President Chavez Frias had handed over title deeds to more than 4,000 families in the Caracas (Libertador) municipality, bringing formality to decades of unregistered small-time properties which has been derogatorily designated "squatters" by previous governments.   Under the specific terms of Venezuela's new Lands Act, a special Urban Land Rights Committee has worked for months to completed real estate legalization procedures in parts of the 23 de Enero, La Pastora, San Pedro and Altagracia parishes establishing the new title deed holders as the true owners of the properties on previously unregistered land.

Registrars have had to wade through an ocean of diffuse documentation, sometimes dating back to colonial Spanish times, to decide municipality borders and for the first time in Venezuela's legal history to set up a permanent real estate register with legally-binding effect ... "it's like writing maps of the country from the beginning of history."

"We have sometimes had to resort to the courts to settle disputes, but they have been few and far between ... it has been a tremendous paperwork job simply to establish what should have been done a hundred or more years ago ... the government has covered legal costs in every situation but there have still been fraudsters who have attempted to take advantage of their fellow citizens ... we are stamping our corruption at every level as soon as we catch wind of it but corruption has been such a part of the old Venezuela that it is difficult to get people to understand that we will no longer tolerate it."