“We had a better year in production,” he said, pointing to trees full of papayas, and thriving crops of corn, peppers, and yucca. “But none of us have land titles as of now. We haven’t seen a penny of the promised credits. We have yet to get electricity. And the only drinking water available is what we pump by hand from the wells we drilled.”

Ferboss and Ana Julia Quintero farm 37 acres at the northern edge of El Charcote, a 32,000-acre ranch in the Rómulo Gallegos municipality, about 10 miles south of San Carlos, the capital of Cojedes, one of the country’s top states in agricultural production.

The Quinteros are among 800 families that occupied much of the ranch for seven years and fought successfully to use the land. Until early 2005 the ranch was operated by Agroflora, known here as the “English company” because it was owned by the Vesteys, a British capitalist family. The Vestey Group owns 14 ranches spanning 865,000 acres in this country and has similar investments in Argentina and Brazil.

Last fall the national government headed by President Hugo Chávez intervened in the dispute after Cojedes governor Jhonny Yánez “tried and failed to evict us in order to salvage the interests of the landowners,” said Santiago Anzola, a peasant who farms at Puertas Negras, at the entrance to El Charcote.

“Chávez came here, met with Agroflora, and then the government bought the ranch,” Anzola said. “Now the land belongs to the state and Yánez can’t evict us. But he and his landowner friends are not making our lives easy.”

The challenges facing peasants here are similar to those they confront across the country. In 2001 the government adopted the Law on Land and Agricultural Development, which allowed peasants cultivating previously idle or unproductive lands to seek legal title. Since the law’s approval, peasants have intensified their fight for land. In many cases, they have established their right to remain and continue producing, and sometimes have won land titles. But their efforts have often been frustrated by big farmers and ranchers and other landlords. To get their way, these capitalists have used the courts, hit squads, and support from bourgeois politicians, including a growing number, like Yánez, in the governing Fifth Republic Movement.  
 
Nationwide trends
According to an April 25 press release by the Ministry of Agriculture, since 2001 “some 3 million hectares [1 hectare = 2.47 acres] have been rescued from large landowners but another 10 million hectares are yet to be recovered.” The same source said food production nationwide increased from 7 million tons in 1999 to 19 million tons in 2005.

Government officials say land is “rescued,” not expropriated, from landowners who obtained it illicitly, pointing out that the country’s current constitution protects private property.

Land under cultivation in Venezuela increased from 1.7 million acres in 1998, when Chávez took office, to nearly 5 million today, José Agustín Campos, president of the National Ranchers and Farmers Federation (Confagan), told the press October 3. Confagan is a pro-government organization.

Despite these advances, the agrarian reform has barely made a dent in land ownership across Venezuela or in the country’s dependence on food imports. According to government figures from last year, Venezuela imports 60 percent of its food, especially from Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Meanwhile, about 5 percent of the population owns 75 percent of the arable land, much of it idle. Steady increases in food prices, about 19 percent since January, are a major contributor to inflation, which is averaging 12.5 percent this year.

Many of the peasants the Militant interviewed said their struggle for land is not only to guarantee a decent living for their families but to achieve food self-sufficiency for Venezuela and at market prices affordable to all.

As Ana Julia Quintero put it, “Our goal is not only to survive but to produce food for the country.”

As of today, more than 150,000 peasant families have won land titles, said Freddy Zapata of the government’s National Land Institute, in an October 6 interview in Caracas. But most rural toilers, some 3 million, or 13 percent of the population of 24 million, remain landless.  
 
Gains at El Charcote, nearby farms
In January 2005, Yánez sent National Guard troops to escort inspectors to El Charcote in order to determine whether the Vesteys had legal title to the ranch. He took the action after President Chávez issued a decree, titled “War on the Large Estates.” The inspectors later determined that Agroflora could not prove legal title to about half the ranch and declared those 15,000 acres state property. Yánez promised land titles to the peasants tilling that part of the land and tried to evict the rest of them, succeeding temporarily.

“But we resisted and returned, and then the national government helped us,” said peasant Pablo Villamizar. During the conflict one peasant was killed by the “flying squads of the landowners and three others ‘disappeared,’” he said.

Peasants scored a similar victory at a 57,000-acre estate, about five miles north of El Charcote, owned by the Bultons, a Venezuelan capitalist family. After many unsuccessful attempts over seven years to occupy part of the idle estate, which cost them three casualties, 600 farm families have begun to till about 50 acres each, said Egidio Chávez, a peasant there.

“We are here to stay,” Chávez, vice-president of the land committee that organized the occupation, told the Militant October 7. “Two months ago the government reached a deal with the Bultons, buying 32,000 acres of the land. We expect titles soon.”

Peasants at El Charcote described more gains. Blanca Roja has taught reading and writing in her hut for a year and a half as part of Mission Robinson, the program that last year led to Venezuela being declared a country free of illiteracy. “We use the TV to show videos provided by Cuba,” she said. Her TV set is powered by a small generator she bought for the classes, making her home the only one with electricity at El Charcote.

Doris Freite and Evaristo Marufo, in their 20s, are among the youngest peasants here. “We couldn’t feed our two kids without help from the Vuelvan Caras mission,” Marufo said, “which amounts to $150 for women and $75 for men per month.” Vuelvan Caras is a government program that trains people for jobs, including farming. Those taking part must attend daily classes on agricultural techniques, and they get paid for lost time from work, Marufo said.

Freite said the problem is the attempt by program organizers to force participating families to join a government-administered cooperative, called “Zamoran Fund,” or else leave the ranch after the classes end. “We don’t agree with that,” she said. “We’ve asked for more explanation. From what I understand, we would get a fixed monthly income at the minimum wage or less, and we would have no say in what crops we produce or how they are sold. That’s what the English had.”

Other peasants like Eduardo Hernández said similar attempts have proved disastrous in other states and insisted this will not happen at El Charcote. “We will get individual titles and form cooperatives on a voluntary basis,” he said.  
 
Cuban agronomists
“The symbol of our victory is the casona of the English company, which is now open to the public,” said Ferboss Quintero, who is also a member of a five-person communal council, recently elected by an assembly of El Charcote’s residents. This is a mansion, complete with computers, Internet service, and a swimming pool, on a hill overlooking the ranch. Agroflora used the house as a center for its policing operations. “Now it belongs to all of us.”

The peasants’ assembly decided to use part of the house to establish a small clinic, now open on Thursdays and staffed by a Cuban doctor who comes in from the nearest town. “We hope to have a resident doctor soon,” Quintero said. About 20,000 Cuban doctors are volunteering in Venezuela as part of the Barrio Adentro (Into the Barrio) program that has brought quality health care, free of charge, to working people who previously had no access to medical services.

Quintero introduced Militant reporters to the 11 Cubans now living in the house. “Nine of us are agronomists and two are veterinarians,” said Rosa Bejerano, herself an agronomist. “We came here two months ago. We have been reviewing the land and crops in order to provide technical advise to the peasants.”

The Cuban personnel will soon be relocated, as most of the house will be used for an elementary school, said Alcida Córdoba, another member of El Charcote’s communal council.

The number of Cuban agricultural specialists in the area has increased this year, said Freddy Díaz, president of the land committee at the nearby farm taken from the Bultons. He introduced Militant reporters to Santos Gómez, a Cuban agronomist who is teaching sugar-cane farming to peasants there.

“We’ve gained a few things,” Ferboss Quintero said. “But we have long ways to go. We need titles, credit, machinery, electrification, transportation, and decent housing. We are more confident to fight for all that.”

Ana Julia Quintero said peasants are now pushing to establish a warehouse at El Charcote where they could store crops and where representatives of Mercal, a government chain that sells food at half the market prices, could buy produce.  
 
Setback at La Yauquera
Others in the area have faced setbacks. At La Yauquera, a 62,000-acre area near El Charcote that a court awarded to the peasants in 2004, the landowners have appealed and succeeded in tying up the peasants there in red tape.

“Last year we ended the occupation we started in 2004 after two people at our camp were killed by the landowners’ hit men,” said Jubir Yauca, a member of an indigenous family that has title to the land and decided to turn it over to peasant cooperatives. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, more than 150 peasant leaders have been murdered by such goons since 2001.

“The government policy that there should be no new ‘land invasions’ has been used by some weak-kneed people among us to argue that we will be called invaders if we retake the farm that according to the court belongs to us,” said Angel Sarmiento, a peasant involved in this struggle. “But we are not the invaders. The landowners took the Yaucas’ land.”

“The landowners count on us being worn out and abandoning the struggle,” said Yauca. “But we won’t give up.”
 
 
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