USA TODAY International Edition
Sour on socialism, Venezuela sees hope
VENEZUELA TASAJERA, My neighbors like to say that nothing ever happens in our village.
That changed Sunday. Tasajera, a little hamlet of 1,000 people nestled into the Andean foothills an hour’s drive outside the capital of Caracas, gave an 83- vote margin to Karin Salanova — and set the stage for the end of more than 16 years of socialism in Venezuela.
Salanova, the opposition candidate for the National Assembly for Circuit # 3 in Aragua state, had been given little chance prevailing. Circuit # 3 is, as Venezuelans say, rojo rojito, or one of the most pro- socialist districts in the country. Salanova, 40, a lawyer, was seen as a sacrificial lamb. Tuesday, she was declared the winner of Circuit # 3 by 83 votes.
My sleepy village where nothing ever happens put her over the top. Her victory helped the opposition Democratic Unity party gain a supermajority in the National Assembly, giving it the ability to rewrite Venezuelan laws, free political prisoners and start a recall of President Nicolás Maduro.
I suspect there are plenty of Tasajeras throughout Venezuela, towns and villages where voters turned out Sunday in higher numbers than had been expected and rejected 16 years of Chavismo, the movement founded by the late Hugo Chávez that stressed a redistribution of Venezuela’s oil wealth and empowered the country’s poor. Many voters were fervent Chavistas at the beginning of the revolution. They drifted away from Maduro and his increasingly self- serving lieutenants in the face of mounting shortages, soaring inflation and raging crime.
My neighbors are hardwork- ing and honest people, most raising coffee or tomatoes. When I first moved here in 2007, the village was, like the rest of Circuit # 3, firmly behind Chávez and his revolution. The village had four consejos comunales, or government- sanctioned communes, that were working to improve our roads and schools.
Reading classes were offered for the many residents who could barely sign their names, while government agronomists trekked up our mountain to help improve coffee yields. The government earmarked more than $ 4 million to improve one of the main roads in the village.
Support for Chávez and his movement eroded over the years.
Work on the road started and quickly stopped. The literacy program petered out as the participants tired of the subliminal messages seeping through the videos, which came from Cuba. Our communes fell to bickering among themselves over who would get the most money.
As Venezuela’s economy soured, we faced new challenges.
It became almost impossible to buy fertilizer, seeds or insecticide, essential ingredients for a farming community. Three of our four jeeps that provided transportation to the city at the base of our mountain were stolen by a gang of unemployed youths whom the police seemed unwilling to tackle. The fourth was wrecked, and still awaits repairs because of a shortage of spare parts.
Our government health mod- ule ran out of simple medicines and treatments. We face daily power outages due to aging transmission lines and transformers.
Most important: Food disappeared. Our Mercal, a small government- backed grocery store, stopped opening daily as the crisis deepened. We’re lucky if it opens once every two weeks, and when it does, my neighbors arrive before sunrise to guarantee their places in the queue to make sure they will get their ration of food at subsidized prices. Way too often, the stocks — largely pasta, rice, cooking oil and chicken — run out before everyone has a chance to buy something.
Maduro blamed his party’s loss on an “economic war” waged against his government by Venezuela’s business elite and foreign interests. My neighbors scoff at such claims. They blame incompetence and corruption. There’s no guarantee the incoming National Assembly will make the needed changes to right the economy and end the crisis.
This weekend, some of my neighbors plan a party in the village square to celebrate Salanova’s and the opposition’s victory. Venezuelans love a party. For the first time in years, there is a glimmer of hope that Venezuela’s crisis could be coming to a close.
Wilson covers Venezuela for USA TODAY.
Voters turned out in higher numbers than had been expected and rejected 16 years of Chavismo, the movement founded by the late Hugo Chávez.