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Opportunities in the oil fields and on the large and small farms and ranches in the pioneer zone of Venezuela along the Llanos-Andes border attract tens of thousands of "undocumented" Colombian migrants. Many replace Venezuelans fleeing from the country to the urban areas. Residents of the higher "cold country" elevations move into the lower ones, whose residents move into the now healthier "hot" lowlands. The affluent are moving from the lowlands to the "cold country," the reverse direction. Sites for hydroelectric dams, noted in 1932, are being exploited, and significant progress is marked by erection of schools and universities, libraries and other cultural institutions. Political reform made possible agrarian land reform, but new latifundistas are appearing as lawyers, physicians and businessmen use wealth acquired in their professions to become large landowners seeking to profit from their holdings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the land tenure problems in Venezuela. Venezuela, like other Spanish conquests, was granted by royal decree to the Conquistadores for two or three generations, in huge manorial holdings, or encomiendas. Those whites who were not government officials, clerics, or army officers, were usually merchant-landowners. The actual work on the hacienda was done by the oppressed serfs and slaves, who were in no position to change traditional agricultural techniques. All persons coming to Coro with something to sell had to have it appraised just outside of town and had to pay the sales tax in advance. On many an hacienda throughout the country, people are living outside the modern money economy. They do the routine chores of the hacienda. The surplus rural population must be absorbed by local industries that should be developed along with mechanized agriculture, by state subvention if necessary. The solution of the land tenure problems in Venezuela will put the keystone into its economic arch.

The article discusses social instability in Venezuela. Venezuela seems to present more problems and contradictions per square mile than most of the other Latin-American republics. Geography, psychology, history and economics all have been delicately interwoven to produce the complicated pattern of Venezuelan life. Certain Venezuelan problems rise directly from social and psychological mores common to most Latin countries. For centuries all manual labor was performed by slaves or serfs, so that gradually, in the folk consciousness, work with the hands became tabu, something to be avoided as degrading at all costs. Venezuela, like the other Spanish conquests, was divided up into huge manorial holdings by the Conquistadores, and most of the simple Indians became serfs on these great landed estates. But suddenly the subsoil of Venezuela was found in many places to be saturated with petroleum and the oil companies were quick to stake out great private holdings. They gave steady work to the half-starved subsistence farmers and floating hacienda workers, and they paid much higher wages than the landowners.

The article discusses the pattern of Neo colonialism. Early on in Venezuela, which was a remote peripheral frontier area, boundary lines were vague and land was concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families. The grasslands were devoted to extensive ranching. The poor and the landless cleared their tiny plots in the wooded areas on which they produced their corn, beans and yuca for domestic use as they had done for centuries. The small farmers got few if any credits and little or no technical assistance. In many cases they had difficulty in getting to market the food crops they do produced. The Soviet Union and Cuba allot small plots to farmers on which to produce food crops for home use and for sale locally. The concentration of land in few hands has gone on apace. It is worked in a highly mechanized, capital-intensive fashion to produce crops for export by companies accountable to the interest of no country. The huge profits go to the local elite or are banked abroad. This is the pattern of neocolonialism.