Silvana Solano Rodríguez
However, in recent years we have been facing a brutal onslaught that seeks to re-establish through blood and fire the large estates recovered by the revolution, in which the landowners with the consent of some state institutions have decided to usurp lands handed over by Chávez, returning them to their previous owners or to private companies that now “promise” to put them into production.
For this reason, for more than a year now, the organized peasant movement has been uniting to counteract the restoration of large estates, fighting for the protection and recovery of the lands they have been cultivating for several years and of which they have been dispossessed. With takeovers, mobilizations and marches, the peasant movement continues to develop strategies together with other social organizations to advance in the struggle for a revolutionary agrarian policy.
Los Tramojos in dispute
The Guárico State is the heart of Venezuela because of its size and location. With a large area of land, it is a territory with a historical agricultural and livestock tradition. Guárico is the gateway to the Venezuelan plains, with rich lands due to its geographical location and favourable climate.
Among these arable lands is Camaguán, a populated center of the state that has a vast territory of productive herds and farms. In this area is located the property Los Tramojos, surrounded by other estates that have a long tradition of landholders who fraudulently and illegally appropriated large tracts of land. Before 2010, Hato Los Tramojos did not have a legal agrarian registry and was unproductive, wasting the more than 4000 hectares that comprise it. The process to prove the unproductiveness of the property was initiated when a group of peasants filed a complaint with the National Land Institute (INTI) requesting that the land be reassigned to producers who would make better use of the land as a collective and family.
43 families begin to produce “Los Tramojos”
In 2010, Bolivarian President Hugo Chávez, together with officials from the Ministry of People’s Power for Agriculture and Lands, succeeded in reassigning the entire Hato los Tramojos to 43 peasant families, with the subsequent delivery of the title of agrarian adjudication. The families immediately began to produce food, mostly from livestock, such as cows, goats, sheep, and other animals, in addition to their livestock for family sustenance, as expressed by Carlos Bolivar, a producer with a powerful voice and receptive attitude, who lives in the region. Bolívar proudly tells us in his presentation that he is part of the Plataforma de Lucha Campesina[1], which accompanied the “A pata hacia Caracas” march. He tells us that his relationship with the Tramojos is due to the fact that his son’s family is living on the land handed over. During 7 years of work, his family supplemented his fine production of meat, milk, cheese and other items; up to 20 kg of cheese were produced daily by the family alone.
However, and regardless of the years of work, they dispossessed their dwelling, knocked it down, as well as those of the rest of the peasants who lived there; they also knocked down the corrals, dug a pit with a bulldozer and buried all their possessions, as well as knocking down the wires; all this in collusion with Prosecutor Margarita Salazar and some other judges, along with José Elías Chirimelli Hurtado, supposed Manager of the Los Tramojos Farm. Bolívar explained that at the time of the dispossession, the families were resigned, partly out of ignorance, partly out of fear, but then came the March, there were some conversations and they understood that they should undertake the struggle to recover the land from which they were deprived and dispossessed.
Landowner restoration returns
That land has never belonged to Chirimelli Hurtado, says Bolívar, who knows firsthand what happened there: I worked in Los Tramojos, a farm I helped to form. Because of a family fight, they decided to sell the herd to the company “Coromoto”, but who owned the company “Coromoto”? Giovanni Firmani, of Italian nationality, Doctor Sojo owner of the Industrial Slaughterhouse of Caracas and Mr. Ávila Santamaría. Later the Tramojos became a family inheritance of the Ávila Santamaría, who supposedly sold the herd to Chirimelli. Never in the documents does it appear that Ávila Santamaría sold to Chirimelli, what appears is a fictitious sale that Darwin Firmani, heir of Giovanni Firmani, makes to him, in the form of a simple sale, which is not registered in any agrarian register.
But since the company was unable to sustain the herd’s production, the peasants, making use of the Land and Agrarian Development Law, Article 35[2], which specifies that all citizens may report idle or non-conforming land use, proceed legally, so that the INTI subsequently initiated the autonomous rescue procedure in accordance with a precautionary insurance measure where the herd is inspected by October 2010.
Minister Loyo[3] assigned the hectares to the peasant families and gave them a letter of agrarian permanence, so that they could settle in the herd and start producing food. First they filed a complaint about the unproductiveness of the herd, then they made the necessary revisions, confirming the information that the 4875 hectares were being wasted. Then they set up a camp for 70 days, so that in the end they would issue the document. From then on, the 43 family members managed to maintain the productivity of the herd for seven consecutive years, to the point that all the settled families came to have 4780 heads of cattle, in addition to pigs, sweet and bitter cassava, chickens, goats, sheep, [and of course] the conuco that never is absent, from 3 to 4 hectares of sugar cane, beans, corn. In spite of all the production they maintained, the reasons for the forced eviction of peasant families, as well as the circumstances surrounding the transfer of the agrarian permanence document and the handing over of land rights to a private company in the hands of José Elías Chirimelli Hurtado, remain unknown.
What happened to Los Tramojos @wcastroPSUV?
Land given to peasant families in 2011 and now arbitrarily dispossessed and evicted # LosTramojosPalPuebloCampesino# Lo QueChavezNosDioN NadieNosLo Quita pic.twitter.com/XyxklJFlKL
– SOBERANIA (@LUCHA_CAMPESINA) 6 July 2019
As far as Bolívar is concerned, it has a lot to do with the fact that the president in charge of INTI has been replaced, in 2017 it was Ávila Bello, who together with the Governor of the State of Guárico are involved in the reallocation of land to private companies. This is also being done by Judge Margarita Salazar in San Juan de los Morros; All of this team took on the task of evicting the peasant families, and since we didn’t know the law, we thought -well if the Judge, if the Governor, who at that time was Mayor, José Vásquez Aranguren, If they say, what are we going to do-, because in addition they showed contempt for us, the CICPC put some of our comrades in jail because they were trespassing on their properties, “you can’t be here” they were told. They have received death threats for attempting to recover what Chávez gave them, and despite the forced eviction they suffered, they understand that they must recover their land, and so they made up their minds.
Land Reclamation Activated
On June 17, the 43 peasant families united to recover Hato Los Tramojos, with a collective action that began at 6:00 a.m.[4], and which was always suspiciously “accompanied” by the State security forces, the General Directorate of Counterintelligence (DGCIM), the Camaguán Police, and the Special Action Forces (F.A.E.S.)[5], who, far from protecting the families, attacked them. Curiously, the landowner José Elías Chirimelli Hurtado was also there. In the presence of all the peasants, the militia and the journalists who were there, “he threatened to kill me,” said Carlos Bolívar, who took advantage of the moment to formally denounce him and say that if anything happens to me, I hold him completely, absolutely responsible for saying that he was going to kill me. That same day, Jesús Osorio, of the Plataforma de Lucha Campesina, was detained by F.A.E.S. officials, and at the same time a Terra TV comrade and a communications comrade who was on the scene were stripped of their equipment and mistreated by officials.
When we spoke with Carlos Bolívar, he was with Jesús Osorio in Caracas, and with other members of the Platform of Peasant Struggle, planning the next actions that the peasant movement will carry out during the following weeks, which will allow us to continue the pressure, particularly from the symbolic level, and to ensure that the agreements reached a year ago with President Nicolás Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, and the President of the National Constituent Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, are fulfilled. While the government has suspended and failed to comply with these agreements, the onslaught in the countryside continues. The landowners continue their violent actions against the peasants, and 19 comrades have been assassinated so far this year, while the land taken over continues to be gradually evicted by state forces under the orders of judges, with the complicity of INTI.
It is not only about Los Tramojos, it is also about “El Esfuerzo” in Portuguesa, “La Victoria” in the southern part of the lake, as well as the Hato El Renacer in Barinas, said the peasant leader Jesús Osorio who added that the issue of land tenure here in Venezuela will continue to be a problem, and not just in Venezuela, in the world, but the situation here is most pathetic because after years of production, there comes this onslaught of eviction.
The economic and political measures of a State that protects life cannot be that of allowing the eviction and dispossession of land to peasant families.#LoQueChavezNosDioNosNosLoQuita pic.twitter.com/w5XpJP56Sj
– SOBERANIA (@LUCHA_CAMPESINA) 7 July 2019
We see the latter as an important element to highlight, since during the takeover being carried out at the INTI, a meeting was held with the current president of the Institution, Luis Soteldo, where it was unexpectedly proposed to reassign the 43 families of the Tramojos to the lands of Piritu Becerra[6] in the State of Guárico, which confirms, not only the dark allegiance to the fraudulent company that owns “Los Tramojos”, but also the scarce knowledge that prevails in the institutions about the great effort involved in founding a productive space and maintaining it over time. Sowing is not a magical matter of throwing seeds and watching them grow, much less raising animals, all this involves a more complex task that requires total commitment to generate the food that nourishes Venezuelan families.
We will continue anchored in the capital city waiting for the word of President Nicolás Maduro to be fulfilled. We, as good sons of Chávez and beneficiaries of a small piece of the national territory, know that we have the right and that we will be waiting there for that group of people, who should be responsible in their public functions, to fulfill the word that the President pledged. To work for 7 years on a piece of land, just so that they burn all your crops, destroy the area and then reassign you to another land without any guarantee that they are not going to do the same, is a subtle but powerful way of destroying the agrarian revolution, which Chávez built and expanded through the state.
1- The Platform of Peasant Struggle was born to unify the peasant sector, and to allow it to follow up on the petitions and demands of the sector. Plataforma de Lucha Campesina is promoted to overcome the atomization of the sectorhttp://www.albatv.org/Impulsan-Plataforma-de-Lucha.html
2.- Official Gazette No. 5.991 Extraordinary of July 29, 2010. LAND LAW AND AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT
3- Juan Carlos Loyo, served as Minister for the Popular Power of Agriculture and Lands, during the years 2010-2012 and 2013.
4- Chronicle of the eviction of Los Tramojos. By Juan José Moreno Escalona and Ketsy Medina Sifontes. http://www.albatv.org/Cronica-del-desalojo-del-rescate.html
5- Ibid
6- Inti and Plataforma de Lucha Campesina agree work agenda http://vtv.gob.ve/inti-plataforma-campesina-acuerdan-agenda-trabajo/