By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS -- A landowner who had his land expropriated by the Chavez government and who recently called off a prolonged hunger strike in a long-running dispute with the National Land Institute (INTI) after they agreed to abide by the agreement but was then resumed his hunger-strike after Venezuela reneged was taken by police officers, firefighters and a judge to be forcibly fed.

Franklin Britos' decision to resume his hunger strike outside the Caracas office of the Organization of American States drew a quick reaction from the authorities. All the signs were that the powers that be were not prepared to tolerate a repeat of the first strike, when Britos held out for 154 days.

Britos' wife, Elena Rodriguez, said that her husband had been taken away "without a word and against his will" and that she was embarking on a hunger strike in his absence. "He was kidnapped," she told reporters. "They have no power to do this."

The land-owner, a biologist by training, has long argued that the government illegally took control of his farm, and that after he had disputed that, they failed to keep promises to restore his land and pay compensation. The case dates back to at least 2005, according to statements made by Britos.

He first took up his stance outside the OAS in early July. He lifted the hunger strike on December 4 after officials from INTI again produced an offer in a bid to end the protest, in which he had become a regular feature of daily life outside the OAS. However, he re-started the feeding stoppage over the weekend, claiming that INTI had again not kept its word.

Brito first incited the wrath of the Mayor of his municipality in Bolivar State, where he was a teacher and a farmer, when he suggested that rather than using pesticides, they could simply change the strain of “ñame” (yam) they were growing. Brito was fired, together with is wife (They are still owed salary and severance from their teaching jobs) and his farm was taken over.

The building has become a site of hunger strikes, the most recent of which was by a small group of students trying to draw the attention of the outside world to what they perceived as a threat to democracy in Venezuela by President Hugo Chavez's government. They called off their stoppage last week.

Opposition Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who has been in a running battle with the government since he won office just over a year ago, earlier this year staged a hunger strike there for six days to demand payment of state funds he said were due to his city authority from the Chavez regime so that he could pay Caracas employees.

OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza has shown no willingness to get involved either one way or another in the protests taking place outside his office in the Venezuelan capital, although he recently urged the authorities to take note of the students' state of health before they called off their hunger strike. On one occasion, he remarked that issues such as the state of democracy in this country were questions which the Venezuelans had to sort out among themselves.


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