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The shiny red and silver capsules of San Agustin’s Metro Cable move silently up the hill some 50 feet above corrugated iron and brick shacks that grip the slope, each line of houses on a precarious walkway, separated by heaps of accumulated rubbish. Concrete steps mount the hill between the shacks, a long hike in the sun down to the valley in which the city of Caracas sits and where most of these residents work. Marisol points: “Look – that place is where I used to live. See that woman, that’s my daughter in law. My son lives there now with his family.”
The Metro Cable is a recent extension of the Caracas Metro, leading up the hill from San Agustin through Manguita and Ceiba and down the other side to link to the Metro again. “There are workers of all sorts who live on this hill, mechanics, labourers, street sellers, nurses and doctors”, says Coralia, and Migdalia Lopez adds: “We’re not the poorest but we don’t have much, and couldn’t afford to move somewhere else. In any case we don’t want to. This is where most of us have grown up.” The three women are among the 27 activists of the cultural committee in the barrio – including two men – who have been organising neighbours and school children into sports, craft workshops and all sorts of performance arts. Over four hundred children and young adults attend the El Sistema orchestra classes, a movement starting before the revolution in Venezuela, but supported by the socialist governments led by Chavez since 1999, and Nicolás Maduro since Chavez died from cancer in March 2013. Migdalia laughs about the balance of women on the committee. “It’s because we know how to organise things. We have to organise our families after all.”
There are about fifty thousand people living on the hill, but their housing has been changing. The first new blocks were put up eleven years ago, an early investment of the Chavez government, at the top of the hill. There were discussions with residents in a Comité de Tierra Urbana (Urban land committee) which these three women were also part of. The original plans to build low rise houses were changed to flats to speed up re-housing. Four stories became 11 stories in the latest blocks, which are mainly at the bottom of the hill.
Both on the hill and down below there is a health clinic and a disabled persons centre, as well as even more local health posts with just one doctor and nurse, mostly staffed by Cubans. The first graduates from a Cuban training scheme have been distributed around the country, intended to replace the Cuban health workers over time. The new housing is almost entirely of 3-bedroomed flats with two bathrooms. Migdalia invited us to her own flat, where she lives with her mother Antonia Lopez and her own five children. Her mother is in her sixties and a recent photo proudly adorns the wall of her receiving her secondary school certificate. She has been crocheting hats for each of her 34 grandchildren, a skill learned at one of the cultural committee’s classes. Twenty years ago she survived as a sweet maker for her children to sell on the streets. The men are not visible although it is a Sunday.
Far from being a remote hovering presence, the cable car has given the hill-dwellers easy access to the city. It costs 1.5Bvs, about a quarter the price of a cheap sandwich. Each car carries the name of one of the States of Venezuela, or a word to describe the philosophies of the government that made this investment for its poorer citizens: Solidaridad, Ética, Comunidad, Co-operación. These investments and the resources given to the community councils are why Chavez won election after election, and why the people voted for a continuance of his policies after his death. The vote was close.
These Caracas barrios are a far cry from the middle class suburbs of Caracas. Venezuela is unusual in Latin America, for having a mainly rich middle class who dominate the media.
There are very few government or independent news outlets compared to the many daily papers and news channels that parade complaints of food shortages and government ineptitude, refusing to give a balanced view. On October 8th 2013, president Maduro asked for and was given powers to investigate and deal with corruption in public services and the ‘economic war’ waged by the opposition. This is an economic war not of small producers or the middle class, but of big business which has manipulated stocks to both create shortages and complaints and take advantage of the inflation when they release goods.
What special powers are going to be used is not clear, but the rotation of the goods absent from supermarkets does point to a co-ordinated economic war, aimed at fuelling complaints and wearing down the electorate.
If it weren’t for the opposition’s hold on the economy, then the extension of housing, health and education in Venezuela would assure the government’s continued popularity. As it is, a lot depends on the ways in which workers and social movements are conscious of the battle going on between capitalists and socialists in Venezuela, and find solutions that put activists from communities like San Agustin in charge to weather the storms that are likely to get worse before they get better.
Ludi Simpson, 11th October 2013, visited San Agustin 7th October 2013
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