WatchCrime rates pose threat to Chávez
By Benedict Mander in Barinas
Two hours after her 20-year-old son was taken by four armed men from a mechanic’s workshop in Venezuela’s rural state of Barinas, Rosa Gisela Piña got the telephone call.
“They told me if I didn’t give them 300,000 bolivars (US$70,000) they would cut my son into little pieces and deliver his head in a plastic bag,” she said.
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Despite paying the ransom – Rosa remains in debt to friends as a result – her son never reappeared, and two and a half years later she still does not know whether he is dead or alive.
Barinas is a Venezuelan microcosm. It is the birthplace of President Hugo Chávez, who frequently eulogises the open plains of this cattle-ranching state, run by his family since his father was elected governor in 1998. More embarrassingly for the socialist leader, it is also Venezuela’s kidnap capital.
Indeed, the country suffers from one of the highest homicide rates in the world, and a rising wave of violent crime is voters’ biggest concern ahead of presidential elections on October 7. The issue could turn the tables on the cancer-suffering Mr Chávez, who leads the polls and who registered as a candidate on Monday.
“Kidnappings and robberies happen all the time here and the government is doing absolutely nothing about it,” says Rosa, who is convinced that corrupt police were responsible for her son’s abduction.
Oscar Pineda, who runs the Peace and Life Committee, a Barinas non-governmental organisation, agrees. He believes senior government figures – including Adán Chávez, the president’s older brother who succeeded his father as state governor in 2008 – are also to blame in that they have not addressed the problem.
The party rejects the criticism. “There is a plot to slur Chávez’s honour from the rancid [US] empire,” says Katiuska Angulo, a PSUV deputy in the Barinas legislature. “This is orchestrated by the opposition to drum up fear and anxiety in the run-up to the elections,” she adds, claiming that much of Barinas’s violence is caused by Colombians fleeing from their country’s decades-long civil war.
Nonetheless, Mr Pineda says that between 2009 and 2011 in Barinas, which has a population of about 700,000, he has registered 1,258 violent deaths, 114 kidnappings and 77 disappearances; 59 people are still missing. Furthermore, 97 per cent of crimes go unpunished, he says. That makes the state, one of Venezuela’s poorest, also one of its most insecure.
Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely Barinas’s widespread poverty that explains why so many there still support Mr Chávez’s socialist government – a pattern common throughout the country.
“People here are heavily dependent on government social programmes,” says Lorenzo Saturno, the only opposition deputy in the nine-member state legislature. “It’s blackmail: if you don’t support the revolution you never get a job, a grant, housing and so on,” adds Mr Saturno, who lives in one of the poorest parts of Barinas city and previously supported the government.
It can also be a lucrative source of contracts. “It seems that Adán Chávez supports these people,” says Mr Pineda, pointing to a newspaper photograph of the governor smiling with construction union leaders, who admit to financing the government’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in return for construction contracts.
Still, in a carefully orchestrated event last month, title deeds to more than 1,800 apartments built by a Chinese construction company were handed out to what appeared to be mostly government supporters, the vast majority wearing the signature red T-shirts of the PSUV. Similar events are taking place elsewhere, as the government purportedly ploughs $16bn into attempts to build 200,000 homes this year alone.
“We’ve struggled for many years, but today the Bolivarian revolution has made my dreams come true,” said a young woman on the verge of tears in front of state television cameras, with Adán Chávez standing imperiously by her side.
Not everyone has been as fortunate, and many are getting tired of waiting. The opposition has grown in Barinas, but some 70 per cent there still support Mr Chávez, compared with less than 50 per cent nationally, according to more reputable pollsters. Opposition challenger Henrique Capriles, meanwhile, polls at under 30 per cent.
Mr Chávez “has given a lot of people hope but, after 13 years, the hopes of many people haven’t materialised”, says Mr Saturno. “That is where we are gaining ground.”
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