Thursday, October 06, 2005

A sad tale from land expropriated south of Lake Maracaibo Long article in today's El Nacional on what has happened with the land distributed by the Chávez administration three years ago in the area south of Lake Maracaibo. Verbatim translation of a couple of parts: "Ernesto Baptista works as a laborer of the "Zamoran" project located in the old La Conquista farm which was expropriated in 2001 to turn it into the first expropriation project of the Government when the Head of the Land Institute was General Wilfredo Silva. He says that currently the farm is paralyzed and that there is no production of any kind in the first agricultural project of the regime. -There is no planting of anything, why should I deny it. There is no production of anything because the Executive left us alone, without projects and without any money. Nobody here is working, because nobody ahs helped us-" "Even worse luck was that of the 450 hectares of the Angus Urdaneta producer handed over by President Chavez himself on September 8th. 2001 to 40 families of the Caiman brook and Caricaiman, in the distant population of Encontrados. All of the families have abandoned the lands given them due to the lack of support and resources" "The President of Fegalago pointed out that all of the agricultural projects implemented by the Government in Zulia have been a failure. -The facts demonstrate that the farms intervened by the Government began to suffer from a decreasing production in all of its categories, something that has little to do with what was going on when they were managed and administered by their owners-" "Martinez called on the President to come to the town of Santa Barbara and the whole axis south of the lake...-It is possible that he is being deceived by those interested in taking over and divide out among themselves Venezuelan farms with the tale of agrarian socialism-" Of course, after this roaring failure, the Government is now threatening to take over this week three of the thirty productive farms of the area. Way to go! 10:36:16 PM    comment []

A cynical double standard by the Chavez administration It wasn't that long ago that Hugo Chavez was blasting Venezuela’s telecom company CANTV, majority owned by Verizon, for "not paying the workers “what the Supreme Court had ordered in the case of workers asking to have their pensions upgraded to current salaries and threatening to apply the “acid and sword of the law” if the company failed to pay. Of course, the Supreme Court has not even told CANTV how much it has to pay the workers, let alone give them a schedule to pay. Moreover, CANTV will certainly appeal the decision. Thus, Hugo was just grandstanding, playing for “his” gallery, pretending to be the savior of the workers. Pretending to care so much for them... Unless... they are Government employees. In that case, watch out! He does not care! This was proven yesterday when one of Chavez' poster boy companies for "co-management" between the workers and the ownership, state-run aluminum company Venalum, appealed to the Supreme Court the decision by a Labor Court to make the salaries of pensioned off workers equal to those that are currently holding the positions. These workers were the same ones that helped block off the President's path when he went to Ciudad Guayana a couple of weeks ago. This awoke Chavez’ ire leading to his infamous statement that nobody should aspire to be rich. Thus, in contrast with the CANTV case, in this case, it is the State that does not want to help the workers, but you don't hear Chavez talking about it or threatening the company, or ordering the CEO to pay the workers, after all he happens to be the boss of the CEO of Venalum. I guess if they work for the state, they want to get rich, but if they work for the private sector, they deserve what they are owed. What a cynical double standard! 8:10:14 PM    comment []