During the brief first period of democracy (El Trienio Adeco, 1945–48), the Democratic Action government had redistributed land which it said had been gained illicitly by members of previous governments,Alexander, Robert. "Nature and Progress of Agrarian Reform in Latin America." The Journal of Economic History. Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec., 1963), pp 559-573. and in mid-1948 it enacted an agrarian reform law. However most of the land redistributed in this way was returned to its previous owners during the 1948-58 dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. After the 1958 restoration of democracy brought Betancourt to office again, a new land reform law was enacted in March 1960, with reform in the early 1960s concentrated in the northeastern states of Miranda, Aragua and Carabobo, and coming largely from expropriated private landholdings. The reform was accompanied by a considerable increase in agricultural production. Ultimately the reform saw about 200,000 families receive transfers of land, largely in the early 1960s.Gregory Wilpert, "Land for people not profit in Venezuela", in Peter Rosset, Raj Patel, Michael Courville, Land Research Action Network (2006), Promised land: competing visions of agrarian reform. Food First Books. p251
