Here’s Someone to Watch

Well, don’t say it wasn’t expected.  Hugo Chavez is heading forward with his plans of land reform in Venezuela.  Apparently, Chavez has promised to put an end to ‘idle’ latifundios.  That is, estates of 5000 hectares (12,350 acres) that aren’t being used efficiently.  You can take your guess at what efficiently may mean.  Especially when the land in question is 6.6 million acres of private holdings.

The claim is that there is too much land in the hands of too few people.  As the government hasn’t enforced property rights in the past, there should be low expectations to see a drastic change in the future.  In one case, where the government ignored demands to remove a few squatters from private land, the number of squatters grew to several hundreds, now equipped with housing settlements and yucca crops.

The wisdom behind these acts is best summed up by Chavez’s motives to "tax farms into productivity."  Unfortunately, such wisdom is having a hard time being implemented since the government doesn’t even have a registry of land ownership.  Hey, there’s a policy that might work for a start—respect of ownership!