Presentation 24 04 09

Presentation 24-04-09

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Slideshow 3 - Venezuela

Slideshow - 4

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Materials in the barrios and their origin.

Materials in the barrio

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Invasion: A contested form of transitional shelter

The landslides that destroyed the coastal cities in Vargas, Venezuela, woke up a nation, unprepared for the impact of natural disaster. Although disaster is recurrent in the area, the amount of affected persons drastically amplified, due to the increase of urbanization in high-areas of last decades. When disaster struck, quick solutions were improvised to cope with the situation. Besides many official solutions to provide shelter to the victims, there was one other more unorthodox way of providing temporary shelter, which ten years later still provides highly contested urban condition, namely invasion.

La Tragedia, coincided with the national election to revise the Venezuelan constitution, which - if won - would pave the way, to what Hugo Chavez calls: “a social-democracy of the 21st century”. This attempt to reorganize Venezuelan society, based on an ideological background of equality, social values and a community/state-structured organization, was incipient at the time and many ministries, the national currency, laws, etcetera were being reorganized to fit this project, which ten years later is still in full progress.

When the landslides indiscriminately destroyed poor as well as rich upper middle-class neighborhoods of the cities during the night of 15 December 1999, many people fled and sought refuge with their family, friends or in camps organized by the government called “refugios”. Those who didn’t leave, or had no other place to go, pragmatically, started “invading” the houses of people who had fled. Given many of the houses were second homes of the richer middle-class of Caracas; these invasions were justified within the national agenda of equality, and a newly created decree ambigously handing out contested tenure documents. Also the lack of any other solution, and the limited capacity of camps, contributed to the invasions getting a “temporarily” tolerated status until new plans were made.

While landowners complained, the invasion continued, and it soon became apparent that people from all over the country, and even abroad, had gotten word of this opportunity. Thus many areas saw a complete shift of their population.

Now, ten years later, when driving through Caraballeda - the worst damaged city on El Litoral - you see an interesting image of derelict villas, abandoned hotels and apartment buildings retrofitted with phenomena usually found in the barrio’s like, make-shift red hollow brick extensions, boarded up windows, tangled wires of tapped electricity circuits and political phrases graffitied everywhere. You could say the informal sector dramatically expanded, only this time growing on a preexisting formal urban and architectural form, versus the sequential growth of the “original” barrio. As you might understand the temporal character of invasions does not really apply, and still today an alternative solution to housing has not been realized.

Depending on your perspective, invasions can be described as righteous or illicit, innovative or opportunistic, symbolic of the revolution or just the result of the absence of any other solution. As you can imagine, the contemporary urban condition is highly contested. People who lost their houses say, Caraballeda is dead to them, and supposedly the only way for them to get their house back is to pay crooked cops vast amounts to forcefully evict the current invaders. On the other hand people who invaded proclaim a victory of the socialist state, and claim that Chavez supports their cause.
The question is how one interprets private property in a time when lives are at stake. Is it possible to manage the temporary use of private property to solve a national humanitarian crisis, and then slowly reinstall its previous and rightful owners? Or is this just a utopian illusion?

Diagrams

Diagram 1: This diagram shows the postdisaster displacement after la tragedia in 1999

Diagram 2: This diagram shows the understanding of communities in barrios. For more information about it see: downloads > meeting5 marisabel pena.

Diagram 3: Processes and main actors involvement in the redevelopment of the Vargas region

From Ranchio to Casa

Slideshow 2 - Venezuela

Slideshow 2 - Venezuela

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Barrio La Catia film

Atificial Boundaries: a week in Caracas

Our first week in Caracas confronts us with the contradictions between a city described by many anxious stories of soaring crime rates, extreme poverty, a harsh political-social divide, and our own experience and observation of a much more subtle and nuanced story of a city full of optimistic, engaged and resourceful people, trying to make sense of a vastly complex urbanization process.

The conceived boundaries that surface during many of our conversations, intuitively give the impression that these boundaries might act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Perceptions driven by fear, blurry statistics (numbers on the murder rates varying from 60 to 500 violent deaths a week), and rigid classifications seem to lead to a voluntary confinement into various sub-groups in the city. Aflredo Brillembourg stated: “How Goethe described architecture as frozen music, Caracas can be described as frozen politics” (UrbanThinkTank, 2005), to this, although related to politics, we argue it is necessary to add the notion that the relationship might not be so top down, but that the individual interpretations of the complex urban condition of Caracas are largely influencing the shape of the city. While the wealthy barricade their homes and shops behind electric fences, the relatively poor confine themselves to their barios to protect their ranchios: gates, barbed-wire, and subversive graffiti capture the image of this territorial struggle. Obviously many of these actions have their political counterpart, but as it seems, a lot might be the product of a vicious cycle of exaggerated stereo-typification.

The insights and understanding we’re creating of Caracas is in various ways relevant to our study in Vargas. First of all the existence of human activity in the Vargas region in a great extent is validated through its commercial relationship with Caracas. Another similarity is the linear orientation of both urban formations, although incomparable in scale, both cities are limited by natural boundaries to a linear orientation. Both linear cities, as well as other cities in Venezuela and Latin-America, have witnessed the large growth of informal self-constructed houses (ranchios) becoming the majority of the housing ‘market’. 

Besides these comparisons, an ironical fact about the Vargas region is that the land suitable for construction is all a direct outcome of a natural process of reoccurring landslides from the Avilla mountain range that creates fan-shaped land in the ocean. This naturally raised the question if such a precarious site should even be reconstructed.  Needles to say re-habitation of the area was already on its way during these discussions.  

Next week we’ll move to Tanaguarena (Vargas), this relatively mildly hit area will be our departure point to explore the whole strip state of Vargas; from the totally devastated and never rebuilt Carmen de Uria, to the historic harbor and commercial center of  La Guaira. 

Too see pictures of our current adventures click here.

URBANTHINKTANK, A. B., HUBERT KLUMPNER (2005) Informal City - Caracas Case, Berlin.

First impressions Caracas

Hola,

we arrived 2 days ago in Caracas.. the first two days were really impressive! We looked around a lot and tomorrow we will have our first meetings. We expect they can tell and teach us a lot about this chaotic city. We have allready a little grip on it but this is so enormous that it is impossible to understand everything. This city is not that dangerous as we thought as long as you stay out of the barrios. The centre of the city is a busy and living place.
It is also quite expensive.. we have to think maybe about drink gas in stead of water

Chao grupos Venezuela

Slideshow1 - Venezuela

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