Agrarian Reform in Venezuela was implemented to recognize the inherited rights of the Venezuelan peasant class to the agricultural land of the country. In fact, it was mainly due to the initiatives of President Hugo Chávez, that the Agrarian Reform in Venezuela helped the landless farmers to get back their land successfully.
Causes for the emergence of Venezuelan Agrarian Reforms:
The agrarian history of Venezuela stated that this Latin American nation had an exceptionally unfair system of land ownership. Only 5% of the agrarian population owned three quarters of arable land in the country. This was precisely why majority of the rural Venezuelan population were in landless condition, undergoing poverty and financial crises in extreme forms. About three-fifth of the agrarian laborers did not have any land ownership. All these gradually took the situation beyond control. It was under such social and financial pressures that the need for agrarian reform became essential in Venezuela.
Land reform programs in Venezuela: brief evolution
In the beginning:
In historic times, agrarian reforms were introduced to solve the problems persisting in the Venezuelan agricultural sector. Reform programs formulated and implemented at that time sought to remove the imbalances existing in this sector, but failed in its attempt. The reason behind such failure was that the land reform programs did everything except providing land to the farmers. Moreover, there was no initiative to make financial credits available to the peasant class, or to extend marketing and technical supports to the farmers. Without these basic assistances, which were essential for the development of the agrarian sector, the land reform programs became a complete failure.
1960s:
In the year 1960, another set of agrarian land reform program was initiated with financial assistances from United States of America. Rather than improving the conditions of the agricultural sector in Venezuela and assuring availability and security of food within the nation, these reform programs burdened the country with external debts and intensified its economic dependences further. According to some critics, the land reform program of 1960 was a flawed one, as far its developmental approaches were concerned. It attempted to industrialize the agrarian production, making the entire process highly expensive. In fact, the 1960 Venezuelan Agrarian reform program failed completely to solve the ailing condition of the agrarian sector. Instead of making fair allocation of land among the farmers, the reform programs of 1960s made them landless.
1990 onwards: the latest trends
In 1998, following the overwhelming victory of President Hugo Chavez, land reform programs were once again formulated and implemented. Just one year after the election of Hugo Chavez to Venezuelan Presidency, a fresh Constitution was approved and adopted by the government. One of the main provisions of the new Constitution was to restore the right of the rural landless population to agricultural land. To rectify the failures of the previous agrarian reform programs, the Law on Land and Agricultural Development was enacted in 2001 November by the Congress of Venezuela. The Law imposed restrictions on the size of the landholdings and levied taxes on unproductive plots of land. In fact, the primary concern of the newly-enacted law was to increase output in the agricultural sector as well as deal with widespread social injustice prevalent in the agrarian society.
The principal objective of the new agrarian law was the formation of three organizations, for proper implementation of the land reform programs. The first organization thus formed was entrusted with the responsibility of overall governance of the rental land. While the second institution was meant for offering infrastructure and technical supports to the farmers for increasing agricultural output, the third one assisted the government with strategies for marketing. The most important among all these organizations was the National Land Institute (Instituto Nacional de Tierras or INTI), founded in 2002, January.
In order to accelerate the process of agrarian land reform, a presidential decree was signed by the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on 4th February 2003. This decree formally announced the introduction of Plan Zamora as a part of the activities of National Land Institute. The aim of the Plan was to allocate land among medium and small farmers, as well as ensure food security and economic independence in the country.
Under Plan Zamora, most of the government-owned and vacant land were fairly allocated among the peasant class. Depending upon the size of the private farmland, the Plan also permitted confiscation of the unused farmland.
Today, land reform program is still in progress. However, the outcome of such reform programs is subject to the fact whether the process can endure both internal and external pressures arising from social and financial structure of the country.