Posted on 01/08/2005 1:16:17 PM PST by Kitten Festival
08.01.05 | Various sources report that El Charcote ranch, owned by British Vestey group, was seized this morning by Venezuelan authorities and the army. This is the first illegal seizure that the Chavez regime conducts against private property owned by foreign groups. With this precedent, will anyone be intrepid enough to invest in Venezuela?
(Excerpt) Read more at vcrisis.com ...
Mugabe's new holiday hacienda?
If Maggie Thatcher was the British PM, they'd have never done it. Blair needs to remind these clymers what happened in the Falkland Islands and suggest they reconsider the seizure.
Now that we have it Ollie what do we do with it. Don't know laurel??
I wonder if Jimmy Carter would care to comment. I seem to remember him supporting this regime.
Oh, Senor!?!? Comprende Malvinas?
This is from the site. Another Zimbabwe and we're in at the beginning. What will the British Government do, I wonder.
We'll soon see what size *cajones*, Blair&Co have. This'll get interesting, fast.
December 23, 2004 — By Pascal Fletcher, Reuters CARACAS, Venezuela — A cattle ranch in Venezuela owned by one of Britain's richest families may become a test case in President Hugo Chavez's crusade to redistribute land to the poor as part of his leftist revolution.
El Charcote, a 32,000-acre cattle ranch in Cojedes state that belongs to the British Vestey Group, was one of several private country estates earmarked for "intervention" this month by pro-Chavez state Gov. Jhonny Yanez.
Yanez's decree followed orders from Chavez for local governors and military commanders to apply a 2001 land law that gives the government the power to take over and redistribute privately owned estates judged to be idle or unproductive.
Authorities in Cojedes said the recent decree did not mean instant expropriation, but rather a formal investigation to see whether owners had legal title or were using lands properly.
Other state governors meeting in Cojedes on Wednesday said they would also seek to enforce the land reform.
Private farmers say the president's publicly declared war against "latifundios" -- as huge rural estates in Latin America are known -- could threaten property rights and frighten off foreign investors in oil-rich Venezuela.
"Anyone with a 'latifundio' is like someone with a stolen car, even if he's bought it," Chavez, who won a referendum on his presidency in August, told state governors recently. Chavez has increasingly complained the application of the 2001 land law is too slow and called for it to be speeded up.
The populist president, who is reviled by critics as a Communist-inspired autocrat and praised by supporters as a champion of the poor, says many rural estates are left idle by absentee owners while landless peasants live in poverty.
A Bombshell
For Agroflora, the Vestey subsidiary that operates the El Charcote property and a dozen other big ranches in Venezuela, the Cojedes decree was a bombshell.
The Vesteys, one of Britain's wealthiest business dynasties whose members rub shoulders with the royal family, have operated in Venezuela since the last century, raising cattle on the country's lush tropical plains.
"We are the country's best beef producers. Vesteys has been in Venezuela for 100 years and we want to be here for 100 years more," Agroflora President Diana Dos Santos said.
Company lawyers were studying the Cojedes decree, which targets several local properties -- including an internationally famous eco-tourism ranch, Hato Pinero.
Farmers and diplomats are at a loss to explain why Chavez's government, which says it welcomes foreign capital, should want to tamper with one of the biggest overseas investors in the badly underdeveloped farming sector.
The decree followed a 4-year-old invasion of much of El Charcote's lands by hundreds of poor squatters. Britain has repeatedly asked Chavez's administration to resolve this problem, a request that has fallen on deaf ears so far.
"The invasion has been an issue on the bilateral agenda between the two governments. The British government is sure to follow the latest developments very closely," a British diplomat in Caracas told Reuters.
The "English Company," as Vestey is known locally, is a big regional employer.
But Yanez, the state governor, defended the move toward redistributing the land to the needy and using it for food production and a new sugar mill.
He said it was inspired by Ezequiel Zamora, a crusading 19th century Venezuelan federalist general -- often quoted by Chavez -- who led his men against rich landowners with the cry "Oligarchs tremble ... Free land and free men!"
Source: Reuters
The Chavez regime should be removed from power by any means necessary.
What are you talking about?
I don't like the news, but Blair has as much to do with this as Bush does, which is nothing. Venezuela is not now, and has never been (so far as I am aware) British territory. When the Argentines made their move on The Falklands, the people on those islands had been using stamps with little pictures of the Queen on all their mail and paying for them with pounds (which also have pictures of the Queen on them), and before that they had other pictures of British monarchs. They are British territory, and the people who live there are (happily) British subjects. They were invaded by a foreign army.
ML/NJ
What does a neofascist thug do when in dire times with the FARC? He seizes a British farm to deviate international attention, of course. Who would one piss off preferably, an English Lord or a group of Colombian assassins?
The expropriation of property owned by the British in a foreign country should be met with swift retribution. Had we done the same when the oil fields were nationalized in Mexico, the country wouldn't be the Third World sh*thole that it is today. Britain, to protect the welfare of its citizenry, has grounds to send troops to Venezuela. If the Chavez regime happens to fall in the process, so be it.
Before I get flamed re: Mexico comment, please note that I've lived there for several years in the past. Although there are positives, including many of the people, the country is indeed a Third World sh*thole.
Besides the same thing goes on in Mexico to Americans who were foolish enough to build or invest there. You won't see Vicente Fox compensating those Americans who were evicted and had their homes stolen from them by that government --- under Fox's rule too.
At the very least, Blair should freeze all Venezuelan government assets in the U.K.
"... remind these clymers what happened in the Falkland Islands and suggest they reconsider the seizure."
That's what I was thinking.
You don't mess with the SAS. They shoot first and ask questions later.
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