Chávez’s fate lies in Venezuela’s divided barrios

CARACAS — The last time he ran for re-election, President Hugo Chávez won comfortably in Petare, one of Latin America’s biggest slums with nearly half a million people. This time around, as Venezuelans vote today, he may not.

Challenger Henrique Capriles — known as “El Flaco,” or “Skinny” — has built a surprisingly large following in what was once clear Chávez territory across Venezuela. The fervent support for the president among the poor he’s graced with state largesse has eroded.

“‘El Flaco’ owns the street!,” María Hernández, 62, shouts from her pane-less window as three foreign journalists climb steps through a warren of red brick homes in a 1,500-family slice of Petare known as José Felix Ribas.

The barrio, planted on a steep hillside, is run by a community council of Chávez loyalists who provide special care for the handicapped, register the elderly for pensions and parcel out government handouts, from free food for the needy to subsidies for home improvements. But such services, delivered through what the government calls “missions,” long ago stopped translating into solid allegiance for Chávez, who is seeking a third six-year-term.

The neighbourhood is divided, owing in some degree to mismanagement by pro-Chávez mayors and governors who were voted out of office in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

Farther up the hillside, orange flags of one of the parties backing the 40-year-old opposition candidate fly from a second-floor window of Ivana Villamizar’s home.

“If Chávez wins, I’m thinking of leaving the country,” she says. “I really don’t want my children’s future to be in a country in this condition.”

The 25-year-old nurse, a mother of 5-year and 18-month-old boys, has spent more than half her life under Chávez’s rule and says she thinks Chávez has done a lot of good.

But she lists several of the most oft-cited reasons for why she wants him gone: spiralling violent crime, the bloating of government payrolls with Venezuela United Socialist Party acolytes in do-nothing jobs at a burgeoning list of government ministries, and unchecked corruption that she says extends to the communal councils.

Villamizar is especially upset because the local communal council hasn’t given her funds to replace her leaky old zinc roof, which is held down by loose bricks and planks.

“That’s not the government’s fault,” interrupts in her neighbour, Jacinto Suárez, a 69-year-old former beer truck security guard.

Suárez is a committed Chavista, and his house is being rebuilt. During Friday’s visit by journalists, two labourers were plastering the brick and mortar that replaced the rickety wood and cardboard walls.

“For me, if ‘El Flaco’ wins the missions will go away. We’ll all die. We’ll all die of hunger,” Suárez says. “He’s with the bourgeoisie.”

Nonsense, Villamizar retorts. “They will continue,” she says of the missions, “because if they don’t it will be a horrendous mess.”

Venezuelans, whose oil-export driven economy produces little else, have become more dependent than ever under Chávez on state handouts and Capriles has expressed no intention of weaning them from government aid.

He has painted himself a centre-leftist, promising to keep the missions and not to thin public payrolls. Capriles is, however, solidly backed by Venezuela’s right and that has stoked fears of a huge purge of Chávez loyalists if he wins.

Two days ahead of voting, Villamizar echoed a widespread feeling that the race is so close that the election will be decided by a large pool of voters, perhaps 10 percent, making up their mind in the voting booth. “There are so many Chavistas, so many people who live in this barrio ... who are public employees and have been obliged to attend government rallies,” she said. “But when it comes to the moment of truth are not going to vote for Chávez,” she said. “And there are others who will do the opposite.”

Villamizar said she had no idea what would happen today: “I’ll tell you, I don’t know. I just don’t know. Let it be what God wills.”

AP