Mr. Cardoso has vowed to settle 280,000 landless families and says he settled 40,000 last year.

Crude death rate "among landless families was three times higher than that for families with three or more acres".

In 1961, the dispossession of farmland had produced 40,000 landless families and by 1969 their numbers amounted to 400,000 throughout Colombia.

The Government intends to acquire 12.5 million acres from commercial farmers, mainly whites, to give to 100,000 landless black families in five years.

Newly landless families became tenant farmers, while the displaced rural poor moved into the cities.

Around 700, 000 landless families were settled in four years, but this was chiefly on public land or in existing settlements.

But when agrarian reform ended in 1990, about 150,000 landless families still had not benefited from the reform actions.

By law, each new char belongs to the Government, to be apportioned among the landless families on official waiting lists.

The villages were settled during the years 1836 to 1852 by 149 landless families from the Chortitza Colony.

By 1969, there were over 400,000 landless families in Colombia, with an annual increase of 40,000 per year since 1961.