“Venezuela’s colonial legacies and its contemporary land reform since 1999”

• In Event: Agrarian Horizons: Rethinking the Politics of Land Reform

Abstract

Venezuela faces a heavy colonial legacy: its large estates or latifundia, which permitted colonial elites to maintain their material and symbolic power. Slavery was necessary for the development of these estates, and they must therefore be understood as structures of terror and violence. Despite the ideals of equality and freedom promoted by patriot leaders, large estates and slavery continued to exist after Independence: slavery was only formally abolished in 1856, and the latifundia have survived until today. The “colonial extractive engine” (John Lombardi) was both reinforced and transformed by Venezuela’s transition from an agricultural to an oil economy during the 1920s. The current economic crisis – marked by inflation, shortages, speculation, currency turbulence, dependence on imports, and social unrest – is based on these traditions.
An official land reform, under the motto “Fight against the Latifundia”, was launched amidst the Bolivarian Revolution, which began in 1999 with Hugo Chávez’s arrival in power. This process has been accompanied by a committed peasant movement willing to fight for, occupy and work the land. To date, 3.5 million hectares (out of 30 million suitable for agriculture) have been recovered and legally redistributed. The “Misión Zamora” aims to strengthen agriculture through the establishment of cooperative production units, fundos zamoranosIts results remains partial, weak and fragmented. My presentation, based on a field study conducted in 2011 in the fundo zamorano “Campaña Admirable”, south of Lake Maracaibo, is an analysis of this agrarian work in progress and its contradictions from a historical, legal and theoretical perspective.

Author

• Andres Otalvaro