Bolivarian Barinas

On my trip to Venezuela I visited the town of Barinas, which lies on the vast plains known as the Llanos. Apart from being just another sweltering hot and dusty Latin-American town, it's also the home of Hugo Chavez. The family Chavez run the state like a feudal fiefdom, making good on the fact that brother Hugo is in the presidency. They're known locally as 'la familia real', the Royal Family.

I was driven around by Luis and Deogracia, known locally as El Morocho - the Twin, apparantly because he was half of one. Both work for the government office for agrarian reform. They showed me a former landed estate, confiscated by Chavez' agents, that is now in hands of the government and of peasant farmers. Good stuff! Although this project looked like it was heading down the right direction, what with Cuban agronomists on board to advise the people and million dollar machinery all over the place, most of the reform is turning out to be a bit of a scam. It's not the poor peasants, but Chavez' own family that's raking up the farms after they've been confiscated from the big landholders. A parliamentarian for the opposition told me Chavez' family had at least 20.000 hectares between them thanks to the agrarian reform and other deals - up from 0 hectares 8 years ago when brother Hugo first came into office.

The town of Barinas was making up for Christmas when I was there, and my two new best friends, Luis and El Morocho showed round town as well. As you can probably tell by the video, we'd had a few already...