October 2nd 2009 , by Aashiq Thawerbhoy
Between 1989 and 1992 both Los Angeles and Caracas , two of the largest cities in the United States and Venezuela , experienced intense rioting followed by intense government repression. On the streets of Caracas , scores of Venezuela ‘s most impoverished citizens poured out of their barrios in the surrounding hills and descended into the city center looting stores for food and other necessities, and burning busses. In Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict was released to the public, poverty stricken African American and later Latin American communities started fires, ransacked businesses and engaged in standoffs with the L.A.P.D. (though it was presumed that by the end, poor people of all ethnic backgrounds had joined in). In both instances the government called on army and National Guard troops to squelch out the uprisings. In South Central, Watts and Compton government troops paraded through neighborhoods and business districts imposing a mandatory curfew in an Orwellian spectacle of new world order. In Caracas , the military acted as death squads as they filed into the barrios, often fi ring at anything that moved, emulating an all too familiar aspect of human history. An estimated 3,500 Venezuelans were discovered either dead on the streets or buried in mass graves, though twenty years later the real number is still unknown. The U.S. media unjustly labeled what happened in Los Angeles as merely a ‘race riot’, while the people of Venezuela labeled their uprising the Caracazo or, the “Caracas explosion.”
Today, in regards to politics and economics, both nations are heading in very different directions. It is common knowledge that the events of 1989 in Venezuela were a catalyst for the Socialist changes being implemented by President Hugo Chavez and various coalitions of popular power within the country. Here in the United States, the riots of Los Angeles, rightfully coined as the ‘justice riots’ by Edward Soja, are still widely understood as a race riot and nothing more. However, if we look at the advancements and changes that have taken place in Venezuela since the Caracazo, and the policies that led up to such an event, we can draw similar parallels to the Los Angeles riots, and begin to question where we are at today. The following is an attempt to link the neo-liberal economic policies of the 1980’s to a trend of uprisings, focusing specifically on Los Angeles and Caracas . The analysis shows the effects of the Reagan years on the working class poor in the United States , and the extent to which similar if the not the same neo-liberal policies have transcended onto a smaller resource rich nation such as Venezuela and its poor and oppressed. During this process, the focus shifts back and forth between both countries, and once the historical context is set, I will begin to discuss the political and economic commonalities and aftermath of both events.
Phony Nationalization, Industrial Decline and Failed (Welfare) States