Class War in Venezuela

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Venezuela is a country of 27 million, smaller than Canada. Yet it suffers more murders than all the United States.

The killings occur in during robberies, drug deals, and – most frightening of all to urban residents here – Venezuela’s notorious “express kidnappings.”

A middle class resident of Caracas will pull up to the metal gate of parking garage under his or her apartment. Suddenly there is a gun at his or her head and a demand: hand over your cellphone. The kidnapper then proceeds to dial every name in the phone directory. “I have your husband/wife/son/daughter/friend/neighbor. Unless you immediately hand over $20,000, I’ll kill him or her straightaway.” The families pay.

These crimes go uncounted. Call the police? The victims fear to do so. The kidnappers know their names and addresses and might retaliate. Besides: often the kidnappers ARE the police or anyway are protected by the police.

Even when the police are not involved, they show little interest in preventing or punishing such crimes. In a tweet, I noted that it was difficult to discern the difference between ordinary crime and political repression. Here’s what that means: from the point of view of the regime, the express kidnappings serve a very useful function. The regime regards the urban middle class as its enemy, and the kidnappings plunge the middle class into terror. The regime is not soiled with the guilt of the crime – all it has done is withdraw policing from middle class neighborhoods. It has done so in the name of class equality: no Venezuelan government has ever policed the shantytowns above Caracas, now the middle class will also go without.

Last night, I attended a gathering in an apartment in an affluent neighborhood. (I should say “formerly affluent” for those Venezuelans who are not connected with the ruling party have been systematically impoverished over the past years through inflation, devaluation, and expropriation.) We drove through darkened streets over hilly roads. In all the long ride from my hotel in the central shopping area, I saw not a single police officer or police car on patrol.

At the same time as protection has been withdrawn, the regime engages in the deliberate incitement of hatred against the people on the receiving end of the kidnappings. “To be rich is to be evil,” says President Chavez in his weekly TV programs. That is a strange remark coming from a man whose family probably now ranks as the nation’s largest private landowner.

Venezuela is a country engaged in a top-down class war, the government against the professional and business classes. The bottom 85% receives no benefit from these campaigns. They remain as poor as ever, despite the regime’s occasional Eva Peron style bursts of largesse. But resentments have been created, the violence gratifies them – and the regime’s rapacious predations can proceed in the tumult.