Vol. 71/No. 42      November 12, 2007

Sarmiento was referring to the British company Agroflora, which until 2005 owned the 32,000-acre El Charcote Ranch, now occupied by peasant families. He works a plot on La Yauquera, a 62,000-acre ranch near El Charcote. Both farms are outside San Carlos, capital of Cojedes state.

Over the last year, the government of president Hugo Chávez has sent combines, tractors, and other equipment to be rented out to peasants at half the rates charged by private companies. According to peasants interviewed, however, big landowners have received priority for the equipment because they offer more money to the government agency managing the machine rentals.

The Venezuelan Agricultural Company, under national law, charges small peasants 28,000 bolivars ($7) per hectare and medium-sized producers 35,000 bolivars per hectare to rent a combine. But, Sarmiento said, “those with money find people in the local government who will take 50,000. The peasants are the last to get the equipment.” One hectare is 2.47 acres.

“We’re waiting for a combine,” said Doris Freite, 22, as she pointed to tall rows of corn on her land. “But if we don’t get it soon, we’ll have to harvest by hand.”

Freite and her husband Evaristo Marufo work 30 acres on El Charcote. They are among 800 peasant families who occupied the uncultivated tracts in 1998. After they battled the local cops, company thugs, and National Guard troops, the national government bought the land from Agroflora in 2005 and turned it over to those who till it.

Two years later, no peasant working at El Charcote has received title.

In 2001 the Venezuelan government passed a land reform law that enabled those cultivating idle land to seek legal title. Peasants across the country have taken advantage of the opportunity and occupied lands owned by large capitalists. Their struggles have met fierce resistance from big landowners and bureaucratic obstacles.

Some 7.4 million acres of vacant land were put into production nationwide between 2001 and 2006. More than 1.5 million peasant families are working these plots, either as individuals or as part of cooperatives, according to Rito Jiménez, president of the Socialist Agrarian Network of Venezuela. The network is part of the National Institute for Agrarian Research, a government agency.  
 
Peasants settle in
Even without legal title, peasants in Cojedes are settling in. Marufo had just finished clearing land to plant pomegranates and beans. Ferboss Quintero and Ana Julia Zumlave have sunk the foundations for a house on their 37 acres on El Charcote. The concrete home will replace their tin-roof and dirt-floor shack.

The landlords’ hired thugs, who used to patrol the lands by motorcycle at night, shooting rifles in the air, haven’t been around for at least a year. Freite said that Agroflora removed the last of its cattle in October of last year. The company used to turn livestock loose on the peasants’ fields to trample crops and scare children.

José Jiménez, who works for the Venezuelan Agricultural Company’s machinery program, denied that any large landowners are renting equipment at subsidized rates. “The mechanization is entirely for the poor. But now there are too many harvests and there are only eight combines, so there’s a wait,” he said.

Jiménez was looking on as workers loaded up a truck with corn just harvested by a subsidized combine on the plot worked by the New World Cooperative. Silvia Linare, a member of the cooperative, acknowledged that medium-sized producers get priority because they pay higher prices for the machinery. The cooperative qualifies as a medium producer because it includes seven families tilling 86 acres of corn.

“We’ve been on this land for five years, but nobody’s received a title,” she said.

“The process of obtaining titles is slow because the National Land Institute lacks adequate personnel,” said Rito Jiménez in an October 23 interview in Caracas.

In response to mounting pressure for titles, the federal government instituted a system in 2003 called the carta agraria (agrarian letter). This is an official letter from the National Land Institute (INTI) enabling a peasant or a cooperative to apply for credit for the public lands they are working.

“We are cultivating 15 hectares, but our carta agraria only covers three,” said Quintero.

About a third of his corn crop was destroyed at harvest time. While no government guarantees exist to protect small farmers from such disasters, Quintero and Zumlave are pressing to recover some of their losses through the local branch of INTI.

“We have to pay the credit in 15 days,” said Zumlave. “We’re small farmers, we’re socialists, and the government has to do something.”  
 
Pressing to expand social services
Peasants here are also pressing for technical assistance and greater access to education and health care.

“The Cubans taught us many good things, but now they’re gone,” said Iginio Chávez, who works a piece of land outside La Vega.

He said Cuban volunteer agronomists had spent six months in Cojedes teaching farming techniques, but were relocated six months ago. More than 100 peasants here took courses.

Other projects, such as the installation of water pumps by the state oil company, have also stalled. “They only got to five or six plots,” he said.

The Cuban volunteers had been staying in a mansion formerly used by Agroflora for its policing operations. Peasants occupied the estate and turned it into a clinic and school. According to Freite, adult classes in the second phase of a literacy program, going up through sixth grade, stopped eight months ago when the Venezuelan teacher returned to Caracas.

Freite graduated from the first phase of the literacy program a year ago. Today she teaches those courses.

Peasants are also pressing for regular medical services. A year ago, Cuban doctors came in from nearby towns to staff a clinic once a week. Today they come once a month.

“You can’t blame the Cubans, they have so many responsibilities, and they’re needed elsewhere,” said Zumlave. “But why is it only the Cubans will come?

“Tell people we need a fully equipped hospital,” she said. “We need a full-time doctor, preferably a Cuban.”  
 
 
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