Beneath bridges and overpasses, the homeless people of Caracas are spending the holidays in encampments of cardboard and discarded wooden palettes.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has pledged to do away with homelessness in the country through an aggressive outreach program that is offering street people communal housing, drug treatment and a modest stipend.
But while the government says it has helped thousands, others remain on the streets, presenting a formidable challenge to the newly re-elected Chavez as he aims to make good on a promise to fix an entrenched and complex problem.
PHOTO: AP
Luis Mavares, a scrawny man of 37 who has lived under a highway offramp for 11 years, said government social workers had offered to take him to a rehabilitation center, but he refused.
"I know they're doing something good, but it's not for me," said Mavares, who sleeps on an old mattress next to the trash-strewn Guaire River and says personal problems left him exiled from his family.
"I don't like to be caged in," he said.
Others say they have received life-changing help from the state program Mission Negra Hipolita, named after the nanny of Simon Bolivar, the South American independence hero who is idolized by Chavez.
The program guides the homeless to shelters and rehabilitation centers, offering them medical and psychological care. Those who join can receive a paycheck equivalent to US$65 a week for community service work like clearing weeds or painting murals with slogans like "Say no to drugs, search for Christ."
"For me, it's bringing results," said participant Marco Barrios, 50, who worked cutting tall grass on a roadside recently and said the program is helping him break an addiction to crack cocaine through discipline and daily prayer.
Chavez, a fierce critic of the US government who was re-elected on Dec. 3, has started a range of social programs aimed at aiding the poor and drawing on Venezuela's oil wealth.
"This revolution cannot allow for there to be a single child in the street ... not a single beggar in the street," Chavez said earlier this year, acknowledging homelessness is a difficult problem in countries across the world.
Venezuela's program began nearly a near ago and is headed by a retired general, former defense minister Jorge Garcia Carneiro, who says many participants are adopting more normal lives despite struggles with drug abuse.
Last month, he said more than 9,000 people were being helped by the program.
Carneiro's ministry said an estimated 800 people remain on the streets in Caracas.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to