Massimo's photoblog

The Christmas light of Caracas slums, seen from the terrace of Mayli’s uncle house, as they follow the contours of the mountains around the city. We spent our last night in Caracas at an exquisite family dinner, eating hallacas and other delicacies. Hallacas is the typical Christmas time dish in Venezuela. A sort of corn tortilla filled with meat and vegetable (a kind of “stuffed polenta”, the specific ingredients varie for different areas of Venezuela) wrapped in banana leaves. If you go to Venezuela at Christmas time you cannot avoid eating hallacas, as everybody prepares them according to an almost-secret recipe which is a family heirloom.

The main ingredient of hallacas is of course the corn flour, which is something very common in Venezuela. During the Christmas holiday of two years ago, anti-government demonstrations took the form of a two-months-long lockout of Venezuelan business, including the oil refinery business. To prevent a food scarcity due to the disruption of the private transportation involved in the lockout, the government started a system of basic goods distribution (with the help of the army) at subsidized prize. These “mercals” become so popular among the lower classes (strongly supporters of the government) that have been maintained even after the defeat of the lockout, and the normalization of the situation. One of the typical items sold at the mercals is the corn flour for hallacas. As an effect of the prize subsidies, the private companies producing the flour had to lower their production costs, allegedly (I am not a corn flour expert to judge) resulting in a lower quality flour. This is apparently of great concern, in these days, for Caracas higher classes, that complain they have to buy re-imported corn flour (from Puerto Rico) to have the same quality as before.

This is quite typical of the venezuelan opposition: to find every day a new petty reason to complain against the government, and losing sight of the overall situation in their own country. One can dispute that the mercals are a good or bad initiative for venezuelan society (they guarantee the accessibility of basic goods for the large impoverished majority of venezuelan population, but at the same time they introduce unfair competition to the private business), but for sure are a very minor inconvenience for the social classes that often import luxury items paying in hard currency. Nobody seems to note that these same mercals (together with other social initiatives like literacy campaigns, “misiones” to provide basic health care in the lower-classes barrios) are having a much broader effect on venezuelan society that just changing the quality of the corn flour. For the first time since the oil boom in the ‘70s, the lower classes of Venezuela are seeing a government that is actually acting to reduce the effects of their impoverishment (again, one can dispute that these measures are the most effective, but still this is the perception of the people for which these initiatives are carried on). This means that for every new mercal, the government is increasing its popularity in the lower classes, which is more and more motivated to vote at the next election. Consider that the lower classes make up almost 80% of the total population, and it is easy to predict how slimmer and slimmer are getting the chances of the opposition to regain the lost power (at least in a democratic way; the opposition did try and narrowly failed a coup in April 2002).

To all the above, you should also add a small but significant detail. All the “misiones” for basic literacy and health care are managed according to plans financed by international organization (like the UN), but developed in Cuba, with the help of cuban doctors and teachers. This is not something entirely new. Cuba has a great expertise in providing health care and basic education in remote and impoverished areas, and has successfully done it in many parts of the world (including Cuba itself, that has a very high education rate and expectancy of life despite decades of US-led economical embargo). What is new is the scale in which these initiatives are carried on in Venezuela (more than one million people involved in the literacy program only), thanks to the high revenues from the venezuelan oil, now at an historic maximum. People learn by example, and is sensible to think that the communities involved in the misiones will be ideologically affected by the contact with cuban volunteers that for a very low salary are significantly improving their life.

All this is something the venezuelan opposition seems to ignore, too involved in petty arguments with the government for issues like the quality of the corn flour, to realize the political shift toward the left that their country is living, and the increasing political awareness of the traditionally disenfranchised lower classes.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.