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Weekly Report - 25 February 2010 (WR-10-08)

VENEZUELA: What role will new peasant militias play?

President Hugo Chávez unveiled a statue to the 'General of the Sovereign People', Ezequiel Zamora, in Caracas on 20 February to mark the 151st anniversary of the start of Venezuela's federal war (1859-1863). A day earlier, the new 'peasant militias' created by his government carried out their first military exercises in El Pao, in the central state of Cojedes. Zamora was assassinated here, having led an uprising against a conservative 'oligarchy' who had seized the country's most productive land in defiance of an edict by Simón Bolívar 30 years earlier. Chávez insists the new militias are needed as a frontline defence against the modern landowning oligarchy who have hired mercenaries to repress the peasants. Landowners fear they are being trained to restart what Zamora was unable to finish.

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