ABSTRACT
Land reform in the traditional areas of good farming, where minifundistas desperately need access to the extensively used but fertile valley lands, is made virtually impossible. Economically the Venezuelan land reform faces conditions very different from those in most other Latin American or underdeveloped countries, although parallels with Iraq have been suggested. The background to the 1960 land reform lies in the economic and political developments of the past 40 years when substantial oil revenues have transformed a poor, backward agricultural country into a rich industrial country. Asentamientos rurales are the smaller group settlements established by the land reform on petitioned land. The debate over land reform has focused mainly on the ten provinces of the Central Valley. Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular administration rapidly hastened the land reform process. Inflation, rising imports, stagnating agricultural production and other economic problems bequeathed by Allende have, if anything, worsened, and the future is very unclear.
