Misery on the highway

Last night I was writing on my dismay at seeing such unsuspected misery in nighttime downtown Caracas. Today I got more, and I had a camera.

I had to go on business trip from Caracas to Valencia. On the way back, this afternoon, the traffic jam of La Cabrera viaduct held me back. This the other major viaduct about to collapse but which is benefiting from the collapse of the other one in January: now they are trying to work out on it more diligently. Still, it is one lane at a time and I am not telling you the extent of the traffic jams.

This line, about 4 miles long, did start before the garbage dump close to Mariara. It was relatively easy for me to catch a couple of scenes at the dump before the car started moving again. The first one shows clearly at least two groups of people scavenging while a tractor lefts a cloud of particularly filthy, toxic, dust that these poor people breeze. The second picture was a close up of a pair scavenging close to the highway, about 20 yards further down on the road.



Nice juxtaposition of two extremes of chavista inefficiency: the collapsing infrastructure and the infrahuman world under creation.

Now, I am perfectly aware that in all parts of the world, probably even in Norway, there are people scavenging city dumps for sustenance, be it discarded items that might have some value to given individuals, or even food. But in this picture, just as the tractor has bulldozed the recent trash arrivals, there are dozens of indigent scavenging. I see them EACH time I drive between San Felipe and Caracas but I deluded myself in not seeing as many as there seem to be since I was driving by fast (and usually the grass is taller and hides some of it).

Again, what is becoming a litany: after 7 years of Bolivarian revolution, what is done for these people? Where is their Barrio Adentro? Their Mision Vuelvan Caras? Their Mision Robinson, even? How come none of the Chavez social programs, those wonderful social programs that he and his sycophantic court brag about seem to be reaching these people?