Murder of Small Farmer Rights Organizer Sparks Protests in Yaracuy, Venezuela

[IndianaGreen]

Murder of Small Farmer Rights Organizer Sparks Protests in Yaracuy, Venezuela

February 20th 2009, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, February 20th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -- Small farmer rights groups plan to march across the city of San Felipe in Venezuela’s Yaracuy state this Saturday to demand that the hired assassins of Nelson López, a small farmer rights organizer, be brought to justice.

López, who was shot fifteen times in the back last Thursday, is the 213th small farmer (campesino) to be murdered since 2001, the year the government of President Hugo Chávez passed a sweeping land reform law which set the conditions for re-distribution of idle sections of large estates to small farmers, according to the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmers’ Front (FNCEZ), one of the groups convoking Saturday’s marches.

According to Braulio Álvarez, a National Assembly deputy and farmer rights organizer from Yaracuy state, the directors of the National Cattle Ranchers Association and the National Federation of Cattle Ranchers (FEDENAGAS), along with two powerful landowners, were responsible for planning López’s murder.

“How much longer will the murder of small farmers at the hands of Colombian paramilitaries and hired assassins, financed by large estate owners and FEDENAGAS, remain in impunity?” Álvarez asked during a town hall meeting organized by the Unified Regional Agrarian Command (CRAU) in Yaracuy on Thursday.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4235

[Judi Lynn]

1. He's the 213th since 2001. Progress is painful in Venezuela, isn't it?

It was painful when the country was invaded by the Spanish, painful when they seized the land and enslaved the citizens. Eduardo Galeano said in Open Veins of Latin America, (Venas Abiertas de América Latina) that they treated their captive workers so poorly they sometimes buried them in the dirt up to their necks to punish them for their mistakes. These would be the ones they didn't have murdered for one reason or another.

He has written that the landowners have been absolute hell on the workers.

What a shame justice hasn't fallen on these clowns like a ton of bricks yet.

Thanks for posting this new information. Clearly it's a reminder to those of us who want and need to find out more to do some homework on this. We're not going to hear what we need to know otherwise, thanks to our corporate media.

We need to find out more about the paramilitaries they hire, too. Looks like dragging the death squad criminals over from Colombia to assist them against Venezuelan people is fairly routine, doesn't it?

[Peace Patriot]

2. Yes, that jumped out at me, too--the Colombian paramilary death squads who can just

slip back over the border and evade capture and prosecution, protected by the narco-fascists running Colombia, on whom the U.S. (Bushwhacks) have larded $6 BILLION of our hard-earned tax dollars in military aid, some of which no doubt goes to the paramilitaries, who have very close ties in the highest levels of the Colombian government and military. What a nasty set-up!

You just have to tear your hair out and beat your chest when Bushwhacks spout their Big Lie that Chavez, or Rafael Correa, are "terrorist-lovers"--and die a little inside when our own new president repeated this stupid, uninformed lie, in January, on a Spanish-language corpo/fascist TV broadcast. Who are the terrorists in South America?! You don't see Chavista death squads running around murdering people they don't agree with! Obama's State Dept. has since toned things way down, and was actually civil, diplomatic and TRUTHFUL in its most recent statements (regarding the Venezuelan referendum). At least we can now hope that our government is proceeding on the basis of facts and truth, and seems to be off this insane path of demonizing democratic governments, and, in Orwellian fashion, lauding the fascist thugs running Colombia as exemplars of democratic virtue.