By Marco Teruggi on July 10, 2020
Photo: Marco Teruggi
A part of the La Vega parish in Caracas is under epidemiological siege. It is the area with the highest concentration of cases of COVID-19 in the capital. A response involving the state, political parties and popular organizations has been put in place, an architecture to deal with the crisis typical of Chavism.
“Those who live in these communities must remain in their homes, respecting the preventive measures to avoid the spread of the coronavirus,” is heard from one of the trucks that travel the streets and the parish is closed at each of its access points. It is the area with the highest concentration of COVID-19 in Caracas, with 78 people infected, at a time when the number of cases is rising to 8,010 nationwide.
This is La Vega. The parish is divided into five axis, the third being the most affected, and, within it, 10 of the 32 communities. The epidemiological fence began on July 2. No one is allowed to enter or leave without authorization, unless he or she fulfills one of the three exempted functions: health, food and transportation.
When you arrive at one of the access points, there is a joint operation between the police and members of the political and social organizations of the site. “They accompany us at the entrances and exits, they are the ones who know the people in their territory,” explains the Caracas Police Commissioner in charge of the parish, Belkys Rangel.
Within the fenced area only food shops and pharmacies can be opened until noon. The aim is to avoid mobility not only outside but also inside the fenced area. It is complex, it is a densely populated place with a lot of community life.
“We are conducting house searches and rapid tests in order to cut the chain of contagion of this dangerous virus,” repeats the truck that is moving slowly through the streets.
“Making an epidemiological fence implies marking the space where the population’s mobility should be limited, and making a general survey of 100% of the households,” explains Mary Carmen Moreno, part of the City Hall’s popular organization team.
This research, that is, testing to detect cases of COVID-19, began from the very beginning, both in the health modules specially prepared to deal with the epidemic, and in the house-to-house visits. There are 12,000 households in the defined territory, and so far 5,000 have been tested.
When a person is positive, “he or she is protected while the staff arrives with the biosecurity norms, and that person is transferred to a center destined for distancing,” explains Mayarí Armas, responsible for gathering and coordinating the different organizations that function in the parish, dedicated to the fight against the pandemic.
Each step is free of charge: the test, the transfer to the isolation centre, the stay on site, the admission if necessary, the medicine and the food.
The goal is that, during the time of isolation, estimated at 14 days, a family by family mapping is carried out, those who have the virus are moved from the site, and thus the outbreak can be reduced until it disappears. This is an exceptional situation within the quarantine strategy that has already been in place for almost four months.
“You can’t tell people to stay in their homes, carry out an epidemiological fence without designing a plan, that plan implies the food part, the services,” explains Nancy Villegas, political coordinator of the La Vega parish.
The plan, in addition to health, includes first and foremost food. The Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP) that provide State-subsidized food, shortened the supply cycle to have a greater number of deliveries. They added to the usual food -mainly carbohydrates- three kilos of protein per week.
Together with the CLAPs, the work of the Food Houses, the School Food Plan, is maintained and a plan designed from the beginning of the quarantine called I Buy at Home is applied, so that people can stock up without leaving the house and reduce mobility.
The supply also includes a contingency plan for two of the services that are difficult to supply: gas and water:
“We have a difficult water situation in the city for two reasons, one because of the drought that has been very hard, in Caracas the water is practically all pumped, it reaches 1,000 meters from the flat of the flat part of the city and in some neighborhoods 1,800 meters, and as a result of the economic war we have deteriorations in the water pumping service,” explains Moreno.
The deployment to sustain the epidemiological fence in each of its aspects implies the action of many simultaneous and coordinated actors. The institutions involved are the Ministry of Health, the Police, the Mayor’s Office of Caracas, the political organization, mainly the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and the different social organizations of the territory.
“It is an approach with a state security perspective, which does not have only an institutional edge, but rests fundamentally on the main strength that we have, which is the popular fabric, a social fabric that has a series of organized leaderships in working instances,” explains Moreno.
Each actor plays a role within a joint plan: the distribution of food, the entrances and exits of the fenced area, the house-to-house tour to carry out the checkpoints, or the disinfection of the common areas carried out, for example, by the Communal Work and Production Brigades: “We have two brigades deployed with hypochlorite sprinklers, we disinfect the common areas such as the handrails, stairs, the park, the walls where people sit, the warehouses, the grocery stores, to keep the focus of infection we have in the area at bay,” says Renny Colmenares, wearing a suit that covers his entire body with a phrase written in Chinese, which indicates that the clothing is part of the contributions made by China.
Another of the actions carried out by the popular organization is the awareness raising, that is to say, the daily explanation of the dangers of the COVID-19, the importance of the safety measures, of using masks, not to make parties, to stay at home. This task is carried out centrally by those who are part of the community:
“Who better than us, who are leaders in our territories, we know our community, the families who live on the streets, to give information, to explain that it is real, that we have cases in our space, even if we don’t see them, but that they exist and we must prevent them from becoming overcrowded,” is explained in a training talk for those who must then raise awareness at their respective points of responsibility.
“This deployment without popular organization would not be possible to imagine,” says Moreno. “It is a scaffolding that forms a new conception of institutionality.”
It fights against an invisible and common enemy. This situation has strengthened unity within the territories, and “has demonstrated the accumulation, situations like this one show what we have and what we lack,” Moreno says.
“That force is not born with the COVID-19, it has 20 years of accumulation.” Within those 20 years, Moreno says, the last five have been of facing situations of worsening material conditions, something that, at the same time, allowed the development of instruments that are central to the pandemic, such as the CLAPs.
Thus, there is an organizational practice within the neighborhoods, a knowledge of responses to emergencies, exercises of mapping territories, with axes, communities, blocks, families, in order to give general and personalized responses.
This is a situation that unifies all the forces in the territory with common objectives. “This is a threat, to life, not to a party, and if Chavismo knows anything, it is to unite and mobilize in the face of threats,” Moreno says.
This mobilization and unity is strategic not only for facing this moment of emergency and others that will surely come, but also for the next electoral scenario, scheduled for December 6.
Source: Aporrea, translation Resumen Latinoamericano North America bureau