tnezuela

il

ft
8) By EDUARDO GALEANO

f,uela is the world’s biggest per
4,Nsumer of Scotch whiskey and
ot champagne, and also the world’s
dy “XPorter. Over three and a half
Pbarrels of oil are extracted daily
fy, Venezuelan subsoil in order
bi industrial equipment of the
bred world going.-No country has
2 S0 high a yield to world capi-
by 1.80 Short a period: in half a
y ae has drained a wealth larger
i at was looted by the Spaniards

.

S! Or by the British in India.

4, the profits U.S. capital draws
fy, “tin America come from Vene-
if eee ccoment here threatens
0 eae everything except what
table oS Oil and iron are un-

1S one of the richest countries
ie but also one of the poor-
ab One of the most violent. I
, JUSinessman who owns 12 cars,
them a Chrysler Imperial in
the maids go to the market.
lndred thousand cars circulate
as, one of the most dazzling
i the world, with its modern
YS crisscrossing among sky-
» and its beautiful bridges and
it €re are kitchens resembling
tS Office, but you can open
; byeePer any day and read that
Pa, 8r Of Yaracuy reported that
fan girl has eaten half her little
Di. id that many children in Yara-
tn Ike skeletons from starvation.
”» aa ate her finger is from San
Monn €re President Rafael Caldera

Imports Food

act Virgin lands of this unin-
Hig tty could shelter the whole
hut vy, of Germany or Great Brit-
AD tn €nezuela imports lettuce and
Reg vy, the U.S. and beans from
Me ©NeZuelan agricultural work-
Wi, ceatening to invade the capi-
€lr tractors because for 10
have not managed to raise
the Of most of their products,
ili Must pay five times more
"ts and equipment.
, ts surge into Caracas in mass
site pnd also foreigners from every-
hy, Make their fortune in Ameri-
Pit, Se the city but they do not
ys 30 years the population of
Me a increased sevenfold. With
bute oil, dictator Pérez Jim-
m .' the largest speedway net-
hes it Latin America. Caracas
ray S asphalt tentacles, making
towns which are forcibly

mt
7 they’
hi y

a

N
bd, j country has rendered so hig
Sboni half a century it has drain

i

h a yield to world capita
ed a wealth larger than w

tds in Potosi or by the British in India.

HE BLACK GOLD
VILIZATION

part of the dizzily rising city, look
ridiculous.

Caracas grows as if by magic, with
its suspended avenues and car ceme-
teries, while Mercedes and Mustang
models are in command. It is the eco-
nomy of waste: car expenses devour
one-tenth of Venezuela’s national in-
come. An anguished poet, Aquiles Na-
zoa, laments: “This is the huge garage
surrounded by horror and despair.”

Forgotten and Violent

In a consumers’ society not all con-
sume everything. While latest model
cars flash along the golden avenues
of Caracas, over haif a million desti-
tutes who sleep in shacks contemplate
the waste, of others. Ranchos, spread
over hills and gulches, under the
bridges, and in the far corners of the
valley where the city stands. It has
been announced that the government
is going to tear down the ranchos of
La Charneca, to prevent them from
being seen from the windows of the
four-star Caracas Hilton Hotel.

Of the 135,000 youths who enter the
Venezuelan job market every year,
scarcely 50,000 can get work, Techni-
cians consider that at the turn of the
century three-fourths of Caracas will
be occupied by ranchos.

Teen-agers and children constitute
the national majority. Half the Vene-
zuelans are under 18, and half of them
get no education at all. In the ranchos
the percentage of young people is even
higher. 4 :

All Caracas is a violent city. It has
become a repressive structure because
an integrated minority must be placed
on safe grounds against a growing
majority of marginated people, blind
with the desire of launching an assault.
The penal code forbids the possession
of arms but an estimated 300,000 peo-
ple own guns. Personal problems are
no longer settled with fists.

Silence of Slums

s rose against the dictatorship
of Pérez Jimenez and afterwards they
openly maintained their opposition to
the regime. Each slum was a kasbah in
arms, In the times of Romulo Betan-
court, the police could not cross the
daily curtain of bullets and stones.
From 1961 to 1963 they fought con-
tinually, day and night. At present, the
failure of the left can be measured by
the resentful silence of the slums.

It is a curious mixture of oil culture
and poverty culture. The young people

Rancho

of Caracas’ slums dance to pop music
and wear psychedelic s.

hirts, and even

. lism in so short a
hat was looted by

While the latest model cars flash along the golden avenues of Caracas, over

half a million destitutes sleep in shacks and contemplate the waste of others...

in the poorest ranchos they have tele-
vision sets. An advertising offensive is
launched from the 21-inch screens
where smiling faces sell mother love
and Meyer sausages: “‘Happiness is
giving a flower to mother. Happiness
is having a million sausages, eating 20
of them and selling the rest.” The Ce-
lanese Corporation manufactures trou-
sers out of oil by-products, blue jeans
made of synthetic fibers, and stimulates
the rebelliousness of youngsters in its
advertising, including the thousands of
poor boys condemned by society to un-
employment and delinquency: “Rebel,”
they advise. “Buy your rebelliousness
by buying Lois trousers.” A hand fall-
ing like an axe breaks the enemy’s neck
and the camera takes a close-up of the
killer’s wrist: “Real men wear Tissot
watches.”

Chimeras and Realities

Lake Maracaibo is a forest of oil
towers. Pump levers resembling black
birds of prey dig deep into the wells,
not only among the iron structures
on the lake itself, but in any house-
yard or. street corner of the cities
which proliferate around the lake and
its fabulous wealth. For half a century,
oil towns have been born and have
died according to the labor require-
ments of Shell or Standard Oil, and to
the ups and downs of their production
plans. Oil workers drive shining Mus-
tangs, but they are becoming more and
more scarce. In less than 10 years,
the number of oil workers has been
reduced by 50% — from 40,000 to
20,000 throughout the country. Only
20,000 people are enough to keep Latin
America’s major source of prosperity

~ functioning,

And for whose benefit? The Venezue-
lan congress has never even “discuss-
ed” the nationalization of oil. “You're
crazy,” a deputy told me, putting his
hand on my shoulder. “Fighting that
battle would mean a general mortal
disease.” The state’s oil enterprise lan-
guishes in the shadows, and when the
government does not have extra funds,
it prefers to plan a second floor for
the speedway east of Caracas. The Ve-
nezuelan Oil Corporation is never men-
tioned. The-majority of oil concessions
will run out in 1983 and already. the
alibi is being planned: the state will
not have the strength, capacity or or-
ganization required to take charge of
so complicated a matter. Technology’s
secrets .

The Plunderers

Meanwhile, resorting to the feeble
disguise of service contracts, they
cheerfully hand over to several cartel
subsidiaries a vast extension south of
Lake Maracaibo for them to exploit
the oil previously prospected with pub-
lic funds. It is true that a new price
has been fixed for Venezuelan oil, but
this is too- innocuous a nationalism.
Venezuelan oil is still very cheap:
cheaper than that of the Arabs, the
U.S., and even than Venezuelan oil it-
self was in 1957. :

In addition to being packed with so-
cial contradictions and submitting the
destiny of a country to the will of a
more powerful one, semicolonial de-
pendency establishes the structure of
international plundering from within
the victim country itself. According to
their own net-profit statements, oil en-
terprises have stripped Venezuela of
$10,000 million, not to mention unde-
clared profits. But at the same time,
Caracas exploits the rest of Venezuela,
especially Lake Maracaibo. That is the
origin of the capital’s nouveau-rich

luxury: as always, ostentation is born”

from poverty.

No city in Venezuela has generated
the wealth Cabimas has. But Cabimas
does not even have a sewer system and
only has a couple of asphalt streets.
The city is a vast swamp full of bare-
footed, big bellied children. After ex-
ploiting Cabimas for 50 years, Rocke-
feller abandoned it, and even had the
company buildings demolished. He only
left the iron and cement skeletons be-
side the empty oil wells.

The history of Cabimas is the history
of many other oil cities and a preview
of others to come. Miserable, dark,
shiny with oil, but bound to a sure
death. A big slice of the multimillion
profits they produce goes abroad, and
the rest inevitably lands in ever-de-
manding Caracas. The government put
a ban on.the bitter songs which ap-
peared during New Year celebrations
in Maracaibo. They begged the People’s
Virgin, “The Chinita”:

That is why the people

Singing day and night

Beg you, Mother,

For God’s sake do something, .

Come and save your people

From centralism and the bourgeoisie.

Lake Maracaibo is a- forest of oil
towers. For half a century, oil towns
have been born and have died accord-
ing to the labor requirements of Shell
and Standard Oil, and to the ups and
downs of their production plans...

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1971—PAGE 9