Crime Brings Venezuelans Into Streets

Despite the billions in revenue flowing into Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, any attempt to stop the violence has been eclipsed by other priorities that Chavez has emphasized, especially his calls to reduce poverty through social programs and to forge regional alliances to counter U.S. political influence in Latin America. The idea is that wider economic opportunities, made possible through social programs, will reduce crime in the long run. But the lack of a direct crime-fighting strategy has been the subject of much of the discontent on the streets in the past month.

"A lot of people voted for Chavez hoping that he would bring to order the problem of violent crime, and this didn't happen," said Marcos Tarre, a public security analyst in Caracas. "The government doesn't have a clear public security policy. Instead, there has been a very simplistic and erroneous manner of thinking that the problem is the responsibility of the military."

Tarre said the police in Venezuela often are believed to earn their positions through political loyalty, fostering a long-held perception of corruption in the ranks. Still, Chavez has remained popular among the general population -- most of whom live in poverty -- in part because few blame him directly for crime.

"Some of the police do their jobs and some don't," said Carmen Guzman, 35, who said she worries about the safety of her 16-year-old son. "It's a problem with the society -- it's getting more violent every day. Thank God we haven't had anything happen to us, but recently they killed a 15-year-old boy who lived near us."

The perception that the threat keeps getting closer is clearly observable to Eduardo Carvallo, a psychoanalyst in the well-to-do Caracas neighborhood of Las Mercedes. He believes that Chavez's fiery speeches, with their emphasis on a creating a fundamental shift of power from the haves to the have-nots, create anxieties -- at least among the upper classes.

"There's a public discourse now that talks about one class of people being at war against other people -- it's new for us," said Carvallo, who has been in private practice for 18 years. "I used to spend very little time talking to patients about their environment and milieu, but now three-fourths of the sessions are listening to them discuss their environment, their fears of the safety of their families, their fantasies of being robbed or attacked."

Carvallo said he has discussed the phenomenon with other psychiatrists in Caracas, who have echoed his observations.

"It's a major change, because when I became a psychiatrist, the goal was to help people sort through their problems and have a happier lifestyle," Carvallo said. "I think that maybe in the last five years that has changed, and the goal is to try to teach the people how to survive."