Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 10 No. 2, April 2010, pp. 251–272.

Can the State Create Campesinos?

A Comparative Analysis of the Venezuelan
and Cuban Repeasantization Programmes

TIFFANY LINTON PAGE

I examine Venezuela’s repeasantization programme Vuelta al Campo, which

was part of a larger effort to pursue a redistributive path to development.
Through exploring this case and contrasting it with Cuba’s repeasantization
programme in the 1990s, I draw conclusions that extend our understanding
of what makes such a state-led development programme work. The state in
Venezuela played an indispensable role by providing many forms of necessary
support for launching such an ambitious project – e.g. financial resources and
legal title to the land – but failed to truly increase participation in decision-
making. Increased participation by those affected by the Vuelta al Campo
programme could have prevented or minimized some of the problems that arose.
Moreover, the programme had the unintended consequence of demobilizing
participants who had previously been politically engaged. This demobilization
undermined the larger national social project – building ‘21st-century
socialism’._JOAC 251..272

Keywords: repeasantization, development, state, socialism, Venezuela

INTRODUCTION
In Latin America, the rural population as a percentage of the total population has
been decreasing (CEPAL 2001, 41–6). Urban areas in Latin America have been
unable to economically absorb all the migrants from rural areas and, consequently,
shantytowns have grown around the city core. This is the case in Venezuela where,
as of 2007, 93 per cent of the population lived in urban areas (World Bank 2008,
1). Countries have become more dependent on food imports as the size of the rural
population has decreased. Many countries in the Global South increasingly find
themselves confronting issues such as the inaccessibility of affordable food, high
levels of unemployment and economic instability resulting in part from limited
economic diversification.The agricultural sector in Venezuela constitutes only 5 per

Tiffany Linton Page, Department of Sociology, University of California Berkeley, 410 Barrows Hall,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1980, USA. e-mail: paget@berkeley.edu
I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance I received from the Andrew W. Mellon
Fellowship in Latin American Sociology, a research expense grant from the Department of Sociology
at University of California, Berkeley and the Tinker Grant from the Center for Latin American
Studies at U.C. Berkeley. I would like to thank Laura Enríquez and the anonymous reviewers of the
Journal of Agrarian Change for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. I also want to thank the
farmers and government employees in Anzoateguí who provided me with support and gave of their
time and knowledge to participate in this study.

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252 Tiffany Linton Page

cent of GDP and the country imports 60 per cent of its food (IFAD 2006, 1).With
fluctuating food prices on the international market, the ability to import sufficient
food to feed the population can, at times, be compromised. This is particularly true
when a country is dependent on a single export commodity, for if the price of that
commodity falls, they will lack the necessary foreign exchange to import the food
they need.
In order to meet domestic demand for food, governments have sometimes
increased the number of people working in agriculture through repeasantization
programmes. These types of programmes have often been carried out by socialist
governments and in times of economic crisis when access to imported food was
limited. Programmes to create small farmers confront a number of challenges.
Urbanization has been considered part of modernization and rural areas are often
regarded as backward. Repeasantization requires a shift in people’s thinking and the
way society values agricultural work. It means both a lifestyle change from the
fast-paced activity of dense urban areas to the more tranquil rural areas, and leaving
behind the community you are part of to build a community from scratch.
Participants must quickly acquire the knowledge that farmers acquire over a lifetime.
In 2001, the Chávez government in Venezuela began promoting a rural devel-
opment plan to expand the agricultural sector, with the objectives of diversifying
the economy, generating employment, redistributing the population geographically
and achieving food self-sufficiency. One of the programmes developed to further
these goals was Vuelta al Campo (VAC), or a Return to the Countryside. It was a
voluntary programme in which urban dwellers could relocate to rural areas with
state support, to establish farming operations. During the period from 2002 to 2005,
57 farms were created across 20 states. Fourteen of these farms were part of the VAC
programme and nine states were home to a VAC farm (INTI 2006, 1–2).While VAC
was not the most important project within the larger agricultural programme (as
measured by the number of farms created through it relative to other programmes1),
the concept VAC represents – a return to the countryside – is fundamental to the
new vision for the agricultural sector (Kott and Felson 2009, 3).
The repeasantization plan in Venezuela is part of a larger effort to expand the role
of the state in the national development project and to pursue a redistributive path
to development. It rejects many of the tenets of the neoliberal model, which
promotes a limited role for the state and a ‘trickle down’ path to redistribution.
Examination of this alternative model seems fruitful considering the neoliberal
model has proven to increase poverty and inequality (Vilas 1996, 1; Wilpert 2007,
107). At the same time, there is research to suggest that large-scale, centrally planned
projects tend to fail (Scott 1998, 4–6; Ferguson 1994, 254–76). What roles can the
state play to facilitate a long-term demographic shift of the population to rural
areas? The Venezuelan case speaks to the possibilities and limitations of an active

1
More of the newly created farms are occupied by cooperatives formed through Misión Vuelvan
Caras, a job-training programme, and many of these cooperatives have some members who are new
to farming. These cooperatives and farms, however, differ in a number of ways from the VAC farms
and consequently are not included in the analysis presented here. The government institution
responsible for these farms differs from the VAC farms; they have access to different pots of money;
the cooperatives generally include both farmers and people new to farming; and these cooperatives
usually establish farms in the state where participants were already living.

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 253

state in pursuit of a redistributive path to development in today’s highly integrated

global economy. The government’s control of the country’s oil revenue provided it
with the financial means to play an active role in development and its socialist-
inspired ideology meant that the government saw an active role for the state as key.
By exploring this case, we can glean some valuable lessons that extend our under-
standing of the processes at work in state-led development programmes. The
empirical evidence I present is from three months of fieldwork in the state of
Anzoateguí, including observations and material from in-depth qualitative
interviews.2

THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN DEVELOPMENT

After nearly three decades of neoliberalism dominating mainstream development
thinking, people, particularly in the Global South, are questioning this model and
trying alternative development models. This has occurred in Venezuela where the
two political parties that alternated power for nearly four decades (1958–1994) lost
legitimacy. Poverty and inequality increased during the years of structural adjust-
ment;3 social, economic and political exclusion came to be seen as permanent
features of Venezuelan society for the poor majority.
Hugo Chávez emerged in the 1990s and gave people hope that he could bring
real change to the political system. When he was elected President in 1998, state
policy took a sharp turn, ushering in a redistributive path to development with the
idea of expanding popular participation. The state initiated a number of redistribu-
tive measures, including the passage of the Ley de Tierras y Desarrollo Agrario (The
Law of Land and Agrarian Development) in 2001. This law provided the legal
framework to carry out land redistribution.
Venezuela was characterized by a highly unequal distribution of land,4 agricul-
tural production was low, and un- and under-employment was high. In promoting
the transformation of the agricultural sector, the Chávez government sought to
expand domestic food production, create jobs, raise living standards, and redistribute
resources to small farmers or people interested in becoming farmers. In the first
years of agrarian reform, state-owned land was redistributed. It was not until 2005
that the state began expropriating privately owned land. Around this time, Chávez
announced that Venezuela was going to build ‘21st-century socialism’. Although this
came about four years after the Land Law was first introduced, the government had
already been promoting redistribution, collective property rights, collective forms of
production, and an emphasis on production to meet basic needs.When the national
development project became explicitly ‘socialist’, the government continued to

2
This research was carried out at the end of 2007 and was part of a larger study on the agrarian
reform.
3
The percentage of people living in poverty increased from 32.2 per cent in 1991 to 48.5 per cent
in 2000, while the rate of extreme poverty increased from 11.8 per cent to 23.5 per cent (World
Bank 2006, 1). The richest 20 per cent of Venezuelans earned 53 per cent of total income, while
the poorest 20 per cent earned 3 per cent of the country’s total income (World Bank 2004, 1).
4
Prior to the land reform that began under Chávez, 75.2 per cent of landholders owned farms of
less than 20 hectares, which constituted 5.7 per cent of total land, while 1 per cent of landholders
owned farms of 1,000 hectares or more, which constituted 46.5 per cent of the land (Delahaye
2004, 17).

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254 Tiffany Linton Page

socialize agriculture, primarily through efforts to encourage a shift in thinking from

individualism to a collective mentality (INTI 2007, 1–2). A socialist development
path affords a significant role to the state.5
A number of scholars have argued that the state has an important role to play in
development (Evans 1997, 82–7; Ó Riain 2000, 20–1; Weiss 1997, 3–4). States can
play a useful role in planning, overseeing and/or participating in production and
distribution to make sure social needs are met, public goods provided and balanced
economic growth occurs. However, states also can, and often do, act in ways that
reproduce inequality. Social groups with more economic power tend to wield more
political power. Socialist projects aim to address this tendency by redistributing
political and economic power. In transitions to socialism, although the idea is for
organized popular sectors to play a key role in defining and implementing the new
political vision, the state can end up dominating the process. One rationale that
governments use is that popular sectors are unorganized and tend to lack many of
the necessary skills for constructing the new society (Fagen 1986, 260). Some
governments may then pursue, what Scott (1998, 4) calls, ‘high modernist’ devel-
opment schemes.
Scott (1998, 4) describes ‘high modernism’ as an ideology that optimistically
believes a government can comprehensively plan settlement patterns and produc-
tion. When such grand plans for development did not work, Scott argues that
governments shifted to ‘miniaturization: the creation of a more easily controlled
micro-order in model cities, model villages, and model farms’ (1998, 4). High
modernism, Scott posits, was not associated with any particular political bent, but
rather with ‘those who wanted to use state power to bring about huge, utopian
changes in people’s work habits, living patterns, moral conduct, and worldview’
(1998, 5). Scott (1998, 223–61) examines a number of high modernist schemes,
including compulsory villagization of people living in rural areas in Tanzania in the
late 1960s and into the 1970s. He argues that the movement of people into planned
settlements often results in the destruction of prior communities. The new com-
munities must start from scratch at building cohesion and the ability to act
collectively.
Instead of the unrepeatable variety of settlements closely adjusted to local
ecology and subsistence routines and instead of the constantly changing local
response to shifts in demography, climate and markets, the state would have
created thin, generic villages that were uniform in everything from political
structure and social stratification to cropping techniques. The number of
variables at play would be minimized. In their perfect legibility and sameness,
these villages would be ideal, substitutable bricks in an edifice of state plan-
ning. Whether they would function was another matter. (Scott 1998, 255)

5
Socialism involves production and distribution to meet basic needs, ending privileged access to
goods and increasing popular participation in decision-making (Fagen et al. 1986, 10). Socialist
development paths tend to have an active role for the state.The state, generally, redistributes land and
other resources, provides free or low-cost social services and encourages its supporters – mainly the
relatively unorganized poor majority – to get organized. The state may promote the formation of
production cooperatives and establish new institutional structures within the state to facilitate greater
popular participation.

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 255

Scott (1998, 345–6) explains that planned communities tend to fail because the state
standardizes citizens, or sees them in the abstract without any context. He suggests
that this is not a mistake, but rather a necessary simplification in large-scale
planning. He argues, ‘What is perhaps most striking about high-modernist schemes,
despite their quite genuine egalitarian and often socialist impulses, is how little
confidence they repose in the skills, intelligence, and experience of ordinary people’
(Scott 1998, 346). This is a top-down approach to development, in which the state
fails to recognize the attributes and initiative of the intended beneficiaries of their
projects.
Ferguson (1994, 255–6) notes that although centrally planned development
projects may fail to achieve their objectives in the long term, they tend to have
unintended consequences, such as the expansion of state power and the depoliti-
cization of the populace. Every ‘problem’ identified can become a point of entry for
new state programmes.The state, he argues, tends to turn development and poverty
into a technical problem, thereby depoliticizing these issues.
The Venezuelan government under Chávez took a dominant role in the
national development project. VAC, as well as other programmes in the agricul-
tural sector, aimed to create model farms, not unlike what Scott describes. The
government’s vision involved changing people’s work habits – encouraging
people to work harder and collectively – and changing their living patterns –
creating new communities in the countryside. Changing moral conduct and
worldview were central in the government’s rhetoric as it encouraged citizens to
shift their thinking from a capitalist mentality to a socialist mentality. While VAC
was a voluntary programme, in contrast to the Tanzanian villagization project,
participants also ended up leaving behind their communities to move to an unfa-
miliar place to build a new life and community. Moreover, the Venezuelan gov-
ernment had a relatively standardized plan of what these farms and ultimately
villages would look like, regardless of the locale in which they were situated or
the individuals involved. VAC participants arrived on the farms with no local
know-how because they were coming with little-to-no agricultural knowledge
and were not familiar with the region of the country where they had moved.
The government’s plan was to play a formative role in shaping the thinking of
participants as it trained them in agro-ecological farming and a collective pro-
duction model.
Similar to what Ferguson (1994) describes for Lesotho, the expansion of state
power has occurred in the countryside in Venezuela. New roads were built into
areas of the country that were previously rarely visited due to the difficulties of
navigating the dirt roads. Employees of the government visited existing com-
munities in the areas around the new farms and collected information on the
people who lived there, opening the way for the entrance of other government
programmes into these communities. Yet in contrast to the depoliticization of
poverty and development described by Ferguson (1994), the Venezuelan govern-
ment politicized these issues. It views the mobilization of its supporters as key
to the process of realizing the larger, social project of building ‘21st-century
socialism’. However, the task of establishing new farms in relatively isolated parts
of the country effectively demobilized the formerly highly mobilized VAC
participants.

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256 Tiffany Linton Page

REPEASANTIZATION
Repeasantization is a phenomenon that, in most cases, is state-led and part of a
larger project to reconfigure society and the economy. In the context of a transition
to socialism, there are two fundamental elements in repeasantization programmes:
(a) training people in agricultural production and (b) shifting to a socialist produc-
tion model. The first part involves building the skills and knowledge of the people
who will be, for the most part, new to agriculture. Repeasantization at the begin-
ning of a transition to socialism also involves shifting participant’s thinking from
being a wageworker to working and managing farm operations as part of a
collective. Both require on-going training. Moreover, the government must build
the infrastructure that makes settlement in rural areas attractive. Even if people were
previously living in shantytowns, they are giving up certain amenities by moving to
rural areas. They must feel that their standard of living and quality of life will
improve. Although different in important respects from the Venezuelan case, the
relatively successful repeasantization programme in Cuba in the 1990s illuminates
some of the factors that determine degree of success.
Cuba underwent two earlier agrarian reforms before the agrarian reform of
the 1990s, the first in 1959 and the second in 1963. These first two agrarian
reforms ‘inserted agricultural production in the socialist development project of
Cuba’ (Pérez et al. 1999, 144). In the 1960s, the government expropriated the
farms of large landowners and turned them into state farms. In addition to the
state sector, there existed a private sector composed of smaller farms, which was
composed of agrarian reform beneficiaries and historic small farmers. In 1975, the
Communist Party and the Asociación Nacional de Agricultores Pequeños
(ANAP), the organization of small farmers, decided to move in the direction of
cooperatization. Private producers were encouraged to voluntarily form a coop-
erative with other individual producers, collectivizing their land and the output
produced. The process of cooperatization was viewed as a long-term process,
based on farmers coming to see the advantages of cooperative organization. ‘One
of the principal obstacles for its implementation was rooted in the inexistence of
a cooperative culture in the country’ (Pérez et al. 1999, 146). To encourage coop-
eratization and ensure the economic viability of the cooperatives, ANAP provided
material incentives, including compensation for the value of the land turned over
to the cooperative, the right to retire, credit on preferential terms and the pos-
sibility of constructing houses (Pérez et al. 1999, 146). Cooperative production
was well established when the agrarian reform of the 1990s – of which repeas-
antization was a part – began.
In the 1990s, cooperative production was further expanded with the transfor-
mation of the state farms into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs),
which were modelled on the cooperatives established earlier (Powell 2004, 9). The
state decentralized management to increase participation in production decision-
making and, as a result, UBPC members felt more empowered (Deere 1998, 80). In
1992, the government began allowing workers on the state farms to have a small
parcel of their own to farm for family consumption. By 1998, the number of
parceleros had increased by 80 per cent (Valdés Paz 2000, 111). ‘This increase of
parceleros, although it strengthened the forms of smallholder exploitation, permitted

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 257

a better use of land and the reincorporation of the urban or semi-urban sector of
the workforce’ (2000, 111).
The primary reason for launching the repeasantization programme, which began
in 1990 in Cuba, was a labour shortage in the agricultural sector. This had been a
problem since the beginning of the revolution. It worsened in the 1990s with the
fall of COMECON, the Soviet-led trade bloc, when the government no longer
had easy access to fuel and other inputs needed for mechanized agriculture. The
government created both a short-term and a two-year agricultural work pro-
gramme. ‘In order to ensure that urban workers, indeed, volunteer, major invest-
ments were made throughout Havana province in new and attractive camps, which
offer[ed] quite decent accommodation’ (Deere 1998, 69). The economic hardship
during this time further encouraged individuals to move from non-agricultural
work to agricultural work.The latter had the additional benefit of providing people
with food, which they might not otherwise have had (Enríquez 2003, 208–9). The
relatively attractive nature of the agricultural sector in the context of the economic
crisis can be seen in Sáez’s (2003, 19–20) description of an agricultural cooperative
that turned away applicants for membership because the cooperative could not
incorporate all of them. During these hard economic times, small farmers were
doing relatively well economically.
Although there were efforts to increase permanent housing in the countryside,
there were shortages in building materials due to the economic crisis, which limited
the number of houses constructed. Consequently, upon completion of their two-
year contract, some people decided not to continue working in agriculture due to
the lack of permanent housing in the countryside (Deere 1998, 70). Enríquez
(forthcoming), however, found that a number of people who participated in the
temporary agricultural work programme decided to stay in agriculture. Not only
did the state create ‘the material and legal conditions for peasantization, it also
engaged in an effort to politically valorize small farming’ (Enríquez forthcoming,
222). The small farmers were viewed as key economic actors in the national
development project. ‘The urgency of the National Food Programme brought
attention to the important role of individual producers in guaranteeing the food
supply for the country’ (Pérez et al. 1999, 148).
There are a number of differences between the Venezuelan and Cuban cases.
First, they differ in terms of the timing of the repeasantization programme in
relation to the transition to socialism. Cuba had been socialist for some time
preceding the repeasantization programme, in contrast to Venezuela, which intro-
duced its repeasantization programme early on in its transition to a more redis-
tributive development model.This meant that the government had the challenge of
simultaneously training people to become farmers and encouraging a shift in
thinking to embrace a socialist-inspired model. In Venezuela, many of the people
who became involved in agriculture under the current government were not only
moving from working in urban areas, in other sectors of the economy, to working
in agriculture, but also moving from wage-work to collective production and
management via participation in cooperatives. A significant amount of training and
ongoing support was necessary to facilitate this transition to a collective produc-
tion model. Piñeiro (2007, 18) found that the development of solidarity among
cooperative members in new, non-agricultural cooperatives in Venezuela was

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258 Tiffany Linton Page

undermined by internal conflicts that resulted mainly from inexperience in admin-

istration, and which were magnified by lack of collective supervisory mechanisms.
As Pérez et al. (1999) point out in their discussion of the Cuban case, when
cooperativization was first introduced in the 1970s it was seen as a long-term
process because a cooperative culture did not exist. By the time repeasantization was
introduced in Cuba, cooperative production was well established.
Secondly, the Venezuelan government was not resource-constrained in the way
Cuba was because the price of oil was extremely high during the first four years of
the VAC programme.6 Moreover, Venezuela was not subject to a trade embargo as
Cuba was; it did not face the possibility of widespread hunger from insufficient
access to food. There was not a pressing need to expand agricultural production
because the government had foreign exchange from high oil prices and the ability
to purchase food abroad. This affected people’s perceptions of the need for repeas-
antization and their desire to work in such an arduous profession. And, finally, the
rural population in Cuba had ‘basic access to schools, housing, and healthcare’ (Sáez
2003, 37) in contrast to the Venezuelan countryside, which was lacking basic
infrastructure. In sum, the incentives for participating in the repeasantization pro-
gramme were fewer in the Venezuelan case and the challenges more numerous.

THE VUELTA AL CAMPO PROGRAMME IN VENEZUELA7

At the end of 2007, there were five VAC farms in the state of Anzoateguí.8,9
Participants arrived on the land at different times between 2003 and 2006. The
farms were located in fairly isolated areas. Participants faced challenges both on a
social level and on a technical farming level. I present interview and ethnographic
data that explore the Catch-22 in infrastructure construction that participants and
the government found themselves in and the social and cultural shift required in
making this life change. I examine the degree of community that existed among
VAC participants prior to relocating to rural areas, the impact on participants of the
relative isolation on the new farms, the process of learning to work collectively and
starting a business, and the challenge presented by oil. On the technical side, I
examine the problems around the participant training programmes, the environ-
mental challenges, and the lack of familiarity with the local environmental

6
In 2003, the average price of crude oil was US$27 per barrel. Over the next four and a half years
the price skyrocketed, hitting US$126 in June and July of 2008. Although 2008 had, on average, the
highest price of oil yet, the price fell significantly in the second half of the year to $33 in December
(Illinois Oil and Gas Association: http://www.ioga.com/Special/crudeoil_Hist.htm).
7
I use pseudonyms for all interview subjects and farms throughout.
8
One of these farms was not technically classified as VAC, but, like the VAC, was composed of
people from urban areas, who had never farmed before. The only difference that resulted from its
non-VAC classification that I could surmise was that INTI was not in charge of managing it;
consequently, more of its funding came from other government institutions.
9
Not all states had VAC farms, as it is one of many programmes that exist in the agricultural sector.
The other state where I did extensive fieldwork (Yaracuy) did not have them, most likely because
it was an agricultural state that already had a number of people who wanted to farm. However, I
visited a VAC farm in another state (Lara) that was experiencing the same problems that the VAC
farms in Anzoateguí faced. I also interviewed a government employee who worked in the National
Land Institute’s headquarters in Caracas and he acknowledged that VAC farms throughout the
country were facing similar problems.

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 259

conditions (such as rainfall and temperature patterns). I end with an examination of

participant responses to these challenges.

Infrastructure
The government sent participants to the land before construction of infrastructure
began. None of the farms had houses, a well, or electricity when the first participants
arrived. Three of the VAC farms did not have a school nearby for the children to
attend. As a result, many participants left their families in the cities. By the end of
2007, the government had built some infrastructure on some of the farms.The farm
that was founded first had houses, electricity, a well, a classroom, an irrigation system,
tractor and a chicken coop.All the other farms lacked houses; some already had access
to electricity; one had a well. Many more infrastructure projects were planned.
Juan and his cooperative were on a farm with minimal infrastructure and had
been there for two and a half years. I asked if they began farming right away and
he responded,
No, we didn’t begin to work the land. We were getting to know the farm
because the problem was that of machinery, that we began to buy it [the
machinery]. This took a lot of time because they brought it from Brazil and
in this we lost a lot of time. It continues to take time . . . We thought that a
truck would be bought tomorrow, that they were going to deliver it at once
in order to begin work. But it is not like that. There is a lot of competition.
They are forming a lot of fundos zamoranos [new farms]. To some they [the
vehicles] arrive, to others no.You need to wait until they send it to you from
Brazil. In order to get one of these trucks that they give you, you have to wait
three or four months. (Personal interview, 24 November 2007)10
Participants waited for months for the necessary equipment and infrastructure to
begin farming activities. Living in a remote area without transportation made it
difficult to establish farming operations and integrate into nearby communities.
Since initially the farms lacked infrastructure, only a few members of the
cooperatives decided to go to the farms when the government informed them that
it was available. They built makeshift structures so that they had a shelter to sleep
under and a place to cook. Many cooperative members who decided to go
temporarily left behind their children and partners in the city with the intention of
bringing their family once the infrastructure was constructed. Juan said,
For me the most difficult is to have my family in Caracas, to leave them
there . . . It is not that I left them, abandoned them. Rather it is I can’t bring
them because in reality there aren’t conditions here [adequate enough] in
order to bring them. There is no school nearby. We still don’t have houses.
Because, yes, I would be delighted with a life here working, producing, and
with my family. This is one of the most difficult parts. But we are moving
forward. (Personal interview)

10
Although I visited these farms multiple times and spoke informally with participants during these
visits, for logistical reasons I carried out most of the formal interviews on 24 November 2007. Unless
otherwise stated, subsequent references to personal interviews were carried out on this date as well.

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260 Tiffany Linton Page

He went on to say, ‘When one goes to war, one doesn’t bring one’s family.This, for
us, is like a war, a beautiful war. Pretty. We don’t come here to shoot anybody.
This is a commitment so the family waits for you there.When everything is in good
condition, they will come here, for the war ended.’ Jorge, on Fundo Gato, echoed
Juan’s sentiments. ‘We are waiting for the houses in order to bring our families. We
are only the heads of households here.The family is not here.They are far away.We
are awaiting the houses for this [to bring the family]’ (Personal interview). Many
participants mentioned that one of the most difficult parts of the process was leaving
family behind during the initial phases of the project, which often lasted years.
Some who came to the farm left to return to their families in the city after waiting
for so long on the infrastructure and equipment (Personal interview).
There were few people actually on the farms. Participant estimates of the
number of ‘active’ members and the numbers listed on project documents were
always higher than the number I saw on the farms. David explained: ‘Originally,
we were 86 [people] . . . Now there are 36 but there is a little conflict because
the majority don’t want to come here until they [the government] give them
houses’ (Personal interview). At the time of interview, there were only two people
living on David’s farm. The remaining ‘active’ participants were still in the city.
Gonzalo explained, ‘Some have work and don’t want to come here. And there are
others that want both things, more than anything they are confused . . . They
thought the land was going to be . . . but it wasn’t that way. So many left’
(Personal interview). According to Juan, his cooperative had seven working
members, though I never saw more than three people on the farm when I
visited.11 According to Luis, a member of Fundo Revolución, originally there were
117 families organized into five cooperatives on his farm. Now there are three
cooperatives – one with one member, one with five members and one with ten
members. On Fundo Sueños I was told that six families were living on it, though
only two families were actively involved in the farming operations. This farm
was different from the others because it had houses, making it a more desirable
place to live. As a result, there was a slight twist on the project abandonment
phenomenon – more people on this farm than were actually working.12
Not all the absent cooperative members had abandoned the project according to
those on the farms. On Fundo Gato there were ten cooperative members on the
farm and I was told that there were ten more members in Caracas, who were still
planning on eventually moving to the farm. When asked about the cooperative
members who were in Caracas, Julia said, ‘Yes, they are involved. We call them and
they participate:“look there is this idea; we are going to do this thing” and they give
their opinion, whether yes or no’ (Personal interview). Alonso explained, ‘For now
the yield is not sufficient for twenty people because we have a family to maintain.
We are rotating. For a time one group goes; for another time comes a group’
(Personal interview). The yield was too low to sustain the whole cooperative. The
11
I suspect that the figures on ‘active’ membership included people who had not arrived, but had
not said that they were abandoning the project; or people who had been on the farm for months
and relatively recently had returned to Caracas.
12
Some cooperative members were living on the farm, but not helping out with the work. As a
result, there was not much planted. However, the farm had a couple thousand egg-producing
chickens. The eggs were bartered at the state subsidized grocery store chain for food to feed all
members on the farm.

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 261

farms did not have many hectares sown because the trial period, during which they
obtained agricultural inputs, learned to plant different crops and tested out crops to
see which grew the best, was lengthy. Moreover, they lacked an irrigation system in
a part of the country that is extremely dry half the year.
All the VAC farms were waiting on ‘approved’ projects that kept getting post-
poned, including houses, wells and irrigation systems.The participants in many cases
did not really know why projects were not moving forward. They travelled to
Caracas to talk to people in the Land Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture to
get an explanation for the delays. They realized that the government was reluctant
to implement projects originally designed for a much larger group of people, but
the government was not saying that the projects had been cancelled. Instead, they
were often told in two more weeks, or in a month, the resources would arrive. But
the resources did not come when they said they would (VAC participant, personal
interview, 29 November 2007). They felt frustrated because they were promised
resources and they took an enormous risk, leaving behind what they had in the
cities to start a new life as farmers. These promised projects were integrally tied to
the success of their farming operations. Without a well from which to get water, a
pump to pump the water out and an irrigation system, they would only be able to
farm part of the year when there was rain.
The farmers and the government found themselves in a Catch-22. On the one
hand, people were reluctant to leave what they had to go to land with no
infrastructure, with only the promise that the government would build the infra-
structure. On the other hand, the government was reluctant to invest the resources
they promised in these farms when they saw that there were very few people
actually on the farms (Government employee, personal interview, 23 November
2007). From the government’s perspective, investment of resources on these farms
could potentially be a waste. The farm could fail and the entire site could be
abandoned. Ricardo, an employee of the Land Institute at the state level, said that
there were many projects approved for Fundo Revolución. They had received half of
the resources they had been promised. Ricardo said that the government’s head-
quarter offices in Caracas did not want to distribute the rest of the resources to
build the wells and houses until the other cooperative members showed up on the
farm (Ibid.). At the same time cooperative members still in the urban areas did not
want to come to the farm until there were houses for them. Luis, of Fundo
Revolución, said that there were still 20 more families in Caracas who planned to
come once the houses were built. Meanwhile, those who had come to the farm
were getting impatient and frustrated with the government because the promised
projects were not arriving along the timeline outlined at the beginning of the
process. David, from Fundo Zamora, explained,‘The project was to raise cattle, sheep,
goats and chickens. But we have problems in the cooperative . . . they haven’t given
us anything yet.’ He went on to say,‘We have a conflict.With the division that exists
[in our cooperative], it [the project] is paralyzed’ (Personal interview).
Social and Cultural Changes
Prior to arriving in Anzoateguí, some members of the cooperatives knew each other,
while others did not. Some of the participants on Fundo Gato recounted how they
organized meetings in their community in Caracas to find more families interested in

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participating in VAC (Personal interview). When I asked if the members of the

cooperative on Fundo Zamora were neighbours in the city where they came from, one
member told me, ‘No, we were from the same sector, but at a distance’ (personal
interview). Juan, from Fundo Rodríguez, replied to this same question,
Yes, almost all of us are from the same sector. Of course, some aren’t but
similarly [someone] was a family member of him [another cooperative
member] or we knew each other. At the root of this, we were interested and
we formed the cooperative. They gave us a loan and we came here to
experiment in Anzoateguí (Personal interview).
While not all participants necessarily knew each other beforehand, most participants
had some connection to the community. Beyond this, Juan is suggesting that, more
importantly, they shared a desire to participate in this social project and to support
the government. Some participants who did not know each other beforehand got
a chance to get to know each other through a course they took in Caracas, in
which they formed cooperatives and learned some basics about agriculture. Other
participants came from other cities in the country and never took these courses. On
Fundo Sueños, the members from Maracaibo had never met any of the other
participants until they arrived on the farm. Some people had to start from scratch
in building relationships and trust on the new farms; all had to start from scratch in
building a new community.
In rural Anzoateguí, there were vast stretches of relatively unpopulated space.
Consequently, the farms, for the most part, did not have neighbours close by.
VAC participants were not moving into an existing community. Rather they were
expected to be founders of new communities in which the government would build
infrastructure for basic social services, including a school and a health clinic. As the
pioneers of this plan,VAC participants found themselves alone.This sense of isolation
was exacerbated by the fact that so few cooperative members had come to the farm.
The people who volunteered to be part of this programme were generally people
who were highly mobilized, urban supporters of Chávez. In rural areas of Anzoateguí,
there was not an organized farmer movement for them to join. While there were
some loosely organized groups in the northern part of the state, they did not meet
regularly (Campesino leader, personal interview, 10 January 2008). None of the VAC
farms in this state were part of any organized farmer group. When I asked if they
heard about meetings or marches, Gonzalo responded,‘Here the radio signal is really
weak and there is no TV. . . . the marches, when we hear, they have already happened.
We can’t go.We are very few [on the farm].We have work to do.We can’t leave the
work to go to the marches’ (Personal interview). They also cannot leave the farms
unattended because of the rampant theft problem.The small number of people on the
farm put those on the farm in greater danger. Theft in the countryside, though less
than in urban areas, was still common; with only a few people on the farm (and if the
farm is abandoned altogether) theft of the invested resources, and potentially assault,
was likely.13 This effectively meant that these formerly politically mobilized people
13
During my time in Anzoateguí, I heard about a lot of theft from the farms. One farm had their
cows stolen in the middle of the night. Another farm, that had only two people on the land, was held
up at gunpoint. The farmers were tied up and everything was stolen (their vehicle, the transformer
for the electricity, the pump that brought the water up out of the well and their cows).

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 263

did not hear about or were not able to participate in political activity.The lack of an
organized small farmer movement may not have been the case in every area of the
country where VAC farms were located. However, the government intentionally
locatedVAC farms in areas where there was not much agricultural production, which
increased the likelihood that there was also not much small farmer organizing. This
demobilization of VAC participants – who were strong supporters of the President –
was not in the government’s interest as it was struggling against the destabilizing
efforts of the domestic elite.
When they relocated, participants lost their social networks and had to adapt to
the changes involved in moving from an urban area with activity to a remote rural
area where, in many cases, the closest pueblo was at least a half hour away by car.
David told me,‘Being here is different . . .We went out [in the city], went to a party,
here no . . . there is nothing here.The closest pueblo is 15 to 20 kilometres’ (Personal
interview).The town he referred to was extremely small and had very little activity,
a sharp contrast from the urban areas the participants came from. Many participants
expressed the sentiment that they were not prepared for life in the countryside.
Roberto reported that the government asked potential participants,‘Do you like the
countryside? Do you want to work in the countryside?’ And if people said yes, they
were sent to the farm. Roberto felt that they did not know what they were getting
into when they decided to participate. Luis, from Fundo Revolución, said that the
government promised them things and it was not the way they thought that it
would be. Part of the disappointment some members experienced on the farm was
due to the failure of the government to provide in a timely manner basic infra-
structure and equipment, as well as training; part was due to the isolation and
loneliness participants experienced; and part was due to the difficulty of shifting
one’s mindset from a capitalist model to a socialist model. Participants were used to
getting paid a certain amount per hour of work and that being the end of their
responsibility. For some it was difficult shifting their thinking to embrace their new
relationship vis-à-vis work – running a business as part of a collective and earning
based on your portion of profits, not wages. It was particularly difficult at the
beginning when the farming operations brought in little income.
The Dutch Disease effects of oil, prevalent in the oil-producing state of
Anzoateguí, further reduced the purchasing power of the new farmers.14 Many
people living in rural areas of Anzoateguí were not farming because they could earn
more working only three months of the year for one of the oil companies than
farming year-round. As a result, there was not much agricultural production in this
part of the country. Ironically, the limited agricultural production was a factor that
led the government to place the VAC farms there. The oil industry (because of its
capital-intensive nature) tends to pay relatively high wages. Consequently, other
employers, competing with the oil industry for workers, must pay higher wages than
they would pay in an area of the country without oil operations. Labour is one of
the inputs in production so higher wages gets passed along to consumers in the way
14
When the price of oil increases, it hurts other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and
manufacturing.The export of oil at these higher prices generates more foreign exchange, making the
currency stronger. It becomes cheaper to import goods than to produce domestically so, ultimately,
other sectors of the economy are crowded out (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2003/
03/ebra.htm).

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of higher prices for the finished product. As a result, price inflation occurs locally;
goods and services in oil states tend to cost more than in non-oil states. Farmers in
cooperatives and family farmers do not work for wages. Their income depends on
how much they produce and sell. They do not benefit from the higher wages, but
they face the higher prices on goods and services. This inflation effect from the oil
industry discourages people from going into agriculture. When asked about the
most difficult part of the VAC process, Gonzalo replied,‘The agriculture . . . because
if you go to the market to sell your produce . . . the feeling that you have is that you
aren’t earning anything, you are recuperating a part of what you invested and
nothing more.You don’t earn anything’ (Personal interview).The local effects of oil
in Anzoateguí made agriculture an economically unattractive profession.

Learning to Farm
Although some of the VAC participants may have been born in the countryside
and learned about agriculture as a child, it had been many years since then. Many
migrated to the cities before adulthood or as young adults and were never
responsible for farming operations in their household. Moreover, much of what
they did learn had been forgotten. Gonzalo explained, ‘I was in the countryside.
I was a campesino, like everybody, we come from the countryside . . . but the little
that you learn, after years you forget it’ (Personal interview). Raul mentioned that
he had grown a few crops, but had much to learn. ‘I have experience in the
cultivation of bananas and planting yucca. While I lack a lot of experience, each
day one learns more. And for this we are here, to learn’ (Personal interview).
Others had no experience at all. Participants depended on the government to
provide them with the knowledge they lacked. They decided to participate in
VAC based on the faith that the government would provide the necessary train-
ing. Jorge said that although they did not have the experience or knowledge to
know when it would rain, what they had was ‘help from the President, like a
guaranteed help that we did not have before. This gives us the belief that I can
go to the countryside because I can project what I want because he [President
Hugo Chávez] is going to help me’ (Personal interview). They viewed the gov-
ernment as their partner.
Yet, many of the VAC participants felt that they had not received the necessary
training in agriculture. Although some received some training prior to moving
to Anzoateguí, since arrival on the farm they felt abandoned. Juan told me that
they had not received an intensive course on farming since they arrived on the
farm. ‘When we began we were 19 people, but always something happens, not
everything is perfect. A lot left because in reality there hasn’t been technical
assistance’ (Personal interview). Lack of technical support was one factor that led to
project abandonment.
I was told that INTI, the government institution responsible for all but one of
these farms, came ‘once a month or so’ (VAC participant, personal interview).
Fundación CIARA (CIARA), a government institution that provides technical assis-
tance to farmers, visited on a weekly basis and other institutions of the government
came every once in a while.When I witnessed these institutions’ visits to the farm,
they often spent about five minutes looking at the crops, then they briefly told the

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 265

one cooperative member, who was walking around with them, one or two things
that ought to be done, then they spent five to ten minutes filling out their report
on the visit, which they later turned into their boss.The majority of their time was
spent driving to and from the farm. Even when they did visit, it was not clear that
the VAC participants learned much from them.
VAC participants wished that the agricultural extensionists spent more time on
the farms and taught through demonstration. One farmer described the classes they
received in the following way: ‘They give us a seat and we listen . . . Them. There.
Like professors and a blackboard. There one learns, for example, the ABC vaccine
that is given every fifteen days or every month. They put a vaccine to prevent a
sickness or something like that. They come for a little bit and then they go’
(Personal interview). Another member of this farm said, ‘It needs to be more
continuous that they come’ (Personal interview). Raul wanted the technical experts
to come to the farm and teach two hours every day.

In the countryside one must work both the practical and the theoretical. The
agronomists have the theory. The campesino has the practical experience. We
are not going to say no to the theory. The theory is necessary. Experience is
demonstrated with actions. It is not saying this is the way it is done. Let’s go
to the fields and let’s do it to see how it is, to learn through doing. (Personal
interview)

They wanted the agricultural extensionists to show them rather than tell them how
to farm. ‘For this reason I say practice and theory need to be managed in this way
because if they only tell us, tomorrow I won’t remember what they told me’
(Personal interview). They felt that much of what they had learned had been
through trial and error.

The problem is that there are a lot of technical experts but they do not teach
what they should. I believe that the objectives that they have drawn up, they
do not meet.Therefore, we continue practically in the same way because what
we are doing here is the experience that we brought of the little that we
learned. (Personal interview)

Participants wanted both more training and more effective training.

Part of the reason the agricultural extensionists did not come to the farms more
often was a lack of transportation. In rural areas of Anzoateguí, often there was no
public transportation. The extensionists were dependent on whether they could
secure access to a vehicle to visit the farms.The INTI office in El Tigre, the closest
city to most of the farms, had a vehicle shortage and as a result they rarely visited the
farms. Employees who had their own vehicles would use those to visit the farms, but
few government employees had their own vehicles. In early November 2007, an
agricultural extensionist from the government institution Instituto Nacional de Desar-
rollo Rural (INDER), The National Rural Development Institute, came to Fundo
Revolución to inform the farmers that two Cuban extensionists could come daily to
the farm to teach them. However, the cooperative would have to drive a long distance
each morning to pick them up and in the evening to take them home. In addition,
they were going to have to feed them during the day. Since the monthly stipend that

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participants received at the beginning had come to an end and their farming
operations had yet to really take off, they had very little money to even buy food for
themselves.15 They asked if the Cubans could live in the town nearby where the kids
went to school because then it would be easier for them to transport them back and
forth from the farm.According to Elsa, the cooperative’s President, the representative
from INDER, did not consider that a possibility. She was told the Cubans needed to
be near medical facilities and there were not any in the nearby town. In the end, the
people on the farm opted not to have the support of the Cubans (VAC participant,
personal interview, 29 November 2007). A similar problem occurred on Fundo
Rodríguez. When I asked about the Cuban technical experts, Juan explained, ‘The
Cubans, yes, they came but there is a problem.They don’t have transportation. One
has to go get them.And we don’t have transportation either’ (Personal interview). On
Fundo Sueños, there was a vacant house, which was supposed to house some Cubans
from Misión Campo Adentro, the government programme that brought Cuban
agricultural experts to Venezuela to advise the government and help implement the
new policies. But, according to Roberto, the President of the cooperative, the Cubans
did not want to live on the farm.
An additional difficulty participants placed in Anzoateguí faced was the poor soil
quality, which made farming more difficult. In some parts, the soil looked almost
like sand. Juan explained how they had to begin:
We planted cantaloupe, watermelon, corn and other little things over there
but not in large extensions, not on a large scale. Rather, since this is a test
period, also for the type of soil, the soil is really acidic. So one can’t run the
risk, neither the institutions nor us, of planting a lot because we don’t know
if we are going to lose it. This is a test of what can be done, of what can be
planted in order to see if the land is suitable. But now we know that the land
is suitable. After we clear [the land] again, we can do a complete planting of
whichever crop. (Personal interview)
Juan’s comment suggests that the government placed people with little-to-no
farming experience on land that the government was not sure was agriculturally
fertile. It turned out to be sufficiently fertile to grow some crops, but required more
work and knowledge than soils of higher quality. When I asked Gonzalo what had
been the most difficult part of the process, he said,
The agriculture. The land here is really poor. You plant something and you
need to be constant because suddenly the plant dies and it doesn’t give you
production. Or we are going to need to make [raised] beds with organic
material and plant these beds. I think this is better. But we are lacking organic
material. (Personal interview)
The participants struggled with the agricultural production not only because they
lacked the necessary knowledge, but also because they had to deal with difficult
environmental conditions.

15
Each cooperative member was given a monthly stipend for eight months, which they got
extended for another three months. The stipend had ended.

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 Can the State Create Campesinos? 267

Participant Responses
As mentioned earlier, some participants responded to these challenges by abandon-
ing the project. As Juan put it, ‘If the institutions [of the government] don’t fulfil
[their duties], sometimes we begin to think about our kids, our wives, who are very
far away’ (Personal interview). Others had not given up: ‘We came here first almost
three years ago, cultivating, raising animals. And it was a little difficult. There was
nothing easy to get where we are today. But when one wants things and one puts
one’s heart into it, one gets it’ (Personal interview).
This cooperative had become creative about ways to survive in the short term
until farming operations took-off. ‘And now that there is no more social support
[the monthly stipend from the government], we could die of hunger. We need to
be inventive, to be intelligent. How can we, ourselves, look for food in order to have
something more secure’ (Personal interview). Since the resources were slow to come
and agricultural production had got off to a slow start, the members of Fundo Gato
came up with a business plan to supplement their income.
Cooperativism is flexible. We are an agricultural cooperative, but we have the
option that we can also be business people because this can be included in our
cooperative.Why? Because we take what is the weakness and the strength.We
have strength over there. Over there is a national highway and we want to be
farmers, but the agriculture for now is not going to give enough to sustain us
so we are going to take advantage of the strength.The strength is the highway
that is there. We are going to put a restaurant there, without abandoning the
planting that permits us at least food. Because if not, there is no food; there
is no life. (Personal interview)
Although their farm was in a remote rural area, it was along a highway, albeit one
with limited traffic. They were planning on opening a restaurant on the side of the
highway in which they would use some of their farm produce to make food.
This is our project. It is to ensure the food . . . and have something to send to
the family there, because this money one sees daily. Because if you plant
something . . . you have to wait three months and if a pest comes . . . it isn’t
certain. With this that we are doing there, we are not going to forget about
raising animals or the agriculture. No. There [in the restaurant] one person
will be assigned, and us here raising the animals and planting the crops. This
is to guarantee food . . . until we are productive. After the work is productive
and there is production there, much better. But to have a base where one can
hold on to survive here while there isn’t production, this is the decision that
we are making here (Personal interview).
Back in the city, many of the members had been involved in the informal economy
making and selling goods; they wanted to put their skills to use in this new context
to generate supplemental income. The idea for the restaurant came about because
one participant had worked as a cook in the past. Others were talking about making
goods to sell in their roadside restaurant/store. This move, if successful, would allow
cooperative members to gain some financial independence from the government.
All the VAC farms, and the people on these farms, were completely dependent on

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the government for their survival, and consequently, their focus was entirely on
getting resources out of the government. Fundo Gato planned to self-finance the
construction of the restaurant, using one member’s savings. When asked if they
would try to get a loan from the government to build the restaurant, they
responded, ‘Yes this can be done, but we are now, how do you say it, on the march
and to get a loan takes time. We need it for yesterday, if it were possible’ (Personal
interview). Although they wanted to pursue what support they could get from the
government, they did not want to wait as they had with the government support
for agricultural production. They wanted to begin constructing the restaurant
immediately so they could generate income to live off.This cooperative was unique.
None of the other cooperatives had developed plans to build non-agricultural
businesses on the side. Frustration and project abandonment was the norm on the
other farms.

CONCLUSION
VAC participants chose to move from urban areas to the countryside for two main
reasons: the difficult conditions of life in the cities and because they were strong
supporters of President Hugo Chávez and the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. Support of
the national social project was not enough to ensure the commitment to and
success of the VAC programme. They left behind their social networks and,
sometimes, their families. They had to build a new community from scratch, often
with strangers and with only a small percentage of cooperative members actually on
the land. This social and geographic displacement left participants more dependent
on the government.The government was hesitant to provide the promised resources
because so few people had gone to the farms and people were hesitant to go
because there was no infrastructure. Their limited knowledge of farming coupled
with insufficient training, and difficult environmental and economic conditions,
made the project more challenging. The slow pace of project implementation and
the resultant lower than projected production levels led to project abandonment and
growing antagonism between participants and the government.
TheVAC farms were an example of the ‘miniaturization’ that Scott describes.The
government made blueprints for these model farms that it intended to grow into
model communities. Rather than looking at the specificities of each locale and each
group of people and adapting the plan to take into consideration the strengths and
limitations present, there was one model.The location of the farm was chosen based
on looking at a map and declaring that more agricultural production ought to occur
in a particular area of the country.This did not take into account such things as the
local effects of the oil industry, the quality of the soil, the fact that some participants
in the programme had children who needed immediate access to schools, or whether
there was a community of people for them to integrate into. This added multiple
levels of difficulty to an already ambitious plan to create campesinos.
The Cuban repeasantization programme was relatively more successful. The
primary difference between the two cases stemmed from the conditions that existed
when the repeasantization programmes were launched. In Venezuela, repeasantiza-
tion occurred at the beginning of the agrarian reform.Venezuela had a small rural
population and rural areas lacked basic infrastructure. Moreover, they did not have

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a history of working in cooperatives. In contrast, Cuba’s agrarian transformation

began in 1959 and repeasantization was not pursued until the early 1990s. Rural
areas already had infrastructure and a sizeable rural population working in agricul-
ture; cooperative production in agriculture had already been underway for nearly
two decades.The people new to farming were surrounded by farmers with years of
experience producing in that part of the country. Agriculture was a significant part
of Cuba’s economy in contrast to Venezuela where the presence of oil had crowded
out the agricultural sector. And, finally, a key difference lies in the valorization of the
role of small farmers in the national development project. Because Cuba was in an
economic crisis in which access to sufficient food to feed the population was
difficult, small farmers were seen as extremely important to the survival of the
population and the political project.Venezuela, in contrast, had the foreign exchange
to import what it needed and was not subject to a trade embargo. Consequently,
agriculture was not valorized to the same extent in Venezuela. Oil, on the other
hand, was viewed as the engine that would fuel the transformation of the economy
and society. These differing conditions do not mean that Venezuela cannot succeed
at repeasantization, but that they produce different challenges.
As Ferguson points out, although these grand development projects may fail to
realize their plans, they may have other consequences. In southern Anzoateguí the
state had expanded its presence in rural areas – mainly in terms of collecting
information on the activities of rural dwellers, what Scott calls efforts by the state to
increase the ‘legibility’ of the population (1998, 2–3). VAC participants had been
demobilized, at least in the short term. They were out of the information loop,
disconnected from a politically active community of people and were dedicating their
time and energy to learning to farm. This raises the question of what are the
long-term implications for the larger social project of building socialism if some of
the most politically mobilized people are being moved to isolated parts of the country
where they are fully consumed with learning new skills and running a business?
As a state building ‘21st-century socialism’, the Chávez government believed
that it ought to play an active role in development. As a petro-state, the Ven-
ezuelan government benefited from ample financial resources. Consequently,
Venezuela provides us with the opportunity to examine the question of the role
the state can play to promote development. After examining the dynamics in the
VAC programme, we can reach some conclusions on this front. The state, in this
case, aimed to create a programme that would increase agricultural production by
bringing more land under cultivation and more people into farming; that would
create employment opportunities, empower workers to participate in decision-
making about production by organizing them into cooperatives and promote
socialist forms of production; and that would develop rural areas by building
infrastructure. In order to realize these goals, the state presented the idea, brought
interested people together, helped them form a cooperative, and provided the
financial resources, training in agriculture, land and guidance in setting up their
farming activities. Popular sectors were, for the most part, unorganized and the
state helped them organize. Moreover, if the government had not created the
legal framework for the land redistribution, their occupation of the land would
have been more precarious. The state played a pivotal role in making this project
happen.

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While some of what the state did was indispensable, we also see how other parts
undermined the project. Participants were required to organize into cooperatives
and were provided with insufficient training to make working as a cooperative run
smoothly.Training focused on the benefits of collective organization, rather than on
building concrete skills – how to facilitate a meeting, how to do bookkeeping, how
to mediate conflicts, etc. More training and/or the option for participants to farm
small, individual plots in close proximity to other participants, having some other
type of union than a production cooperative, may have allowed the flexibility that
would have better facilitated success. The government’s singular focus on coopera-
tives may have undermined the larger project of repeasantization. In Cuba, the
government expanded the parcelero sector as part of its repeasantization efforts and
a significant number of people opted to get a small plot of land for personal
production. Moreover, as the Cubans acknowledged when they first introduced
cooperative production in the 1970s, it is a long-term project because a cooperative
culture does not initially exist. Simultaneously, introducing cooperatives as a way to
organize production and repeasantization, as occurred in Venezuela, presents a
number of fundamental and difficult changes in participants’ lives.
Repeasantization projects also require training in farming. The state provided
some training in this area, but it fell short of what was needed. This resulted in
part from the politically polarized nature of the ‘revolutionary’ context; the oppo-
sition often retains footholds in the state and seeks to obstruct the implementation
of the new policy. As a result, the government may create new government
institutions, staffed with supporters of the government, who may or may not have
the necessary expertise (Fagen 1986, 251). In addition to providing agricultural
expertise itself, the state could also facilitate exchange with local farmers. The
latter did not happen in the VAC programme. Farmers familiar with the local
environmental conditions and experience growing in the specific region could
have been hired by the government to provide some hands-on training. This
would have helped VAC participants meet other farmers and may have brought
new people on board with the government’s larger project of ‘21st-century social-
ism’. These existing farmers would be both benefiting from the new agricultural
policies and would be interacting with highly politicized supporters of the gov-
ernment. Another option would have been integrating people new to farming
into unions with pre-existing farmers, rather than grouping people with no agri-
cultural knowledge together on the same farm.
Overall, the main weakness of the state in this case was the fact that the state did
not involve popular sectors more in the planning and implementation of the
project. Although increased participation is a key part of the Venezuelan govern-
ment’s larger social project, the highly centralized culture of the government
bureaucracy – characteristic of petro-states (Karl 1997, 201) and common in
transitions to socialism (Fagen 1986, 260) – undermined its efforts to increase
popular participation. It was simpler for the state to abstract or standardize partici-
pants, as Scott argues. This led to decisions about the new farms that caused
problems that undermined the success of the programme. If participants had been
more involved, they may not have been placed on land without a school nearby,
meaning that their families could have come from the beginning. Moreover, if they
were located near a school, then that would have also meant that they were near an

© 2010 The Author – Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

 Can the State Create Campesinos? 271

existing community for them to become part of, thereby possibly minimizing the
demobilization effect, and exposing them to farmers from whom they could learn.
In sum, the state played an indispensable role in providing many forms of
necessary support for launching the repeasantization project. However, it failed to
truly increase popular participation, which could have prevented or minimized
some of the problems that arose. In answer to the question posed in the title of this
article – can the state create campesinos? – Potentially. It has occurred to some extent
in Cuba. Moreover, Vuelta al Campo is not the only government programme in
Venezuela that has brought new people into farming and production has increased
since Chávez was elected.16 However, modifications of the VAC programme are
necessary for such a project to have long-term success.

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