RAQUEL BARREIRO C.
EL UNIVERSAL

The president of the National Land Institute, Eliézer Otaiza, Tuesday said his office is to demand a reform of the Land Law -which has been in force for three years- in order to implement said regulation to any plot of land that may be used productively for agriculture in Venezuela.

This would be a first step towards implementing land reform nationwide. On Thursday a special committee is expected to present a report on the scope and goals of the government planned fight against latifundios. The document is expected to contain some of the announcements President Hugo Chávez is scheduled to make on January 10.

One of the proposed reforms consists in eliminating the so-called rural land networks, thus paving the way for the government to implement the Land Law throughout the Venezuelan territory, said Otaiza. He added that the INTI is ready to undertake any legal steps deemed necessary to have this reform passed.

The only limitation the agency is facing is the fact that the Land Law can only be implemented in lands comprised in rural land networks. The plots of land described as agrarian under rural land networks are a very small part of the Venezuelan territory. Therefore, if the planned land reform is implemented only in rural land networks, the reform is to comprise a reduced area.

"Any necessary land reform shall be executed, and this year we are going to find solutions for all of the problems we have faced," Otaiza said.

Rural land networks are defined under article 21 of the Land Law, which establishes that "to determine agrarian lands, the Executive Power, by issuing successive decrees, is to establish the regional rural land networks, which will connect to constitute the national rural land network." Under rural land network, coordinates are set, and agrarian lands therein are subject to the Land Law.

In Venezuela, there are four rural land networks: Apure-Barinas, Miranda, Sur del Lago (a region located south the Maracaibo Lake in Zulia State), and Portuguesa-Cojedes.

Otaiza added: "We are facing an important problem: significant extensions of top-quality land are underproductive as they are devoted to monoculture or subject to production cartels that are seriously damaging the land. We have found this problem in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, and Cojedes, where the agricultural industries are trying to preserve their monopolies. We have identified these cases too, as well their political motivations. We are going to stop this. What we intend is to change the current development model."

Meanwhile, parliamentarian Pedro Pablo Alcántara, president of the National Assembly Committee on Agriculture and Land, said "for a law to be reformed, it has to be implemented first. Otherwise, you do not have ethical elements for its modification, especially this law, which was passed by Chávez and not by the National Assembly."

Alcántara added that land seizure decrees issued by regional governors violate the Land Law and the Organic Law on Territorial Classification. "Governors do not have jurisdiction to seize lands. Such decrees are a mere smoke screen to hide the fact that over 3,000 tracts of private land have been invaded since Chávez took office." This government does not have a real agrarian policy, he said.

Since the Land Law was enacted in 2001, the INTI has issued only 57 land grants. "Now, in the next six months we are going to issue 100,000 land grants," Otaiza said.

Translated by Maryflor Suárez