Los Guayabitos: The Venezuelan town where La Revolución reigns supreme

Posted on Saturday, 03.08.14

Los Guayabitos: The Venezuelan town where La Revolución reigns supreme
BY JIM WYSS
JWYSS@MIAMIHERALD.COM

LOS GUAYABITOS, Venezuela -- The residents of this windswept farming
village have reason to be angry.

For the last 15 years, Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" has promised
to pave the rutted dirt road that keeps them isolated from markets and
jobs. A school that was started seven years ago was never finished. Many
of their houses are slapped together out of mud and wood.

Yet a year after the death of President Hugo Chávez, Los Guayabitos
remains, perhaps, the most loyal swath of Venezuela. Every one of its
121 voters cast their ballot for Chávez during his final race in 2012.
And every one of them voted for his successor Nicolás Maduro.

As opposition protests and a rising death toll cast a pall over last
week's memorial celebrations for El Comandante, it's clear that one of
Chávez's legacies is a deep connection with the country's poorest. And
it's that legacy — fraying but not yet broken — that some believe is
keeping the besieged Maduro administration afloat.

Domingo Fernández, a yuca farmer in Los Guayabitos, has been watching
the swelling protests on television, but he says nothing he's seen or
heard sways his sympathies.

"The opposition is against this government, but what are they for?" he
asked. "They've never offered anything to us poor people."

Los Guayabitos sits at the end of a winding dirt road that cuts into the
mountains of Miranda state, about two hours southeast of Caracas. The
local government recently began providing daily Jeep service up the
hill, but during the rainy season the community is almost virtually cut
off, locals said.

Although opposition leader Henrique Capriles won the governor's race for
Miranda in 2012, Los Guayabitos only gave him three votes — and
residents said they can't fathom who might have done such a thing.

Fernández said that from his vantage point, up on the hill, Capriles and
people like him seem like a mirage.

"They're like peacocks," he said. "They look good, but they don't sing."

CHÁVEZ THE CHARMER

During his 14 years in power, Chávez not only sang but danced, joked and
wooed the poor as he used the nation's petrol wealth to finance public
housing, education and healthcare. Venezuela reduced poverty between
2011 and 2012 faster than any country in the hemisphere, according to
the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. And even
when that largesse didn't make it to places like Los Guayabitos, the
villagers seemed to identify with the folksy former soldier.

During last week's commemoration of Chávez, Maduro underscored the work
of his boss, who died a year ago at the age of 58 after battling an
undisclosed form of cancer.

"Hugo Chávez has passed into history as the great redeemer of the poor
of the Americas," Maduro said from Chávez's hilltop tomb. "The nations
of the south called him Christ the Redeemer of the 21st Century."

Few go as far as Maduro in adulation, but Chávez does have an almost
cult-like following among the poor, said Alfredo Croes, a Caracas-based
analyst who publishes the Venebarometro public-perception poll.

" Chavismo empowered the poor considerably," he said.

A few hundred yards from Chávez's crypt, in the 23 de Enero
neighborhood, locals have erected a makeshift shrine to "Saint Hugo Chávez."

"He gave so much to us," said Elizabeth Torres, 49, the caretaker of the
memorial. "And that's why the poor are still loyal to him."

THE PRICE OF POPULISM

But Chávez's populist policies have taken their toll. The combination of
price regulations and foreign currency controls have spawned a black
market for goods and rampant speculation. Inflation hit 56 percent last
year — the world's highest — and people often wait in line for hours in
hopes of buying subsidized beef or cooking oil.

To complicate matters, the country bleeds with one of the most alarming
crime rates in the world.

The most recent Venebarometro poll found that 81 percent of those
surveyed said that insecurity was their top concern, followed by food
shortages and the cost of living. All of this in a country with the
world's largest oil reserves.

Venezuela's troubles hit the poor just as hard, if not harder, than the
rich, said Fredis Guzmán, a 62-year-old interior decorator. Guzmán lives
in the working-class neighborhood of Petare, a government stronghold.
And while the neighborhood hasn't seen outright protests, he said the
mood is grim.

"Maduro wants to make Venezuela like Cuba, and things are getting ugly
here with the food shortages and the insecurity," he said. "Sometimes
you wait in line three or four hours to buy something, and by the time
you get inside it's all gone."

On a recent weekday, Guzmán had spent hours searching for stucco that he
needed to finish a job.

"Whether you're a Chavista or a follower of the opposition, we all have
to stand in the same line to buy a little bit of flour or a little bit
of chicken," he said.

OPPOSITION STRUGGLES

The opposition has tried to appeal to the poor. During his presidential
race against Maduro, Capriles promised to do more for the needy,
regardless of their political affiliation.

But the rhetoric couldn't be backed up with action, said Croes. Almost a
decade and a half of electoral defeats, including at the municipal
level, have left the opposition hamstrung, he said.

"Their ability to take action in poor neighborhoods has been
dismembered," he said. "They've lost political power, but they've also
lost financial power."

Even so, Capriles managed to win 7.4 million votes, or 49 percent of the
electorate. Although he lost, it was proof that the opposition can have
popular appeal, Croes said.

" Chavismo has an organic connection with the poor, but it's losing it,"
he said. With those elections, "the opposition opened a window" into the
administration's base.

That window didn't even crack in Los Guayabitos.

The town of about 400 people doesn't get cable television or newspapers.
Instead, they're reliant on broadcast television and radio — much of it
state-run — for their news. But they say they have seen real benefits
from local government. Politicians have handed out seeds and provided
school children with educational laptops called Canaimas.

Fidel Henrique Quintero, 55, lives in a mud-walled hut with his son and
four grandchildren. Despite his precarious economic situation, he said
Chávez changed his village and his life permanently.

"You can see reality from here, and we know that things will never be
the same," he said of the poor's role in politics. "The opposition are
egocentric, they never want us to get ahead."

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