The Current Conditions of Street Life in Venezuela

Essay written in June, 2002

Although Venezuela is a rich country, the misuse of this wealth on the part of the government in addition to the consumerist culture which has arisen in its wake have obstructed the incentive to develop creative programmes with which to tackle the increasing levels of poverty in the country.

The discovery of petroleum in Lake Maracaibo in the 1930’s has resulted in an increase in consumer spending among certain sectors in Venezuela. This has resulted in the creation of a consumer culture and the idea on the part of the poor that the quality of life depends upon how much and what one buys. While the poor do obtain some benefits from this increase in wealth in the form of state assistance programmes, the problem is that the state gives too much money, and that it gives it in uncreative ways. Instead of supporting programs that might change society or alleviate poverty, the government just hands out milk and bread, thus generating a dynamic of dependency. Today, Venezuelans speak of this earlier period as the period of “easy money” in which the rich were corrupted and the poor made to depend on the state. Because the government gave people everything, they never had to work, and the habits of industry and independence, of which most Latin Americans are so proud, were lost.

Although the price of oil has decreased and the poor and middle class have lost their access to government funds, the culture of “easy money” is still very much alive. In the 1980´s, children started going out on the streets to beg or rob because they felt that only by doing these could they become part of the consumerist culture. The mass media focuses on images of “adolescents who kill to rob a pair of brand name trainers!” Consumerism permeates the whole society.

Envy of what others have is a primary cause of the horrifying levels of violence in Venezuela. This, in turn, causes fear of being in public places. The rich are confined to their deluxe apartments or to shopping centres while the police are ordered by the government to maintain order in the poor neighbourhoods. Poor children try to break away from this apartheid-like system by going out on the streets as beggars, street vendors (buoneros) and thugs (malandros). They end up by becoming street children.

“Easy money” in Venezuela has also resulted in the lack of any influential leftist organisations (Like the PT in Brasil or FMLN in El Salvador) but only in the formation of leftist groups who request assistance for the poor from the government (as in the US). Therefore, there is no space to encourage the growth of critical groups nor creative NGOs who could work for the benefit of street children. While Venezuela does, however, have some good shelters it does not have programmes to empower street children nor street educators (with the exception of the Pentecostal programmes in Maracaibo):

Hugo Chavez and his “bolivarian revolution” has tried to make the government serve the interests of the people but his reforms have been mainly concerned with assistance programmes. Furthermore, as the coup d´etat of April 2002 shows, the old aristocracy does not even support minor reforms. This new period in Venezuela has not resulted in the creation of activist NGOs. The number of street children is increasing and there is an insufficient number of programmes to assist them.