The report details 17 of 200 contra attacks on peasant cooperatives in the past six months, saying 1,400 civilians have been killed since the contra-Sandinista war began.

The group promoted attainment of agrarian reform, organized local families and political parties that create peasant cooperatives through violent means if necessary.

Topics will include land problems, development projects, health and education, women's groups, peasant cooperatives and democratic congresses.

More than any other such program in Central America, the Nicaraguan effort explicitly favors peasant cooperatives over large individual landholders.

Chávez encouraged peasant cooperatives as alternatives to agricultural sector expansion in the 1950s.

The term is related to the modern Italian word fascio, used in the 20th century to designate peasant cooperatives and industrial workers' unions.

But the new peasant cooperatives were starved for funds, which went to buy Soviet arms.

This would include property that is in the hands of third parties, including peasant cooperatives set up under the Sandinista land redistribution program.

The idea was to replace the old model of a single lease holder (a gabelloto, often a Mafia boss) with a "collective lease holder" through a peasant cooperative.

His father Miha Vošnjak, native from Šoštanj, was one of the founders of liberal-progressive peasant cooperatives in Lower Styria.