Since President Chávez left Venezuela last week to go to Cuba for his surgery, a bit of a power struggle seems to have broken out in his absence. It is more clear than ever how critical his persona is for the government and the PSUV (his political party) and how little consensus exists within it apart from support for His Excellency. Roughly speaking there are two leading factions within the government - the radical leftists, currently led by outgoing Vice President Elías Jaua, and the military, led by former soldier and current Speaker of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello. The radicals unabashadly look to Cuba for inspiration while the military wing seeks above all else to maintain its own privileged position and business interests, and has more desire to protect law and order (or at least order). Chávez himself bounces back and forth between the two groups as is convenient, never allowing (at least until now) one faction to gain too much influence.
During the past few months Chávez has seemed to favor the military branch more than usual. He has praised them repeatedly in public appearances, increased their salaries yet again, promoted Cabello to Vice President of the PSUV, and controversially declared that the military is chavista and owes its allegiance to him and not to the state. Jaua has already been informed (and that is exactly how it goes, Chávez dictates to his underlings what they will do) that he is to run for governor of the critical state of Miranda this year, though no date has been set for his departure as Vice President (it will have to be by June). Pundits speculated that Chávez was seeking to shore up the support of the military in advance of the October elections which could be quite close. Its support could be the critical factor in determining whether he is able to hold onto power in the face of controversy and protests.
But since he left, it looks as though the radicals are trying to reassert their own authority. Without Chávez around, Jaua has been making a series of public announcements, which is unusual for him, though it is appropriate with the president gone. More importantly a favored tactic of the radicals witnessed a burst of activity and thrust itself into the news even more than usual in the past few days. That tactic is invasiones - the invasion of private dwellings by homeless people or other groups. They subsequently remain in their new houses and become squatters indefinitely.
If you will permit me to oversimplify a bit, broadly speaking there are three different forms of ¨invasions¨ of homes for the benefit of three different groups. In the first, the government formally seizes a private property, expropriating it and then presenting it to the group or business it favors. Often this is done without any compensation whatsoever for the property holder. Most often an expropriation occurs just as an apartment complex or other building is completed and before anyone has moved in, and the group that most often benefits from seizures of this type are the damnificados - victims of flooding and other natural catastrophes who lost their previous homes during the event. It is unknown how many damnificados there are, but the number runs into the tens of thousands.
The second type of invasion is performed by professional invaders. Of course it is never admitted as such, but there are groups of people who enjoy government support (and certainly government advice) on where and when to invade homes. These groups often bring heavy equipment along with them, and have been known to blast large holes in the sides of buildings to permit entrance. After a successful attempt they will leave and be replaced by damnificados or other government-favored groups in need of homes. The final type is executed by groups of homeless (or living in extremely overcrowded conditions) who more closely fit our traditional notion of squatters. This is the least common form of invasion.
The reason that so many invasions take place is because there is a desperate shortage of housing in the country, generally estimated at between two and three million units. The productive capacity of Venezuela has been so ruined by Chávez´s policies that there is a chronic shortage of building materials in the country, most importantly of cement and steel. Plus the government is not known for its effectiveness even when it does decide to build housing. And much of the housing that is built is of such poor quality that it is especially prone to disrepair and natural disasters. Add it all up and you have a big problem.
When it comes to the housing shortage, President Chávez somehow manages to have his cake and eat it too. Whenever people complain about the housing shortage he replies that he is not the mayor of all of Venezuela, and that he cannot be counted upon to fix every problem in the country. He especially likes to do this in opposition controlled cities and states. But when housing is constructed or expropriated, he inevitably makes a grand televised appearance to present the buildings to their new inhabitants, who are of course eternally grateful to their benefactor.
Anyway, back to the power struggle. While invasions are a fact of life in Venezuela (as I have mentioned previously there is a building on my block that has been invadido for five years now and another in my neighborhood has been invaded since I´ve been here), in the past few days there has been an unusual number of high visibility invasiones. Not only that, but the most prominent of them occurred in the municipio (burough) of Sucre, in southeastern Caracas. This is particularly interesting because the mayor of Sucre is Carlos Ocariz, who just happens to be a member of Henrique Capriles Radonski´s Primero Justicia party and who just won the opposition primary to be the next governor of, wait for it, Miranda state, whose current governor is, wait for it, none other than Capriles. This certainly paints a picture of Jaua and the radicals attempting to reassert their authority against the military (who do not generally favor invasions) and to make Jaua´s opponent in the upcoming gubernatorial election and Chávez´s in the presidential election look bad.
The only problem is that the tactic appears to have backfired. When the invasions took place on Sunday night the National Guard (which answers to the federal government) arrived late and did little to address the problem, as is its custom. The police of Sucre and of Miranda (municipal and state forces, both of whom under opposition control), on the other hand, arrived promptly, and effectively halted the invasions of defused the situation. Though the chavista press would have you believe the opposite, crediting the National Guard for its exemplary handling of the situation (after it was clear the invasions had failed). Twitter accounts from neighbors on the scene provide strong evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the best analysis of the situation was provided by Chigüire, the Venezuelan equivalent of The Onion, who wrote that ¨Jaua says that invaders misunderstood President Chávez´s message [that he really did say] that his followers should take for the revolution empty land that they see.¨
In any event it will be interesting to see if elevated rates of invasions continue occur while Chávez is recuperating in Cuba, and whether or not other signs of intra-government strife will be detected. The ultimate signal of how that struggle plays out will come when Chávez announces who will be his new Vice President and the rest of his re-shuffled Cabinet, which he will have to do in the next couple of months. Until then observers can only read the tea leaves.
No comments:
Post a Comment