Cowboy Comeback

Naked children scuttled to cover behind mud huts. Startled vultures lurched up from the roadway. Down the muddy roads of Venezuela's back country roared a ten-ton Fruehauf truck-trailer. Loaded with chilled beef from the Government's new slaughterhouse at inland Calabozo, it was bound on a twelve-hour haul to the meat-hungry markets of Caracas.

The trucks (20 more followed the first), the road (passable except in floods), and the fancy new slaughterhouse and refrigeration plant were part of the Government's plan to put the once cattle-rich llanos (plains) back on the map.

While the rest of Venezuela battened on oil, the cattlemen struggled with the legacy of civil wars, a virulent malaria known as la fiebre economica (Venezuelans quip that if it hits in the morning, your only expense is a coffin at night) and the 27-year exploitation of Dictator-President Juan Vicente Gomez. Their worst headache: the senseless three-to-four-week trek to Gomez's slaughterhouse near the coast (over 20% of the cattle's weight was lost on the way).

But the junta that took power in last October's democratic revolution meant to do something to improve Venezuela's food supply. The junta handed the problem to dynamic ex-advertising man Mario Garcia Arocha, president of the Government Supply Commission. By last week Arocha's plans were getting results.

Besides Fruehaufs highballing twice daily to Calabozo, Arocha had ten white-painted DC-3s flying chilled beef to the capital from distant llano towns like Ciudad Bolivar, on the Orinoco, and San Fernando de Apure. This week work was expected to start on another slaughterhouse at Barinas. Already caraquenos found llano meat in the markets at 27-c- a Ib. Last spring they had paid three times as much.

Plans v. Oil. The Government had a whole drawerful of plans for the llaneros: credit and technicians for 500 new ranches, fences, anti-tick baths, selected forage, blooded bulls, housing and plenty of roads. President Romulo Betancourt was well aware that the oil industry, with its $8-a-day wages, was advancing from the great coastal fields into the llanos. He wanted to keep the cowboy in the saddle.

Peons on Tractors. The cowboy was not the only Venezuelan countryman to get Government help. Determined to share the country's million-barrel-a-day oil wealth as widely as possible, President Betancourt pressed schemes for gradual land redistribution, a $6,000,000 irrigation program, and 148 new rural schools. To shore up food production and boost rural living standards (most Venezuelan peons get about 1,200 calories a day), he pinned his hopes on mechanization. The U.S. State Department backed this program by putting Venezuela high on the Latin delivery list, right after Mexico and Brazil. This week a four-man commission prepared to leave for the U.S. to buy $120,000.000 worth of farm and industrial machinery. With the hemisphere's tidiest budget surplus, Venezuela would pay cash.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.