"The Lord of Misery" in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez
El 11 de diciembre, Hugo Chávez Frías, presidente de Venezuela de ostentosa radicalidad, se sometió a su cuarta cirugía por cáncer y desde entonces languidece celosamente recluido en un hospital de La Habana. Solo a sus familiares cercanos y a sus delegados –y, cabe suponer, a los hermanos Castro– se les permite verlo. No ha aparecido un video de él sonriendo desde una cama de hospital ni una grabación arengando a sus fieles.
Chávez's representatives only admit that he suffers "severe respiratory difficulties", despite the rumors that he is in an induced and connected coma to a respirator.The president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, visited Havana last week to bring a Bible to Chávez and, although she did not say if she had seen it, she later tweeted: "Until always."Chávez's supporters insist that he is recovering and even signed a document - a proof of life diligently shown to the press.But Kirchner's message sounded like a final goodbye.
It seems appropriate that Chavez has come to rest in Cuba, which has long been as his second home.In November 1999, Fidel Castro invited him to give a talk in a narrow conference hall of the University of Havana.Chávez, an ex -partner, had been president for only nine months, but had already raised an audience that included Castro, his younger brother, Raúl, and other senior officials of the Cuban Politburo.Chávez, overflowing with goodwill expressions towards Cuba, praised Castro and called him "brother."
It seems appropriate that Chávez has come to rest in Cuba, which has been his second home
It was impossible to ignore the implications of your visit.From the end of the Soviet subsidies, eight years ago, Cuba had had difficulties, and Venezuela was rich thanks to its oil;Chávez was traveling with a delegation from the national oil company.Prone to expansive speeches since then, he spoke for ninety minutes and Castro listened to it carefully all that time.A man sitting beside me whispered that he had never seen him deploy such respect for another leader.
That afternoon, a crowd went to the National Stadium of Havana to see a friendly baseball match between veterans of the teams of both countries.There was a festive spirit.Chávez threw and hit Venezuela, and played the nine full tickets.Castro, who wore a baseball jacket on his military uniform, served as a coach of Cuba and gave a strategy lesson to his guest: throughout the game he put several young players disguised with false beards with false beards that were laterThey removed, starting cheers and laughter from the spectators.At the end of the Cuba party he was winning five to four, but Chavez declared: "Both Cuba and Venezuela won. This has reinforced our friendship."
Soon, Cuba began receiving Venezuelan oil cargoes at a low price, in exchange for the services of Cuban teacher, doctors and sports instructors, who worked in a huge poverty reduction plan launched by Chávez.Since 2001, tens of thousands of Cuban doctors have treated the poor of Venezuela and people with ophthalmic problems have been treated in Cuba as part of a program that Chavez called, with their characteristic pomposity, mission miracle.
A tacit part of the agreement was that Chavez also won an ideology.From the beginning he was a fervent disciple of Simón Bolívar, Liberator of Venezuela and Maximum National Hero.Shortly after Chavez assumed the presidency, he renamed the country as a Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.Bolívar was a model to follow something complicated, a charismatic defender of freedom whose bloody campaigns released a good part of South America from colonial Spain.
But, although he admired the independence of the United States, Bolívar was much more a autocrat than a Democrat.For Chávez, Castro was the bolivar of the modern era, the guardian of the anti -imperialist struggle.In 2005 he announced that, after a long period of study and reflection, he had decided that socialism was the best roadmap for the region.In a few years, with its millions of oil and with Castro as a guide, Chávez revived the language and spirit of the leftist revolution in Latin America.
After a long period of study and reflection, he had decided that socialism was the best road map for the region
His plan was to turn Venezuela into what he called, in his speech at the University of Havana, "a sea of happiness, of true social justice, of peace."His declared goal was to exalt the poor.In Caracas, the capital of the country, the results of its irregular campaign are in sight.
The Spanish colonizers who founded Caracas in the sixteenth century carefully chose their site: in the mountains, and not on the Caribbean coast, to protect it from English pirates and indigenous mercethers.Today you can reach the coast, less than twenty kilometers from the city, by a vertiginous highway excavated in the middle of the mountains under the orders of the extinct military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who governed the country during the fifties.Ruthless and widely repudiated, Pérez Jiménez was deposed after only six years as president, but left an impressive legacy of public works: government buildings, social housing projects, tunnels, bridges, parks and highways.
For decades later, while a good part of Latin America suffered the martyrdom of dictatorships, Venezuela was a dynamic and generally stable democracy.Being one of the richest oil nations around the world, it had an expanding middle class with an extraordinarily high standard of living.It was also a firm ally of the United States;The Rockefeller owned oil deposits there, as well as large farms in which family members set up horseback with their Venezuelan friends.
Being one of the richest in oil, it had an expanding middle class
The prospect of a good life in Venezuela attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants from the rest of Latin America and Europe, and all of them contributed to the reputation of Caracas as one of the most modern and attractive cities in the region. It also had a splendid university - the Central University of Venezuela - a Museum of Modern First Level Art, an elegant 'Country Club' and a series of excellent hotels, as well as exquisite beaches. By the end of the seventies, with Venezuelan women turned into eternal winners of the Miss Universe contest, most Latin Americans considered the country as a beautiful place for beautiful people. Even his most ignominious criminal, Marxist terrorist Illich Carlos El Chacal Ramírez Sánchez, was a dandi who liked silk ties and Johnnie Walker. In 1983, during which the cusp of the Caracas charm could be considered, opened the first subway line, as well as the Teresa Carreño Theatrical complex, first category.
Today, that city is barely noticeable.After decades of abandonment, poverty, corruption and social disturbances, Caracas has deteriorated beyond the imaginable.It has one of the highest homicide rates in the world;Last year, in a three million city, about 3,600 people were killed, approximately one every two hours.The homicide rate in Venezuela has tripled since Chávez ascended to power.In fact, the violent crime, or the threat of this, is the characteristic that best defines Caracas, as inevitable as the weather, which in general is magnificent, and traffic, which is horrible - there are several hours of several hours every day every day every day every day-.
Hunting vendors travel the streets proclaiming their toys, insecticides and pirate movies, while drug addicts wash windshields or juggle in exchange for coins.The graffiti covers the facades;The garbage is stacked on the sidewalks.The Guaire River, which crosses the heart of the city, is a gray torrent of stinking water.Hundreds of homeless people live on their banks, most drug addicts or mentally ill.The richest neighborhoods of Caracas are fortified enclaves, protected by safety walls topped with electrified fences.In access garitas, armed guards watch you behind polarized glass.
Caracas is a failed city, and the tower of David is, perhaps, the definitive symbol of that failure.The tower, a reflective glass zigurat crowned with a large vertical elevator, erects its 45 floors over the city.As a distinctive element of the confinement skyscraper complex - which includes another 18 -story tower, and a high parking - can be seen from almost any point in Caracas, which is still, mostly, a city of modest buildings.The surrounding neighborhood is typical: a hillside of houses and businesses of one or two floors that disappear a few blocks above, in the skirts of the Ávila, the jungle mountain that makes up the spectacular green wall that separates Caracas from the Caribbean Sea.
The tower takes its name from David Blusbourg, a banker who made his fortune during Venezuela's oil boom in the seventies.In 1990, Brillembourg inaugurated the construction of the complex, hoping that he became the Venezuelan response to Wall Street.But he died in 1993, when he was still under construction, and shortly after his death, a bank crisis ended with a third of the country's financial institutions.Construction, complete at 60%, had to stop and never resumed.Distance view, the tower gives no sign that there is something wrong with it.Closer, however, the irregularities of their facade become evident.In some points there are missing glass panels and the holes have been tapped with wood;In others, satellite antennas seem to sprout as fungi.On the sides there is not a single glass panel.
The entire complex is an unfinished concrete armatos - an inhabited armatos.Brick houses of gross construction, similar to those that cover as scabs the slopes surrounding Caracas, have filled the empty spaces between many of the floors.Only the upper floors are open, in the air, like the platforms of a huge wedding cake.Guillermo Barrios, Dean of Architecture of the Central University, told me: "Each regime has its Printur, its icon, and I have no doubt that the architectural icon of this regime is the tower of David. Encarna the urban policy of this regime,which can be defined by confiscation, expropriation, government disability and the use of violence. "The tower, built as a milestone of Venezuelan greatness, has become the highest lost city in the world.
The tower, built as a milestone of Venezuelan greatness, has become the highest lost city in the world
By the time Chavez assumed power, in 1999, the center of the city was abandoned and came less, and the tower had been in custody of a federal insurance agency.When the government tried to finish it in a public tender, in 2001, nobody offered for it;A plan was abandoned to make it the central office of the Mayor's Office.Finally, one night in October 2007, several hundred men, women and children, guided by a group of so -called so -called so -called, invaded the tower and camped there.
A woman who was part of the occupation told me: "We entered as if we went to a cave, like pigs, all together. We open a fence and from that day we have lived here."The woman was afraid, but she felt she had no choice."We all wanted a roof on our heads, because nobody had where to live. And it was a solution."Many others sought the same.The leaders of the invasion began selling the right of access to newcomers, mostly people from the shacks of Caracas who wanted to change the mudases hills around the city.Today, the tower is the emblem of a fashion of the Chávez era: the "invasion" of unemployed buildings by large groups of occupies known as "invaders."
Hundreds of buildings have been invaded since the phenomenon began, in 2003: departments blocks, offices towers, warehouses, shopping centers.The invaders now occupy about 155 buildings in Caracas.The tower complex houses approximately three thousand people, which completely occupy the minor tower and to the twenty -eight floor of the highest.There are young motorcyclists who operate a motorcycle taxi service for the residents of the upper plants and take them from the street level to the tenth level of the attached parking, from where they can continue to climb by rudimentary concrete stairs.For those who live beyond the tenth floor, it is a long way.
During a recent trip to Caracas, I asked a taxi driver to leave me in front of David's tower and looked at me dumbfounded."Willn't you go there, or yes?" He said."This is where all the evil of this city comes from!"The tower has gained reputation to be the criminal epicenter of the city, with the help of the journalistic notes that indicate it as a paradise of thieves, murderers and kidnappers.For many Caracas, the tower is synonymous with everything that is wrong in its society: a community of invaders living in their midst, controlled by gang members armed with the tacit acquiescence of the Chavista government.
The head of the tower is an old criminal turned into a pastor, called Alexander 'El Niño' Daza.Chávez's fervent defender, he agreed to meet with me only after an intermediary assured him that I was politically related.When I arrived at the main entrance of the tower, some women in a safety garrita with an electric fence made me show them an identification and sign a record, and then let me pass only by being invited from Daza.Daza was waiting for me in the atrium, an outdoor concrete space between the two main buildings.
Disorder music sprouted from two huge speakers next to the entrance of the 'church' of Daza, a room from the ground floor where he preached on Sundays; It was said that he had found Christ in jail. Of low stature, fornid and with a childish face, Daza was 38 years old but seemed younger. We sat on a low wall to talk, but with the speakers at full volume it was almost impossible to hear it. He did not talk about the tower, his community or his role as a figure of authority there. Instead, replicating the language of government officials, he complained that "private media" always sought to distort the truth to attack "the cause of the people" and "harm Chávez." On the occasion of my reports about Chávez, a lot of time had spent with him over the years; When I told Daza, it seemed impressed, although cautious. After a while he relaxed considerably and pointed to his wife, a beautiful young woman named Gina who walked with a baby.
Much of the community life of the tower passed hidden in our eyes, on the heights, but some of the lower level departments were around the atrium.There were clothes lying in the rudimentary balconies and some parabolic antennas.You could also see signs of prevalent political loyalties.In the last elections, Daza had done everything possible to make the tower of David a support base for Chávez, and about us there was a close red banner in his honor.Daza complained about the stories that portrayed the tower as the center of the crime and him as a criminal.He and his people took something that was "dead" to "give life," he said: "We rescued her with the vision of living here in harmony."
A good part of the community life of the tower was hidden from our gaze
This was a minority opinion.Guillermo Barrios, the Dean of Architecture, told me: "The Tower of David was not a beautiful example of self -determination of the peoples, but a violent invasion."He described Daza as a "malandro" - one of those opportunistic thieves who had come to characterize the street life of Venezuela - disguised as a pastor."He is an invading leader who sells access to the building: the wildest form of capitalism," he said."He dresses of religiosity, but there is a violent group behind him that allows him to carry out those actions."
Chávez won re -election in October and an atmosphere of uncertainty covered the city in the subsequent weeks.The 58 -year -old president began receiving cancer treatment in January 2011, but declared himself healthy enough to govern another six -year period.Chávez launched a tough campaign against his opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski - a Atlético lawyer of forty years that represents the center -right - and won by a considerable margin of eleven percentage points.However, since his speech he has not reappeared in public.
In November, a payroll official from Chávez told me: "The president is recovering from the strenuous campaign."A couple of weeks later, Chávez traveled to Cuba for a medical check -up and, shortly after, he returned to Caracas and announced that his doctors had detected new cancer cells.Sitting next to his vice president, Nicolás Maduro, he declared: "If something came to happen to me [...], they choose Nicolás Maduro."
The 58 -year -old president began receiving cancer treatment in January 2011
Chávez told me once that Castro had publicly advised to improve his safety, and said: "Without this man, the revolution will end immediately." In Chávez's opinion, that vision attributed too much importance to his person. But if his revolution has advanced something, it has been thanks to his personality; He made things happen while he was present, although otherwise the administration of him was chaotic, erratic. Chávez consolidated his ideological education in jail. He fell imprisoned in 1992 for leading a failed military coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. From there, he asked Jorge Giordani - a Marxist professor of Economics and Social Planning at the Central University - to teach him. "The plan was that Chavez wrote a thesis on how to turn his Bolivarian movement into a government," Giordani told me in 2001, when he held the position of Chávez Planning Minister. He laughed. "But he never finished his thesis. Every time I ask him about it, nothing more tells me 'That is what we are doing, putting the theory in practice'."
Giordani showed me the plans for one of his revolutionary projects."We want to get rid of some shacks to repopulate the field," he said.So Chávez and he had sent the army to the underdeveloped center of the country to start building "autonomous agroindustrial communities" or Sarao (system of rural associations organized), which would grow until they become small cities, they believed.It was a utopian idea, and Giordani acknowledged it."But in social planning one moves between utopia and reality."In the end the Sarao Plan was set aside and the irregular neighborhoods continued to grow.It was typical of Chávez 'ad hoc' governance.Once, on the set of 'Aló President', his free -format television broadcast, I saw him inaugurate an ambitious program to expropriate large farms and hand them over to the peasants.He made the announcement with great joy and then narrated a volleyball game played by play.
Before arriving in Caracas in November, I had not come almost four years, and the city seemed more gloomy and battered than ever.But, as always, it was full of panoramic posters and ads in which the government congratulated itself for various achievements.There were huge photographs of Chávez hugging viejitas and children with affection.Everywhere - on the walls, light posts and highways - there were posters of the recent electoral campaign.There was graffiti and countergraphitis and spotted paint in the points where a party had tried to sabotage the efforts of the other.Polarization has defined Chávez era and there are few things in public life that do not generate disputes.
Polarization has defined Chávez era and there are few things in public life without disputes
This includes the Tower of David: all the people I met had an opinion about it.A journalist friend, Boris Muñoz, told me that the building was administered by "empowered lumpen" who controlled residents with the same violent system that governed life in Venezuelan prisons.Guillermo Barrios blamed the invasions of the abandonment of the city by the government and Chávez himself."The political narrative that has justified the invasions, the shameless robbery, has left Chávez's speeches," he said.In 2011, Chávez gave a speech in which he prompted Caracas's destitute to occupy abandoned warehouses, known as "sheds."
"I invite all the people," he said."Look for your shed and tell me where the shed is, everyone looking"The appropriations of all kinds of buildings had shot themselves.After a disastrous flood in December 2010, which left one hundred thousand people without home, most displaced from the poor neighborhoods of Las Colinas, Chávez ordered the hotels, a 'country club' and even a supermarket to host them.
For months, several thousand "victims", as the homeless was called, lived in the city parks and in a camp at the gates of the Miraflores presidential palace.Some were housed inside the palace.The situation was urgent, without a doubt, and, faithful to his military style, Chávez declared a new "mission": the great housing mission.In Caracas, a large part of the weight of the housing mission fell to Jorge Rodríguez.Old Vice President of Chávez, Rodríguez has been mayor of Libertador, the central area of the city, since 2008. One morning I went to see him to his office, in a beautiful colonial building with balconies and an inner courtyard covered with trees.
Delgado and friendly, with hair hair, Rodríguez wore the informal manner of many Chávez ministers: an impeccable white guayabera, black jeans and running tennis.A huge oil portrait of Simón Bolívar contemplated his office, which gave a beautiful place baptized in honor of Bolívar and decorated with a large bronze statue of Bolívar.He told me that he had not assimilated the severity of Caracas's deterioration until he assumed as mayor."On my first day of work I looked out this window and I saw a drunk urinating the statue of Bolívar. If the thing is here, what will it be in the rest of the city? I thought."Rodríguez said he went to see Chavez to talk about the situation."We decided that we were going to fix the city, starting with the center and going towards the outskirts. Somewhere we had to start."
Rodríguez blamed Caracas's problems to previous governments.Since the Spaniards built Caracas, it has grown without planning - except during the dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez."He did have a plan, but then he was overthrown," said Rodríguez, who described the process prior to this emergency as "an earthquake in slow motion."The poor used to live in the ravines or on the slopes of the mountain, and then had to move to the city out of necessity.The wealthy private initiative had stopped investing in the city, and the 2010 flood brought the situation to a point of crisis.
The wealthy private initiative had stopped investing in the city
Throughout the country there was a deficit of three million homes, and the annual objective were 270,000 new units, he said.Barrios had told me that, during a good part of Chávez's mandate, the government had built only 25,000 units per year, on average, which meant a lower percentage of housing needs than any administration since 1959. But Rodriguez assured me thatThey were going very good pace to fulfill the quota: "We are building everywhere where you can."He granted that there was still a good stretch to go."I can barely rest, I'm all day from one place to another!"He laughed and pointed out the tennis of him.Rodriguez made a gesture to the square and asked if he noticed any difference from my previous visit.
I realized that I was empty.There were no longer the street vendors who used to obstruct the pedestrian streets of the Historical District."We get rid of 57,000 street vendors," Rodríguez said.They had been relocated to a new market roofed on the outskirts of the center.With the support of the president, Rodríguez had also decreed that the invasions of buildings would no longer be tolerated, although there would not be arbitrary expulsions.
"There are still one or two attempts to take a building every week, but we stop them."
Apparently, the government did not officially approve the invasion of the David Tower, but did not make any effort to close it.Was there any tacit pact to leave things as they were?Rodríguez seemed to bother and said: "The situation in the tower of David has to be corrected, and the government will deal with it in due time." By the entire city there were signs that Chavez had begun to face the problem of housing shortageand public transport.Rodríguez took me to a place, on Libertador Avenue, where they were raising a series of departments buildings, including several improvised appearance of five brick and steel on columns.
On the side they were demolishing a lost city and relocating their residents.On the sides of several highways, pillars were risen for a new high light rail, sold by China, which is part of an ambitious plan to reduce city trafficking and take pressure from the overwhelmed metro network.They had installed a cable car, with a very high cost, to transport the inhabitants of San Agustín, a Chabolist settlement in the hills that was one of the oldest in the city.The cabins started from a glowing station and moved slowly in the air, propelled by huge Austrian manufacturing pulleys.
All the cabins were painted from Red Bolivarian - the color adopted by Chávez - and had been baptized: sovereignty, sacrifice, socialist moral.Below, the garbage spilled through the muddy hills, between the casuchas and the dirty alleys.They told me not to get off the cable car on the summit, to prevent someone from assaulting me.
One morning, I met Daza in a vacant lot full of herbs behind the smallest tower.He was supervising a crew of masons made up of four adolescents and an older man, who mixed cement in a truck and spread it on a quartered concrete surface, mud, grass and gravel.Daza wore jeans, suede moccasins and a picture shirt.The air stun to Caño.He explained that he wanted to make a little park so that families with children had a safe place to play and hang the piñata on birthdays.The adolescents of the gang made nonsense and Daza barking orders every so often, but he otherwise watched with tolerant air.He told me that those were young at risk, recommended by their parents.
He explained that he wanted to make a little park, so that families with children had a safe place to play
In the construction gang they were under supervision and, since they were paid for about one hundred dollars per month, they could earn some money for their families.He was supervising them personally, he explained me, because his last gang chief had turned out to be irresponsible."All he did was go around him on his motorcycle, Armando Disorder," he said.
Daza had ambitious plans for the tower.He showed me the garage of the ground floor - a huge space, empty except for a few decomposed urban buses - and he explained that it was an important source of income: they rented the garage to bus drivers.In a few hours it would be full.Near the entrance, where two young people lazy on two dirty sofas, Daza planned to install a security fence and a garrita for a guard.On one side of the building, in the shadow of a row of mango trees, he pointed out an unoccupied place where he wanted to build a nursery for children of working mothers.Near the main entrance he hoped to open a cafeteria "where Bolivarian food can be sold at socialist prices."
While we were moving forward, Daza explained how the building worked.He had a rhythmic and emphatic speech, like a preacher."A prison regime has not been imposed here," he said."What there is is order. And there are no cells here, but houses. We do not force anyone to collaborate here. There are no tenants here, but inhabitants."Each inhabitant had to pay a monthly rate of one hundred and fifty bolivars (about eight dollars at the black market exchange rate) to help cover basic maintenance expenses, such as the salaries of the cleaning brigade and the mason gang.People who could not pay for the construction of their rooms were given financial aid.
Each inhabitant had to pay a monthly rate of one hundred and fifty bolivars
There was a record of all residents, and each floor had its own delegate to take care of the problems.If the problems could not be solved at the floor level, they were raised at the Board of the Tower Council, which Daza organized twice a week.A common problem - he told me, with a little bitterness - was that the residents did not pay their monthly fee and it was difficult to deter the tenants of throwing their garbage in the patio.To transgressors, he told me, "they are given a warning to appeal to their conscience."There was a discipline committee and repeat offenders could be expelled from the building, but there were always some who took their freedoms.The version of the public order system of the tower that gave me Daza contrasted significantly with the stories that I had heard, of prison -type executions, of people who mutilated and whose amputated parts were thrown from the upper floors.
That was the typical punishment for thieves and blows in Venezuelan prisons, and the custom has leaked to the neighborhoods of Caracas controlled by mafias.When I asked him about such stories, Daza made that evasive, typically Venezuelan gesture, of frowning the lip."What we want is to let us live here," he said."We live well here. We do not listen to shots all the time. There are no thugs with gun in hand. What is here is work. What is here is good people, working people."When I asked Daza how he had become the boss or leader of the tower, he frowned his lips again and, finally, said: "At first everyone wanted to be bosses. But God got rid of those who wanted to undo and leftthose who wanted to leave. "
Many residents of the tower have had difficult lives, marked by the national confluence of crime and poverty. In a reconverted winery near the church of Daza lived Gregorio Laya, a friend Daza met in jail. Laya worked as a cook in the presidential cuisine of the Miraflores Palace, but in the old days he had been part of a role -playing gang - specialized in expensive watches. He recited his favorite marks: Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet. Normally, he and his men were waiting at the door of the Teresa Carreño Theater for the concert attendees. But one day he decided to steal the owner of a gym - "close to here, a few more blocks," he said, pointing beyond the tower. He took the clock, but, while he escaped, the man took out a gun and began to shoot him. He had "left more option" to respond to the shots, he said, and had killed the owner of several bullets. Laya was also injured and the police cornered him a few blocks from the place. They condemned him eleven years.
Laya's department was a single room, crowded with all basic belongings, such as the cabin of a sailor or as a cell, perhaps.There was a big bed and a flat screen television, a closet, a chair and a clothesline with clothes hanging in a corner.Laya said he was happy.He was lucky to have a job and he was grateful to Daza for finding a place in the tower.He every day he spent walking through the gym, on the way to his work, and thought how different his life was now.
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Daza told me his own redemption history in similar terms.One day he taught me the church of his, an old warehouse, wide and painted green, with stacked plastic chairs and a preacher's lectern.On a wall they read, in golden letters, the words "House of God" and "Puerta del Cielo".Daza placed two chairs and invited me to sit.
One day he taught me his church, an old warehouse, wide and painted green, with stacked plastic chairs and a preacher's lectern
He told me he was from Catia, one of the most famous irregular neighborhoods in Caracas.Her family was very poor.He was the youngest of several brothers, all of them much older.He stayed away from problems until he turned eight years old, when some children stole his bicycle and beat him to humiliate him.He described them as "malandros" that terrified his neighborhood."I remember seeing them as they chased my brothers," Daza said."They had guns, and my brothers ran and they chased them, shooting them."
"I didn't care if they kill my brothers," he continued."I was bothered in the way they arrived at the house and behaved in front of my mother. They mistreated her, smoking drugs and said rudeness in front of her. I told them that they were cowards, because all they did was attract their enemiesto the neighborhood and then run away when they arrived. "Daza formed his own children's gang."We got some guns; then, when I was fifteen, as our first action we wait for the leader of those same malandros, we approached him and - Daza made a gesture of shooting with his hand - we killed him."After that, he became the head of the whole neighborhood.Daza had spent a couple of seasons in jail, the first time five years and the second two.During his second confinement, by illegal carrying of arms, a preacher policeman went to jail and turned it.Daza had left "with the Gospel" and since then he had tried to have a better life.
For Daza, as for many other inhabitants of Caracas, the idea of a better life is both material and spiritual.The administration of Chávez has had a volatile effect on the national economy.While his anti -capitalist rhetoric has induced some companies to leave, others have learned to work with the government and have done quite well.There is surprising profusion of regulations - for the mere act of paying the account in a restaurant it is necessary to show an identification - but, perversely, this has caused a boom in business activities of the black market.
Chávez administration has had a volatile effect on the national economy
Many doctors and engineers have abandoned the country;Other professionals have flourished.The only constant is the flow of money from oil, which reports great profits to some in addition to supporting the thriving public sector.The poorest in Venezuela are slightly better today.And even so, despite Chavez's calls to socialist solidarity, his people want security and beautiful things as well as they want an equal society.One afternoon, Daza insisted on taking me by car back to my hotel.Gina, he and I hope at the exit of the tower until a shiny Ford Explorer stopped;A driver got out of the car and lay the keys.I got back and we started.
While we were moving, Daza said: "God blessed me with this car in December."Apparently a man owed him money and, when he could no longer pay him, he gave him the car.It was a 2005 model, Daza explained to me, and it was quite good, but now I wanted 2008, preferably one white.By chance, we pass by a 2005 White Explorer in traffic.
Daza murmured something and admired the gleaming grill chrome by his rearview mirror.Then we pass by a Ford concessionaire with a 2012 Explorer exhibited in the illuminated showcase."Who knows how much does that cost half a million bolivars!" She exclaimed.On the highway, Daza asked where the hotel was and seemed to doubt when I told him the name of the district, big sticks.Had he been there?He said yes, of course.However, I had to point out the highway exit and indicate the route from there.While we approached the hotel and spent departments with private security and exclusive restaurants, Daza and Gina looked out the window with amazement."The people here are very rich, right?" He said.In front of my hotel, Daza stopped the car in the middle of the street and observed, paralyzed, while the cars turned sharply to pass us and played the horn.
However, in many parts of the city it is not the rich but the "malandros" who are on the rise.Caracas is one of the places in the world where it is easier to kidnap you.Thousands of kidnappings occur every year.In November 2011, the Chilean consul was abducted by some gunmen who beat him and shot him before letting him.That same month they kidnapped Wilson Ramos, Cácher of the Washington Nationals, taking him from his home in Venezuela and keeping him imprisoned for two days before they rescued him.In April a Costa Rican diplomat was kidnapped.The next day, the police appeared at the David Tower to look for him, but they only found a few weapons.
At a dinner in Caracas, I listened to two couples who exchanged stories about the calls they had received from criminals who claimed to have kidnapped their children.In both cases, voices of children who sounded like their own, crying and imploring help.The calls were false, made by scammers, but the episodes, along with the increasingly bloody news, left them worried about the future.One of the crimes that was most talked about while I was in Caracas was the murder of a taxi driver, whom they had beaten, had cut his face and shot him several times.Then, his murderers passed over him with his own car, for mere fun, before escaping.
Apparently, Daza never left the ground floor of the tower and did not want me to do it either. When I suggested up, he responded with evasive and put pretexts when I asked to witness a session with the floor delegates. If he charged access to each new resident, as they had informed me, he did not admit it to me. But he probably earned a living with the building, perhaps with the bus garage. He could pay a few luxuries, somehow; He lived on his church, but he had an apartment in another part of the city; He had children of previous relationships and they could visit him there safely. On a couple of occasions I managed to climb the tower to take a look. On the tenth floor, the members of the building security team appeared, invariably, to ask to identify me and tell them where he was going. When I mentioned the name of Daza, the guards let me go, but they reappeared every so often to watch. The residents of the tower were always alert and said nothing when they passed by my side. On the stairs, many carried an important burden and moved as mountaineers, with the gestures of those who are going through resistance test.
Apparently, Daza never left the ground floor, and did not want me to do it either
The halls had been drawn in such a way that they received light from the windows that were at each end of the building, but they were in any case in gloom.On the unfinished floors, people had built small homes with painted concrete blocks and plaster.Many left their doors open to be better ventilated and also by sociability, and one could see them busy in their daily lives: cooking, cleaning, loading water buckets, showering.Here and music was heard.Daza had installed a water pump that worked with a generator, and each floor had a tank but the water supply flowed unpredictably by pipes and hoses.
The tower has several overseas stores, a hairdressing and a couple of exclusive nurseries for residents. On the ninth floor I entered a little store where Zaida Gómez, a Parlanchina woman of about sixty years and white hair, lived with her mother, 94. She showed me the cubicle adjacent to the store, where she had installed her mother, a small bird -looking woman who slept in a bed stuck to one of the laminated glass windows. Gomez kept a fan turned on all the time, as the window warmed the room as an oven. Gomez was afraid to be evicted from the tower. "This building is too expensive for people like us," she said. One day the authorities were going to want to recover it. She expected the government, who built homes for the poor in the nearby Libertador Avenue, also decided with the tower and relocate them all. "All I want is to have my own little house and an earthly to sow things: something I can say is mine."
Albinson Linares, a Venezuelan reporter who has written about the tower, described its residents as "refugees from an underdeveloped state who live in a structure belonging to the first world." The tower houses a representative sample of Caracas workers: nurses, security guards, bus drivers, shopkeepers and students. There are also unemployed people and the Circle of Evangelical Expose of Daza. Each floor has its own sociology. The lowest levels are reserved, above all, for older people, who do not endure the rise to the highest levels. In some floors family life predominates and others are mainly occupied by young people with a rude appearance. One day, a couple of guys pulled the photographer who was traveling with me inside and questioned him with suspicion. When he mentioned the name of Daza they released him, but reluctantly. On the downstairs we saw a graffiti that said "The Sapo Child", that is, Soplón. Apparently Daza had enemies inside the tower.
The tower houses a representative sample of Caracas workers
Some conflict seemed inevitable.Among access fees, maintenance charges and garage rent, he could earn good money as an invader.One afternoon, Daza took me to a restaurant on Calle de la Torre: a small and hot place with open kitchen.Shortly after sitting, three men entered our table threatening, standing up just behind our chairs.Daza arched his eyebrows and stopped talking until, after a few minutes, the men left and stayed on the sidewalk.Later, Daza told me that these men lived to organize invasions."They are professionals," he said."That's what they dedicate."
I asked him if they were his enemies.He said no, not exactly, and then murmured that there were few people in the life in which one could trust. Half an hour by car from the tower was another "invasion", the miracle.It had been founded several years before by José Argenis, an ex -convict turned into a shepherd who joined other expressidiaries and his families to invade a land on the riverbank of the river on the outskirts of Caracas.It was an area covered with weeds and garbage, but it was in a good place: very close to the main road, next to a bus stop and near a narrow bridge that allowed residents to cross the river on foot or motorcycle.The miracle was now a community of about ten thousand people, and continued to grow.
Argenis, a charismatic black man of imposing voice, administered in the miracle a host house for expressidiaries, who went to him in search of help in his transition to the outside world.Venezuela's prisons are perhaps the worst in Latin America.The thirty institutions of the country were designed for about fifteen thousand inmates, but house the triple.There is sale of drugs in full view and prisoners have access to automatic weapons and grenades.In many prisons, the authorities have given the control to armed gangs of thugs known as pranes - so called for sound, Pran, which makes a machete when colliding against the cement.The pranes headed the thriving criminal community, both within prisons and outside;With a police force and a judicial power deploreably corrupt and inefficient, they offered structure where there was no.
The pranes had gained enough power to deal directly with the government.Argenis worked as an advisor to Iris Varela, recently appointed Minister of the Chávez Penitentiary Service, whom she helped to negotiate with the pranes.It was a work without paying "for the moment", he explained to me, but it was convenient to work with her;He hoped that her reception model would receive public financing and thus be able to build more centers throughout Venezuela.Argenis had been imprisoned for homicide, which is how he had come to know Daza.After jail they had continued in touch.
"When they took the tower, the boy was still involved in that world, in the underworld," he told me."And there were those who wanted the disorder, but he imposed order ... the old woman used."He launched me a look full of land.At some point, Daza had come to him in search of help."He stayed here six months. He officially continued in the tower, as a leader there, but he stayed here."According to Argenis, Daza had "left prison with problems. There were people who wanted to kill him and we protect him."He left in the air the possibility of Daza returning to criminal life."I think he already hung his gloves," Argenis told me, and outlined an ironic smile."But he can always fall back into temptation, because we need to see for ourselves, do you understand me?"
"But you can always fall back into temptation, because we need to see for ourselves"
Argenis also still had enemies."I have killed some. I have left others in a wheelchair. Some I left sterile. Nothing more imagine: they will hate me the rest of their life."When I asked him how the culture of the malandros had spread, he replied that it was because of prisons.The men who were already even tried to escape, he explained to me, because "they have everything they need there and live just as well or better than they lived in the streets."The economy of the prisons was in apogee, generated millions of bolivars through drug trafficking control."The prisons are really strong, and have gained much more strength in the last seven or eight years."
Argenis spent time in a jail called Yare, located between hills covered with thickets one hour from Caracas in the southern direction.I visited it in 2001 and an prison official led me to travel the perimeter of his fences along a dirt road.We stopped and saw two high cell pavilions with dozens of bullet holes on the facade;Where there should be windows were irregular holes, and a large group of without shirt and rude appearance looked at us from there.A thick black line of human excrement descended by an outer wall and down, in the patio, there was a whole mud and garbage ocean of several meters deep.
"We can't stay here," the official told me."If we stay too long they can shoot ourselves."While we were moving away in the car, he explained that there were only six security guards inside jail at all times.The prisoners selected a guard and allowed him to go to a certain entrance to collect the bodies they had left.Chávez was imprisoned in Yare for two years after his coup attempt.Although he was in a safe area, for political prisoners, it is said that at some point he heard, with impotence, a tumultuary rape to another prisoner, who then cut his throat and stabbed him until he was killed.
Chávez was imprisoned in Yare for two years after his coup attempt
In 1994 Chavez was amnestied and, at the beginning of his presidency, he promised to help reform the prison system.But with the emergence of new crises and causes, prisons were forgotten;Of the twenty -four prisons he promised, only four were built.Last year there were more than five hundred violent deaths within the system.In August, two gangs in Yare engaged in a four -hour shooting that left twenty -five inmates and a dead visitor.There are photographs of Geomar and El Trompiz, the two gang leaders responsible for the massacre, where they possess in an intimidating way with their weapons.The trumpiz was killed last January, apparently by his own men.
After his re -election, Chávez declared an emergency state in the country's prison and promised a radical transformation.Even so, as Argenis suggested, the damage is done."This government has been more permissive: the previous governments were more repressive," he told me."And that is why the Malandra culture has flourished, and has passed from prisons to schools, to universities, to the streets. It has become the national culture."
The first thing the visitor who arrives at Caracas International Airport is a popular neighborhood, perhaps the most famous in the city: on January 23."The 23", as he is known, was built in the fifties as a social housing project by one of Venezuela's great architects, Carlos Raúl Villanueva.It is a complex of eighty buildings that occupies a huge land in decline at the north of the city.It was conceived as a vast suburb, divided between four -story and multifamily departments buildings of fifteen floors, communicated by gardens and walkers.
At present, green spaces are totally taken by invaders.The 23 is, for practical purposes, a lost city of one hundred thousand people, studied by the multifamily of Villanueva.The area is an explosive mosaic of self -managed groups that range from those with leftist claims to criminal flagrants.Many of them have weapons.
One of the emblematic figures of the 23 was Lina Ron, a militant activist with blond -dyed hair and an overwhelming personality.Until before dying of a stroke last year, she reunited multiple anti -imperialist manifestations, bustling marches that often ended in violence.Chávez tolerated her, as well as her quarrelsome followers, because she was a passionate defender of her public policies and often appeared next to him in the rallies.In 2001, Chavez implied that he had adopted an extreme left position to avoid a blow like the one who had taken him to power."The truth is that we need a revolution here, and if we cannot get it now it will come later, with a different face," he told me.
"Maybe in the same way we leave, at midnight, with weapons." Today, there is probably no chavista as openly radical as Juan Barreto. At 54, in addition to being a professor at the Central University, Barreto is an eloquent, bright and resounding Marxist. He was "Mayor Mayor" in Caracas, in charge of supervising all the districts of the city between 2004 and 2008, when many of the invasions occurred - including the David Tower. At the beginning of 2008 I spent some time with him, and it was evident that some of the occupies of the center considered him the protector of his. (Barreto has always said that he does not support the invasions, but he did approve the expropriation of some vague properties of the city to help solve the housing crisis). In a typical move of his, Barreto lined up the rich of the city by threatening to confiscate, in the name of the town, the Country Club of Caracas, where the palatial villas and the gardens surround a golf course of eighteen holes. In the end the plan was abandoned, apparently by orders of Chávez.
The frankness of Barreto has won numerous enemies, and even some Chavistas 'mainstream' consider it a lost bullet, prone to speak in public about "putting together the people" to defend the revolution.As mayor, he clearly liked to be the 'terrible enfant' of the Chavista revolution.He organized a group of "motorized" –guardespaldas in motorcycles - who traveled with him.Among his troop was a teenager, ancient murderer, named Cristian, whom Barreto was rehabilitating.
Among his troop there was a teenager, ancient murderer online, named Cristian
When he introduced me, he asked: "Cristian, how many people have you killed?"The boy murmured: "About sixty, I think", and Barreto released a laugh, satisfied.When Barreto left the position he entered a political limbo, but last year, during the re -election campaign of Chávez, he got again.Putting at the forefront of an informal group of radical "groups" out of the popular neighborhoods, he formed a new organization, called networks, which joined the campaign.Caracas was covered with networks of networks that showed Chávez, swollen by the treatment of steroids, male hugging an even more corpulent barreto.
I found Barreto living in the murky neighborhood of Caracas known as the cemetery, for the great cemetery that is there - where the malandros celebrate rituals in honor of their fallen comrades.The shacks covered the nearby hills.Barreto's house had a huge double steel gate and a couple of armed security guards watched the area with German shepherds.Once I identified, they let me go to the garage, where two armored SUVs had parked.Inside I saw an atrium full of modern sculptures next to a giant aquarium.Barreto was on the top floor, cooking tamales in a latest technology kitchen.Next to the kitchen was a living room and a group of young people, members of the troop, sitting around a table with 'laptops'.
A heroic Barreto painting decorated the room - a woman with the torso discovered, a man of man giving him a strawberry in his mouth -, along with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Platinum ("Gift of a friend") and a Marlon Brando dollcharacterized as Don Corleone.Barreto explained that his and he worked to turn nets into a political party.In recent dates, Chávez had presented his plan for "socialism of the 21st century", in which Venezuelan society would restructure in communes.No one, except by Chávez himself, understood what exactly that term or how it would apply, so a debate on.Barreto said that his followers and himself worried that, without the pressure of groups as networks, the plan would end up being used to "tie their hands" to the revolutionary forces.
Nobody, except perhaps Chávez himself, understood what exactly that term meant
To help create a real commune, Barreto worked closely with Alexis Vive, one of the best organized armed groups of 23. Barreto suggested that we went there by car to see them.When we got on one of his SUV - Barreto said that Chávez had lent them - a bodyguard took out a Belgian P90 machine gun."Beautiful, right?" Barreto asked, with a smile."Shoot 57 bullets."He then said he needed weapons like that for personal defense."It's not that we are against the Government. I can't find the means to fully support it."He laughed."It's like when you have a beautiful woman but you're not in love with her. It's difficult. You still want her, but you don't want her, do you understand me?
At the headquarters of the Alexis Vive collective there were murals of Marx, Mao, Castro and Che Guevara, but, beyond a few armed men who remained in the corners of the nearby buildings, the foot soldiers remained discreetly hidden.One of the group's leaders, a young sociology student named Salvador, explained that the group controlled about twenty hectares, with ten thousand inhabitants, with whom they were trying to form a self -sustaining Marxist community.The group was armed for self -defense, he said.There were corrupt police officers and members of the Venezuelan National Guard working with Malandros in 23, some of them in areas that border their own territory.Barreto argued that the armed contingent protected his people from the dishonest police."They have not been able to enter here since 2008," he said laughing."We have gained bullets with them."
Barreto told me that corruption in security forces was a deeply rooted problem: the true source of the country's criminal culture.He had fought it as mayor, he said, by replacing a good part of the police with members of the Tupamaros, an armed group of 23. The situation, said Salvador, arose from Chávez's inability to take care of the true criminals: "ChavezHe has not gone against the malandros because he thinks they can go against him. "
"Chávez has not gone against the malandros because he thinks they can go against him"
One Sunday, fifty plastic chairs were placed for religious services in the church of Daza, but only a dozen people arrived, almost all women and children.Daza seemed imperturbable.He wore a tie, pants and black shoes, and tested the microphone singing 'Gloria' and 'Hallelujah' while a couple of men worried with the musical team - a drummer, an electrical organ and huge speakers.A few more women arrived and knelt to pray before joining the congregation.Daza's companion, Gina, entered with her children and took a brilliant pink bible.
While the musicians played, Daza sang - mall but without inhibitions - from the side of the stage, pounding a bongo.At some point he took the microphone and began to shout rhythmically, with a rough scream, things about good and evil.He said: "There are wars in the world and people do not care if children die, if women die, if they die old. They only care about their wealth. But in the Bible it says that there is only one life and it is this life - the Lord knowsof an eternal life, but only he - so we must live it. We must live this life and be in peace with God. "
The Mass lasted three hours.The women swayed and rocked up, with their eyes closed.Daza's voice became a hypnotizing sound wall.At some point, a young guest preacher named Juan Miguel got to testify.He came from a poor neighborhood, he said, and his father was crazy.He had been in jail and his house had been razed by the floods of 2010;He lived with thousands of victims in the mall expropriated by Chávez."We have had difficult lives, hard lives, but God has called us to preach his word."His eyes shone;He told Daza: "God has chosen you and has chosen me. God has chosen Venezuela to bring the gospel to the world."One day, Daza led me to the neighboring state of Miranda to see the popular neighborhood where he had lived with his ex -wife, and where she kept living.
The women swayed and rocked up, with their eyes closed
On the way he was talking, as always, about how God had saved him.Daza had abandoned school at thirteen, and by the time he turned fourteen he was already in the life of gangs.During the second stay in jail he learned to read, and his first book was his."I did not have a preparation like in universities, but I have prepared a lot in God. I used to speak to people offensively, with rudeness. I was filthy. But somewhere in the Bible - I don't remember where -I read that bad language corrupts good customs.
And when I read that, I said: 'Oh, God is talking to me' ". We arrived at a concrete house at the summit of an steep hill; from there other wooded hills were seen, marked by new invasions. There was the daughter of the ex -wifeDe Daza, a young people of twenty -half.
Although he was still a criminal, that relationship had been formative for Daza. She was older, and he felt that she had helped him mold as a man. She, in addition, had consented to him, Daza said with a laugh: she cooked and cleaned for him, and ironed her clothes. Daza had escaped with other women - "I changed bride as if changing clothes," he told me - and she had pregnant them. He and his ex -wife fought a lot. There, Daza began to recreate a particularly dramatic fight in which he immobilized the woman against the wall, took the gun out of her and fired from her a few centimeters from her head. "It was nothing more to scare her," he told me smiling. But the woman had a knife in her hand, and when he shot - "maybe she thought she really was shooting her, or perhaps it was only an instinctive reaction" - Daza sank it in the chest. He left the house staggering and managed to reach a clinic. He was lucky: the knife had not touched the heart or other vital organs.
The girl nodded and laughed when he remembered the scene."After that we reconcile again," Daza said.In the car, I asked if she regretted something."No," she said.- And what about the men you have killed?-Like who?–As that malandro you killed when you were fifteen.Daza kept silent.After a minute, he said: "At that time I was ignorant, and I have changed. I feel like a new man, a new person. Those were things that one lived in life and that, well, God allowed, but I thinkThat I am different now. "
Daza kept silent again and then said: "In this life, when you become a leader your life becomes at risk, because you become enemies. Some people think you are involved in the mafia and weird things, for your past. The enemies They will always try to discredit you. The devil will try to make sure you are miserable, to use you for their benefit. " After all, it was difficult to know if the child Daza was a "malandro", a genuine defender of the poor or both. What was evident is that he was very well adapted to the life in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez, and that he could take advantage by all the media: he worked with the lagoons left by the government, life was sought with a capitalist company and negotiated With the world of underworld when necessary. When we left the old neighborhood we encountered a small political rally in a street. Henrique Capriles, who had appeared against Chávez in the presidential elections, was governor of Miranda and the elections for the governorship they approached threateningly, in a few weeks. Some campaign volunteers in a truck distributed beers and posters. Daza shrugged. He expected the Chavista candidate to win.
Some campaign volunteers in a truck distributed beers and posters
Daza commented that he was considering getting into politics himself.While the leader of the Tower of David had come to meet some city officials, including people from Chávez, and they had urged him to consider themselves by a seat of the municipal council.With the changes that the Government proposed and the creation of the communes, he hoped that David's tower would obtain legal status.
Daza had begun to probe in the building."People tell me that I should apply for me, and that I have possibilities," he said."So I'm thinking about it."Chávez ordered him to stand two years ago, to give Simón Bolívar's bones a new dwelling.Before, he ordered the bones of Bolivar to be unearthed and examined, under the belief that the hero had been poisoned by his enemies, but the autopsy was unfinished.He then called the construction of the new tomb.
The building is a thin white wedge that rises, like a boat candle, more than fifty meters high.According to reports, it cost 150 million dollars to build it and, like everything Chavez has done, generated controversy.The construction passed in secrecy and mausoleum, whose opening had been announced for December 17, is still not inaugurated after several postpones.When finished, it will be the central element of a decadent corner of the city, next to an ancient military fortress - where Chávez was imprisoned, briefly, after his attempted attempts - and the national pantheon, a nineteenth -century church where the remainsDe Bolívar rest guarded by guards of adorned clothing.
When finished, it will be the central element of a decadent corner of the city
There are persistent rumors that, when Chavez dies, they will bury him with Bolívar in the mausoleum.Chávez and his followers, of course, trust that his struggle will not die with him.In 2001, Chavez told me that he fervently wanted to bring a "true revolution" to Venezuela.A few years later, however, Jorge Giordani, ancient Mentor of Chavez, seemed worried that his pupil did not build a permanent revolution."I am also a Quijote," he told me."But one must have well planted feet on Earth. If we have any oil, we will continue to have an authentic country within twenty years, but we have a lot to do until then."Giordani paused and recited the old Venezuelan saying: "The dog dead, the rage is over."Now, with dying Chávez, those who say Chavistas convey the alleged wishes of the president to citizens.
In recent months, Venezuelans have received little reliable information about the intentions and true health of its president, and therefore have had little interference in their own future.For them, Chávez's death represents the end of a long and tangled show.They gave power in one choice after another: they are victims of his affection by a charismatic man, whom they allowed to be the leading character of the Venezuelan stage at the expense of everything else.After practically a generation, Chavez leaves his fellow citizens with many unanswered questions and a single certainty: the revolution he tried to actually generated was never carried out.He started with Chávez;And with him, most likely, he will die.