Venezuela creates militias to protect peasants, raising concerns among ranchers

Venezuela’s ranchers warn against arming peasants

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government is creating peasant-based militias throughout Venezuela’s rural, agricultural-rich regions, raising fears of confrontation among the country’s cattle ranchers and landholders.

The armed groups, organized by Venezuela’s military, will be responsible for protecting poor farmers from vigilante groups allegedly organized and financed by cattlemen and wealthy landowners, Chavez wrote in a newspaper column published Sunday.

“Faced with the onslaught against peasants through an escalation of aggressions, sabotage and hired killings by the most reactionary forces of our society, the duty of the state … is to protect the poor farmers,” Chavez wrote.

The newly formed militias will also help the military prepare for a possible foreign invasion, said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that the U.S. military could invade Venezuela to seize control of its immense oil reserves. U.S. officials deny that any such plan exists.

The government claims that more than 300 peasants have been killed — purportedly by mercenaries for wealthy landholders — since authorities launched a sweeping land reform initiative in 2001.

Landowners and cattle ranchers dispute those claims, saying Chavez’s administration is wrongly attempting to vilify them as a means of gaining political clout among the country’s poverty-stricken farmers. They vehemently deny hiring vigilantes to drive away or kill peasants, who occasionally squat on their lands or steal cattle.

“We’ve never sought paramilitary groups to protect ourselves,” said Manuel Heredia, president of the National Federation of Cattle Ranchers, which represents approximately 20,000 ranchers.

“If one of our members is accused and it’s proved that he was involved in a crime, he must pay for that crime. We’re not going to defend him because we don’t promote those types of actions,” Heredia said in a telephone interview.

It’s unclear exactly how many peasants have been killed in recent years. Representatives of the Attorney General’s Office could not be reached Sunday to provide details. Prosecutors have not recently released information incriminating ranchers associations or their members in the slayings of peasants.

Heredia noted that violent crime is widespread throughout Venezuela — even in remote, rural areas and border regions where Colombian rebels and paramilitary groups operate — and that ranchers themselves are increasingly becoming kidnapping victims. Close to 100 cattlemen have been abducted during the past two years, according to the ranchers federation. Many ranchers suspect that Colombian guerrillas are responsible.

“These groups are supportive of the government,” Heredia said.

Jose Luis Betancourt, a cattle rancher on the sun-baked plains of Barinas state, urged the government to take measures to guarantee the security of all those who work in the countryside, not just peasant groups that support Chavez.

The government “should not create different groups that seek increased confrontation and distortion in the relations between those of us who live together in Venezuela’s agricultural zones,” Betancourt said.

“The security forces that already exist should provide security for all of those in the countryside.”