The next issue of Socialist Resistance will be produced on November 12-13 and distributed the following week. The deadline for feature articles and for letters (which are welcome on any topic, up to 400 words) will be Monday November 7. Diary items reviews and local news are also welcome. Julian Coppens In a radical programme of reform that has delighted peasant communities and angered big business the Venezuelan government is stepping up its confiscation of under-used or unused factories and land.
If industry and land are not deployed to help
deal with its legacy of poverty and underdevelopment, the Ministry of Agriculture (MAT), these resources will be handed over to those who are willing to use them for the benefit of society.
Examples of recent expropriations include three shutdown factories and 164,000 hectares of idle land owned by four latifundistas (large landowners), in the states of Yaracuy, Portuguesa, and Barinas.
Also in Monagas, an idle Heinz Baked Beans processing plant has been taken OVer
As part of the "war to the death against the latifundia" declared by the MAT, a maize processing plant of Promabasa in Barinas was occupied in September.
The action involved MAT representatives, along with HOIC than 3000 including ex-workers of Promabasa, community members, cooperatives and the national guard. Promabasa belongs to the Polar group, one of the
corporations in
According to agriculture minister Antonio Albarran these are just the start of interventions and expropriations by president Hugo Chavez' government.
"There are 700 installations, some of which are working at half capacity and others that have been shut down... by the end of the month, we will have a definite census of companies that could be declared public utilities, opening the way for state ownership', the minister said.
At the same time, the National Institute of Land (INTI) has declared idle a number of large ranches totalling SULLIC I 164,000 hectares.
The redistribution of this previously unused land is set to benefit 1496 families, including hundreds of campesinos (peasants) grouped in cooperatives, Yaruro indigenous people and Vuelvan Caras cooperatives. (Vuelvan Caras is a government-sponsored social mission aiming to promote production for the Venezuelan, rather than foreign, market.)
Under the new land law, large land holdings that are being used at below 80% of potential can be declared idle and redistributed.
The organisations representing Venezuelan business are up in arms. Noel Alvarez, president of the services and trade council Consecomercio, commented in the September 13 edition of Tne newspaper Universal:
"The government is controlling the economy, strangling businesses, so business owners are standing up in defence of the centres of private production."
In response, attorney-general Isaias Rodriguez argued that the right to property was subordinate to public and gerneral interest as set out in the Venezuelan constitution.
He said: "This is not even about the interests of the campesino, or the property owners, but rather of society.
From this point of view we have to understand the right
property as a social, rather than individual, right."
The process of taking over idle land and factories appears to be supported by the majority of Venezuelan people, many of whom are actively participating in carrying out these measures.
The poor majority has repeatedly taken to the streets to detend the government against big businesssponsored attempts overthrow it.
Current polls put Hugo Chavez's approval rating at over seventy per cent. Solidarity