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During a visit to National Lands Institute (INTI) central-west regional director Pedro Moreno to inquire about the current status of land recovery, I met a lady from a village in El Tocuyo, who is requesting INTI to open an administrative process to rescue part of a hacienda.
Maribel Peraza, who was brought up on the hacienda and living in the town, is attempting to organize around 58 families on the hacienda who want to grow vegetables on the idle part of the farm.
Pedro Moreno told us that INTI is already working with around the same number of families in a neighboring hacienda where the families have been living in shacks for decades.
In the hacienda Maribel Peraza was taking about, he said, the owner has cut off traditional access to the river forcing people to use a bridge the local government has installed. The same owner has also thrown out people to whom he had rented bits of land.
The lady maintained that there was still a lot of fear among the people she was trying to organize because of the old feudal system of squires and peasants or pawns which she believed would take time to overcome but more families are convinced that they can set up a socialist company to grow vegetables, such as peppers and coriander in the area and gain meaningful employment.
Pedro Moreno told Mrs Peraza to organize a meeting of the families to listen to proposals and to start drawing up a study of their needs, soil and irrigation so as to open an administrative (legal) process against the owner and present a project aimed at producing vegetables.
Mrs. Peraza approached INTI after a March last week through El Tocuyo to highlight the agrarian reform. Pedro Moreno says it's like a snowball that starts off the size of a baseball and gets bigger as it gathers speed and as people lose fear.
Reading through the newspapers, I came across a statement from Pedro Moreno as head of the Central West office of INTI in 2005, stating INTI had recovered 15,000 hectares of idle agricultural lands and yesterday, he ratified that the figure is now around 40,000 hectares
Patrick J. O'Donoghue
news.editor@vheadline.com
