A Cowboy in Caracas
Weekend Edition June 21-23, 2013
The Story of the Barefoot Priest and the Venezuelan Revolution
A Cowboy in Caracas
by DANIEL KOVALIK
I met Charlie Hardy, a former Mary Knoll priest and missionary, in Caracas, Venezuela when I was there as an international accompanier of the Venezuelan elections in April. When I told my colleague Alex Main that I was going to go with Charlie to see the new socialist city of Ciudad Caribia, Alex said, “oh yes, ‘the barefoot priest,’ you’ll like him.” And of course, I did. Indeed, I must say that Catholic priests, as well as former Catholic priests, dedicated to social justice are probably my favorite people in the world – there is something very pure about their dedication.
On the the way to our destination, Charlie explained, as he does very well in his book, that he lived for eight years as a Maryknoll missionary in cardboard hut in Terrace B of the barrio Nueva Tacagua, beginning in 1985. As Charlie explained to us, and as he explains in his book, Cowboy in Caracas, his first introduction to barrio life was stepping into “a mountain of fecal matter.” As Charlie relates in his book, “I don’t think there was a square inch of Terrace B that had not been tainted by human or animal excrement at some time. The problem was threefold: lack of running water, lack of toilets, and lack of enclosed sewers. In front of my door, a stream of black water carried the sewage from my neighbors’ dwelling to the miniature black river behind my house. Soon I would cease to notice the stench. That day I did.”
As Charlie, a native of Wyoming (thus the cowboy part), explains, life in the barrio was hard and inevitably ground people down – even driving some to the point of insanity. Basic necessities, like water, were hard to come by, and were expensive. As Charlie explains in his book, “water arrived on Terrace B in tank trucks with the words ‘DRINKING WATER’ painted on their sides. They were old and dirty and the hoses that carried the water to our barrels were equally disgusting. The price was much, much higher than what the wealthy in other parts of town paid for the same quantity, which they received through their faucets. . . . We never knew when the trucks would return. Sometimes more than a month passed without water.”
Charlie explains how the grinding poverty in the barrios, combined with the rising price of basic foodstuffs and gasoline – which resulted in the jump in the cost of transportation – led to the spontaneous barrio uprisings, known as the Caracazo, shortly after President Carlos Andres Perez assumed office in February of 1989. As Charlie writes, during this uprising, which was marked by looting, the police “became assassins, firing indiscriminately into crowds running away from them. . . . The situation became worse when the president ordered the army into the streets.” According to Charlie:
No one knows the number of deaths that occurred in Venezuela during the tumultuous days of February and March, 1989. (1) I would not be surprised if the number surpassed that of the massacre in Tianamen Square in China three months later. The China event received extensive press coverage, and the date is still remembered every year. But what happened in Caracas received little coverage and was quickly forgotten. . . .
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/21/a-cowboy-in-caracas/
