4,000 families in Caracas municipality get land deeds

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Venezuelan challenge to the "free-market," U.S.-led consensus
"democracy" -- in which the poor get to choose between various candidates as
long as nothing is done to change their conditions -- in Latin America
continues to deepen.
Fred Feldman

http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=7276

Posted: Sunday, May 11, 2003
By: David Coleman


Chavez Frias hands over title deeds to 4,000+ families in Caracas parishes

President Chavez Frias had handed over title deeds to more than 4,000
families in the Caracas (Libertador) municipality, bringing formality to
decades of unregistered small-time properties which has been derogatorily
designated "squatters" by previous governments.

Under the specific terms of
Venezuela's new Lands Act, a special Urban Land Rights Committee has worked
for months to completed real estate legalization procedures in parts of the
23 de Enero, La Pastora, San Pedro and Altagracia parishes establishing the
new title deed holders as the true owners of the properties on previously
unregistered land.

Registrars have had to wade through an ocean of diffuse documentation,
sometimes dating back to colonial Spanish times, to decide municipality
borders and for the first time in Venezuela's legal history to set up a
permanent real estate register with legally-binding effect ... "it's like
writing maps of the country from the beginning of history."

"We have sometimes had to resort to the courts to settle disputes, but they
have been few and far between ... it has been a tremendous paperwork job
simply to establish what should have been done a hundred or more years ago
... the government has covered legal costs in every situation but there have
still been fraudsters who have attempted to take advantage of their fellow
citizens ... we are stamping our corruption at every level as soon as we
catch wind of it but corruption has been such a part of the old Venezuela
that it is difficult to get people to understand that we will no longer
tolerate it."