The Skyscraper Slums of Caracas - by Peter Wilson
CARACAS — There is perhaps no better symbol of the depths to which Venezuela has sunk under President Hugo Chávez than Centro Comercial Sambil La Candelaria, a shopping mall in Caracas, the country's teeming capital. In 2008, when he ordered its expropriation, Chávez called the mall a "monster of capitalism." Yelitza Campos, who heads a neighborhood association across the street from the megamall, calls it a "nightmare."
Her living space measures 12 feet by 12 feet and has jury-rigged electrical outlets. She and her family share a large bathroom with hundreds of other refugees on each floor; there is no hot water. Residents hang their clothing along the rails, while Bolivarian National Guard units watch over the entrance, restricting access.
"The government provides us everything we need," Navarro says. "They deliver three meals a day to our cubicle, and they provided beds and furniture when we moved in. My children attend school here, and one of my neighbors even gave birth in a clinic on the parking deck." She sighs and looks around. "I can't complain but it's not home. It just doesn't seem like home."
Navarro isn't alone. Nearly 4,000 other homeless people are crammed into the parking levels of the mall, waiting resettlement in housing the government plans to build in the near future. Many more are arriving since unusually heavy December rains wreaked havoc in the city's hillside slums. Outside the parking levels, the mall is largely unoccupied. Heavy trucks pull up to the building at all hours of the day, using its basement levels to store foodstuffs for a chain of government grocery stores. For the most part, though, the building is empty, its floors littered with dust and empty boxes.
The shopping mall, which sits squarely in a mixed residential-business neighborhood of Caracas, is part of a worsening housing shortage that now confronts Chávez, who took office in 1999. It also symbolizes the battle over the future of private property in the country.
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