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Now
With the Venezuelan presidential campaign
shifting into high gear in advance of tomorrow's election, Caracas
looks as polarized as ever. Recent demonstrations have underscored
the great political rift dividing Chavez followers from the opposition.
Last week, supporters of Manuel Rosales, the opposition candidate,
thronged streets and major highways. The very next day, hundreds
of thousands of Chavistas, dressed in their trademark red clothing,
turned out onto the streets in support of the president. Some
marched through Altamira, a wealthy district in the eastern section
of the city which is sympathetic to Rosales.
While in Caracas I was struck
by the changed political atmosphere which prevailed in the city.
Indeed, much had changed since I lived in the city in 2000-2001.
I had gone to Venezuela then to pursue research on my doctoral
dissertation, and spent much of my time between San Bernardino,
a hillside neighborhood where I had rented a room, and downtown,
where I used to go to do archival work.
At that time, Chavez was still consolidating his political power
and had not yet initiated controversial social and economic programs.
As I recount in my recent book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics,
and the Challenge to the U.S. (St. Martin's Press), many
folk in San Bernardino were beginning to grow suspicious of Chavez.
The neighborhood had once been affluent; Nelson Rockefeller
had even built a famous hotel in the area, the Hotel Avila.
In more recent years, however, poor residents had taken over
a hillside next to my landlord's condo. I was warned that the
people were Colombian and should be avoided at all cost as they
were violent. After I finished my day's work at the archive
downtown, I would head to the Institute of Advanced Business
Studies (known by its Spanish acronym, IESA). The institute
had generously agreed to provide me with a work visa in Venezuela
so I could pursue my research.
The school was located a couple blocks from my apartment building,
and I frequently made use of IESA's computer room. The school,
with a quiet and tranquil atmosphere cordoned off by gates, was
a refuge from polluted and congested downtown. The students,
who in general looked whiter than many folks in the city center,
used to demonize Chavez as a dangerous radical.
I left Venezuela in the summer of 2001, and judging from my discussions
with many members of the middle class, social antagonism was
starting to grow. However, Caracas still hadn't achieved the
level of popular mobilization that we've seen
in recent years. During and after the coup of 2002, however,
that would change as the city became more and more polarized.
One physical symbol of the
growing political radicalization within Caracas is the proliferation
of street murals. Over the course of about three weeks this
summer, I had the opportunity to see a lot of the new public
art. At one point, while taking a grimy bus from the mountains
down into downtown, I saw signs on the highway reading "Let
us unite and we will be invulnerable."
The quote was attributed to
Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator and independence hero against
Spain whose profile appeared on the mural. Throughout the city,
murals depicting patriot leaders such as Antonio Jose de Sucre
are commonplace. I saw one mural of the independence fighter
Felix Ribas outside of a government sponsored cooperative. Appearing
next to Ribas was a portrait of Chavez, wearing his characteristic
red beret.
Later, I went to Bolivar's
Native House (Casa Natal de Bolivar) in downtown. The
staff was in the midst of restoration of the colonial building,
which had a red brick tile roof. For Chavez, Bolivar, who liberated
Venezuela from Spanish rule, carries symbolic importance. The
president has renamed Venezuela the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
(the government had to redo all the country's stationery at great
expense), and addresses his people on TV while sitting underneath
an oil portrait of the Great Liberator.
According to Mercedes Garcia,
the director of Bolivar's Native House, Chavez had been able
to awaken a historical interest amongst the masses. As a result
of the president's speeches, Garcia told me, more people were
heading to Venezuelan historic sites and had undergone a psychological
shift. In the schools, children were now leaning more about Bolivar
than ever before. In her museum Garcia noted an increase in
the amount of visitors, which now amounted to 3,500 per week.
Garcia added that many soldiers were now coming to Bolivar's
House and that there was greater historical curiosity within
the armed forces.
In 2000-2001, I was always
careful not to linger in downtown Caracas after hours. In San
Bernardino, my landlord advised me not to go out after 7 PM.
Apparently my neighbors had similar ideas: in the evening, the
streets around IESA were deserted. At night I would like awake
in bed, the silence punctuated only by the occasional sound of
distant gunshots.
During my recent trip, I cannot
say that I sensed much of a drastic improvement in Caracas.
In downtown I found it difficult to breathe due to the pollution.
My eyes and throat frequently felt sore from the smog. Meanwhile,
downtown seemed as anarchic and unsafe as ever. Indeed, I found
it difficult to walk on the street as it was taken over by the
buoneros (informal street vendors). The buoneros sell
everything from CDs to arepas, a kind of Venezuelan corn
pancake. Compared to five years earlier, there were more homeless
people sleeping in the streets around Bellas Artes, a grimy area
falling to pieces.
In light of their brutal everyday struggle, it is not surprising
that many residents here have become politicized and routinely
turn out for Chavez's mass street rallies. To some, Chavez's
hard core supporters are a menace. Speaking to one well-to-do
businessman in Altamira, a wealthy Caracas neighborhood, I inquired
about activists who attended Chavez's mass rallies. "They
are fanatics," he replied.
To get more perspective about growing social polarization, I
traveled to the neighborhood of Chacaito and the offices of the
Venezuelan opposition party, Primero Justicia. There, I met
with Gerardo Blyde, General Secretary of the party. Blyde was
clean cut, had slicked back hair and wore a blazer.
Blyde admitted that in Caracas,
there was a real discrimination in terms of services. The poor
had little access to basic infrastructure, he commented.
"In New York," he said, "the water you get in
Queens or Brooklyn is as clean as the water you receive on 5th
Avenue in Manhattan. That kind of equality in services is not
evident in Caracas. Unfortunately, Caracas grew in an amorphous
manner which was disordered, adequate planning was not put into
services, and this has given rise to chaos."
To get a sense of how the other half lived, I went to Altamira.
On one day when I was there, I noticed workmen tending some
flowers planted nearby. Though still polluted, the neighborhood
had a fountain in the main square and tree lined streets. In
the cafes, women flaunted jewelry, surprising to me in light
of growing kidnapping of wealthy residents in the capital.
At a nearby store, I spoke with the same businessman who belittled
anti-Chavez supporters. During the oil strike of 2002-3 [designed
to shut down the oil industry and bring down the Chavez government],
he remarked, well dressed and educated folk tried to keep his
store from opening and surrounded the premises. Finally, he
had called the police. Personally, he had just as much disdain
for the elitist anti-Chavistas in Altamira as the hard core Chavistas.
Blyde admitted that in 2002
many of the elite were paranoid about the Chavistas coming into
their homes. Since then, however, he said that the Caracas elite,
like much of the rest of the city, was not fearful of political
violence as much as everyday street crime.
"Caracas is one of the most dangerous cities in the world,"
he said. "Because of the lack of employment and lack of
income, the city is very violent."
Rafael Uzcategui, media coordinator
at the human rights organization Provea, agreed with Blyde that
much of the paranoia had decreased since 2002. However, he also
stated that the political divide had widened once again in advance
of the election.
Five years earlier I'd met Rafael in Caracas. At that time he
had been a student at the Central University and frequently wrote
for the anarchist newspaper El Libertario. Rafael was
still involved with the paper, but he confided to me that he
did not feel comfortable selling El Libertario on the
campus of the Central University of Caracas.
There, he said, there were pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez groups.
His circle was in the minority, and members of El Libertario
felt pressured by both sides. Even an elder member of the group
was insulted when he attempted to distribute materials. Rafael
said that he was no longer on speaking terms with many former
friends owing to political differences.
"There are pro-Chavez
zones of city and anti-Chavez areas," Rafael said. "We
have always been interested in putting on cultural events and
showing movies," he added. "When we put on activities
in opposition areas, we are accused of being pro- Chavez."
But, he continued, "In a pro-Chavez barrio, they said we
were right wing imperialists."
During the April, 2002 coup,
he said, members of El Libertario had received a lot of
death threats, hateful e-mail, and harassing telephone calls.
The group's Web site had been hacked and destroyed during a
meeting of the World Social Forum, and they had had to launch
a new page through a more secure server.
"We have had to put up with a low intensity civil war in
this city," Rafael commented.
Back in 2002, Rafael said, people would judge you based on the
newspaper you read. If you bought El Nacional, you were
automatically perceived as anti-Chavez. If you were seen reading
Ultimas Noticias, you were assumed to be pro-Chavez.
"In 2002," Rafael added, "If you went out with
red on you could feel the pressure of people looking at you in
the metro."
For me personally, the issue of color as a political marker is
one of the most interesting facets of Caracas political life.
In recent years, red has become the official color of the Chavistas.
In Catia, a poor Caracas barrio, I visited a cooperative where
women were busily sewing red T-shirts for the state-run oil company,
PdVSA. On another occasion, I witnessed pro-Chavez followers
painting over an opposition mural in front of my Caracas hotel.
They were all wearing red.
On a recent trip to Coral Gables, Florida, I had the opportunity
to discuss these questions with Dr. Steve Stein, an old mentor
of mine who is currently the director of the Latin American Studies
Program at University of Miami.
"The Sandinistas had red
and black and they really used those colors a lot," Stein
said. "In the nineteenth century political parties had
colors in Argentina; the liberal and conservatives had light
blue and red. Under Rosas's authoritarian regime in Argentina
you had to wear something red. So, color as a means of political
identification has been a longtime fixture of Latin American
politics." [for those interested in reading the rest of
this interview, see the upcoming December edition of the Brooklyn
Rail which will shortly be available online].
The name of the game in Caracas
has been winning the allegiance of the middle class. According
to Blyde, the vast majority of the middle class voted for Chavez
in 1998.
"But," he said, "that middle class is accustomed
to getting the kinds of services that are common in today's world.
They're not rich, they're not multimillionaires from Manhattan,
they're who have studied, who have worked hard to get their car,
their apartment, their house. These people felt threatened by
speeches made by Chavez: he was going against what they had built
up over the past twenty or thirty years."
"Thirty years ago,"
Blyde continued, "there was no middle class. There were
some rich people and a few families. The rest were poor, like
the typical division in Latin America. They felt threatened
by Chavez's rhetoric stressing 'Socialism for the Twenty First
Century.' They thought they were going to have their standard
of living taken away. Chavez then lost the middle class."
Once, while eating in a Tasca (Spanish style restaurant) near
to my hotel, I fell into discussion with a middle aged couple.
The woman, who was of Spanish descent, said that if Chavez won
again she would leave the country. Her husband owned a print
making shop, which had done well economically. But, the two
of them were fearful of Chavez's intentions and believed that
the Venezuelan president might impose communism.
Speaking to the amiable night watchman in my hotel, I asked him
about growing political tensions in Caracas. He said that he
was a Chavista, as was his family, but that he was not a fanatic.
He disliked Chavez's program, Alo, Presidente!, but occasionally
watched the other state channel, Vive TV.
As a whole, he said, the middle class was divided. Some were
with Chavez, others were against, and some comprised the so-called
"ni, ni" bloc (neither with the opposition nor with
the Chavistas). He personally believed that the middle class
had not become very anti-U.S. as a result of Chavez´s speeches.
"People are just as consumerist as before," he said,
"perhaps more as the economy is now doing better."
Some middle class, he said, had sold their property after the
coup and moved abroad. But then, he said, they found that life
wasn´t so easy and had to return to Venezuela.
Currently local and state authorities
as well as government ministries fund public murals in Caracas.
My favorite was a huge piece near the Bellas Artes metro station
not far from San Bernardino. The piece is comprised of several
panels, each of which is perhaps one storey tall. The mural
depicts Venezuelan history from the colonial period to the present.
In the first panel, the mural shows prosperous owners of great
cocoa plantations and black slaves rising in revolt. Another
panel depicts Venezuela's experience with oil in the twentieth
century. Sitting on top of a big barrel of oil was none other
than Juan Vicente Gomez, a dictator who ruled the country from
1908 to 1935. Gomez, who was installed in a U.S.-supported coup
d'etat, developed a strategic alliance with American oil companies.
Simultaneously, Gomez presided over the country through a repressive
spy and police network. In the mural, next to Gomez, we see
a prisoner holding on to the iron bars of a jail cell. The Gomez
era was notorious for its horrible prisons, such as the terrible
dungeon known as La Rotunda.
In supporting such public art,
the Chavez authorities are clearly trying to compete with materialistic,
U.S.-style billboards and advertising all over the city. In
downtown Caracas, the desk clerk at my hotel remarked that in
his view, the murals had not made much of an impact on public
consciousness. I put some of these questions to Steve Stein.
"If we look back on the
Mexican Revolution, which was probably the beginnings of this
kind of political mural art," Stein said, "there was
not a lot of subtlety in the great Diego Rivera or Orozco murals
either. Did they actually indoctrinate people towards a certain
ideology? And the answer is probably not. My sense is that
after a while, you don't even see them anymore."
As for Caracas, Stein added,
we need to pose crucial questions about the overall impact of
the murals. "Is the murals effect greater than the products
of an international, globalized consumer society. I don't know
if I have the answer to that question."
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