Land Reform Law, by the standards of Latin American history, is quite moderate.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 By: Hector Dauphin-Gloire

Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:31:53 -0500 From: Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com To: editor@vheadline.com Subject: Before the lion can lie down with the lamb...

Dear Editor: I write to express support for the rural defense force that President Chavez is now creating. What has been happening in the countryside, for some reason, is never mentioned by the Venezuelan opposition. In fact, it's very clear why ... because the rural arena has been the scene of the same kind of landlord thuggery as countries like Brazil.

When Chavez first came to power, one of his fundamental promises was Land Reform ... and he soon proved he was serious about this by not calling out the army, as was the customary response from Presidents, when impoverished people occupied public lands; instead he settled the matter through dialogue.

I recall a commentator of the time being incredulous that a President would actually respect the squatters enough to talk to them, instead of brutally forcing them out as the previous regimes would have done.

In 2000, he followed this up by passing a Land Reform Law. This law was by the standards of Latin American history quite moderate. The cut-off for the size of estate you were allowed to keep was quite large ... there was compensation for expropriated land, and only land that was not being productively used was liable to seizure.

But the Venezuelan oligarchy opposed it ... just as the oligarchy in any country will oppose whatever they have the strength to oppose ... measures that would have been considered moderate twenty years ago are today called "Communist" and "foolish."

Within a few months, several rural activists supportive of the Chavez program had been assassinated ... no different than what happens in Brazil all the time. My source for this evidence is not any radical publication, but rather the Associated Press. Whenever the opposition says that they have not been violent towards the government side, I feel like saying "what about the landlord violence in the countryside?"

It's time, at last, to ensure that the poor in the countryside are armed to defend the land that is rightfully theirs ... and no oligarchy should be able to take away from them.

Only with an armed peasantry will this kind of violence stop.

And only when the lion gives up its rapacious habits can we imagine a future where "the lion will lie down with the lamb" as it has been said.

Sincerely, Hector Dauphin-Gloire montonero22@hotmail.com Environmental Technician