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-- Venezuela’s battle for food sovereignty Sunday, May 22, 2011 By Federico Fuentes <http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/670>, Caracas <http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/2499> When I asked Alfredo, a dairy farmer and president of the Prolesa milk processing co-operative in Tachira state, what food sovereignty meant to him, he said: “Food sovereignty is not only about being able to produce enough food to feed ourselves, it also means getting to a point where we can export food to other countries. “There’s a global food crisis, and each day more and more people are going hungry. As Venezuelan *campesinos<.em> [peasants] we need to realise that we have an obligation to the people of the world.”* This sentiment was shared by many of the campesinos I met during a recent three-week visit, together with a small delegation from the Venezuela Food Sovereignty project, to rural communities.......read rest at http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47647 Venezuela: Rural killers enjoy impunity Sunday, May 22, 2011 By Federico Fuentes <http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/670> Having arrived back in Caracas after more than two weeks visiting various rural communities, leaders from the National Campesino Front Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ) told us that the bodies of two of their comrades, missing since April 12, had been found. Jose Joel Torres Leves and Agustin Gamboa Duran were leading land reform activists in the Comunal City Antonio Jose de Sucre, in Barinas state. On April 12, they were kidnapped by a group of heavily armed men wearing balaclavas who raided their family home. The thugs beat and tortured other male members of the extended family present, then tied them up and covered them over with black plastic. They warned the family that if anyone informed the authorities about their ordeal, they would be back to kill them all. Two days later, the bodies of Torres Leves and Gamboa Duran were found on the outskirts of the city, 17 kilometres from their home and with execution-style bullet wounds in their skulls. Their bodies were brutally disfigured almost beyond recognition. Such stories are a cruel feature of the life and death struggle in Venezuela’s countryside, as rich large landowners fight to hold onto their power and privileges in the face of government-promoted land reform to the benefit of poor farmers......read rest at http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47646 -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
