Richard Serra - Literal

theory of social and economic organization, which
advocates that the state, representing the community,
should own and regulate the means of production, distribution
and exchange in order to redistribute evenly
the nation’s wealth. Don’t get me wrong, I do not condemn
social programs, it’s socialism and its ideological
use I despise.
Justice, equality and progress are not synonyms;
yet they appear to be the same only in the Latin leftist
jargon because these words are appeal to the masses.
They are vacant ideals that build up to socialism, a diagnosis
of the past and a vision of the future. But in
this region where the past is collapsed into the present,
ideologies like these are dangerous, because they don’t
offer real solutions. Socialism is the endless repetition
of dreams of development.
The 21st century socialism invokes welfare but fails
to achieve development. In fact, the outcome of this
new socialism has caused the slow dissolution of the
country’s middle class. About 21.1 million Venezuelans
(81 percent of the population) survive with 60 dollars a
month. Social programs help them to stay alive, but fail
to provide them with a dignifi ed live. Claiming they are
social justice, the Venezuelan state oil company spends
a third of its earnings (more than 3.7 billion dollars) on
social programs, which is laudable because no other
government has done so before, but these oil-fueled
social campaigns are band-aids to the country’s main
problems: violence, unemployment and poor education.
Any given week, newspapers present an account
of about 32 gun-deaths in this country; two years ago
the United Nations reported that about 47 people of
every thousand are killed yearly with small arms. In addition,
about half of Venezuela’s workforce operates
in the informal economy, as buhoneros, or street vendors,
who are not counted in the 14 percent of unemployment
fi gures. In other words, about 60 percent of
the population is either underemployed or have no job.
So far, the trickiest problem is education: the National
Institute of Statistics reports that 95.1 percent of Venezuelans
are literate (thus, they can read and write),
but high school dropouts are counted in millions. In
sum, Venezuelans can read, but have no tools to interpret
what they read. Meanwhile, those who want
the benefi ts of the government’s social programs have
to declare their loyalty to Chávez’s party. By promoting
social justice and equality Chávez and his followers
have restricted the freedom and responsibilities of the
country’s poorest classes, claiming their supposed best
interest. Venezuela’s State paternalism has made beggars
of its citizens.
The country’s capital, Caracas, feels like the Macondo
of the banana plantation years, because it has
been divided in two: the rich and the poor. Like American
settlers inhabiting the fi ctional town protected by
electric barriers, upper class Venezuelans live in neighborhoods
with fenced houses. In downtown Caracas,
orphan children live and work in the streets where
buhoneros sell phone calls, food and even sex, and
where violence is rampant.
Venezuela hasn’t achieved social equality but social
division. And the only group making profi t from this
dichotomy between classes is the ruling political party.
Chávez calls the 21 st century socialism the revolution
of the poor, but the only true revolution in Venezuela
has been oil. Venezuela, like Macondo, is a country politically
unstable; dependent on oil exports and ruled by
a small leftist group… it’s a Banana Republic. But these
riches have an expiration date. What will become of
Venezuela after a rainy day, or four years of rainy days,
like in Macondo? Let’s only hope that ideologies have
an answer for that, because otherwise, like García
Márquez’s fi ctional town, Venezuela could be wiped
from the map by a giant windstorm.
OTOÑO, 2007 • LITERAL. VOCES LATINOAMERICANAS 3 49