Chavez Announces Takeover of 16 Estates for Venezuela’s Land Reform

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2251

Caracas, March 26, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Sixteen landed estates will be expropriated for Venezuela’s land reform program, announced President Hugo Chavez yesterday, during his television program Alo Presidente. The total area of land that will thus become available for redistribution to peasants and agricultural cooperatives will exceed 330,000 hectares (815,000 acres) in the Venezuelan states of Apure, Anzoátegui, Barinas, Guárico, Portuguesa and Aragua.

The estates, which are all considered to be idle, are located throughout the country, explained Chavez, and will be used primarily for cattle ranching, due to the type of land involved. The effort represents a “true attack against latifundios ,” said Chavez. He also added that landowners that own productive land do not need to worry, because cultivated land will not be touched by the government.

Speaking about the estate known as Hato Calleja, from which his program was being broadcast and which comprises 24,883 hectares (62,250 acres), Chavez said, “Starting today it will pass on to be what it always should have been: social property and social production for the satisfaction of the needs of the people.”

Chavez also announced the implementation of a new Integral Agricultural Development Plan for 2007 to 2008, which is supposed to contribute to Venezuela’s “food sovereignty.” Currently Venezuela imports approximately 70% of its food needs and the Chavez government has declared that it aims to increase agricultural production so that it no longer has to rely on imports to cover the country’s basic food needs.

and give it to people who haven't done shit in their lives to earn it.

The problem with Latin American leftists.

remind us again, when did Bush ever earn an honest penny without sucking at the tit of the American taxpayer?

I'm talking about wealthy locals who have had lands and properties for centuries. If you take away what's theirs to give it away to poor guy Pepe, his wife and their 27 kids, it's called stealing.

conquistadores those centuries ago.

That doesn't justify this kind of action.

C'mon. Just because it's an entrenched system doesn't make it right. It's time for all of us to become more socialistic in our thinking.

you have given it back to the indigenous peoples who once lived there? if not, why not?

in Valparaiso. The only land they owned was their house in the city. So, no there is no land to give back but I would if I could.

The problem is when the goverment simply takes properties away from you just because they feel someone else is more deserving of the land than you are. That I can't agree with.

If people want to give up land voluntarily, I applaud them.

What information I have been able to get about Chavez is that he isn't uprooting the rich and throwing them into the street, but making deals and offering some compensations.

implies taking, not buying.

Happens here too you know except that they "expropriate" from the poor, not the rich to build freeways and baseball stadiums.

They "haven't done shit" to deserve their land. The rich, on the other hand, deserve everything that's handed to them for free, because they popped out of the right uterus. The fact that they're rich proves that they earned their wealth.

:crazy:

:shrug:

and undergoes judicial review. this is taking of land by fiat, at least that is the implication. Chavez decided he wanted to take the land, so he did.

are assuming he didn't and I have read that he does.

this article certainly implies, from a source very friendly to Chavez, that this land was taken. 'expropriated' is a loaded word. 'redistributed' is loaded. the strong implication from this article is that the land was taken, not purchased or compensated. if you have a citation that says differently, please educate us.

yet only what is in the OP. I'm sure some of the Latin American Press will have something on it in the next few days, then I will post it. It's just in the past he has offered compensation so it leads me to believe that he has this time as well. He doesn't want to piss off the rich people that much and they aren't leaving Venezuela in boatloads because they are being stripped of everything they own so I believe Chavez is balancing this out somehow.

If they're using it for "expropiar" (which would make sense) it probably includes a compensation. A fair compensation? I don't know, but they're probably buying the land by force.

ranches have no deeds. He is leaving the productive ones alone, but probably taking over the unproductive ones because there are no deeds, but I don't think he would be so stupid as to not compensate the owner/squatters, which is what they are no matter how filthy rich they are.

In Venezuela right now, 5% of land owners own 80% of the private land in Venezuela. This huge inequity was created under earlier regimes that were working largely with foreign oil companies. A few people who made fortunes in oil bought up vast tracts of land in the early 20th century and also the 1970s. This would be the equivalent in America of something like several individual families owning entire states such as Arkansas or Colorado, and then making these entire states gated and privately controlled and policed with private militias.

Something has to be done to correct the situation. The situation has now caused agricultural problems in Venezuela because so little of the Venezuelan land is being farmed because these large land owners are not using all of their land because they have so much. At the same time there are millions of Venezuelan citizens who have no means to buy property, but who do want to work and who are ready, willing, and able to farm the land.

The first step of the Chavez government was to issue land grants from government owned land.

Under Hugo Chavez, the government has issued, and is issuing, a large number of land grants to propertyless peasants for use in farming, which is exactly what the United States of America did from its inception on through the early 20th century. In this way, President Chavez's land reforms are very similar to the Homestead Act of 1862, signed by Abraham Lincoln.

Additionally though, President Chavez's reforms call for the government acquisition of privately owned land where either ownership of the land cannot be proven, or where there is a very large land holding and a portion of the land is sitting idle.

First of all, in Venezuela, a lot of land has simply been claimed, by no right recognized by any government. Some of this land was never lawfully purchased. This is because Venezuela has a troubled history already. Over the past 100 years some powerful families and regional bosses have simply gated off sections of land and "claimed it".
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/blog/index.blog?from=20050306

I get so involved in looking for information about poverty and health care here in America that when I do read things about S.A. I don't bookmark it.

Thanks again Viva.

thanks for setting the record straight once again.

80 square miles for one "entity" and I could be a king.

be compensated fairly. Can't begin to grasp how anyone, no matter how insanely anal, would DARE to try to raise hell about that.

From your link:

The fact of the matter is that land reform is something that has taken place in almost every country on earth, usually many times, with both good and bad results. The Chavez administration has actually been proceeding with caution in a measured manner thus far. When land ownership becomes extremely concentrated, something has to be done, and in fact there are many moral and philosophical arguments, as well as historical precidents, that support the land reforms measures being taken by President Hugo Chavez.
(snip)

Your link referred to another link which leads to this information:

The Facts Regarding Chavez’s Land Reform
The Venezuelan leader first articulated his land reform plan, what he calls “Vuelta al Campo,” (Return to the Countryside) under the Law on Land and Agricultural Development in November 2001. The goals of this legislation were as follows: to set limits on the size of landholdings, tax unused property as an incentive to spur agricultural growth, redistribute unused, primarily government-owned land to peasant families and cooperatives and, lastly, expropriate uncultivated and fallow land from large, private estates for the purpose of redistribution. On the last and most controversial goal, the landowners would be compensated for their land at market value.
(snip)

http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2005/05.21%20Venezuela%20Land%20Reform%20the%20one.htm

On edit:

Forgot to thank you for the information. It would be appropriate if a few of the screamers slowed down and exposed themselves to the facts.

Thank you. :hi:

another screamer! He had the big bold heading something like.... "Is Chavez's Venezuela turning to Communism?" I was so shocked by their blatant propaganda I didn't get the exact heading but that was the essence of it. Chavez is now the big bad commie with a very bad influence on his neighbors. It was stunning in its stupidity.

What WON'T he do for approval from the White House?

They know Latin America despises _Bush, so like the heroes they all are, they have criminally crooked, blatant lies spewing from the grubby shapeless mouths of their tv tools, right into the feverish, overwrought "minds" of their disoriented, and probably drunk right-wing listeners. They just fight back by poisoning the minds of America's idiots, hoping there will be enough of them stumbling around in the streets with torches demanding war on Chavez to make it inevitable.

As you have seen, there are so many belligerent ones among them, they won't stay in their own little klaverns, either.

encoaching up to the North.

It's creepy how they got away with this "screaming" before the Internet!

the guy was salivating in that report... must have been a directive from DC, too, judging by some of the responses that this post is getting. The new red scare has officially begun...duck & cover!

If only the success of recovering stolen property from wealthy land barons could rub off on this, the biggest land thief of them all, the USA.

As more & more working people here are knocked back on their asses, losing everything, the impossible notion of the "American Dream" becomes way too real for many who've worked their fingers to the bone all of their lives & now see their piece of the pie lost in debt.

That "influence" Chavez is wielding should open quite a few eyes, of the ones who are the backbone of this country.

Viva Chavez!

Vestey hands over farms for Chavez land reform

By Patrick Markey

March 22, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Meat producer Vestey on Wednesday agreed to hand Venezuela two farms worth at least $11 million (6 million pounds) for use by state cooperatives as part of President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution...
http://lanr.blogspot.com/2006/03/vestey-hands-over-farms-for-chavez.html

The Facts Regarding Chavez's Land Reform The Venezuelan leader first articulated his land reform plan, what he calls "Vuelta al Campo," (Return to the Countryside) under the Law on Land and Agricultural Development in November 2001. The goals of this legislation were as follows: to set limits on the size of landholdings, tax unused property as an incentive to spur agricultural growth, redistribute unused, primarily government-owned land to peasant families and cooperatives and, lastly, expropriate uncultivated and fallow land from large, private estates for the purpose of redistribution. On the last and most controversial goal, the landowners would be compensated for their land at market value.
http://www.counterpunch.org/delong02262005.html

I knew I read it somewhere. Thanks so much.

took time out and read them for personal enrichment, and to save future face.

(I posted this to VLR by mistake upthread)

The Situation room was another screamer! He had the big bold heading something like.... "Is Chavez's Venezuela turning to Communism?" I was so shocked by their blatant propaganda I didn't get the exact heading but that was the essence of it. Chavez is now the big bad commie with a very bad influence on his neighbors. It was stunning in its stupidity.

He mentioned Hugo Chavez had created another "hot word" for Venezuela, said "communism," and I kept waiting to see what the hell that idiot planned to say, and got called away before he finally ran the spot.

That pathetic, empty, stupid Wolf. If he had to break down and LEARN something about Venezuela, on his own, rather than reading the crap the White House sends over, he would never be able to do that red-baiting.

As soon as I heard him say "communism" early in his show, my heart sank. I thought we, as a country, formally left all that crap behind us years ago. Now this empty tool, like a sleep walker, is dragging it all back, because the _Bush administration wants to rouse the rabble to support it in its war of Chavez.



Flipping half-wit.
Shown with his mama, Cesia Blitzer.

he now joins Kitty Pilgrim (:puke: )and Lou Dobbs as the official CNN tag team of Chavez bashers for the WH.

just as we've seen some scribbling here, with no one to step forward with the facts for the easily duped in their audiences.

It's just unbearable seeing professional intentional lieing from those puffy, ugly faces and no way in hell to get the truth out there.

I'm not surprised you turned away. One can only take so much.

I hate that dead look he has, as if someone has hit the top of his head with a sledgehammer. And that dead, droning voice. My God.

Describes him exactly--just can't watch the guy. I told a friend that Wolf has a failed life,imo.

segment, because the headline told it all.

thought about starting a thead on it, but I figured it would come up at some point.

don't you LOVE how all the ignoramos on this thread have blathered on about his 'siezure' of private property, claiming there was no compensation, only to be confronted with the annoying facts?

BLITZER in THE SITUATION ROOM: Moving on, he's a thorn in the side of the Bush administration, now making sweeping changes to his own country. But is the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, fomenting a new wave of communism in the process?

Our State Department correspondent Zain Verjee is joining us now live. What is Chavez up to, Zain?

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, Venezuela's leader wants to grab land, to share the wealth. Could Hugo Chavez, the socialist, be steering the country down the road toward communism?

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/26/sitroom.03.html



Why does this sound so much like some of the posts in this thread?

because it does? thank you for the transcript. Horrible isn't it?

Probably why I like you so much. :hug:

People would get a lot more upset if they were kicked off their land so that others can live there.

that the family that holds the land isn't even living there, so they aren't being kicked off the land to begin with. Also, the land is to be turned to productive use in cattle ranching, so that is hardly a subdivision being built as suburbs.

Also, I read somewhere that much of the land has no actual deeds to prove ownership anyway.

my guess is no, most likely traded for favors and loans to corrupt officiald

And some on the righties are already commenting on similarities about the suppression of dissent and the media between Mugabe and Chavez

and more time doing the research and reading the rest of us have to do to grasp the simplest truths.

Mugabe gave land to people who weren't properly trained. He was trying to end the oppression of the whites against the black majority, but he unfortunately didn't anticipate the lack of expertise that the blacks had. However, Mugabe was trying to create a society where the majority had control of the fruits of labor.

just clarifying. Cause California was stolen as well, right?

Your argument is really dumb however. You are protecting the rights of rich people who are not using their land that can be used to improve the economical situation of landless poor people and instead you want me to become homeless to prove my point. That is really dumb of you and I'm not that dumb.

surely there is someone in your town worse off that you who could take advantage of your property to better their circumstances, right?

and why does land have to be 'used' to be valuable to society? ANWR isn't being 'used' and it could be better served to improve the economic situation of the indigenous people of Alaska, you support drilling in ANWR?

species that call it home. I don't support drilling in ANWR because the oil that would be gained is hardly worth it. Also, having traveled in Alaska the best way to help the indigenous people and quite honestly throughout America is to give them their land back so they can go back to their traditional way of life.

maybe they want high paying oil field jobs? who are you to decide? the indigenous tribes of Alaska overwhelmingly (publically at least) support increased drilling. return the land to them, and I bet you there will be drilling.

and why are Caribou more important than any animal in Venezuela? there are eight mammals on IUCN's Red List native to Venezuela. Perhaps they inhabit these 'unused' lands? much as the Caribou do in ANWR?

You are all over the place with this protection of the rights of rich people because poor people don't matter to you. That I get, but now you want to protect mammals on ranchland in Venezuela? Maybe you should start at home? We have a lot of species being pushed to the edge of survival because of development.

rights are called rights because they extend to everyone. if it doesn't extend to everyone, then it is a priviledge, not a right.

There are hungry people in the US, right? and there are prime agricultural lands not being used to produce food because we use them for things like land trusts, and environmental protection, and yes, recreation. Ted Turner is the largest landowner in the US, but his land isn't 'productive' because he used most of it for preservation. should it be taken away to feed the hungry? that is the rough equivalent, don't you think?

and is there some reason I should be more concerned about animals in my country than others? should I quit my job because it is focused on preserving wildlands outside the US from development?

oh, and on edit? cattle ranching is one of the most environmentally destructive agricultural uses of land there is.

anyone, I have observed.

keep that in mind.

difference.

That's not hard to understand, is it?

even if you don't know it was stolen. If I sell you a DVD player that is stolen, we are both committing a crime. or is there some sort of statute of limitations on land theft?

are of the bourgeoisie. They don't apply to a socialist effort. They were made by the bourgeoisie, and so they can be unmade by the workers.

At any rate, this is not "land theft", this is taking the means of production from those who exploit and giving it to those who produce. This property was undeniably depriving the workers, and so the workers have every reason to take it for themselves.

Don't like it? Have fun trying to convince them to give it back to their former lords.

do people really talk about the Bourgeoisie anymore?

welcome aboard. I think you will like the 21st century.

because capitalism is again teetering on the brink of collapse, at which point revolution is the most likely possibility.

Capitalists said we were done in 1848; they said the same in 1871; they again said the same in 1989...they're still wrong.

are roughly the same as those who wish for war, they have never actually been in one.

If you are an American, you ARE the bourgeousie, don't forget that. there is nothing like teh disaffected borgies to plead for a revolution that will destroy them. I truely hope you never have to deal with one, they aren't pleasant.

the objective is the issue: war, at present, is about profit; revolution is about making profit a thing of the past. Next you're going to compare a drunken brawl to the actions of the people trying to stop it.

Do you even know what the bourgeoisie is? Do you? The bourgeoisie own the means of production, meaning that the vast majority of Americans are NOT of the bourgeoisie. For your information, I am most assuredly not a member of the bourgeoisie. Please, know what you're talking about next time.

who took a term that meant...wait for it...middle class still, even in Marx's world, the bourgeoisie do not represent inherited wealth, but wealth created by industry and capital. a mortgage broker is bourgeoisie, for instance. a banker, a lawyer, a stock broker, a commodities trader, a store owner, or whatever. basically, anyone who does not physically make something with their hands counts. I have no doubt that Marx would call any white collar worker bourgeois. of course you know that in this nomenclature, the people these estates were taken from are much more likely to be rentiers that bourgeois, oui?

please, buy a better translation of the Communist Manifesto, combine it with Engel's Condition of the Working Classes in England. you might have a better idea of what is going on. don't listen to the petty pop-school communists, go to the source. read your Marx, Engels, Lenin, and of course, your Trotsky.

the bourgeoisie WAS middle class in societies where there was still a nobility. Now that the bourgeoisie has all but deposed of the traditional feudal aristocracy, the boureoisie now controls society and is certainly NOT the middle class. So no, you're incorrect. Read the Communist Manifesto sometime, it'll clear these things up for you.

A store owner is not bourgeois, a store owner is petit-bourgeois. There is a distinct difference. Again, read some Marx.

I do read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and others (Gramsci is one of my favorites, along with Luxemburg). You're the one who is grossly mistaken here.

By natives or anybody else. The reason why most people want to own land is to have a place to live that they can't be arbitrarily kicked out of, but that goal could be accomplished by long term irrevocable leasing or any of a number of other legal instruments.

--any one individual can own. That has to require government intervention.

productively to keep ownership and keep using it and profiting from it.

Which is better for everyone, imho, than static limits.

That's assuming there are trade laws in place to prevent abuse from folks outside of the country.

No reason to limit ownership of machines.

Progressive taxes include:
The income tax
Property taxes

Regressive taxes include:
Sales tax
Filing/document fees

Improvements were made by the hands of men, but land, water and air are not.

it would solve all the problems that haunt society.

I'm sure you won't mind.

I'm all for nationalizing things like energy resources, and I'm 100% in favor of a national health care system. But seizure of private property in this fashion isn't too many steps away from Stalin seizing the kulaks' seed grain.

You go for it. Just like Hugo is doing in Venezuela.

and your new car being ten years old. However, it's not like I have extra. But sure if I had another trailer and you needed it I would give it to you if you were in need of course.

I already did give my other house, my tent, to a homeless family I met in a campground, so I'm sorry I don't have any more to go around. However, I'm really wondering why you don't ask Donald Trump or George Bush for some land. They have plenty. I don't know why you would want my few possessions.

Land and water and air were not.

personal property is stuff you actually use intimately for your own life. Private property is stuff that you OWN and gain profit from (through the labor of others).

The workers must destroy the latter, private property, which is the foundation for exploitation and deprivation.

Fuck that!

What if they wanted it back?

There was this little war, they lost and we won. Had they won, people as far north as Colorado would be speaking Spanish right now. I've got allot of time and money invested in this ranch and I'll be damned if anybodies going to just walk in and take it. Now if some one was to offer a number in the low 7 digit range, well they just bought a ranch, and i walk away a happy man.

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It's a stereotype, and not a positive one. Since you claim
to be a Latin American, is it cool if I just assume every
woman in your family has 27 kids? Or would that MAYBE be
just a wee bit OFFENSIVE, hmm?

Since you seem to be the one crying for all those hardworking
Venezuelan millionaires who have YOKED that imaginary 27-child family
to grinding feudal poverty for centuries, I calls it like I sees it.

Believe it or not, many poor Latin Americans (and many Latin Americans in general, but mostly poor) start having children very early, and they usually have way more kids than they can feed. I'll give you an example from my visits to the Dominican Republic (my dad is from there). We usually stay with a friend of my dad who is a high ranked Air Force member down there. He's considered rich over there, and he has several teenage (16 to 19) maids working for him.

One afternoon, we went out for dinner to the "Ciudad Colonial" (the colonial section of Santo Domingo), and we gave one of the maids a ride to her house. It turns out this girl, who was 19 then, lived in one of the poorest slums I've had the unfortunate chance of seeing, and she already had 3 kids, one of them a 2 yr old that was walking naked, dirty, with his belly swollen, probably because of worms. Guess what? She was pregnant at the time. We couldn't help but wonder how this girl planned to feed her 4 children with her miserable salary.

I mean, maybe I was a bit... harsh with my comment, but anyone who has lived or been down there knows the way things are down there.

the big culprit the Catholic Church, that keeps birth control information and other medical practices to limit families from getting to the women that need them.

Yes, and I suppose that maid was earning a good salary to feed her children from you. These are the inequities and abuses that Hugo Chavez is trying to change. I know the haves are going to have their little lifestyles upset, but that's what needs to be done. I remember my mother crying when she had to clean her own house, here in the states, but she got over it.

We agree that the Catholic Church has done a lot of harm to the poor in Latin America. Yes, this girl is probably a victim of the lack of sexual education and lack of access to birth control methods thanks to the fake moralists who run the spiritual lives of millions down there.

And, no. My dad's friend, a man who made it "from rags to riches" thanks to the Dominican Air Force, is a stingy S.O.B; an exploiter.

Still, I don't think the solution for the problems of this girl down there in the DR would be to kick my dad's friend out of his house and give it to her. Better education (and access to education for everyone), better health services, money to rebuild the poor communities, war against government corruption, more progressive taxation systems... populism doesn't have to be extreme. It's been tried before, and it has failed, just like extreme social and economic conservatism has failed down there as well.

Soviet style to give it to a poor family. It's clearly stated that the land is unused land that he wants to give to rural families to ranch again. I get the impression the owners of this unused land don't even live there.

I think Chavez is trying to do all the above that you mention but he has to pry loose some of these entrenched institutions that prevent those things from happening first so that he can grow the economy to sustain those things.

Our government doesn't want any of this to happen because it will affect our economic hegemony in Latin America. This is why anyone like Chavez will be demonized and likely assassinated and I for one am tired of it.

Read anything Noam Choamsky has written about Latin America. He really knows his stuff and it will open your eyes.

so she didn't have to live in a slum. or would that have been rude too? :eyes:

Actually, he gave her $50 and I gave her $50 ($100) for her being so nice. Down there, that's some good money.

but wouldn't a decent wage have helped her more, in the long run?

That hundred bucks (split two ways)...did it give any of her
four kids a chance to better themselves? Did it give even
one of them an opportunity to escape the cage they were born
into? Are any of them currently learning to READ, or even
looking foreward to a future free of intestinal parasites?

Or did it just slap a bandaid on your CONSCIENCE and allow you
to pretend you really helped?

When you go to lunch and (OFTEN) spend more for a plate of food
than she earns in a week, do you think of her and her four kids?

Or do you use that free time to plan your next DU post concerning
the many "injustices" heaped upon the wealthy elite who deliberately
put her where she is?

Seriously, "man" (since you feel free to refer to me in that rude manner)
I have a hard time taking you seriously here. Your posts paint
a COLORING BOOK picture of an elitist "checkbook liberal".

You come across as a wannabe fascist "blame the victim" Repub who thinks
he's a "liberal" because he ONCE gave a member of the "servant class"
a ride home and a nice tip, and now goes out of his way to tell everyone
about it to prove how much he cares about those "little people".

Color me UNDERWHELMED, mister Limbaugh. Color me underwhelmed with
regards to your great "hundred dollar tip" anecdote.

exactly what I wanted to say... but I deleted cause there were too many swearwords.

:hug:

Along comes someone trying to IMPROVE the "way things are down there",
and suddenly you're outraged by the indignities being heaped upon
that poor, helpless upper class that has held the peasants in shit-smeared
bondage for the last few centuries.

Yes, we do indeed understand "the way things are down there". Most
of us here at DU, anyway. And, more importantly, we understand WHY
things are "the way they are" down there, and WHO is responsible for
things being "the way things are down there".

And we don't get upset when those responsible for centuries of grinding
oppression experience some minor financial inconvenience once in a while.

Because "the way things are down there" is not an accident, not a
mere circumstance of nature or history. It is a CRIME. An ongoing
crime planned and perpetrated with malice aforethought.

Believe it or not, many poor Latin Americans (and many Latin Americans in general, but mostly poor) start having children very early, and they usually have way more kids than they can feed. I'll give you an example from my visits to the Dominican Republic (my dad is from there). We usually stay with a friend of my dad who is a high ranked Air Force member down there. He's considered rich over there, and he has several teenage (16 to 19) maids working for him.

One afternoon, we went out for dinner to the "Ciudad Colonial" (the colonial section of Santo Domingo), and we gave one of the maids a ride to her house. It turns out this girl, who was 19 then, lived in one of the poorest slums I've had the unfortunate chance of seeing, and she already had 3 kids, one of them a 2 yr old that was walking naked, dirty, with his belly swollen, probably because of worms. Guess what? She was pregnant at the time. We couldn't help but wonder how this girl planned to feed her 4 children with her miserable salary.

It seems to me, Katzenkavalier, that your association with your dad's friend has given you a bias toward the wealthy. Did you ever once stop to think about why this girl was 19 and pregnant? Any number of reasons occur to me, all having to do with circumstances that and you and your dad's friend can't even imagine with your easy stereotyping of the poor. Did you ask your dad's friend if he would raise the admittedly "miserable salary" of his "several teenage (16 to 19) maids." (Hmm, did it ever occur to you that a guy who has only teenage maids could be sexually exploiting them and could be the father of at least some of their children?)

Your dad's friend, who may be a very nice man in his dealings with other rich people or with Norteamericanos, is callously exploiting his servants if his maid has to live in one of the worst slums in Santo Domingo.

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Racism has little to do with it but classism, (your family name)has everything to do with it.

It's pretty obvious where you're coming from.

By equating his behavior with that of Bush. Well, if the show fits, I guess El Commandante can wear it.

everytime Venezuela's reforms move forward.

know anything about how the system works. Those people who do shit for nothing are the serfs and laborers who keep the patrones or fundo owners rich because they mostly don't get paid for what they do. They are just allowed to live in shacks on the property if they do the work expected of them and are allowed to grow some food to feed their families.

Although the OP doesn't state it, he did say these are properties that aren't being ranched so there is probably a deal that he made with the owners to give them some reparation for handing the land over. There is a lot that needs to be known first before making broad statements like that.

A través de la región se ha visto este tipo de cosas constantemente, y mucha sangre se ha derramado, mucha inestabilidad ha habido gracias a los radicalismos de la izquierda y la derecha en Latinoamerica.

a los pobres.

Sure thing, a farm guy can work out there really hard & save up & buy land. Right.

The Grateful Dead, in Ripple--

Let it be known, there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men.

By what rights should any single human own water, land or air, or anything else that was not made by the hands of men? If Bill Gates wanted to buy up all the water in Western Washington and use it to make the world's largest outdoor swimming pool, would it be OK for him to do that just because he could afford it?

Sharecropper: How come I have to give you half of my crops? I do all the work.
Landlord: Because I own the land.
Sharecropper: How come you get to own the land?
Landlord: Because my granddaddy fought Indians for this land.
Sharecropper: Well then, can I fight you for it?

Thanks for the insight into your way of thinking. Now I know what to expect.

Land reform is at the heart of the economic problems of the huge indian and mestiso rural populations. The oligarch's domination of the agricultural economy goes back to the spanish conquest.

It's horrible how Reaganite ideology has poisoned even some people who call themselves Democrats.

That quote tells me all I need to know about you.

from them, and it has been approved by the Supreme Court. Here a municipality can take your land from you and sell it to real estate developers.
That's the problem with corporate fascism.

it deprives the people who actually work and rewards exploitation. The landowners are people who use the labor of others, and so it is only right that the workers control the land.

You talk of "earning it"? The owners have been using people as their chattle, and if you think that's "earning it", you've lost your sense of right and wrong.

Here's what it boils down to: the people who actually do the work should control the land. Anything which exploits labor for the profit of someone else is intolerable.

should remain in the hands of people who do nothing with it...

I don't think so.

And exactly what part of work don't you understand...

Poor does not = lazy.

of socialist governments in most of South America in the last three years.

if you do the math? 810000 /16
Why would one family need 51,000 acres or 80 square miles?

Right wingers in Latin America take land away from the poor and give it to foreign powers who will exploit the locals. The left wingers take private land, usually owned by rich families for centuries, and they give it to the poor, disrespecting private property.

Both suck big time. That's why most Latin Americans have lost faith in their governments, me included.

Go ask a Native American about "respect"

What did they do to "earn it?" Nothing more than the poor people who "haven't done shit."

Your posts are inconsistent with the Rawlsian basis of modern liberalism.

You prefer to leave the control of land in the hands of the Lords. The divine right of thieves or some such bizarre reasoning. Others here choose to ally themselves with those who do the work, not the parasites.

gets the same amount of land, and the same resources to work it, and there are no people making money off of them, then you will have a point. you can't really work more than about 15 acres without hiring help (given the lack of technology) and hiring help is antithetical, right?

Think Chavez himself will work a plot? or will he be a parasite?

You are assuming some sort of law that only one person is allowed to work any plot of land, alone? What a ghastly notion of how society works. I know it is consistent with the Me!Me! ideology of the Norquists and such, but it certainly is not rational or even possible.

I thought this was to take land away from the exploitative owners and return it to the workers? once someone hires people to work their land, aren't they just another owner? what's the difference between me hiring someone to work the family farm and ADM doing it?

delusion. And, in case you have never encountered this fact, there are relationships between people that are not defined as owner/slave or owner/wage-slave. You seem to believe that those two variants are not simplistically the only possible options, but actually decent and laudatory. What a sad world you must live in, where everyone you meet is seen as either owner class or peasant.

by very definition. if you are a farmer, for instance, you either own the land you work on, or you don't. maybe there is a third way I haven't thought of, please let me know if I missed it.

land is a zero sum game, you either own it, or you don't.

breaking away from their groupthink. Or at least give up on perpetuating that illusion. Many societies have existed for thousands of years without assuming that the world consisted of property, owners, and serfs. Surely you can't be more limited in you ability to handle concepts than those "primitives." If you are truly as naive as you present yourself, look up "worker owned" on Google and do some reading.

gee, that sounds like the people doing the work are the owners, just like one of the two options I gave above. your use of the term 'serf' by the way, gives you away. i work for someone else, but I am not a 'serf' because I am not tied, by law, to my job. Serfs were slaves in another name, but instead of being tied to an owner, they were tied to the land, no matter who owned it at the time. they were, their children were and their children's children. is that the situation you currently find yourself in?

are you really calling for the abolishment of private property? I just want to make that point perfectly clear.

It is theft. (Not talking about one's underwear and stamp collections.) The difference between a wage slave and a serf is tiny. Serfs' lives depend on servicing one Lord, while proles must search around to find some "owner" to service and risk getting tossed into the trash at any moment. That may be your utopia, but I believe a better world is possible.

While the sharecroppers in the South were not legally tied to the land, in fact, lack of ability to accumulate any real money and lack of educational opportunities kept them there as surely as any legal system, except in the case of a few unusually talented individuals.

I vote door #2

everyone loves Robin Hood.

care to place a wager that the families that own this land belong to the other political party?

Mine, as a Brazilian, is better.

parents were from Venezuela. She told me once that when she was fifteen her mother took her on a trip back there to meet the relatives she hadn't known up until then. When she came back from her trip she told me how astonished she was. She said her family owned so much land that it included villages and everyone who lived in those villages and who worked on their land. Since she had been raised middle class here, (dad was a bank executive and mom a stay at home mom), she said she had no idea how rich their family was until then. Then she told me that she didn't feel it was right that so few people had everything and most of the people had nothing. I think my friend will approve of what Chavez is doing. I never liked the latifundo system either although I too had friends in Chile who owned and lived on them.

The Spanish colonists came over, killed/enslaved/subdued the indigenous populations and the King of Spain gave them "title" to the lands. Thus they grafted the centuries-old European feudal system -- even to the "ownership" of villages -- onto the conquered lands.

What possible justification can be made for maintaining such a medieval relic of a system in the 21st century?

sw

Things have to change and unfortunately those who have benefitted the most from this unequal system are going to have to give. I feel the same way about the ultra rich here in this country too. I will be happy when we get our country back to democratic principles and start taxing those who haven't been paying what they should so that the rest can have what they need to survive.

What did they do to deserve it?

did the people who are going to get the land do to deserve it? There has to be a way to help the poor without demonizing the rich. Could Hugo not find some middle ground.

who gave the government the power to say that they now own the land? and once someone else owns it, what's to stop the next government from taking it away again, since they don't recognize the ownership?

Namely use it for agricultural production instead of having it remain idle.

Which is what, exactly?

16 families own 1600 square miles which is roughly 1/3 the size of Puerto Rico.
Now what would be left for Puerto Rico's 4,000,000 citizens?

This isn't about ones house, car or even farm.
It is about land reform.

Oh, forget it, let the serfs eat cake

They ancestors were conquerors, slave traders, businessmen, and other at-the-moment-legalized crimes. No one is justifying the horrors and crimes on which our Hemisphere is based. I'm a descendant of African slaves and poor (and some kinda wealthy) Spanish laborers, it's not like my ancestors had any upper hand in this.

Still, whatever the means, you are talking about families that have owned these lands probably for centuries. Look, the area in San Juan, Puerto Rico, known as "El Condado", the wealthiest zone in the northern part of the island, was owned by a black family named Falú in the 19th century. The Spanish government took those lands away from them and gave them an unfair compensation. They gave those lands to rich white people who converted the zone into what it is today. Even though the story is sad, and there are still hundreds of descendents of the Falú family throughout Puerto Rico, none of them has made any attempt to reclaim those lands, because the people that live there today should not be held accountable for what their ancestors did more than a hundred years ago.

So, tell me, other than possessing it, why do the current "owners" have a superior claim to the land than anyone else?

You haven't, and you can't, because they don't.

And, seeing as they have an equal claim, it's not immoral to equal out the possessions a bit.

This would be a more difficult question if we were talking about rich people who had earned their wealth (although I argue that a Rawlsian analysis would lead to a similar conclusion), but you've made it clear that we're not.

what did the people who are given it do to earn it?

Chavez modeled it after our own Homestead act.

the people who own this land own it because ancestors stole it or they exploit the labor of others to control it. There is no reason anyone should be obscenely rich when people are poor and starving. Anyone who thinks so is not a progressive but a supporter of the current world system of exploitation, death, hunger, and disease because they want to do what is "fair" for the rich 1% and not for the 99% who according to them "don't do shit". What the fuck have people like Paris Hilton EVER done for this country!?!?! I have done more and yet make 39k a year. You can go party with Paris, I'll stand in solidarity with the other 99%.

then I guess I fail. should all land and property be distributed equally? shall we say on a decennial basis?

just as an example. the US is 9,161,923 square kilometers. Of which 18 percent is arable for traditional agriculture. that's 1,649,646 square kilmeters of arable land. divide by the us population of 300,000,000, and everyone gets .005 square kilometers. everyone gets 1.24 acres of land. I mean we could make this number bigger by dividing all the land up, now we are up to 7.54 acres a piece. I vote we do it by lottery, if yours happens to be in Iowa, you might make a go of it. bad luck if you draw Pike's Peak though. seems a bit silly, right?

and you know, you can believe in private property without thinking Paris Hilton is an examplar, right?

Too bad we're talking about inheritance.

inheritance should be abolished. upon death, all properties and possessions should be returned to the state. i am perfectly fine with that. (of course, I do mean EVERYTHING.

health care and other programs to help the people and so it's far from the reach of the neo-cons who want to fill their pockets with war money.

I don't know enough about the situation in the OP to have an opinion on what Chavez is doing here, and I support the estate tax here at home, but the concept that the state could just grab EVERYTHING at death is highly repugnant. Fuck that.

The person who posited the question to me was being ridiculous so I had to answer in the affirmative to show him what could be possible.

However, we do need to bring the estate tax back for inheritances that are over a million dollars. It's bad for the economy to have too much money tied up into investments or locked in banks and not out in circulation.

and savings? according to whom? only if the concept of capital is bad to begin with. I would think it is good for the economy that my bank has money to loan me to buy a house. where you figure that money comes from?

where did you get your economics degree? Moscow State?

the necessity of money circulating through the economy. Investment in interest bearing property is of course important too, but when the majority of it is funneled to a few rich owners at the expense of the common wage earner, money becomes stagnant and isn't spent and that creates a downward spiral in the economy. This is one of the reasons that the economy did so well under Clinton. Everyday people had extra money in their pockets to spend in stores and other purchases, which in turn posted rosy profits and that was reflected in gains in the stock markets.

Of course if you ascribe to the Milton Friedman school of economics then you are of course comfortable with 1% of the population owning most of the wealth, investing it into property that makes more money in interest and dividends, but does nothing to stimulate the economy otherwise.

btw. I don't need a degree to express my opinion any more than you do.

possible worlds. :sarcasm:

military industrial complex ever in the history of the world.

We live in the belly of the world-destroying monster.

My most heartfelt wishes for success go to all the common people of the world, that we may all grow in strength in order to defeat the monster.

sw

It's all water under the bridge. Those poor landless peasants need to just get over it and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. They didn't deserve shit to deserve a productive and happy life by honestly working the lands stolen from their ancestors.

:sarcasm:

what, exactly, these landed estates are. Are they privately owned? Or were they? By whom?

smart money says by people who belong to the opposing political party. or am I being too cynical? does anyone know who owned Hato Calleja?

since most socialists probably aren't millionares with very much land. Almost all of Chavez's support comes from the poor and landless.

unused property. An example of this is right here in the US. Walmart will build a store and even if they close it and the land is idle..they refuse to sell it to block out competition.

several families own 1/3 of the land, leaving millions in extreme poverty. Apparently Chavez is only appropriating land that was lying fallow for years, helping no-one.

it is to think of medieval fiefs with a Lord that owns everything on it. In the not so recent past they were also pretty much self sustaining, the work being provided by the landless peasants, usually displaced native people who were bound to the land like the serfs of medieval Europe back in the days when most of Latin America belonged to Spain.

My family had friends who owned such a property. They were of German decent too. There wasn't much in the way of laws, just what the patron dictated. If he was a good patron he made sure his peasants and their families got enough to eat, got health care and the children went to school. If he wasn't then no one told him he had to do those things.

who explained this to me. :) I appreciate it.

which means that the owners made profit off of the labor of others (if they were in use, which is disputable).

They were owned by the rich oligarchy which had ruled and owned the country until recently (thanks to Chavez, their iron fist is very weakened).

There is a difference between redistributing wealth and taking away private property rights. This is going to discourage all investment in the country, since people risk losing their investments to the government. This problem has plagued Latin America and many other developing nations the past century. No one is going to invest in a country that has a revolution every five years, whether it's from the right or from the left. The instability that Chavez is creating isn't helping either.

Chavez is creating these agriculture shortages with his failed price ceilings to begin with. People don't want to farm because they can't make any profit from it.

like the ones that have made them the fastest growing economy in the regions and reduced the poverty level?

of food. As people's personal incomes have risen, consumption has risen. There hasn't been a revolution every five years. the only land being taken is land that has been idle for years. Obviously there wasn't much investment in it.

where now nearly 100% can read (we don't even come close to that here)

like the medical program where everyone has access to the basics (unlike here)

like telling the oil companies to take a hike, and using that money to improve the infrastructure?

methinks you are a bit uninformed.

repeat neo-con talking points as if they were fact. Either that, or people in this country have really moved this far to the Right, even liberal democrats.

some are speaking of? Like the US investment in the oil companies where all the profit was going to the US CEO's and now it is going to Venezuela's people? Or maybe they are refering to the "investment" in the electrical and telecommunications companies by US investors where they failed to pay the nation's minimum wage and pensions...yup those investments were sure a blessing for the people of Venezuela. They are screwed without them!

Chavez is consistently referred to as a dictator, yet he has over 60% approval ratings and was just re-elected for the 3rd time.
People just don't bother to learn for themselves. :(

I am glad these filthy White Guardist scum have their own party. Too bad it is illegal in Germany.

is that what you call 30 MIG 29s?

not a single article I have read mentioned upping military strength, not even US news reports. :shrug:

nevermind - found them, all dated 2004. They stopped buying from us because our Gov. backed the failed coup.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/06-10-2004/7164-helicopter-0

And blocked Israel from doing so, as well.

parts to Venezuela, so they were unable to repair the American planes they had already bought.

Damned underhanded.

They had to start replacing entire airplanes which could be repaired with easily acquired parts for the future of their Air Force.

Here's an article:

Venezuela considering Russian jets to replace fleet of F-16s
Updated 6/3/2006 4:28 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print |

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — An adviser to President Hugo Chavez said Friday that Venezuela is considering buying about two dozen Russian fighter jets to replace its fleet of F-16s because Washington has refused to sell the country upgrades for the U.S.-made planes.

Venezuela is considering buying Sukhoi Su-35 fighters to replace the 21 U.S.-made F-16s, and Venezuelan pilots have already traveled to Russia to test out Russian warplanes, Gen. Alberto Muller told The Associated Press. He said Venezuela was considering a purchase of roughly 24 planes.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, meanwhile, said Venezuela is free to sell its F-16s to any country it wishes because the United States has violated a contract by refusing to sell replacement parts for the planes.

When asked by a reporter if Venezuela would be willing to sell the F-16 fighters to Iran, Rangel said: "To whomever. What the United States does not have the right to do is suspend the supply (of replacement parts) after there's a contract and agreement."
(snip/...)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-05-20-venezuela_x.htm?csp=34

sometimes my Google skills fail me.

:hug:

if you need to purchase something from somebody, it tends to not go over well when you come to their country and call them Satan. Venezuela has stated publically that the reason for its military buildup is to resist the US and US coporations. Seems strange to then complain when said US corporations won't do business with you anymore, right? I mean if I walk into my local starbucks and loudly proclaim how evil it is, I think they might not be interested in selling me a latte, no?

not a private company that doesn't want to do business. Advanced weapons systems require extensive and on-going maintenance and upgrades, that's why all of the details are written into the contract. Arbusto_® & Co. have refused to fulfill the contract that was entered into, failure to perform is grounds to negate any contract in existence, and the injured party is no longer bound by the terms of that contract.

Your example is completely inappropriate, as is your argument.
:kick:

about threatening to use the weapons systems against the United States military? bet there is.

and US parts supplies contracts are totally at the will of the government of the United States. you cannot export military technology without the permission of the Defense, Treasury and State Departments. you can't really expect the US to sell military technology to countries diametrically opposed to what the US Government is saying, right?

Venezuela has never threatened to attack the US military. When the US reneged on their contractual responsibilities, they surrendered any claim of enforcement to the export of technology.

I understand that you're OK with stealing and killing others to enable your lifestyle, fortunately you're a minority here.

Hopeless.
:kick:

your socks? underwear? shoes?

remember, you are in the 95th percentile of wealth globally. keep that in mind when you talk about redistribution. cause for most of the world, you are on the take-away list. the global 9th decile makes $15,000/year. if you are above that, then you are one of the rich you hate so much.

there are nine people in the world who are doing worse than you, statistically. how do you justify owning property when it could be better used by those people?

or is redistrubution just for those who you think are too rich?

This sub-thread was about your defense of arbusto_® voiding an existing contract to sell the required parts and upgrades for multi-billion dollar weapons systems and your objection to Venezuela being forced to go elsewhere to acquire their hardware. You made false claims to justify your your position and when called on them threw up a non sequitur about where clothes are made and the fact that we are the upper class on a global scale, then when called on that you try to switch to property redistribution, another topic you've made unsubstantiated claims about and failed to address in those sub-threads.

Are you sure you're on the right board?
:kick:

shoudln't you be living in some Soclialist Workers' Paradise?

I have cited an interview with the top general of the Venezuelan army who said they were arming to resist American invasion. read it. where i come from spending as much money on the military as health care and education isn't a progressive value. there are people starving, and the government is buying jet fighters from Russia. this is a progressive value? really? there are people without educational opportunities, and the government is buying 100,000 kalishnikovs? if that is a progressive value, the one you think represents the ideals of this board, then you are right, I am in the wrong place.

so, to summarize: DU value=tripling military spending.

and yes, I think it is ridiculous that we don't continue to sell weapons to them. If Chavez is going to squander his country's money on foreign weapons purchases, they might as well be American, right?

you are passionately defending someone who has increased military spending faster than either education or health care spending. keep that in mind on your high horse. MORE GUNS! FEWER DOCTORS!

I am not passionately defending Chavez, although I do believe he is a far better leader than Venezuela has had for many generations, I am pointing out the fallacy of your misrepresentation of the situation as it exists.

Your knee-jerk condemnation of anything that he does is disingenuous at bast. Your position seems to be that he should simply give up and accept that Venezuela and its citizens exist only to serve us, or more specifically, the ruling class. It's OK to spend billions to buy arms from us, but he made truthful statements that we don't like, so it's OK if we don't have to live up to our agreement. Simultaneously, he is a bad puppet because he is buying from our competitors, he should be spending that money on his people, but is a bad puppet because he will deal with other people that we don't like for those very things that he is bringing to his people.

Since the U.S. has repeatedly devastated his country, it is perfectly understandable that they are worried about, and preparing to resist, a military incursion by "our" government, it's not like we haven't done it before. Are you familiar with the term "banana republic"? Do you know how it came about? Any leader of a Central or South American nation that doesn't worry about U.S. "intervention" is a fool.

While it would certainly be preferable to not have to spend money that could be better used to further improve conditions for his people, that is, sadly, not reality in that region of the world, thanks largely to us. OTOH, his people are indeed far better off under his leadership than they have been for generations and it continues to improve for them.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/world/americas/25venez.html?ex=1330059600&en=25be50a9a3dfea93&ei=5088


and this interview with General Raul Baduel:http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10507

and this one: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1399


and this one: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060729&articleId=2854


and this one: http://english.people.com.cn/200606/20/eng20060620_275584.html


so let's see. we have the New York Times, GlobalSecurity.org, Venezuelaanalysis (same source as the OP), the People's China Daily and an interview with the head of the Venezualan Army. all saying the same thing. is that a broad enough range of sources for you? there is no reason to invest billions of dollars in military toys for Venezuela, there are no outside enemies that this army/airforce can possibly stop, right? if you consider that perhaps the only country that might be interested in invading is the US, 24 Sukhoi fighters ain't gonna help much. they will last about as long as the Iraqi airforce did. the only reason is posing and blustering, just as you would expect. what a waste of money. Venezuela, in case you are wondering, spends 2.3% of its GDP on military expenditures, and only 3% on healthcare. for a country with really poor distribution of healthcare, seems like maybe not the best allocation of resources? and such a past trend of poor application of resources leads me to suspect future allocations.

"I've got mine, fuck you" school of thought.
:kick:

see ya in a week and a half! :hi:

That is, not at all.

And redistribution of wealth necessarily requires disrespecting the claim of the rich to their wealth. So what? Their claim is illegitimate and unjust.

http://www.taiwan-agriculture.org/taiwan/rocintro4.html

And they managed to generate all the investment they needed internally. Of course it helped that transferring money out of the country would get you put up against a wall and shot.

otherwise it's to obvious.

There's probably a reason for that.

he would not merely expropriate the idle land of the rich.

Brilliant, by Jove

If there is compensation involved, this is no different than eminent domain. The problem in Venezuela is vast tracts of land are owned by a few, to the detriment of many.

That's why we can't have UNREGULATED captitalism here -- that's what always ends up happening, everybody's played monopoly, right?

Since we should protect property rights here, they say.

Even if Chavez respected property rights, the ultimate goal should be to redistribute the land either through a buy-out program or taking back land that was gained through fraud or passing a powerful inheritance tax to break the cycle.

Many tracts of land, but by no means all, these landowners have were gained extra-legally. In those cases, there should be no compensation. Claiming of land through the use of violence or fraud should not be legitimized by the payment of money to get back that land.

There's also the issue of landowners intentionally under-utilizing the land in order to drive up the cost of crops grown on the land. Of course, that means the poor pay the heaviest price of all.

Even if you accept the moral foundation of private property rights, which I do not, it would merely involve taking wealth from the taxpayer so as to avoid taking wealth from the rich - hardly just.

Edit: Though I guess it has the economic justification of allowing people to make investments with security, but I read you, perhaps wrongly, as implying a moral component to it ("fair" market value).

Without solid property rights, lending may very well grind to a halt (or exist with extremely high interest rates).

Without assurances that capital will not change hands randomly, that would essentially act as a disincentive for people to invest, potentially weakening the economy.

I generally don't see owning land as an unrestricted right as much as a limited right that must be regulated. For instance, for pieces of land that were claimed extra-legally, no compensation should be given. In several cases in Venezuela, the land was claimed illegally by thuggish landlords. The government should be free to evict the lord off that piece of land and use it for another purpose, such as establishing a farming co-op.

People should be free to purchase land individually (like a family farm) or collectively (like a farming co-op), but both an individual as well as a co-op should be limited in the amount of land they can purchase to prevent excess concentration of ownership. There should be a public/community banking mechanism to encourage the establishment of co-op enterprises, and it should serve as the lynchpin of any transition towards a more democratic economy.