Informe de Machado y la discusión posterior del informe 1929 11 00 this region. They have no knowledge of the revolutionary ideology whatsoever; they have even lost the past political traditions of the old bourgeoisfeudal parties which formerly existed as political factors in Venezuela. The prestige of the old militarists or war lords is gone. General Urbina is very popular in that region, where he was born, and where he has risen several times against the government. made inquiries amongst the peons about their situation and was glad to hear from them their complaints about the injustice which makes that they produce corn and coffee, etc. but are not given even sufficient of these products to consume during the whole year. repeatedly spoke to then about the urgent necessity of organizing themselves into cooperatives, unions, etc. in order to fight their immediate common enemies; the land owner, usurers who consider these peons as mere chattel, and wh o buy their products from them at a miserable price, robbing them in a most oppressive way, and then selling their products back to them at a price which is easily ten times as high as the one they (the peons) originally received for them. It is interesting to note that a great number of these peons have worked in the past and during a period of their lives in the oil district around Maracaibo, where they received higher wages, or rather good wages compared with the Venezuela standard for agricultural workers. Since a crisis, due to rationalisation and to the high cost of living, in this region, many of these temporary Industrial workers went back to the land. Due to the fact that during a time they were industrial workers, their mentality is quite different from that of the peon who has never left the land. They are anti imperialist and have a hatred for the foreigner. the gringo. who has oppressed him, exploited him while he was at the oil fields. They hate the oil interests. This is due to the well known tactics of the oil companies, which are in Venezuela, as they are elsewhere in the world, of the same terroristic and tyrannical character.
Gen. Urbina and other officers not members of the PRV, knew very well that am a communist and did not hesitate a second to continue with my communist propaganda amongst the peons, telling them of the necessity of arming themselves for the defence of the land which is theirs and which they have to take away from the hacendados or landowners.
Propaganda, in Venezuela, is today equal to a sentence of death. The government does not tolerate it in any way whatsoever, not even in the mildest petty bourgeois or literal way. The opinion of my comrades and myself, opinion which was confirmed to us by the ac tion in Falcon, is that propaganda will be carried on only the day that the peasants and workers of Venezuela become armed in order to defend themselves against the terroris