Vicente Lecuna jabs a wall map of his Santa Isabel
ranch so angrily that the map crashes to the floor. "I used to produce
10,000 tons of sugar cane a year," says the 67-year-old Venezuelan
cattleman. "Now it's zero! Zero!" he shouts.
Two years ago, squatters seized about half of Mr.
Lecuna's 3,000-acre ranch, setting up a cooperative named "Re-Founding
the Fatherland." Far from being evicted, the squatters got loans and
tractors from the government of President Hugo Chávez. They then
uprooted the sugar cane and decided to try their hand at growing
plantains.
"We are building socialism and fighting capitalism!"
says co-op leader Juan Nava, standing amid wooden shacks on what used
to be Mr. Lecuna's land. The rancher's efforts to fight the takeover in
court have gone nowhere. ...
Since coming to power, the Chávez government has
handed over 8.8 million acres, an area bigger than Maryland, for use by
the poor. While much of this was state-owned land that was either idle
or leased to ranchers, some 4.5 million acres were "recovered" from
private owners, Mr. Chávez said recently. In some cases, the government
compensated them. In most others, like Mr. Lecuna's, it has simply
turned a blind eye to land invasions.
The government bills land reform as a way to make
Venezuela self-sufficient in food. But so far, the effect has been to
undercut production of beef, sugar and other foods, as productive land
is handed to city dwellers with no knowledge of farming. Established
farmers and ranchers, fearing their land may be seized next, are
cutting investment in their operations to a minimum.
The chaos in the countryside has contributed to
shortages in basic items like milk and meat, a paradox in a country
enjoying an economic boom traceable to high oil prices. Also spurring
the shortages are price controls on certain foods that keep them priced
below the cost of production. Meanwhile, 19%-plus inflation -- as oil
revenue floods the economy -- spurs panic buying: purchasing
price-controlled and other goods the shopper might not immediately need
for fear of having higher prices in the future or not finding the items
at all.
"You get up at dawn to hunt for a breast of chicken
all over town. Housewives are in a foul mood," says Lucylde González, a
Caracas homemaker, who says she hasn't seen an egg in a week. ...
Mr. Chávez blames the shortages on "speculation" by distributors and
producers. Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua recently called a news
conference to deny there's been any decline in food production during
the eight years of Chávez rule. The central bank stopped publishing
agricultural statistics in 2005. A private farm association called
Fedeagro estimates Venezuela grew 8% less food last year than the year
before, citing factors including the price controls, land seizures and
the wave of kidnappings of farmers.
Some Chávez initiatives recall disastrous past
experiments with collectivized agriculture, such as in Mao's China and
the Cuban revolution, which helped turn one of Latin America's richest
lands into one of its poorest. But as the world's fifth biggest oil
exporter, Venezuela has an advantage they didn't. Oil revenue gives the
fiery nationalist leeway to pursue utopian policies despite the doubts
of many mainstream economists that they are sustainable. ...
For some, the Venezuelan co-op program -- which
readily makes loans available to members of a wide variety of co-ops,
not just agrarian -- is evidently just a way to make a buck. Some city
residents hire watchmen to live a subsistence existence in shacks on
their rural homesteads while waiting for government loans. In Guárico
state, officials say some local businessmen gave local prostitutes a
few hundred dollars for the use of their names to form ghost co-ops and
then receive loans of up to $100,000.
The repayment rate on farm co-op loans in Venezuela is
less than 1%, says Olivier Delahaye, an expert on agrarian reform in
Latin America. The whole Venezuelan co-op program is a "loan factory,"
Mr. Delahaye says. ...
Many involved in the land-reform effort say it is
riddled with corruption, such as in San Carlos, the capital of the
state of Cojedes, a sweltering town with a statue of a giant mango
marking its entrance. The last three local administrators of the agency
that grants squatters "agrarian letters" -- the first step in getting a
government loan -- have been fired amid charges of mismanagement and
fraud. "The struggle against the oligarchy is paralyzed," says Anibal
López, an aging former guerrilla sent from Caracas to run the agency.
Scandals have dogged almost every agency involved with
Venezuela's new agricultural development. Fondafa, which is supposed to
fund the new co-ops, has the worst reputation. Reinaldo Barrios, a
Chávez supporter and municipal official in the town of Zaraza in the
main corn-producing region, estimates that $100 million of money
intended for farmers was stolen or lost in the last two years.
"Impunity, inefficiency and corruption are destroying
the economic and political bases of the country," he charges.
Venezuela's Congress is doing an investigation. But some high-ranking
Chavistas have labeled Mr. Barrios a "counterrevolutionary," suggesting
the inquiry may not go very deep.
Mr. Chávez is undaunted. In late March, he held his
weekly televised address from a farm that had just been seized. He
asked an aide what kind of land it was. "This is a very flood-prone
zone," the aide replied, saying that 80% of the land is at times under
water. That didn't stop Mr. Chávez, who promised that in three months
the government would have an economic development plan for the land.
"The Revolution is here," he said.
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