VENEZUELA: Social Angst and Handouts

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Marquez

CARACAS, Aug 21 1996 (IPS) - Carpentry teacher Oswaldo Borges had waited a long time for the opportunity. Now he was face to face with a government minister. He had a lot on his mind; the minister was in the mood to listen.

“Welfare is ruining our young people,” said Borges, who had become frustrated with the level of truancy in Alta Cruz, the improverished Caracas hillside where he teaches.

“They’d rather stretch a hand out than go into our shops and factories. One hundred thousand people live in this area but its impossible to get 15 kids together for a class”, he continued.

Listening to him was Teodoro Petkoff, a 64-year-old socialist who five months ago was named Minister of Planning in the government of Rafael Caldera and spokesperson for the new neoliberal economic “adjustment” programme, which since April has been eating into the buying power of 22 million Venezuelans.

The scene was a luncheon for the minister and community activists in one of the poorest areas of this capital. Organized by the Foreign Press Club, the aim was to discuss social programmess with a community group representative of the programmes’ intended recipients.

Thomas Mulcage, an Irish priest who ministers to the local Catholic population, allowed the use of the parish’s four-story community center, built with aid from the European Union on the tallest inhabited hill in Caracas.

Petkoff accepted that welfare payments had increased. He said this was because official unemployment had increased to 12 percent, though that was not the full picture since “half of the population is working off-the-books”

A large numbe of people were “completely outside the regular employment loop,” he said. Petkoff said that the government would like unemployed youths to receive “some income and to learn a skill at the same time” in public job-training programmes or through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which train workers. But, he added, “it’s one of those programmes that’s yet to come”.

In all, Venezuela has 14 separate welfare programmes — 12 were begun after the first economic “adjustment” of 1989 — that service 12 million people. Petkoff admits that these are not long- or medium-term solutions.

“We need more basic structural change”, he said, since in Venezuela “the richest 10 percent of the population receives 46 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 10 percent gets only 1.6 percent”.

Job training “is essential. If we continue on the road we’re on now, in a few years, 35 percent of our youth will have received no formal training”.

The war on poverty (84 percent of the Venezuelan population qualifies as “poor”, according to privately financed studies) needs to be grounded in economic growth, plus health care, education, and public services “since nothing rates as important to people as universal access to drinking water, electricity, and transportation”.

“I’m not one of those people who think that the best social policy is good economic policy”, said Petkoff, who has been called a “neoliberal” because of the policies he defends, “but social problems are worse when the economy is bad”.

As for Borges, he thinks the government made a mistake by focusing on money supply and other macroeconomic issues. “We’re in the same place we were in 1983 only two decimal points behind. The bolivar was at 4.30 to the dollar, now it’s 470 bolivars to the dollar, and things are 100 times more expensive!”.

And when government does get involved, as they did in building a huge new agricultural “megamarket” in the populous west end of Caracas, prices are even higher than in the tiny neighborhood shops, Borges complained.

The discussion continued through the clattering of dinner plates. No detail was spared in the preparation of this affair. The fruit cocktails, the rice, the dainty cilantro leaf topping the mashed potatoes, even the green tablecloth, were immaculate.

Petkoff recalled how, as a young communist agitator, socialist presidential candidate, and as an elected official, he pounded the streets of this area and talked to people about their problems.

“You can’t compare prices at the megamarket with those at the neighborhood grocery. You’ve got to compare them with the big supermarket chains. If it didn’t exist, your prices in the neighborhood would be even higher,” he said.

Petkoff explained social programmes in the same way. But this did not go down well with the audience who accused him of state paternalism. After he called May’s 12.6 percent rate of inflation a “godsend”, he noted that “things could’ve been worse”.

Gladys Marquez, a community leader, then took the floor to ask Petkoff about the outlook for the country.

“If we could leave you with a lower inflation rate by the end of the year, we’d be happy”, responded Petkoff. “After we stabilize inflation, what’s going to keep prices down, or at least make them not rise so fast, are higher wage policies”.

The evening concluded with a letter handed to the minister formally requesting that he look into the provision of drinking water to the neighborhood and for formal recognition of the group as an NGO. The area also has other problems, like drug trafficking and armed robbery.

Many young people, according to Marquez and Juana Vasquez, another community leader, have fallen pray to the unwholesome lifestyles that poverty, too much free time, and the lack of jobs create.

Mulcage deplored the “lack of solidarity and the individualism brought about by the increasing poverty”.

In his opinion, this is illustrated by the rising rate of violence among the poor, the paucity of community institutions, such as the “soup kitchens” which exist abroad, and by the fact that in the hills of Propatria, where 100,000 people live, only 20 are active in the community.