Weekly Report - 8 July 2003

The land issue has brought together three members of the Chávez family: President Hugo Chávez was born in Barinas, the central plains state whose governor is the President's father. The President's brother Adán is the head of Venezuela's land institute, currently engaged in distributing to landless peasants titles to idle, state-owned land. The institute has already distributed 20,000 titles to some 730,000 hectares -but peasants have been going ahead and occupying land without waiting for the institute.  

The cattle breeders' association of Barinas reports that there have been more than 90 'invasions' of land in recent months, and accuses the government of encouraging them. Their leader, Manuel Cipriano, who compares the situation in Barinas to that in Zimbabwe, has been threatening publicly direct action to evict the 'invaders' and warning that 'there could be clashes'.  

Some of those 'invaders' actually have provisional occupancy certificates issued by the land institute -which the ranchers consider illegal.