Street vendors seem to encroach on every broken sidewalk, every open plaza, every grimy corner of downtown Caracas, most of them grinding out a living on the pavement for lack of a better option.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has cast himself as a defender of this poor underclass, upholding their right to work on the street while promising his leftist revolution will bring more dignified employment.
Eight years into his rule, their existence has become an uncomfortable reminder that the president's policies -- like those of his predecessors -- have failed to create enough stable, productive jobs despite a growing economy boosted by oil revenues.
PHOTO: AP
Street peddlers, pirate taxis, maids and others toiling in Venezuela's informal economy account for 45 percent of the labor force -- at last count, 5.5 million people, according to the government's March employment statistics. The street sellers are the most visible face of this formidable off-the-books economy, a phenomenon common across Latin America.
Many street vendors remain loyal to Chavez, saying he has brought benefits -- if not jobs -- to their downtrodden neighborhoods: subsidized food, basic health care and education.
"Before the president arrived, the police would beat us," said Ervert Anillo, a 35-year-old fruit seller.
The street sellers peddle staples like sugar and flour below government-set prices -- sometimes still in packaging from subsidized state-run markets.
While Chavez's increasingly heavy hand on the economy has frustrated formal businesses with restrictions such as price and currency controls, the street-level economy is ruled by supply and demand. Vendors haven't benefitted from Chavez's 20 percent minimum wage hike, and take home only as much as they hawk.
Ana Rosa Gutierrez, 79, spends two hours each night sewing under an exposed light bulb in her red brick-and-tin home in a shantytown east of Caracas. Six days a week, she rides a rickety minibus into the city to sell her clothes.
"I raised four children like this," she said, pointing at T-shirts and blouses hanging from her makeshift stall.
On a good day, she might make the equivalent of US$10.
"It is capitalism in its most savage form," said Isabel Pereira, a Caracas economist.
Chavez insists his socialist policies are curing the country's capitalist ills, including endemic unemployment. Government statistics indicate some headway: Last year the number of formal-sector jobs increased by 570,000 -- about 10 percent. Poverty also is declining, according to government statistics.
Yet overall unemployment has barely budged. It averaged 10 percent last year, compared to 11 percent in 1999.
Critics note that the state payroll has grown dramatically and the government has changed the way it measures the jobless rate by excluding participants in state social programs.
And this during one of Venezuela's greatest oil bonanzas ever -- a boom that has helped the economy grow by 10.3 percent last year, the fastest in the region.
Venezuelans overwhelmingly re-elected Chavez in December, and since then the authorities have bulldozed street stalls in parts of Caracas, moving vendors to state marketplaces and coaxing others away from the informal economy with job training and cash handouts up to US$250.
The government insists it is using petrodollars to diversify the economy, funding cooperatives in fledgling industries from cement production to cacao farming.
But critics say Chavez's economic policies are hindering job creation and entrenching the informal economy, scaring businesses with threats of expropriation while new regulations make it harder to turn a profit.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS