Kerry’s Lonely Crusade Against Venezuela
Weekend Edition March 21-23, 2014
Class War From Above
Kerry’s Lonely Crusade Against Venezuela
by MARK WEISBROT
Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. With a wide variety of sources and people on the ground to talk to, I thought I was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But even I was not prepared for what I saw in Caracas: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.
Major media outlets have reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement. It’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas it is almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.
Walking from the working class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there is no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS). The metro also runs very well – much better than in Washington DC, and at a tiny fraction of the price — although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations at Alta Mira square until their eviction this week.
I got my first glimpse of the barricades in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades – which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently been shot dead for doing so). But even here, some traffic is snarled but life is otherwise pretty normal. On the weekend the Parque del Este is full with families and runners sweating in the 90 degree heat – before Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I am told, were disappointed when the less well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are also crowded at night.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/21/kerrys-lonely-crusade-against-venezuela/
