Venezuela Inaugurates First Socialist City
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez explains the distribution of housing, schools, medical clinics, and green spaces in Venezuela's first socialist city, Caribia (agencies).
The Venezuelan government, together with the private sector and international partners, is ?nding creative solutions to the nation’s housing de?cit, including the construction of new, communal-oriented cities.
Pushing forward with its large-scale public housing program that seeks to construct two million new homes in the next 6 years, the Venezuelan government opened the doors of 602 apartments to needy families in the socialist city of Caribia last weekend.
The delivery represents part of Mission Housing Venezuela, a social program launched earlier this year with the explicit goal of eliminating the Caribbean nation’s housing de?cit, estimated at 1.5 million.
“In the future, there will not be a single family that doesn’t have digni?ed housing like the ones being handed over today in Caribia City”, President Hugo Chavez said during the inauguration ceremony on Saturday.
Broadcasting from the presidential palace of Mira?ores in Caracas, the Venezuelan head of state praised his government’s efforts in making affordable homes a reality, commenting that such a program would never be possible under a capitalist system.
“Only with a socialist government would this be possible”, Chavez af?rmed.
A SOCIALIST CITY
Caribia City, a socialist megaproject ?rst conceptualized by Chavez in 2006, is envisioned as a planned, holistic community, complete with schools, health clinics and employment opportunities for its residents.
With the recent birth of Mission Housing Venezuela, the city’s development has been accelerated as the social program incorporates the work of various ministries and building strategies to boost housing availability.
The government is planning a total of 1,400 new homes, totally furnished, to be delivered to residents of the city this year and a total of 20 thousand to be provided in the urban center by 2018.
Located in the sector Camino Los Indios just outside the capital of Caracas, the majority of the ?rst residents to bene?t from the initiative have been the victims of torrential rains that left more than 100 thousand people homeless at the end of last year, as well as those living in high risk areas too dangerous for permanent residence.
“I’m happy and really pleased with this new home”, said Jessica Suarez, mother of three, upon receiving the keys to her new apartment last Saturday. “Now we’re going to be able to start a new life”, she stated.
The new units are ?nanced by the Venezuelan government with varying rates of subsidies including up to 100 percent, depending on a family’s income.
JOBS CREATION
“The government’s investment has been 2.9 billion bolivars [$674 million] up to this point and we’re approving another important allocation in order to accelerate the work”, Chavez said of his administration’s ?nancial commitment to the project.
Of?cials report that each 3 bedroom apartment has a cost of 290 thousand bolivars [$67,000] and is being constructed by a Venezuelan-Cuban enterprise formed under the auspices of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americans (ALBA) regional block.
Nearly 2,000 Venezuelans have been employed by the project.
“This is a city for the people… not for the machine of capitalism that allows a small group of people to bene?t at the cost of the rest”, Chavez declared on Saturday.
ANOTHER HOUSING INITIATIVE: PETROCASA
In addition to the acceleration of Caribia City, the Venezuelan government has also been speeding up its construction of Petrocasas to ful?ll its housing commitment.
In the state of Carabobo, more than 27 thousand people have bene?ted from the construction of 6,000 homes fabricated from materials originating from the nation’s massive oil industry.
The idea of using the country’s dominant oil sector as a motor for housing construction was ?rst proposed in 2004 as a way to adopt locally available materials to the needs of residents living in precariously built shantytowns outside major cities.
“Petrocasa comes from the idea of designing a construction system that can utilize the raw materials of the petro-chemical industry. For this reason, we sought out the best technology in the world, selecting it from Austria, Italy and Germany in order to create the machines and the designs to build the ?rst Petrocasa factory in the state of Carabobo”, explained Enrique Majo, Director of the socialist business.
The homes are built with highly resistant plastic frames ?lled with concrete, steel and iron girders.
There are currently three factories in Venezuela producing the Petrocasa “kits” in the states of Carabobo and Apure.
The houses, which can be built in 10 to 12 days, are not “plastic homes”, Majo argued, but are of high quality, exceeding Venezuelan health and safety standards.
“The Petrocasa system is in compliance with quality and safety standards. The residential units are anti-seismic, non-?ammable, durable… and hurricane resistant”, the Director assured.
Many organized residents, participating in the their grassroots community councils, have taken the initiative in preparing the grounds and erecting their new homes.
Neida Marin, a spokesperson for the community council Cacique Guacara in Carabobo, described the leadership role that activists have played in the transformation of their living environment.
“We, the organized community, received the dimensions and pro?les of the Petrocasas and we created teams with the participation of men and women from the area. We put together our homes in stages and in less than a year we had an entire neighborhood built”, Marin said.
The activist informed that 530 Petrocasas have thus far been constructed in her residential area, substituting what were once ?imsy built shacks for new digni?ed homes.
“This neighborhood is the product of a big struggle. The community council got organized and formulated the project and with the assistance of [the state petro-chemical company] Pequiven and the institutions involved, we could solidify the construction of our homes”, she declared.
Initiatives like Petrocasas and Caribia City are part of the reason why the Chavez administration will meet its goal in the coming months of constructing 153,000 homes in 2011, Housing and Habitat Minister Ricardo Molina reported last weekend.
“Our conviction is that we will meet the goal because, according to our calculations, many homes are in stage of being ?nished. Beginning in September, different construction processes throughout the country will be coming to a close”, Molina stated.
ZNet Articles
Venezuela Crime Spree from NYT
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Sep 12, 2011 09:16 AM
In Venezuela Crime Spree, Even Hospitals Are Hit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A young man dies of gunshot wounds, and enraged friends and relatives react by shooting up the hospital. A medical student leaving another hospital at the end of her shift is shot to death by a robber. Doctors working late take to sleeping in their workplace rather than risk being mugged.
In crime-ridden Venezuela, even hospitals are no longer safe.
No one was injured in the Aug. 20 shooting rampage at the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, but Eduardo Vargas, a 39-year-old nurse, recalled pulling children from their sickbeds as bullets broke windows and lodged in hospital beds.
"We took shelter in a closet and we threw ourselves to the ground," he said.
The shooters were arrested, but the next day public anxiety was heightened when the 24-year-old student was killed just outside a hospital in Valencia, Venezuela's third biggest city. Eduardo Morillo, an anesthesiologist explaining why he and others now sleep in their hospital, said there had been other incidents, but "this is the drop that made the glass spill over."
And the very next day a man barged into the hospital brandishing a gun and searching for a man about to be operated on for gunshot wounds, but gave up and left after doctors hurried the patient into hiding on his gurney.
Last year, Venezuela's homicide rate was more than double that of Mexico, which is engulfed in drug-related violence, and the third highest in the region after Honduras and El Salvador. The Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a nongovernmental organization that tracks violent crime, says there were about 17,600 homicides last year, compared with a 2009 estimate of 15,241 in the U.S., which is over 10 times more populous than Venezuela.
The government puts the murder rate at 48 per 100,000 people, up from 19 per 100,000 in 1998, the year Hugo Chavez was elected president. In polls, Venezuelans consistently rate criminal violence as their biggest concern, but they tend to blame societal and bureaucratic failures, and so far it doesn't seem to be affecting Chavez's support ahead of next year's presidential election campaign.
Still, the International Crisis Group, an independent Brussels-based organization focused on conflict prevention, says crime and violence are out of control and can "seriously threaten Venezuela's medium- and long-term stability."
In a report issued last month it says the main reason is that the public doesn't trust authorities to enforce the law. Chavez's government "seems unable but in part also unwilling to safeguard military and law enforcement institutions against criminal influences and corruption, fight organized and common crime and protect the population."
It describes perpetrators and victims alike as "predominantly young, male, urban and poor."
The report says among various changes during Chavez's presidency, he has centralized power and the institutions of law and order have been weakened. "Corruption, impunity and inefficiency have been the obvious results," it said. "The effects of this institutional decline have been particularly manifest in the justice system and the security forces."
It notes that the justice minister himself said in 2009 that police were involved in 15 to 20 percent of crimes.
Carrying a firearm requires a permit, but the law is widely ignored.
Chavez and other government officials say they are making progress. Thousands of new police officers have joined a growing national force, and this year all weapons, even licensed ones, have been banned in buses, trains and public transit stations.
Chavez has noted repeatedly that the crime problem predates his presidency, and in a Sept. 2 speech said that his country isn't alone.
"There's a situation of insecurity and not only in Venezuela, not only in Caracas. Go to Mexico. Unfortunately it's a phenomenon in the United States, in Europe," He said.
Still, critics say Venezuela has a long way to go.
On most weekends, the Caracas morgue fills with dozens of victims — robbery victims, young slum dwellers, occasionally children hit by stray bullets.
Last month, authorities said seven armed robbers stormed a ranch in central Carabobo state that was hosting a children's camp and seized cellphones, cash and other belongings.
Another gang recently slipped into a movie theater and demanded money and valuables.
The authorities report arrests in both cases, but overall, according to Roberto Briceno, director of the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, arrests are made in only 9 percent of homicides, and security at hospitals is worsening.
Caracas' Jose Maria Vargas Hospital shuts its emergency room at 7 p.m. Domingo Luciani, the hospital that suffered last month's shooting spree, has installed a vehicle checkpoint and metal detectors at its entrance.
Last month hundreds of doctors and nurses rallied to demand tighter security. One sign said: "We don't want bullets, we want to save lives."
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see below Gauadian weely
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Sep 06, 2011 10:03 AM
Where housing, job security,freedom in Venezuela?
Promises of affordable housing for all fail to materialise in bricks and mortar
Venezuela diary
Marie Delcas
The determination of Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez to push through a Bolivarian- style revolution means the government has plenty on its plate. The Vivienda (housing) part of its ambitious social policy aims to build 2m homes for those on a low incomes by 2017. Op- position parties have condemned this move as an electoral ploy in the run-up to next year’s election, in which Chávez plans to run for a fourth term, health permitting. The housing initiative aims to build 153,000 homes this year and another 200,000 in 2012. At the beginning of July, the oil and energy minister Rafael Ramirez reported that 16,964 units had been completed in the first six months of 2011.
The Sambil Candelaria in Caracas was supposed to become yet another massive shopping mall. But at the end of 2008 Chávez expropriated the structure. Since last December it has housed some 2,300 people made homeless during that year’s rainy season. “We are leaving soon,” says Isaura Sanchez, a mother of four. “My commander will find eve- ryone homes. We saw them on TV and they’re almost ready,” she adds. About 100,000 families are in urgent need of housing and they are pinning their hopes on the Vivienda initiative.
Caracas is ringed by barrios, or shanty towns built of breeze block and corrugated iron, and served by narrow alleys and steep stairways. The poor in Venezuela are no better off than their neighbours elsewhere in Latin America. Population growth and failures by successive govern- ments have led housing shortages.
The present government has made housing a priority, but haphazard policies have hampered
Ideology doesn’t make bricks ... shortages mean Caracas’s shanty towns will exist for many years Jorge Silva/Reuters
construction. There have been 11 housing ministers since 2005.
Town planners estimate that almost half of the capital’s urban fabric has been built illegally. The barrios are almost all self-built.
On Avenida Las Acacias, be- tween a plush building and a 25-storey tower block a gigantic sign announces the imminent construc- tion of 146 low-cost homes. The bulldozers are already at work. Three blocks further along, a similar sign indicates another 140 homes. But there is no sign of any work here. Chávez once claimed that “there is room for a second Caracas within the perimeter of the existing city,”. But the local authority will find it hard to turn that claim into reality.
Public transport is overcrowded, congestion on the roads appall- ing and power cuts, already com- mon elsewhere in Venezuela, look increasingly likely in the capital.
“We are obviously glad housing has been made a priority,” Uzcategui says. “But political determination is not enough. It makes no sense to announce the construction of 2 million new homes with no provi- sion for collective amenities, drains, transport, schools, sports grounds, power lines and such,” he adds.
“For years the left criticised tech- nocrats, but it would be good to have a few now. Ideology does not make bricks grow,” says a Socialist (PSUV) party militant.
“Two million homes for families of three to four people, means that the government has committed itself to rehousing 6 to 8 million people between now and 2017. It’s quite unrealistic,” says José Carquez, the manager of a building materials store. One problem is the shortage of materials. “The supply of cement is very irregular and we haven’t had any steel bar for about four months. It’s only available on the black market, at twice the price,” Carquez adds. The nationalisation of the steel
industry and cement firms has only aggravated a long-standing problem.
“The state cannot solve the housing crisis on its own,” says the head of the Builders Confederation, Juan Francisco Jimenez, who would like to see a public-private alliance.
“Chávez is usually very rude about Venezuelan business lead- ers, but oddly enough he seems quite happy to deal with much more extreme Russian or Chinese capitalists,” says Uzcategui. Dozens of construction contracts have been signed with Russia, China, Cuba, Uruguay and Iran, but as yet there have been few results.
“People are finally going to real- ise this government is absolutely ineffective,” says Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of the opposition daily Tal Cual. “The Vivienda initiative could well have a boomerang effect.”
“People who put their names on the housing waiting list are given a government certificate, with the hope of one day having their own home,” a Latin-American diplomat explains. “Late next year Chávez will warn voters that if the opposition wins those certificates will be worth- less. So people will vote Chávez.” Le Monde
“Current estimates suggest we need 3 million units. We should be ???? building 300,000 homes a year. But since Chávez came to power the annual average has been 30,000,” says Rafael Uzcategui, of the Provea human rights organisation. “Only President Romulo Betancourt did worse, in the early 1960s.” Then the population was seven million; it has since quadrupled.
We are glad housing has been made a priority. But political determination is n????o t e n o u g h
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