[Marxism] Land reform in Venezuela accelerates --more military force behind peasants

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following comments by Stuart Munckton appeared on the Green Left list:

A very useful overview of the land reform programs in Bolivia and Venezuela.
Looks at the detail and how each land reform process is going, challenges
etc.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4426


On Venezuela, interesting to note three things raised in this report:

1) The way class and nation interests intersect - the needs of the rural
poor for land intersects with national independence goal of having food
security (can't be done while agriculture controlled by agribusiness that
produces for export to maximise profit). 

Also, the rich can import food, while hte urban poor can't afford the price
of imported food, so breaking dependence on imports and developing national
agriculture important to meet needs of poor majority.

"Despite ample arable land, Venezuela has historically imported the majority
of its food supplies. With the advent of its growing wealth from oil
drilling royalties, Venezuela shifted away from using its landholdings for
subsistence agriculture in favor of growing cash crops.

?This meant that while the middle class could readily pay for imported
produce, the same could not be said about the poor."

2) Process spreading up now - intensifying class struggle, heightened by
global economic crisis, increases need to strengthen local agriculture
industry, requiring land reform, plus break the power of oligarchy and
foreign corporate interests, which control large land holdings

"In the past several months, Caracas has been unusually active in
putting its mind to accumulating land for redistribution and for public
infrastructural purposes. 

?In an unusually forceful manner, the government?s National Land Institute
(INTI) recently expropriated one parcel of over 2,800 hectares (7000 acres)
with the help of National Guard troops for fear that recent clashes between
the entrenched landowners and the landless peasants would spiral out of
control."

3) The way the intensifying class struggle is playing out within Chavista
movement. Opposition to it from a right-wing PSUC governor, which has
included in that state national guard violently ejecting peasants and
workers from the government's land reform institute from land they were
occupying - legally under the national law.

"Despite his push for land reform, Chávez has not found universal
solidarity behind it within his United Socialist Party of Venezuela
(PSUV). Governor of the state of Portuguesa, Wilmar Castro, a member of
PSUV, has publicly criticized recent expropriations of land for use by
landless peasants, blaming the government for its failure to
redistribute land through proper legal channels. 

?Governor Castro?s policy is strongly at odds with federal law that allows
peasants to utilize unoccupied private land. Another incident that shows the
increasingly fractured nature of Venezuelan society occurred on April
17. Authorities in the state of Portuguesa evicted more than sixty
landless farmers and three INTI workers from privately owned land that
state officials had marked for appropriation and redistribution. 

?With local authorities completely disregarding the policies emanating from
Caracas, it is unclear how Chávez will be able to enforce his policies
at the provincial level."



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