Chavez Seizes Large Venezuela Ranch Under Land Reform

by Humberto Marquez

(IPS) CARACAS -- The Venezuelan government announced that parts of a British-owned cattle ranch and an ecotourism/ranch that is famous among birdwatchers will be seized by the government under its agrarian reform program.

Leftist President Hugo Chavez said last January that his government would accelerate efforts to redistribute land forming part of "latifundia" or large landed estates that have been unproductive.

The land law that was enacted in late 2001 was one of the measures that triggered protests and strikes by business, labor and political groups opposed to the Chavez administration.

After 58 percent of voters supported Chavez in a recall referendum organized by the opposition movement in August 2004, the government based the campaign for the October elections for state governors on the fight against latifundia.

In January, the authorities began to carry out land inspections, to determine whether land has been left idle, and to create a nationwide inventory of rural property, land ownership, land use and productivity levels.

The first property affected by the new rules is the El Charcote ranch, operated for decades by the beef-producing company Agroflora, the local subsidiary of Britain's Vestey Group, which owns 12,950 hectares on the plains of the state of Cojedes, located northwest of the Orinoco River and 200 kms southwest of Caracas.

The Vestey Group has major cattle ranching and sugar cane farming interests in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, as well as an international food product business.

El Charcote is Venezuela's top beef producer.

Eliecer Otaiza, president of the National Land Institute (INTI), said the "chain of title" -- the succession of land title deeds and sales contracts -- shows that El Charcote only exists as private property since 1850.

The problem with that is that an old Venezuelan law established the start of the chain of title on Apr. 10, 1848, when the first law on the commons and uncultivated or fallow land was passed.

Besides, said Otaiza, INTI determined that nearly 5,000 of El Charcote's 12,950 hectares are "unproductive and are considered a latifundium," and will be confiscated and handed over to 230 families who informally occupied the land several years ago and have been working it since then.

The rest of the property, which is used for raising cattle and cultivating corn, sunflowers, sorghum, sesame seeds and other crops, will receive a certificate that it is being used productively, although these documents do not recognize that Vestey legally owns the land, which it must prove in the courts.

The Hato Pinero ranch and reserve on the plains of the Orinoco River is located to the south of El Charcote on 80,200 hectares of land.

Of that total, "25 percent is dedicated to cattle ranching and the rest is gallery forests and flood plains that cannot be used for ranching and are maintained as a reserve," Jaime Perez Branger, whose family owns the ranch, told IPS during a visit in 2003.

The 800 square kilometres covered by the ranch are home to all of the species native to Venezuela's "llanura" or alluvial plains, including wild cats like the jaguar (Pantera onca) and ocelot (Felis pardales).

The property is also a famous bird-watching area, and has an herbarium containing more than 2,000 different kinds of plants.

According to Perez Branger, the Hato Pinero is located on land that was colonized by his ancestors since the mid-18th century.

But the INTI ruling states that its "legal tradition does not have duly verified documents that demonstrate that it is private property," in accordance with Venezuela's laws.

In the first decision by the INTI directors, who met last weekend, the land institute ruled that "the property is not private, and is considered a latifundium," said Otaiza.

As in the case of El Charcote, INTI will grant a certificate showing that part of the Hato Pinero is productively used, but without recognising the Perez Branger family as the rightful owners.

The certificate will also state that part of the land considered unproductive will go to the Quebrada de Agua campesino (small farmer) community, which was set up within the borders of the ranch.

INTI also asked the Environment Ministry to establish a special reserve on part of the ranch that encompasses four gallery forests.

Environmental groups had expressed concern that the land reform efforts would lead to the depredation of areas in need of protection.

"We are not opposed to granting land to campesinos, but we are asking for areas with great diversity of species to be respected," Marieta Hernandez with Audubon of Venezuela, an affiliate of the Britain-based Birdlife International, told IPS.

"We are worried that primary forests will be destroyed beyond the point of no return," said Hernandez.

But Otaiza said the problem is that "no private owner can manage biological and forest reserves for their own benefit, exploiting this resource, which belongs to the country as a whole, as an ecotourism business."

Braulio Alvarez, the leader of a federation of campesinos that supports the government, told IPS that "many of the ecological crimes have been committed by agribusiness owners themselves. It was also a crime to appropriate large extensions of land for private aims and leave many people out of work."

In this country of 25 million, just three million people live in rural areas.

Venezuela carried out agrarian reform in the 1960s, to combat the heavy concentration of land ownership, which is similar to what is seen throughout Latin America, and several million hectares were distributed to 230,000 families.

Nevertheless, the ownership of rural property became even more concentrated since then, and by 1998, large landowners owned 42 percent of Venezuela's farmland, compared to 23 percent in 1958, according to a study by PROVEA, a prominent local human rights group.

Another fact that is often cited by the government and activists is that this South American country of 25 million consumes more imported than locally produced food.

Chavez has frequently complained that this country, which is so rich in fertile farmland, has to import staples like beans, corn, milk, sugar, beef or chicken, while tens of thousands of campesinos do not even have a tiny plot of land on which to grow food.

The owners of El Charcote and Hato Pinero, who have two months to appeal the decisions in court, had not yet responded publicly to the ruling by Monday.

But the president of the agribusiness federation, Jose Manuel Gonzalez, said "private property in Venezuela is definitely threatened by these decisions."

Agribusiness interests argue that the state owns more than 11 million hectares of land and that if it wants to assist landless campesinos, it could start by distributing that land instead of seizing private property.

The government notes that in the past two years, it has settled around 100,000 campesino families on more than two million hectares of land.