Zulia and three other states -- Tachira, which switched to the Opposition at the elections a year ago, Merida and Trujillo -- would be used to boost output of grain, plantains and vegetables, as well as beef and dairy products.

Despite being blessed with large swathes of potentially productive land, a benign climate and a relatively small population of around 28 million, Venezuela is estimated to import at least half the food it eats. This has been a tendency for years that has so far defied attempts at government level to reduce the country's dependence on imported food -- the cost of which is deemed to fuel the highest rate of inflation of any country in South America.

Unsurprisingly, the policy ran into criticism from the very start. Opponents including large landowners and business leaders decried it as a populist land-grab that rode rough shod over the right to own private property -- a principle enshrined in the Bolivarian Constitution adopted by referendum at Chavez's behest during his first year in power a decade ago.

Evidently mindful of the likelihood that his statement would revive criticism, Jaua was on the defensive. "We are acting in accord with the law," he declared. "Nobody, be he the most oppositionist that can be, can present himself as a political leader to infringe the laws of the republic."

Although the minister was not reported to have mentioned anyone in particular, this was taken to be a reference to self-exiled Opposition leader Manuel Rosales. A former two-term governor of Zulia and then mayor of the state capital, Maracaibo, Rosales fled Venezuela earlier this year on the eve of a trial on corruption charges brought against him by the government. He now lives in political asylum in Peru.


National Guard troops, accompanied by officials from the state security service, DISIP and the National Land Institute (INTI), last weekend "occupied" Finja La Milagrosa (The Miraculous), an estate owned by Rosales outside Maracaibo. The takeover was officially described as part of an "administrative procedure" that INTI had been carrying out since 2003.

However, the official rationale prompted questions as to why INTI hadn't taken such action a lot earlier -- for instance, while Rosales was still in power at state or municipal level.

Reports reaching Caracas meanwhile quoted INTI President Juan Carlos Loyo as having said that he "guaranteed" the personnel at Rosales' estate would receive their "social benefits." But he was also said to have told them to pack their belongings and hand over the keys to the property.

INTI officials then set about making an inventory of livestock at the estate as Jaua said another 10 estates were under "investigation." The aim of this, he said, was to establish who were the owners and whether the land was "in production" -- clearly implying that more land takeovers could be on the way.

Rosales' successor as Zulia state governor, Pablo Perez, who also hails from the Opposition, condemned what critics had already dubbed the "militarization" of La Milagrosa. "This is an assault, what they're doing, it's a violation of private property and I say this not because it's Rosales' land, I say it for all the injustices being done to the Venezuelans," Perez said.

Perez evidently considered that he also had to take pre-emptive defensive action to protect his position in the public eye. Chavez has a penchant for depicting the Opposition as toadies of an old "oligarchy" that ruled the roost until he sprang on to the political stage -- so the governor was out to scotch any such suspicion about himself.

"We're not in favor of latifundistas, nor empty land, but they must respect the right to private property," he said. The government had not followed a "coherent" approach in Zulia since the Land Law was introduced six years ago, he added.

However, while attention focused on Rosales' case and then the action taken in the four stations mentioned in Jaua's statement, it emerged that takeovers of agricultural land had been proceeding on a much larger scale elsewhere in the country. Jaua confirmed that, to date, 8,767 hectares of farm land had been been transferred to state ownership in Guarico state and another 4,984 hectares in Barinas, the president's home state.

Venezuela's largest business organization, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Fedecamaras), rejected what was happening in Guarico. It condemned what the National Guard and INTI had done there as an "illegal invasion" -- the phraseology more usually applied to squatters in urban areas.

Fedecamaras said that the government had seized more than 32,000 hectares of "highly productive" farm land claiming it was lying idle. The land in question had been used to produce 50 million kilos of flour and for grazing more than 30,000 head of cattle, and the government was out to "destroy private initiative," it said.

The federation went on to point to the possible implications of land takeovers for food supply. "Every time they take over an estate, they go against the food security of the country," warned Jose Manuel Gonzalez, a former Fedecamaras President. He urged agricultural producers to get together and discuss what action they should take against the latest land seizures.