Michael Penfold is a Prof. at IESA in Caracas and the brother of a good friend. He
wrote this very good article in Friday’s El Nacional, saying basically that the
more things change in Venezuela,
the more they stay the same. But they have never been worse. (For a graphical summary of the road problems mentioned by Michael in the article, our friendly ghost blogger Jorge Arena has a good album of infrastructure problems around Venezuela in the last few months)
Vargas is a simile by Michael Penfold
Writing about Vargas has probably become a common place.
Since the announcement of the closing of the viaduct, it is a sorrow
shared at all social events, an obligatory comment to remember that the
solitude, the barbary and the administrative negligence are not a remote
possibility, but something palpable, that the references to Zimbabwe or Nigeria
are not only an allusion to explain what happens when states collapse and begin
to function in order to plunder resources, but also a political and
geographical reference that each day is more precise to understand what is
happening in Venezuela.
The closing of the viaduct is not a statistical number.
It is not a number that may be the subject of endless
discussions about whether its value is high or lower, such as those about
unemployment, growth or oil production. The collapse of the viaduct is
something tangible. As real as the fall of the Twin towers in New York.
The vehicles can not drive over a fragile and hopeless structure, the citizens
of La Guaira more isolated than ever: Vargas is an island that each time is
farther away from the mainland.
That is why Vargas is the best metaphor to explain the drama
of Venezuela’s
contemporary history and also a simile that exemplifies the failures of this
Government.
It has been seven years in which Chavismo has exercised power without shame, so
as to come now and blame the closing of the viaduct to the forty years of
“Puntofijismo”Seven years in which viable and executable solutions could have
been developed.
But Chavismo has always preferred the permanent management of the crisis,
facing them with Bolivarian heroics, to say they solved the problem and really
leave us with the ashes. It is the triumph of heroic politics over policies as
a matter of government. For them the excitement is to face collapse, instead of
preventing it.
But it is also true that it would be very superficial to exhaust the
topic of Vargas in the hands of the Chavistas. Vargas is a tragedy provoked by
the current Government because they represent what made Chavez reached power.
The situation in Vargas is more of the same, but more concentrated.
The church has summarized it very well by saying that the
collapse of the viaduct is the product of a political culture that values
improvisation. And it was precisely that culture which allowed Chavez to ascend
to the presidency. Vargas was an invention by Accion Democratica that decided
at the end of the nineties to create a State that was physically not viable in
order to have access to federal money.
The creation of Vargas was so illogical, that the Governor
controls an extension which is exactly the same one that is managed by the
Mayor of La Guaira. As a consequence of this administrative absurdity, the
Governments spend more time fighting between them for the control of the funds,
than discussing the political policies for the reconstruction of the State.
After the
mudslides, the Chavista solution was more of the same; the creation of a unique
authority that would share power with the Governor and the Mayor. The result
was more conflict. Meanwhile, for the remainder of the municipalities of the
metropolitan area, the problems of Vargas, its reconstruction after the
mudslides and the access to the air cargo and port services through the
viaduct, were something distant that did not concern them. It was in this
manner that we handed ourselves over to randomness, in the hope that nothing
would happen. It was this way that the Chavez government opted for the same
solution as the previous Governments: warm bandages in the hope that the
collapse would occur later, that by divine intervention such a tragedy would
not happen to them.
But the most humiliating part was to see how, despite the magnitude of
the oil income, the Government has preferred to use the extraordinary resources
to conquer international loyalties, finance dependency policies to buy votes
through the misiones and invest in public works whose social purpose is never
very clear. It has forgotten that a fundamental aspect for the development of a
country is maintenance and the expansion of the road infrastructure of the
country.
The Western highway collapsed months ago and continues to
exhibit severe problems.
Instead of
expanding it and renovating it, we continue to assume the traditional policy of
repairing the patches. While the highway towards the East advances slowly, the
road to Puerto La Cruz is a true guillotine filled with holes and permanent
cracks. The La Cabrera tunnel continues to pose severe risks in the road to Valencia
and its collapse would be less damaging that the situation created by the La
Guaira viaduct. It has been seven years in which the government has not given
answers to very elementary problems, matters that we have been carrying for
more than a decade, problems that Chavez promised to fix in 1998 and that he
chose to replace with the revolutionary rhetoric and by a condescending attitude
towards corruption.
Chavez now can not speak only about statistics and celebrate that we
have recovered from the oil strike and hide the most elementary things. That is
how Carlos Andres Perez used to speak without realizing the political and social
implosion that was coming. How does it matter if GDP grew more than one digit
if we can not get to Maiquetia airport? How does it matter if unemployment is
more or less, if the people of Vargas will have to face in the next few months
a social debacle of incalculable proportions?
Vargas is a simile: Vargas is like
us, it is Chavez, it is like AD, it is the country.
The Devil's Excrement 
Leave a comment