VHeadline.com News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue writes:  Speaking to Maracaibo broadsheet, Panorama, Agriculture & Lands Minister Elias Jaua admits that the Ministry has had more problems to recover lands in Zulia State than in other parts of Venezuela. 

Jaua attributes the cause to weak backing from the State Government and a campaign of terror in the countryside. 

• The Minister complains that State Governor, Manuel Rosales, currently presidential candidate, has not been supportive enough in implementing the government's agrarian reform. 

"There are violent groups in the area that had been hired by landed estate owners to prevent National Lands Institute (INTI) officials from undertaking inspections." 

Jaua contends that these groups exact vengeance on peasants and small farmers, who have  been given lands to work on. 

Jaua cites the case of Jesus Alberto Fernandez, belonging to the Vuelvan Caras cooperative in Colon municipality, who had been granted an agrarian letter and was some summarily executed on October 15 when he was discussing the project and helping other cooperatives.

The regional police have not been collaborating either, Jaua points out, and peasants themselves have connected police officers to the terror groups. 

Zulia and Yaracuy States have both been conflictive because there are still people who do not understand that Venezuela is undergoing a process of change ... "the only  guarantee of peace in the countryside is to solve the problem of landed estates. "

Since 2003 to date, the Ministry has handed 7,840 agrarian letters involving 163,123 hectares to Zulia State peasants and currently, the Ministry has issued 42 cautionary measures for around 11,474 hectares.