More than a decade has passed since the expropriation of the “Central Azucarero Venezuela”, (Sugar Mill Venezuela), located in the town of Batey, Zulia State. This event was carried out by the late President Hugo Chávez in 2010 when very few anticipated that “from those dusts come these sludges.” Currently, practically 4,000 hectares (almost 10,000 acres) of sugar cane plantations are lost (out of a total of 5,100 hectares), the mll is paralyzed and around 800 workers were unjustifiably dismissed.
Lexzys Lugo / Correspondent lapatilla.com
Eight other sugar mills in the country were taken over by the National Executive during the time of Chávez, and today all of them are paralyzed. The only mill in the country that has productive active farmland to grow sugarcane (raw material) for sugar production is the ‘Central Zulia’, but disinvestment and embezzlement of funds sank its operations. In December 2021, the mill was completely paralyzed.
According to what the dismissed workers told la patilla.com, only about 1,000 of the 5,100 hectares are suitable for harvest. They anticipate that this year they will no longer have sugarcane to harvest, because fields have not been tended. They pointed out that sugarcane is a noble product that only requires watering and cleaning, but “they don’t even do that.”
The Venezuela Sugar Mill is located in Caja Seca in the Sucre Municipality of the Zulia State. According to its residents, this was one of the main sources of employment in the area, but when it shut down many people were left unemployed.
What happened?
Due to pressure from the Chávez government, in 2009 the Biyanbur Consortium decided to cease its operations and then the National Executive through the Ministry of Land and Agriculture, together with the workers, decided to install an ad hoc administrative board.
“We were happy and we even saw that production increased, since the resources were all managed in the Central Azucarera until 2013, when by decree the: intervention, suppression and liquidation of the Central Venezuela was given with an extension of one year (…). From then on, the decline of everything began, because they centralized the administration and there was no more investment in either the industry or the farmland,” said a former worker at the mill.
Andrid González, another former worker, recalled that according to what was said in the company when it was private, the National Executive had closed the sources of financing for the mill, as well as the supply of certain products. Apparently, this was one of the causes of its closure in 2009.
Eliecer Linares also worked at the sugar mill and commented that it was founded more than 100 years ago. It was a pioneer in the production of white sugar (refined sugar), because by 1913, when it was launched, only brown sugar was known and produced.
He also reported that in 2007, 3,600 tons of sugar were produced per day. “Since then, President Chávez’s war against the businessmen began. The Government claimed that only 60% of the production was marketed, when this was not the case. 100% was destined for the country’s shelves, but they asked that all production be delivered to the so-called Mercales,” Linares said.
Fired and without right to complain
Linares denounced that in 2023 the workers were fired in three batches. They only paid the settlement through Onapre, which were mostly payments that ranged between 350 to 700 bolivars. Some employees had up to 25 years of service.
Andrid González was paid as severance 8,250 bolivars for 16 years of work, without any explanation for that ridiculous amount. Today he is unemployed, and that adds to the country’s economic crisis and the serious situation in which the Sucre Municipality finds itself after the closure of the Sugar Mill. Everything conspired for his eldest son to emigrate to the United States two years ago.
“The only thing I get are ‘marañas’ (tangles, short-term informal jobs), and they don’t happen every day. This municipality (Sucre) is dead, there are no sources of employment. If it weren’t for my son sending us remittances, we would have died here already,” González complained.
The former worker said that the closure of the mill harmed more than 3,000 people. About 1,000 direct employees left, and the rest were indirect jobs and informal economy workers who also benefited.
The women of the town, according to what he said, sold food, clothing, shoes, that is, money circulated in the area. Truck drivers also had to sleep there to load their trucks, and that activated the hotel sector.
González only asks the authorities to send an inspection, review and put this plant, one of the largest in the country, into production.
Social drama
Engineer Carlos Azuaje has on several occasions denounced that the ‘Central Azucarero Venezuela’ is wasted and paralyzed. In 2021 it stopped operations due to the shortage of diesel fuel. At that time, the dismissal of workers and the dismantling of the facilities began.
“If the Government manages everything, how could they not have diesel? Oh my God! They let the fields die little by little, in fact, there is little cane left. There are thousands of hectares full of weeds, where they could very well be full of cane,” said former worker González.
“The other eight mills that were expropriated do not operate either. The sugar business was left in the hands of private companies. “The government buried and annihilated all the public power plants, all of them (those that were expropriated),” he stated.
Yoiri Zambrano, a former worker at the ‘Central Azucarero Venezuela’, urged the Attorney General’s Office and Nicolás Maduro to resolve the situation. She said that she has children to support and now she is unemployed. She needs the entire payment of her employment benefits to be paid to start a business.
Zambrano, without shame, confessed that she does not have money for her children’s uniform, and to feed them “it takes guts, hearts.”
The former workers also denounce that the little sugar cane that remains in the field is being sold to artisanal sugar millers, ‘panela’ producers (piloncillo, unrefined sugar). They wonder where the resources they earn from the sale of this item go, because it is evident that they are not even invested in the land.
Another irregular fact that the former workers expose is related to an alleged partnership between the Central Azucarero Venezuela and a company, whose history they question. When they verified the data of the aforementioned company, they realized that it is dedicated to the sale of cosmetics, an area that has nothing to do with the sugar business.
A 60-year-old woman, a social leader from Batey Street in the Sucre municipality, also received a “ración de patria” (dose of homeland, harassment, intimidation) when she was fired. She sends a message to Maduro: address the labor crisis in the country. The lack of employment, poor wages and the closure of many companies, such as Central, which once provided hundreds of workers with resources to even buy homes and improve their quality of life.
The hundreds of workers affected by the bankruptcy of the Central Azucarero Venezuela, which was a model and pioneer company in the country, today regret that it was destroyed by the terrible management of the national government.