Massimo's photoblog

After coming back very late on Christmas night from la Finca, we slept until late in the morning. During the day we really didn’t do much, apart going to a “communication center” of the local telephone company to call my parents at a low telephone rate, and visiting some friends of us living in Tabay (one of the small villages along the roads to the Paramo).

Tabay has an interesting story. As part of the “barrio adentro” program, the government offered to place one of the cuban doctors that are organizing basic health care centers for poor neighborhoods. This is a program done in collaboration with Cuba (which has the expertise and the actual doctors available for the program since it was too hard to convince venezuelan doctors to practice for a very low salary in poor neighborhoods), in exchange for oil. The deal is that the government pays the small salary of the doctor, while the community provides the location to install the little hospital. Being the mayor of Tabay affiliated to an opposition party, the offer was refused, and the local community had to organize independently from the town officials to find a suitable place. As a result, in the last elections one month ago the incumbent mayor lost his office, and now the town is governed by the pro-government mayor that organized the community to keep their cuban doctors. The “barrio adentro” program of course can only provide basic health care, and cannot substitute the need of real hospital to cure serious illness, so have been criticized as a waste of money that should instead be used to fix the problems of the proper national health care system. The recipients of the “barrio adentro” program, apparently, do not think this way and are ready to go a long way to support the initiative (that barrio adentro is effectively improving the quality of life of poor people was one of the recurring themes in Mayli’s uncle description of his life as a priest of a poor Merida neighborhood). Of course having cuban doctor is not a long term solution, but the program is gradually training doctors and paramedics from the local communities, with the aim of having a program which is self-supporting in the future. This is however something that the middle class cannot see, given their small contact with the daily life of Venezuelan dispossessed.

After dinner, we received the visit of one of Mayli’s cousins. He was happy because he is opening a new small commercial activity in Merida, and was assured cooperation from the city officials. He said that he got it because he always maintained an equal distance between the pro- and anti-government factions during the struggles of the last few years (his philosophy is that there is no point in swimming against the current). When he went to talk to the city pro-government officials, they checked that he didn’t sign for the recall referendum against the president (the list of these signatures is public), and then said that they will be very happy to make business with him.

Today’s photo has nothing to do with this story. I didn’t take many pictures in the last few days, though, so I decided to post one more image of Merida’s mountains, this one taken a couple of days ago while driving to Mayli’s cousin restaurant on the Valle de la Culata. Despite all its social and political problems, Venezuela is a beautiful country.

Go to the next installment of my Venezuela travel diary.