[Cincinatus' Wife]

U.S., Europe work on Latin crises - First on Otto Reich’s agenda – Venezuela ***Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio spent ''quite a long time'' discussing Latin America and possible areas of U.S.-European cooperation, Palacio told me in a telephone interview from Washington.

And the Bush administration is sending its special ambassador to Latin America, Otto J. Reich, to Spain, Italy and France next week to discuss the region's hottest crises, as well as lingering financial troubles in Brazil and Argentina, White House officials and Palacio told me.

Among the people who have been asked to meet with Reich is French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, the diplomat whose public criticism of the Iraq war so exasperated the White House. Others will be Spanish Ibero-American Cooperation Minister Miguel Angel Cortes and Italian and Vatican officials.

The most pressing issue on Reich's agenda will be Venezuela, U.S. officials say.

The administration fears that Venezuela's populist leftist President Hugo Chávez will renege on an internationally brokered agreement to convene a national referendum on the duration of his term, and that he will provoke a violent clash with the opposition in order to suspend constitutional guarantees and radicalize his ``Bolivarian revolution.''

''He is trying to create an incident where he can call out the military and say that democracy has been threatened,'' a U.S. official says. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Land War Stirs in Venezuela's Farming Heartland*** In Barinas in the rolling Los Llanos plains, ranchers say they are fighting against the political tide. The president was born there and his father is state governor.

They say at least 94 farms have been invaded by squatters, some with quasi-legal documents from the government; others with no paperwork. At three farms visited by Reuters, rural workers on the land had no deeds from the state or said they were waiting for one.

At Hato Viejo, farm administrators say peasants have forced them to abandon some pasture land and have starved cattle to death. But peasant cooperative leaders deny they are to blame and counter they have been threatened.

At the nearby La Batalla farm, where employees busily process milk into cheese, three men have taken over a small plot in a clutch of trees. Farmers say appeals to regional authorities that the land is in use have gone unheeded.

For some peasants, though, necessity takes precedence over law. A few yards from a desolate roadway that weaves through Barinas, Jose de la Rosa Lugo has taken over a plot of land near his shack to sow maize.

The leather-skinned 70-year-old appears to have little time for legal squabbles or politics forged in the distant capital.

"These people have so much land and they don't want to let people work," he said. "Everyone has to have a piece."