A Conversation with President Hugo

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In the educational field, we've opened up nearly 3,000 Bolivarian schools, which represents about 10% of the total number of schools in the country, where children learn only after having breakfast first. Before these schools [existed], kids would arrive at school without having eaten breakfast. There's not much you can learn on an empty stomach! Now they eat first and then go to classes. They have mini libraries in each classroom. They no longer have to work out of tiny individual desks, now they work at larger tables with more legroom and where they can spread out, and have some ownership of their personal space. They can pour out their creativity, receive medical attention, they have computer labs with internet access. They have theatres for dance, plays, music, sports activities. Later in the day they eat lunch there and have a snack at tea time, even if it's just a little juice and a pastry. Education is very important to me. I certainly care about the fiscal deficit, but I care about children even more.

M: It was announced recently that the land reform would cover 100,000 acres, or about 40,000 hectares...

H: ... it's very beautiful, very clean earth. Your brand new landholder can take a few kernels of corn, dig and put the seeds in a little hole, and tend it with care. A few days after the rain comes, you'll see a leaf begin to poke out, and within a few months you have a stalk. You grab it yourself, tearing off the leaves, skinning it, deseeding it, cook it up and then you have cachapa [a corn meal delicacy].

M: I'd like to hear some more about agrarian reform here. What are your plans?

H: I'd prefer to call it an agrarian revolution. For forty years they've been talking about agrarian reform, and it's done nothing but reinforce the old colonial system. First, we're putting into effect the constitutional principles to obtain a real and lasting change in the rural areas -- principles like prioritizing and taking seriously food security.

M: How many people have benefited from the land reform thus far?

H: Well so far this year we have distributed 600 thousand hectares of land through the distribution of land titles.

M: How many people more or less?

H: Okay, well out of 600 thousand hectares, more or less 2 people benefit per hectare, so we're talking about 1,200,000 people. These are people that either were landless or had little land. We're not only redistributing land, however, we're distributing over 2,000 tractors, some from China and others from Brazil, as a kind of credit from these countries to us. It's been almost 20 years since the country has upgraded its fleet of tractors -- we had tractor cemeteries where all the scrap metal and useless machines were kept. Another thing we're doing in the agricultural sector is the Zamoran Funds in honor of Ezequiel Zamora -- real flagship and model programs. Kind of like the Bolivarian schools in the educational context, this is a holistic model. In Apura state near the Colombian border, we gave out nearly 2,500 hectares of land from our Santa Rita Fund to a cooperative and we gave out nearly 800 million bolivares in credit.

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