In Venezuela, ranchitos (or barrios) are like Brazil’s favelas, the shanty towns which grew around Rio de Janeiro and now are ubiquitous in metropolitan areas throughout Brazil. Argentina has Villa Miseria or asentamientos; Chile has campamentos; Colombia, tugurios; and so on. 

To generalize, these are “informal settlements.” Man-on-the-street terms range from slums to shacks to squatter settlements, etc. 

They are a sight to behold.

A visitor to the once dynamic, modern, enterprising city of Caracas is amazed as he emerges from one of the last tunnels leading from the international airport in Maiquetía, and, before getting a glimpse of the capital city’s shiny skyscrapers, he is slapped with a view of colorful, makeshift, paper shacks, stacked sky-high, side by side, grasping the massive mountainsides for miles.

“Who lives here?! Who can live here?”

By latest estimates, about 700,000 in Argentina, 48,000 in Chile, 300,000 in Colombia, and 12,000,000 in Brazil. About 1,000,000 Venezuelans make their homes in ranchitos, 800,000 of which are in Caracas. But the Venezuela figures are old and suspect. Meaning, the numbers now are likely higher.

What caused these to begin with?

In the case of Venezuela, a few sources says the “oil boom” was to blame. However, that boom began in the early 20th century, whereas the ranchitos exploded in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

Other sources simply presuppose the ranchitos and just report the headache these are to different politicians in different eras. One source actually said that Hugo Chavez was the first politician to declare “war” on the ranchitos, which is laughable propaganda. Hearing about governments’ plans to attack the ranchitos takes me back to my childhood, which long preceeded Chavez.

I recently asked my dear 89-year-old mother what she could recall regarding the origins of the ranchitos.

“I remember when they began appearing. The usual commentary was that they were poor people leaving the conucos [small family farms] and coming to the capital city on the basis of promises of high-paying jobs, which did not materialize for them.”

But why did they come in the mid-twentieth century and not before?

This is not a mere academic matter. As I’ve written in other posts, most recently in the post on Spain and the Reformation (Spain and the Reformation), “…North, Central, and South America have more in common with one another than is usually assumed….” Perhaps by understanding at least some of the causes behind the ranchitos of Venezuela, we would not only better understand our neighbor(s), but we might even avoid some of the pitfalls that have bedeviled them.

First, we’ll review the encomienda system brought to the New World during the Spanish discovery and conquest. Future posts will look at the hacienda system and subsequent “land reforms”, which have been the bane of peoples around the globe and yet continue to function as a siren call to many.

The much-maligned encomienda system was intended to protect and instruct the native population. In general, the system “granted” areas or regions to the Spanish Conquistadores, soldiers, and other pioneers with the encomienda — the trust, the charge, the responsibility — to protect, evangelize, and catechize all the peoples in their areas, their encomendados.

Significantly, this did not include a transfer of land ownership. The Crown insisted the land revert to the native population. The encomendero — the receiver of the grant — could exact tribute from the peoples in their encomienda in the form of minerals, produce, or labor. 

In addition, the encomenderos were required to pay tribute to the crown and, as if that weren’t disincentive enough, the grants’ durations were limited to no more than two successive generations.

Had the Crown or its ministers somehow have been able to travel to the future century and read William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Colony they would have anticipated the deadly flaw in such an arrangement. Without ownership, incentives for industry and production were disfigured. Good men did their best but also had to look out for their own interests, including, in the case of many, outright confiscations of the lands, albeit with kind treatment of the natives, in many cases also granting them small parcels of land outright. Others, in effect, mistreated and enslaved the Indians. These are the ones who ended up incentivizing Bartolomé de las Casas to produce his dangerous broad-brush propaganda, which caused havoc in subsequent centuries and which is so much with us to this very day. For more on the monk and his writings, refer to the post, Simón Bolivar (Simon Bolivar).

The encomienda system produced gratifying results early on, including decent education and learning of the Spanish language, something that genuinely impressed the anti-Spaniard, Alexander Humboldt. But overall it did not render good fruit and was officially ended in the late 18th century, although historical records reflect no new conferments of encomiendas after 1721.

It is instructive to note that the encomienda system was in effect in Spain itself, but with one critical difference: in Spain, unlike in the New World, the encomenderos were actually granted title to the lands.

To her credit, Spain believed that once the Indios had been catechized and educated they would become good subjects of the Spanish crown and would be treated as such, ownership of land. This helps explain why the Latin American wars for independence required so much malignment of Spain, including resurrecting Bartolomé de las Casas to once again preach his hatred. And despite the relentless propaganda, many 19th-century Latin Americans disbelieved their betters and resisted the wars. Hence, the unbelievable bloodletting, especially in Venezuela with 33% of its population eradicated. It’s been persuasively argued that those wars were actually civil wars as opposed to wars for independence.

What followed the encomienda system was the equally-maligned hacienda system, which was an improvement, and which depended much on the character of the hacendados.

This “ancient history” is important and is with us still. For example, many of the original land holdings in Texas originated from Spanish land grants which were honored by the Texas Republic after independence. The beginnings of the world-renowned King Ranch are marked by Captain King’s purchase of a 15,500-acre Mexican land grant in the mid-19th century.

What’s more, Captain King himself established a sort of encomienda wherein, during a devastating drought where the people of Cruillas in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, in order to survive, sold him all their cattle. As he and his men rode the herd back to his ranch in Texas, he suddenly realized the people of Cruillas would not survive. He turned his horse and he and his men rode back and offered the people protection and pay if they came with him and worked in his ranch along with his men. The people agreed and became known as LosKiñenos, whose descendants still work at the ranch.

And do not live in ranchitos.

We will look at the hacienda system in a future post.