Deadline: Crime, Journalism, and Fearful Citizenship in Caracas, Venezuela

DEADLINE: CRIME, JOURNALISM, AND FEARFUL CITIZENSHIP IN CARACAS, VENEZUELA

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFULLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Robert Nathan Samet November 2012

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/dn875vt7129

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Sylvia Yanagisako, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Paulla Ebron

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

James Ferguson

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Terry Karl

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Frederick Turner

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

iii iv ABSTRACT

This dissertation traces the constitutive relationship between the press and populism in Venezuela through an account of crime journalism. Based on more than two years of research alongside journalists on the Caracas crime beat, it analyzes how demands for security mobilized disparate sectors of society around a common cause. The vital link between the politics of security and populist mobilization is something that scholars have only recently begun to recognize (Bottoms 1995; Garland 2002; Pratt 2007; Wacquant 2009). Although my analysis focuses specifically on Venezuela, I believe that it has implications for studies of crime and for studies of populism more generally.

This dissertation sets out three interrelated findings. First, crime news creates victims. I mean this in a discursive sense: crime news reproduces the figure of the innocent, wholesome victim. A glance at the morning papers or the midday news confirms as much. Crime journalism is replete with images of grieving relatives and stories about good kids, hard-working men, and beloved mothers who were murdered for no reason at all. Anthropologists studying mass media representations of crime have looked almost exclusively at the figure of the criminal. We know where the category of the criminal leads—to the body of the young, poor, dangerous, black male. What can we learn by following the category of the victim?

Second, in Venezuela victimhood becomes legible through the discursive practice of denunciation. We tend to think of victims as silent, passive objects; yet in Venezuela victimhood is anything but silent. To the contrary, the victim is an active performer, someone who voices sentiments of rage, grief, tragedy, and fear. To denounce is to assert one’s victimhood publicly, usually through the medium of the press.

Third and finally, denunciations made in the name of victims are the building blocks that form populist movements. In Culture & Truth, anthropologist Renato Rosaldo talks about how finding the rage in grief helped him understand the impetus for Illongot headhunting (Rosaldo 1993). I argue that by seeing the rage in victimhood, we begin to understand the impetus behind populist mobilizations against violent crime. The discursive practices of denunciation on the part of victims, journalists, pundits, and media

v moguls allow us to analyze this process. Rather than reducing the phenomenon to a moral panic or a mob mentality, an analysis of denunciation actually shows us the mechanisms and the micro-politics through which the populist movements take shape.

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have given generously of themselves and their time in the making of this dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank all of the journalists in Venezuela who made this project possible. Despite the tense political atmosphere in Venezuela, they trusted me and allowed me into their lives. If I followed them every day of my fieldwork, then they have followed me throughout the writing process. Per the norms of anthropology and contra the norms of journalism, I have chosen not to reveal their names in the text of this dissertation. In the future (and with their permission) I would like to write them back into the story. For the time being, I hope that this all-too- short list will at least acknowledge a few of the people to whom I am eternally grateful: Altagracia Anzola, Felicita Blanco, Laura Dávila Truelo, Alex Delgado, Oliver Fernández, Gustavo Frisneda, David González, Felipe González Roa, Sandra Guerrero, Santiago Gutierrez, María Isoliett Iglesias, Mayela León, Sabrina Machado, Ricardo Matheus, Javier Mayorca, Thabata Molina, María Alejandra Monagas, Jenny Oropeza, Efrén Pérez Hernández, Jose Pernalete, Wilmer Poleo, Deivis Ramíerez Miranda, Luz Mely Reyes, Gustavo Rodríguez, Eligio Rojas, Fernando Sánchez, Luis Vallenilla, and Laura Weffer. I would also like to extend a special thank you to the editors and owners of Últimas Noticias and El Nacional who welcomed me with opened arms.

My committee was with me at all phases of this project—Sylvia Yanagisako, Paulla Ebron, James Ferguson, Terry Karl, and Fred Turner. I cannot thank them enough for the meetings, letters of recommendation, and gestures of encouragement along the way. Sylvia Yanagisako, my advisor, was a constant source of inspiration and support. She shaped this project from its inception, often in ways that I did not immediately recognize. She also set an example of grace and good humor, which I will always strive to emulate. Paulla Ebron was the first person to call me from Stanford University and she acted as a mentor throughout my years in graduate school. Along with our conversations about media, crime, and politics, Paulla showed me a pedagogical approach that I have tried to make my own. James Ferguson constantly pushed my thinking, starting with coursework and continuing through the writing of this dissertation. Time and again, he showed me the lasting contributions that anthropology can make to our understanding of the world. Terry Karl generously adopted me from outside of her discipline. Few people

vii have written as brilliantly on Venezuela as Terry, and I felt very fortunate for her suggestions and advice. Fred Turner was a voice of enthusiasm, a model of joyful scholarship, and a pragmatic guide in my graduate journey. He encouraged my interdisciplinary inclinations and I am deeply grateful for all of his advice.

Beyond this wonderful dissertation committee, I greatly benefited from the indispensable guidance of many of the faculty at Stanford University, including Kathleen Coll, Claudia Engel, Ted Glasser, Thomas Blom Hansen, Miyako Inoue, and Liisa Malkki. There have been many others who have read sections of this dissertation and offered suggestions and encouragement. Sincere thanks to Fernando Coronil, Graham Denyer Willis, Daniel Hallin, Kevin Lewis O’Neill, Kimberly Theidon, Daniel Goldstein, Naomi Schiller, Natalia Roudakova, David Smilde, and Alejandro Velasco. In Venezuela, my research was oriented with the help of several scholars and researchers, including Andrés Antillano, Andrés Cañizalez, Victor Hugo Febres, Lorena Freites, and Elsie Rosales.

During my time at Stanford University, I was lucky to be surrounded by an exceptional cohort of anthropologists. Nikhil Anand, Hannah Appel, Elif Babül, Maura Finklestein, Rania Sweiss, and Austin Zeiderman shaped my intellectual development and continue to be my closest interlocutors. I could not have done this without them. Along with my cohort-and-a-half, there were many others at Stanford whose help, friendship, and wisdom were invaluable. Tania Ahmad and Ramah McKay recruited me and made sure that I was well taken care of during my first years in the program. I also owe a hearty thanks to Mun Young Cho, Dolly Kikon, Aisha Ghani, Yoon-Jung Lee, Serena Love, Tomas Matza, Curtis Murungi, Zhanara Nauruzbayeva, Bruce O’Neill, Kevin O’Neill, Angel Roque, Joshua Samuels, and Thet Win, who were wonderful companions in graduate school. My roommate Peter Samuels pushed me intellectually, and I was all too happy to follow his example through many a late-night studying session. Natalia Roudakova played the role of informal mentor even after she left Stanford for the University of California, San Diego. I enjoyed many productive conversations with my colleagues in Stanford’s Department of Communication: Mike Ananny, Isabel Awad Cherit, Daniel Kreiss, Lise Marken, and Seeta Peña Gangadharan. Finally, my “fellow

viii fellows” in the SSRC Drugs, Security, and Democracy program have been amazing. Thanks to all of you, especially Adam Baird, Damion Blake, Diana Bocareja, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, José Miguel Cruz, Graham Denyer Willis, Angelica Duran Martinez, Alex Fattal, Juan Felipe Moreno, Anthony Fontes, Paul Hathazy, Ellen Sharp, and Michael Wolff.

The two people who did more than anyone else to get me through the Ph.D. program were our department administrator, Ellen Christensen, and our Student Services Officer, Shelly Coughlan. I deeply appreciated their help navigating the University bureaucracy and all of the intricacies of graduate schools. Even more than that, though, I appreciated their warmth. They were my family away from home. In this respect, I also want to recognize Donna Even-Kesef and all of the other administrators in the Department of Anthropology: Emily Bishop, Kaila Jimenez, Jennifer Kidwell, Maria Manzanares, and Rachel Tongco.

In Venezuela, so many dear friends kept me in good company. When I first arrived, Alejandro Damian took me under his arm and taught me everything that I needed to know about surviving in Caracas. Not only was Ale the person whom my mom knew she could call in an emergency, he introduced me to the Avila, Maria Lionza, and El Coyuco—the best chicken in town! Charlie Devereux and Tiffany Fairey brought me into their home for six months and showed me more kindness than I could ever expect. Watching their son Finn grow up was truly a blessing. I am not sure if I can say the same about being converted into a fan of Arsenal Football Club. The list goes on. It includes Elodie Bernardeau, Quinlan Bowman, Rory Carroll, Amy Cooper, Graham Dick, Rachel Jones, Carlos Lagorio, Blandine Liévois, Clara Long, Simon May, Jose Orozco, Damian Oropeza, Ligimat Pérez, the crew at Casa Azul especially Mike Fox, Carlos Martinez, and Jojo Farrell, and my neighbors, Luisa, Suki, and Pepi.

These acknowledgments would be incomplete without mentioning the help of my research assistants, especially Carmelo Velasquez, who straddled the divide between friend and colleague. Carmelo came to understand this project from the inside out. His easy-going charm opened doors across Caracas and he made the solitary business of

ix research a real joy. I was also lucky to have the help of Leo, Carlos, Åsa Odin Ekman, Sylvia Gomez, and Lila Vanoria at various points in my research.

This dissertation was made possible by generous financial support from a number of sources, most notably Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology. My research was funded by the National Science Foundation (Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant), the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Dissertation Fieldwork Grant), Stanford University’s Center for Latin American Studies (Ayacucho Grant), Stanford University Vice Provost for Graduate Education (Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity Award 2010), and the Social Science Research Council (Drugs, Security, and Democracy Fellowship). My final phase of writing was funded with an O’Bie Shultz Dissertation Completion Fellowship granted by Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

My family has been the steady foundation for everything that I have done. There is no one who makes me prouder than my sister Lauren. Since we were kids, she was always a trooper and a luchadora. At the same time, she has always been incredibly generous and giving of herself. No one is a better friend that Lauren Samet. Indeed, she has always been and always will be my best friend. My father, Jan Samet, has been my greatest advocate. His love of knowledge is what gave me the courage to pursue a Ph.D. Where others questioned the practicality of doctoral work, my father saw it as a wonderful opportunity to learn and to teach others. He has never told me what to do with my life, but he has stood by my decisions as if they were his own. My mother, Sylvia Samet, has been both copy editor and voice of practical reason. She has put so much time into this dissertation and has always been available for help at all hours of the day or night. Whenever she approved of a paragraph or a chapter, I knew that it had passed an important hurdle. Finally, I want to thank my partner in crime, life, and everything else, Elif Babül, who has been with me through the ups-and-downs of graduate school, fieldwork, and writing. I am grateful for her patience, just as I am completely awed by her brilliance. I read most of this dissertation aloud to her, and she always showed me how to make it even better. Our friendship was the best thing that happened to me in

x graduate school, and I look forward to more joy and laughter as we move forward together.

Both of my parents have given so much in the cause of this Ph.D. that it is something that I rightfully share with them. It is an honor to dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Jan and Sylvia Samet, and to their parents, Robert and Dena Samet and Albert and Bessie Rosenblum. L’Dor Vador.

xi xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Who’s Afraid of Caracas? 1 Crime Journalism as Affect Management 4 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? 8 Populism as Something Other than a Pejorative 11 Studying the Journalistic Field in Venezuela 18 Research Methods 26 Outline of the Dissertation 30

Chapter 1: The Republic of Victims 33 The City in Fragments 34 The Politics of Security 44 Purity and Victimhood 51 Mobilizing in the Name of Victims 57 Conclusion 66 Appendix: Getting a Handle on Crime Statistics 67

Chapter 2: Denuncias, Populism, & the Rise of Press Power 73 Watchdogs and Denouncers 77 The Delinquent Society 85 The Journalism of Denunciation 90 José Vicente Rangel and “The Dogs of War” 96 Conclusion 102

Chapter 3: The Photographer’s Body: Victimhood and Political Polarization 105 The Life and Death of Jorge Tortoza 107 The Chavista/Opposition Divide 110 The News Coup 113 The Janus-Faced Martyr 118 The Investigation 123 Conclusion: The Photographer’s Body 129

Chapter 4: Competition, Cooperation, & Control: The Caracas Crime Beat 133 7:00 A.M. – Meet “The Power Rangers” 135 8:30 A.M. – The News Tree 139 The “No-Names” 142 9:00 A.M. – The Morgue in Bello Monte 146 9:45 A.M. – The Bloodhound’s Call 151 10:15 A.M.– Barrio Pinto Salinas (Official Sources, Part 1) 152 11:00 A.M. – Meet the Minister (Official Sources, Part 2) 155 1:00 P. M. – Competition, Cooperation, and Control 158

xiii Chapter 5: The Victim’s Voice: Denunciation and the Politics of Violence 161 The Sano and the Malandro 164 Performing Pain 170 The Victim’s Voice 177 The Radical 180 The Reformer 182 Conclusion: On Populist Culture 185

Chapter 6: The Thin Editorial Line 189 Hierarchies of Judgment 192 The People’s Voice: Inside Últimas Noticias 198 The Crusaders: Inside El Nacional 207 The Official Story: Inside Diario Vea 220 Conclusion 227

Epilogue 229

Bibliography 233

xiv Introduction

INTRODUCTION WHO’S AFRAID OF CARACAS?

During 2011 the central morgue in Caracas handled more homicides per month than New York City witnessed over the course of the entire year.1 This was not a sudden outbreak of violence. Venezuela’s capital city—home to a population one-third the size of New York—had experienced alarming levels of violent crime for over two decades. The problem became even more pronounced under the administration of President Hugo Chávez despite programs of education and poverty reduction aimed at the most vulnerable sectors of society. The failure of the government to curb urban violence made crime the most hotly contested political issue of the president’s second term (2006-2012). For the opposition, “insecurity” symbolized everything wrong with the government and with the country. And no institution played a more vital role in publicizing the problem and shaping the response to crime than the private press.

Admittedly, crime journalism is not an intuitive starting point for a project on populist mobilization. Even in the politically charged environment that is contemporary Venezuela, most people place crime news outside the realm of the political. Loyal audiences of crime news said as much. One respondent summed it up succinctly. “It is not linked to politics and I will tell you why. Because I believe that you are always going

1 Caracas averaged between 200 and 300 homicides per month in 2011. That same year, there were 209 murders in all of New York City down from 329 in 2010. Source: New York Times. http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map. Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter, Tyson Evans, Brian Hamman, Andrew W. Lehren, Angelica Medaglia, Jo Craven McGinty. Accessed on June 12, 2012.

1 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? to have crime. What they write is a reality.” Émile Durkheim made a similar observation. “Crime is normal,” he wrote, “because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible.” It was Durkheim who demonstrated that responses to crime provide a useful vantage onto patterns of social organization (Durkheim 1984 [1893]; Garland 2002; Greenhouse 2003). Laws, courts, and regimes of punishment are all invested in upholding an idealized moral order. The same is true of crime news (Ericson, Baranek et al. 1987). In this dissertation, I am interested in how journalists, their sources, their audiences, and their editors went about upholding a moral order that seemed on the verge of collapse.

The chapters that follow set out three interrelated findings. First, crime news creates victims. I mean this in a discursive sense: crime news reproduces the figure of the innocent, wholesome victim. A glance at the morning papers or the midday news confirms as much. Crime journalism is replete with images of grieving relatives and stories about good kids, hard-working men, and beloved mothers who were murdered for no reason at all. Anthropologists studying mass media representations of crime have looked almost exclusively at the figure of the criminal. We know where the category of the criminal leads—to the body of the young, poor, dangerous, black male. What can we learn by following the category of the victim?2

2 This question has been posed, provocatively, in the context of medical anthropology by Diddier Fassin and Richard Rechtman (Fassin and Rechtman 2009).

2 Introduction discursive practices of denunciation on the part of victims, journalists, pundits, and media moguls allow us to analyze this process. Rather than reducing the phenomenon to a moral panic or a mob mentality, an analysis of denunciation actually shows us the mechanisms and the micro-politics through which the populist movements take shape.

Crime journalism presents a window onto the Venezuelan press, which has been arguably the most important political institution in Venezuela for the last quarter century. The media was militating for political change in Venezuela long before Hugo Chávez burst onto the scene in 1992 as part of a failed coup d’état. While Chávez was in prison, the press became the most influential force in national politics. When the former coup leader decided to run for office, key figures in the private press backed his candidacy and helped him win the presidency. However, upon assuming leadership of the country, the press and the president parted ways. It was a bitter breakup. For most of the Chávez era, the private press has functioned as the mouthpiece of opposition to the president (Duffy and Everton 2008). Journalists have been alternately vilified for attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected government or lionized for their bravery in confronting that same government.

It was against this backdrop of political polarization that I conducted fieldwork with journalists on the Caracas crime beat. Some of these journalists opposed the Chávez government; others considered themselves supporters. Regardless of political orientation, they universally agreed that urban violence was out of control and that not enough was being done to address crime. They saw it as their journalistic duty to confront the problem on behalf of their audiences, their sources, and the Venezuelan people. Moreover, they believed that journalism gave them the tools to make a difference. Working on the Caracas crime beat gave me a unique perspective on the kinds of tools that journalists have at their disposal and the ways in which they use them.

***

3 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

Crime Journalism as Affect Management

The news van was weaving through the streets of downtown Caracas at high speed. Using his horn like a siren, the driver crossed over the median into oncoming traffic, plowed across the sidewalk, and swerved down a side street. A second van blazed into view—its horn blaring—and cut in front of the first. Working in tandem the two vehicles cut a swath through heavy traffic and accelerated onto the highway. It was like a chase scene from a B-movie, except that everyone seemed to be watching me rather than the exploits of the drivers. I was squeezed into the back seat of the first van between two crime reporters. There had been a shootout on the other side of the city and the journalists were in a rush to get there before the action subsided. In the front seat, the photographer and the driver kept looking back to check my reaction. As the driver floored the van up the wrong side of a narrow mountain road, the photographer glanced back at me and grinned. “Whaddya’ think about his driving?” An awed expletive and a wide-eyed expression of terror were all that I could manage. “Look at his face! You should see yourself, Robert!” one of the reporters laughed. The photographer chuckled again and snapped a few shots of me. “A souvenir of your adventures!”

Like any other rookie, my initiation into the Caracas crime beat consisted of a series of shocks. Some, like the car chase, were deliberately staged or exaggerated.3 Others were simply part of a job that documented the aftermath of urban violence. During my first few months on the beat, I became intimately familiar with crime scenes, corpses, funeral parlors, grieving relatives, accidents, morgues, hospitals, and seemingly endless stories about death. The crime journalists assessed my response to every new experience or situation. If I did not seem sufficiently affected, they made sure to reinforce the gravity of what I was witnessing.

Shock is the currency of journalism and crime journalism in particular. There is an affective intensity in images and stories of violence, which is only rivaled by (and

3 At the time, I wondered how many journalists had died in automobile accidents. Thankfully, this was the only chase scene that I ever witnessed. After two years and more than two hundred days following crime journalists in Caracas, I can confidently say that the episode was staged for my benefit.

4 Introduction often equated with) pornography. This implicit relationship between shock and crime news is signaled by the term sucesos, which literally means “events” or “happenings.” In the context of Latin American journalism, “sucesos” refer to violent events, specifically crimes or fatal accidents. The word suggests a sudden, bodily shock. It is the kind of experience that theorists have linked to both trauma and mass mediation (Freud 1920 (1990); Benjamin 1968; Schivelbusch 1987; Buck-Morss 1992; Taussig 1992). Crime journalists are in the business of mediating the most shocking of events; they are in the business of what William Mazzarella calls “affect management” (Mazzarella 2009; Mazzarella 2010).

It is precisely the shocking or affective quality that has led many commentators to condemn crime news for its morbid sensationalism. “The ‘liberal lament,’” Ellen Moodie writes, “insists that sensationalist images only depoliticize pain and suffering” (Moodie 2009:382). Such a stigma might say more about our own cultural sensibilities than about representations of violence or popular culture. Taboos on shocking, affect-intensive stories and images are linked to political ideals that date back to the enlightenment, in particular the elevation of reason above emotion. If the former represented the height of human achievement, then the latter was a base animal instinct, a holdover from some prehistoric age. Irrational, unchecked emotion was associated with women, children, “savages” (i.e., non-Europeans), and the urban masses.4 What makes crime news vulgar—what separates it from, say, a medical or criminological textbook—is its appeal to the emotions.5

Journalists on the Caracas crime beat were all too aware of the stigmas that followed them. Writer and chronicler José Roberto Duque confronts the subject in the opening lines of his collected volume Guerra Nuestra: “The chronicles that appear in this book are fundamentally sensationalizing. As a consequence, their author is too. It could not be any other way. To put it more precisely—there is no other way that chroniclers of

4 This affective quality also leads to the common albeit incorrect assumption that the popular classes are the main audiences for crime news. At least in Caracas, crime news was the most consumed genre among both elite and popular audiences. 5 News coverage of crime is often criticized because it violates the sacred space of death for cheap thrills. However, it is also charged with doing exactly opposite—for having an anesthetizing effect on audiences by creating distance between the victim and the witness.

5 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? crime (case in point) can escape this designation” (1999:5). Duque argues that shock serves a purpose. Without the intimate details of suffering, his denunciations of violence and injustice would fall on deaf ears. Still, he cannot escape the sense that crime journalists are “Draculas” who feed off human misery (5). Indeed, most of the reporters and photographers with whom I worked recognized that they were tainted by their profession. Theirs was the dual burden of witnessing countless traumas and being secretly associated with them.

Working with crime journalists meant learning to manage the affective shock of violence. This ethnography describes how journalists cultivated techniques for working with victims, many of whom had suffered devastating losses. Similarly, it shows how journalists employed different strategies for coping with their personal experiences of violence. These encounters with shock were, in turn, tied to the way that crime journalists managed stories and images of crime.

Journalistic representations of crime attempt to convey the affective force of violence. Not unlike melodrama (Brooks 1980), the impact of crime journalism emerges from the play of repetition and difference. As Charles Briggs has demonstrated, crime news is highly formulaic (Briggs 2007); it is a genre that seems to repeat the same motifs ad nauseam. Although crime stories are situated against this background of sameness, they present themselves as “verbal photographs” which index the singular reality of a violent event (Briggs 2007:331). In that way, each crime story is simultaneously unique and infinitely reproducible thanks to the conventions of the genre. These conventions, in 6 turn, are formulated within preexisting structures of power and knowledge. Often the work of affect management reinforces the dominant structures of power, but not always and certainly not unfailingly. Like social scientists, crime journalists are situated within overlapping fields of power; they address multiple audiences; and they engage in political struggles on several fronts. If the affective shock of violence often reproduces forms of

6 Take the narrative convention that the anthropologist Charles Briggs calls the “vox populi” (the voice of the people) and which I describe as the denuncia (see below). Per Briggs, the vox populi is a collective identity that appears in many crime stories not unlike the Greek chorus. When “the people” appear on the scene, they do so in order to demand justice on behalf of the victim (Briggs 2007). This narrative convention functions as a vehicle through which crime journalists attempt to recreate the affective intensity that accompanies violence.

6 Introduction oppression, it also has the potential to do the opposite. It can be a source of terror, but it may also carry the seeds of healing (Taussig 1987).

In this dissertation I examine one specific technique or practice of affect management—the journalistic use of denuncias.7 As I explain in Chapter 2, the term “denuncia” translates as “denunciation,” “accusation,” or “complaint,” although the meaning varies depending on its context. It often refers to an official complaint that is filed with the purpose of initiating an investigation or a legal proceeding. In this sense, denuncias are most often thought of as reports or indictments. The term can also refer to informal denunciations that attempt to expose wrongdoing. In Venezuela it is common for citizens to publicly denounce crime, corruption, and other forms of malfeasance through the medium of the press. Crime journalists use these public denunciations in their reporting.

As a narrative technique of crime journalism, denuncias reproduce the shock of violent crime with the hope of inspiring a reaction on the part of their audiences. By following denuncias, I hope to show how representations of violence are linked to different social responses, one of which is political mobilization. It is worth emphasizing that these denuncias give crime journalists a sense of purpose that goes beyond the prurience of violence. Instead of peddling human suffering, denuncias allow crime journalists to imagine themselves as the voice of victims and the hand of justice.

The ethical dilemmas of crime journalists echo those of anthropologists who write about violence. What does it mean to claim to speak for victims, and what does it mean to stand in judgment of those who do so? There is no way out of these ethical dilemmas, at least not if we adopt a god’s-eye view of violence and signification. The point is not to sound a retreat or to make the problem so complex that we end in a philosophical tangle. Rather, I mean to emphasize the importance of a situated realism, one that is positioned in the world rather than above it (Putnam 1990; Haraway 1991). The merits and failings of crime journalists in Caracas deserve to be judged on their own terms, from a

7 Historians and literary scholars have long recognized the political significance of denuncias. On the legacy of denunciation in Latin America see Chapter 2.

7 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? perspective that appreciates the historical, political, and social context in which they are located. Theirs is an urgent situation. A young crime reporter who had never heard of Walter Benjamin once commented to me that her generation was born into a state of emergency and that for all of their lives they had been immersed in crisis. It was under these exceptional circumstances that crime journalists came to champion the victims of violence, to channel their denuncias, and to mobilize popular opinion against crime.

Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

There is a vast body of research on perceptions of crime, much of which centers on one emotion—fear. For nearly half a century, social scientists have been conducting quantitative and qualitative surveys on fear of crime. In 1992 Chris Hale counted some 200 works dedicated to the topic; less than a decade later, that number had jumped to more than 800 articles, books, and monographs (Hale 1996; Ditton and Farrall 2000; Farrall 2004). Most of this research has been guided by three central assumptions, that people are afraid of crime, that fear is something negative that can be dispelled by expert knowledge, and that the fear of crime is a subjective experience that can be separated from the objective reality. It is not my intention to dismiss any of these claims. It is true that people are often afraid of crime and that in many instances fear can have negative consequences. However, fear alone is insufficient for understanding social reactions to crime (De Haan and Loader 2002; Karstedt, Loader et al. 2011).8 How a phenomenon as complex as reactions to crime has been reduced to a single affective register is a subject that deserves greater attention (Lee 2007; Lee and Farrall 2008). After all, anthropologists have long recognized that violence engenders a wide and shifting range of affective states including anger, disgust, grief, numbness, shame, yearning, sadness, and terror (Taussig 1987; Feldman 1991; Scheper-Hughes 1992; Rosaldo 1993; Malkki 1995; Daniel 1996; Hansen 2001; Goldstein 2004).

8 As Farrall argues, it is anger and not fear that is, by far, the most common emotional state associated with crime (Farrall 2004).

8 Introduction

Perhaps the greatest drawback to the fear of crime paradigm is that it suggests a passive, demobilized citizenry. Fearfulness is imagined as a retreat from public space, a distrust of strangers, and a defensive posture towards the future. At its most extreme, this is a world in which decent people hide behind locked doors, too timid to venture out after dark. A visitor to Caracas would, no doubt, observe a city held captive by crime. However, foregrounding fear of crime in Caracas would mean neglecting other important responses to urban violence. As in the United States and Western Europe, violent crime has become an object of political mobilization in Venezuela. Scores of demonstrations have been launched in the name of victims by politicians, activists, and the press. If anti- crime crusaders are full of passionate intensity, fear is not the affective state that best describes them. Anger, outrage, mourning, grief—these are more apt descriptions of the backlash against crime in Caracas and its affective register.

For over three decades, being tough on crime has been a mainstay of the political discourse in Europe and the Americas. Scholars have slowly come to recognize the significance of the shift in policies and attitudes towards punishment that is often referred to as “the punitive turn” (Bottoms 1995; Garland 1996; Hallsworth 2000; Garland 2002; Pratt, Brown et al. 2005; Pratt 2007; Wacquant 2009). Prisons and policing were formerly organized according to a rehabilitative ideal, which stressed the reform and reintegration of criminal offenders (Garland 2002). However, starting in the late-1970s, this ideal was challenged by a coalition of actors—led by conservative politicians, victims’ movements, and the press—who demanded a more forceful approach to crime in the United States and Europe. Taking up the cause of victims, they championed an approach to crime control that emphasized retribution over rehabilitation. The outcome of this punitive shift is especially evident in the United States, where draconian penal policies have resulted in the largest incarcerated population in the world (Walmsley 2008; Warren 2008). In Latin America, it has been reflected in the widespread popularity of mano dura (heavy-handed) approaches to crime.9

9 David Garland comments that “the re-appearance in official policy of punitive sentiments and expressive gestures that appear oddly archaic and downright anti-modern tend to confound the standard social theories of punishment and its historical development. Not even the most inventive reading of Foucault, Marx,

9 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

British scholars interested in deviance and moral panics were the first to identify the outlines of the punitive turn. In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Stanley Cohen showed how deviance was constructed as an object of moral censure (Cohen 1972).10 The concept of the moral panic was incorporated by Stuart Hall and fellow collaborators Tony Jefferson, John Clark, and Brian Roberts in their now classic study Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (Hall, Critcher et al. 1978). Drawing on interviews with journalists and content analysis of crime news, they demonstrate how the press helped produce a racially inflected moral panic around the subject of mugging. For these scholars mugging was important because it allowed them to establish how poor, black youths came to bear the brunt of social censure. In retrospect, it is possible to read Policing the Crisis and other works on moral panics as an historical record of the punitive turn. They describe how crime became an object of populist mobilization in Britain through the mass mediated construction of criminals.11

If there is a limitation to this early work on moral panics, it is a tendency to take victims lightly. Part of this is due to the context in which the scholarship was situated. Youth culture in Britain during the 1970s may have appeared threatening, but the levels of violent crime were relatively low. The situation in contemporary Latin America is of another magnitude, and describing the situation in Venezuela as a “panic” would be to ignore the gravity of the situation. The other reason for the relative neglect of the figure of the victim in the moral panic literature is its emphasis on processes of criminalization. Cohen, Hall, Young, and other scholars were interested in the social construction of deviance, and so they focused on the production of scapegoats, folk devils, and dangerous others. In this respect, their work remains highly influential, so much so that scholars have almost entirely neglected the equally important construction of the suffering victim. To understand the contemporary politics of security, it is absolutely imperative to consider the production of victims as well as victimizers.

Durkheim, and Elias on punishment could have predicted these recent developments—and certainly no such predictions ever appeared” (2002:3). 10 Cohen’s work was part of a developing body of scholarship on deviance that included works by Jock Young, Ian Taylor, and Paul Walton among others (Young 1971; Taylor, Walton et al. 1973). 11 Stuart Hall suggested as much in an article that he published just a few years later (Hall 1980).

10 Introduction

One of the central claims of this dissertation is that crime news produces the figure of the sano—the “good,” “clean,” or “wholesome” victim. I am not suggesting that the media is responsible for violent crime or that crime news is a conduit for violence (although there are many who have made this claim). Nor do I intend to argue that the sano or the citizen-victim is an avatar of a Foucauldian politics of life (although I am sympathetic to this perspective). Instead, I am interested in the ways in which victimhood has become the fulcrum for populist mobilization. The task of this dissertation is to explain how collective identities are articulated through a shared sense of victimhood and how, in turn, the figure of the victim comes to represent the righteous indignation of society as a whole. It is vis-à-vis the category of the victim that I approach the subject of populism.

Populism as Something Other than a Pejorative

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Venezuela was shaped by two competing populist movements. Scholars have paid close attention to President Hugo Chávez, the best example of a charismatic leader since Juan Perón. What has gone unacknowledged is that the opposition was also a case study in populist mobilization. Drawing parallels between the opposition and chavismo invites debate, yet there is ample evidence for this claim. As I show in Chapter Two, the populist movement that coalesced around the figure of Hugo Chávez was promoted by many of the same actors who later became his fiercest adversaries. The populism of the opposition, especially the private press, was not a response to chavismo. It was its precondition. My contention is that both political coalitions shared similar origins and that they were linked by similar practices of denunciation. This is not to say that they are the same. There were significant differences between the populism of chavismo and the populism of the opposition. However, the two camps were not as distant as some partisans would lead us to believe. Drawing out these similarities may help rethink the conceptual impasse that has forced scholars to accept the chavismo/opposition divide as the only analytical framework for studying Venezuelan politics.

In common parlance, the term populism has strong negative connotations that often obscure its analytic utility. To call someone a populist is to accuse him or her of

11 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? pandering to “the masses,” whipping up anti-institutional fervor, and using social unrest for personal political gain.12 However, social science has a more nuanced conception of populism, one that is less fraught with moral overtones. Many of the most important scholars of populism have defended the phenomenon by pointing out that populism shares strong affinities to democracy (Canovan 1999; Arditi 2004; Arditi 2005; Mouffe 2005; Panizza 2005; Laclau 2005a). It was anthropologist-turned-sociologist Peter Worsley who first highlighted these affinities (Worsley 1969: see Arditi 2004). Worsley argued that the common denominator linking otherwise disparate expressions of populism is their demands that governments be held accountable to the will of the people. Popular sovereignty—government of the people, by the people, for the people—is the rallying cry of every populist movement regardless of its political orientation. The all- too-quick dismissal of populism as irrational mass politics conveniently avoids the still unresolved question about rule by the “demos.” If populism is an illiberal political expression that sometimes veers towards the extremes of sovereign power, its success is predicated on the promise of a more perfect union between government and the governed. In other words, the challenge of populism reflects the challenge of democracy more generally, its potential for violence as well as its promise of redemption (Canovan 1999; Arias and Goldstein 2010).13

In addition to the assumption that populism is “bad” or “undemocratic,” there are a number of other common misconceptions about populism. The balance of social scientific research coincides on the following points.

• Populism is not charismatic leadership. • Populism is not reducible to any single economic program.

12 This partially explains why anthropologists, with a few notable exceptions (Albro 2000, Coronil & Skurski 2006, Hansen 2001, Holmes 2000, Sánchez 2001, Skurski 1993, Worsley 1969), have favored other analytic lenses because labeling a movement “populist” is to damn it from the outset. There are also historical reasons for this relative neglect on the part of anthropology. During the 1980s, as collective action was becoming a subject of interest within the discipline (Edelman 2001), populism was in retreat. Attention turned toward the crumbling of authoritarian regimes and the rise of new social movements demanding democracy (Escobar & Alvarez 1992, Nash 1997, Paley 2001). 13 De Tocqueville’s “tyranny of the majority” is the specter that haunts every democratic project, despite the best efforts to dispel it. This is what distinguishes populist movements from the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike the new social movements, which mobilized specific sectors of the citizenry in search of rights, populist movements make totalizing claims on the body politic. Whereas the former bases its legitimacy on a discourse of diversity, the latter is majoritarian in its outlook.

12 Introduction

• Populism is not the exclusive domain of either “the left” or “the right.” • Populism is not authoritarianism, although it sometimes leads in this direction. • Populism is not uniform; there are different varieties of populism.

That is not to say that there is consensus among scholars. As with any key political concept, there are competing definitions of populism. Since the term populism emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, there have been numerous attempts to set out a unified formulation of the phenomenon (Di Tella 1965; Ionescu and Gellner 1969; Laclau 1977; Germani 1978; Canovan 1981; Roberts 1995; Weyland 1996; Knight 1998; Weyland 2001; Jansen 2011). This is sometimes confused with a lack of conceptual clarity. Indeed, if there is a cliché in studies of populism, it is that the previous generations have failed to understand the phenomenon and that a newer, more encompassing definition is necessary. Rather than failure, different approaches to populism have to do with attempts to explain different facets of a complex, socio-political tendency. To imagine a resolution to debates about populism in which a singular definition is established once and for all is to slip into the realm of social science fiction.

This dissertation deals with the formation of populist movements, specifically the role that the press plays in populist mobilization. Although the importance of mass media in the emergence of populism has long been recognized (Di Tella 1965; Laclau 1977), there have been very few empirical studies of the topic (Mazzoleni, Stewart et al. 2003). My research focuses on the role of crime journalism in the production of collective identities. It describes how categories of “Us” and “Them” are constructed by journalists, their sources, their employers, and their audiences. In particular, it looks at the discursive practices through which populist identities are produced. For that reason, there are certain facets of populism (e.g., clientelism) that fall outside of this study.14

14 By focusing on the press and populist mobilization, I am bracketing the question of how populist movements evolve once they attain power. For much the same reason, my research does not examine the networks of patronage and influence that populist governments establish once they come to power, i.e., clientelism. My neglect of these themes is not a dismissal of their relevance or an attempt to sidestep the scholarship on these subjects (eg. O'Donnell 1973; Cardoso and Enzo 1979; Coniff 1999; Auyero 2001). However, this project is better situated to describe what Robert Jansen calls populist mobilization than populism as a style of government (Jansen 2011).

13 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

***

For the purposes of my study, populism refers to anti-status quo movements that reduce the political space to a struggle between “the people” or “the majority”—as the rightful source of sovereign authority—and its enemy, “the power bloc” (Panizza 2005: 3; see also Laclau 1977, 2005). It is both a style of political mobilization and a process through which otherwise disparate actors come to identify with a common cause. This definition of populism has the following features:

1. Populism is predicated on the principle of popular sovereignty. All populist movements claim to represent the will of the majority of citizens. This is often expressed as the will of “the people,” but the majority can also be represented through terms like “common citizens,” “average Americans,” “patriotic Venezuelans,” “the moral majority,” “the 99%,” and so forth. 2. Populist movements define themselves in opposition to some powerful enemy or adversary. Populists gain legitimacy by challenging authorities that are oppressive, elitist, out of touch, or otherwise illegitimate. Corrupt officials, cruel dictators, liberal elites, or dishonest bankers are all common targets of populist ire. Without such an enemy, populist movements cannot sustain themselves. 3. Populist movements make polarizing distinctions between “Us” and “Them.” Populists represent themselves as the righteous expression of the majority and they seek to incorporate the largest possible base of support against a powerful enemy (i.e., the aforementioned corrupt officials, cruel dictators, liberal elites, and so on). Every populist movement imagines itself locked in a struggle of good versus evil, the righteous versus the wicked. At its most extreme, such a worldview leaves no room for moral ambiguity or compromise. Of course, this division of the world into two competing camps belies the internal complexity of populist movements. 4. Populist movements are remarkably heterogeneous. One of the key questions posed by scholars of populism is how otherwise unaligned sectors come together

14 Introduction

in the semblance of a unified whole. For example, how are we to explain the marriage of religious evangelicals and the corporate establishment in the United States, or the alignment of the military leaders, ex-guerilla, and the popular sectors in Venezuela? The closer we look at any populist coalition, the more fragmented it appears. This fragmentation was one of the characteristics that puzzled early scholars, yet it also provides an important clue about the formation of populist movements. 5. Finally, populist movements have no necessary ideological content. Their critics often point to populist movements as incoherent and internally fragmented. And while scholars often distinguish between “left” and “right” wing populism, every populist movement is a mélange of ideological influences.

This definition of populism is strongly influenced by the work of Latin American scholars—the first generation of sociological writings by the likes of Gino Germani, Torcuato Di Tella, and Francisco Weffort, as well as the later interventions of Ernesto Laclau. Despite the acknowledged importance of this last figure, Laclau’s work is often misunderstood by social scientists. Too often his theory of populism is reduced to a theory of “discourse.” While it is true that Laclau is interested in the discursive underpinning of populist identities, he stresses discourse as a socially situated practice. His theory provides a framework through which populist mobilization and the formation of populist identities can be studied empirically. Such a framework has enormous implications for contemporary studies, which have placed great emphasis on the language of populism (Weyland 2001; Hawkins 2010; Jansen 2011). By reducing discourse to the speech of charismatic leaders, many contemporary scholars have missed Laclau’s most important observations about how populist movements coalesce.

Laclau indentifies a pair of practices essential to the formation of populist subjectivities (Laclau 2005a; Laclau 2005b). The first practice is the discursive linking or “articulation” through which disparate demands coalesce into “chains of equivalence.” If the terminology is somewhat opaque, Laclau’s point is fairly straightforward. Populist movements form when unaligned groups with different demands—e.g., for jobs, social services, protection, and so forth—realize that their demands have gone unfulfilled. Their

15 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? shared frustration forms the basis for a collective identity between sectors that otherwise have very little in common. The second practice, which coincides with the first, is the creation of an “internal frontier dividing the social space into two camps” (2005b: 43). As I have already mentioned, populist identities are based on a polarizing discourse that divides the world into “Us” and “Them,” friend and foe. Laclau’s point is that populist movements emerge out of the very practice of establishing a common adversary, without which any populist movement would cease to exist.

There is a third and final element of Laclau’s analysis, which is also the most elusive. For a populist movement to emerge as a political force, one of the aforementioned demands must come to stand for the whole chain of equivalences. This synecdoche is what Laclau calls an “empty signifier,” and it functions as the discursive glue that sustains populist movements. This signifier is “empty” not because it is without meaning but because it is pregnant with possibility. The empty signifier can represent the entire assemblage of demands because it is flexible enough to reflect different interests. For example, in Venezuela the demand for “security” appears to represent a common problem even though it has very different meanings for elites and the urban poor. As Laclau explains, the ultimate empty signifier is the populist leader who is all things to all people (or, at least, all of the people who are part of the movement). That said, populist movements do not begin with charismatic leaders, nor must one emerge for them to have political success. Both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are contemporary testaments to that fact. If the empty signifier is the most charismatic element of a populist movement, its emergence is also the most unpredictable.

My dissertation deals primarily with the first two aspects of populist mobilization: the articulation of demands and the formation of an internal frontier. These are the practices that I observed while working with crime journalists in Caracas. In fact, it was only in the course of trying to explain the practice of denunciation that Laclau’s writings on populism drew my attention. The articulation of demands usefully explains why denuncias of crime carried so much symbolic weight for journalists, their sources, and their audiences (see Chapters 2 and 5). Similarly, the polarization of the political field

16 Introduction helped to explain the use of victimhood as a category of popular mobilization (see Chapter 1 and 3).

The qualities that make Ernesto Laclau’s theories useful in the context of Venezuela also make him controversial in some circles. Along with Chantal Mouffe, Laclau’s works reveal the armature beneath collective identities like “the people” or “the working class.” The project outlined by Laclau and Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was a response to the failings of orthodox Marxism, which by the 1970s were all too apparent (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Their work attempted to hold onto the importance of collective identities without insisting on the preeminence of one identity over all the rest (i.e., the working class). If I have my misgivings about their program of radical democracy and their attempts to replace class struggle with popular struggle, Laclau’s framing of populism is both rigorous and well-suited to Venezuela. In a country where politics has been reduced to a pair of warring camps, it provides us with the tools to understand how polarization is produced from the ground up. Moreover, it allows us to think beyond the with-us-or-against-us mentality that says we must “choose a side.” After all, being situated does not mean being trapped in false dichotomies.

Here I should note that I depart from Laclau on two important points. The first is what I believe is a common misunderstanding of his work. Cursory treatments of Laclau often assume that populist movements are nothing more than movements that claim to represent the people. This leads to the erroneous belief that in Latin America a movement is not properly populist without some reference to el pueblo. However, behind the figure of the people stands something more fundamental—popular sovereignty or the will of the majority. Populists may invoke any number of rhetorical figures in their claim to represent the will of the majority. This was clearly the case in Venezuela, where the citizen-victim presented one potential avatar of the general will. It is also the case in many other populist movements, especially those that have swept across Europe and the United States in recent years.

The second point of difference is a somewhat less optimistic outlook on populism. Laclau celebrates the populist phenomenon as a gateway to radical democracy. He has

17 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? been criticized on this point, perhaps unfairly.15 My own position is to emphasize both the potentially liberating aspects of populist movements and their potentially violent tendencies. Populism can lead to a more just and equitable society; it can also lead to violent oppression in the name of justice and equality. If every democratic project begins with popular sovereignty, history has shown that claims to popular sovereignty can lead to authoritarianism, fascism, or worse. For that reason, it is essential to pay close attention to the direction that any populist movement takes. Once battle lines have been drawn, there is no theoretical a priori that can save us.

Studying the Journalistic Field in Venezuela

This project did not begin as a study of crime journalists or populism but as an ethnography of the press and democratic practices in Venezuela. In the highly polarized world of Venezuelan politics, few institutions divided opinion like the media. Within a few weeks of fieldwork across different sectors, I realized that the research was turning up little more than a stream of accusations and counter-accusations. For supporters of Hugo Chávez, the private press represented the mouthpiece of their greatest adversary and an institution that was determined to oust their president. For the opposition, the private press was one of the last bastions of political freedom and an important check on presidential overreach. The antagonism between the president and the private press was so powerful that it seemed impossible to get beyond the calculus of blame to understand the ideals and experience of journalists.

Crime journalism presented itself for at least two reasons. First, talk of crime was pervasive and it weighed heavily on most residents of Caracas or caraqueños as they are sometimes called. Caraqueños were posing questions about violence and searching for answers with a sense of urgency that was impossible to ignore. By April of 2006, violent crime was the number one voter concern in Venezuela, and it became a central theme of political campaigns in Caracas and beyond. Second, although crime journalists covered a politically weighty topic, most people viewed crime news as apolitical. This was

15 See the debate between Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau in Critical Inquiry (Laclau 2006; Žižek 2006).

18 Introduction surprising because Venezuelans were highly critical consumers of information, acutely aware that the source of news often determined its content. Yet when it came to crime news, skepticism dissipated among both audience and journalists.16 The Caracas crime beat presented an opportunity to work alongside reporters whose work lined up with their professional ideals. If a direct approach inevitably led to tired debates about the Chávez government, crime journalism afforded the best position from which to observe the relationship between the press and politics in Venezuela.

Here it is necessary to say something about the controversies surrounding press freedom in Venezuela. Several international watchdogs and commentators have portrayed Venezuela as a country entirely bereft of press freedom (e.g., Freedom House). Even the most radically oriented Venezuelan would have difficulty accepting this claim. All of the opposition leaders, media owners, and pundits that I interviewed acknowledged that press freedom in Venezuela was an incontrovertible fact. It is true that there have been some egregious offenses against democratic rights by both the opposition and the government, most notably the failed media coup against Chávez and the removal of RCTV from the airwaves. It is also true that the policies and actions of the Chávez administration merit scrutiny for the ways in which they have attempted to exercise direct and indirect forms of censorship.17 Still, the fact remains that Venezuela has a vibrant and politically outspoken press culture. Indeed, in terms of the decentralization of ownership and the willingness of journalists to challenge the government, few places in the Western Hemisphere compare favorably with Venezuela. Regardless of how one measures press freedom, it is hard to imagine how a press that fits the profile of Venezuela’s could be described as “unfree.”

As Sylvio Waisbord observes in Watchdog Journalism in South America, debates about press freedom are also debates about political legitimacy (Waisbord 2000). Everyone defends press freedom—military juntas and armed guerillas, media moguls and

16 This was later confirmed by audience research that I conducted in January and February of 2009. Charles Briggs’ research produced a similar finding (Briggs 2007). 17 These tactics are not new to Venezuelan politics. It is well documented that previous governments were equally if not more inclined to use economic, political, and violent coercion against the press (Díaz Rangel 1974; Morris 1989; Coronil 1997).

19 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? grassroots media activists, neocolonial powers and national liberation movements. Too often these debates devolve into declarations of patriotic faith so that press freedom is reduced to “what we defend and what our enemies oppose” (Waisbord 2000:3). Like Waisbord, I am not interested in questioning the importance of press freedom or the sincerity of those who champion it. However, to understand the complex relationship between visions of democracy and practices of the press in Venezuela, it is important to attend to the lived experience of journalists, citizens, and government officials. This is especially important when we think about press freedom in international perspective. After all, the press is not everywhere the same. If we are to take comparison seriously, then it is incumbent upon us to consider these differences from the inside out. In Venezuela, crime news offered an important window onto the journalistic field, one that allowed me to go beyond the spiral of accusations in order to understand how politics was practiced on a day-to-day basis.

***

During the period of my fieldwork, few places in the world rivaled Caracas for the diversity of its journalistic output. Venezuela’s capital city was the epicenter of a booming national news industry, for which there was a large audience.18 Television and radio news was ubiquitous, so that even the most impoverished sectors of the city had access to broadcast news. “Indeed, compared with other countries in the region, there [were] more users and subscribers for television and radio per capita than in either Brazil or Mexico” (Cañizález and Lugo-Ocando 2008:192). Along with a robust selection of broadcast news channels, nearly a dozen newspapers served the Caracas metropolitan area and at least four of these papers circulated nationally. In contrast with North America and Europe, the newspaper industry in Latin America experienced strong growth in the new millennium (Nelson 2011). Sales in Caracas remained steady and the

18 Antonio Pasquali and others have emphasized the lack of media production in Venezuela (Pasquali 1991; Cañizález and Lugo-Ocando 2008). As an international producer of entertainment content such as television shows, films, fine art, and music, Venezuela ranks behind the likes of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. However, in terms of the audience and sheer quantity of national news, Venezuela likely outstrips them all.

20 Introduction print press had a very public presence in daily life.19 Venezuela was also one of the regional leaders in terms of digital communication. By 2011 more than 35% of citizens had access to the internet, cell phone penetration hovered around 100%, and Venezuelans ranked among the top five users of Twitter in the world.20 This last indicator also points to the growing popularity of newsblogs and internet news providers like Noticias24 and Aporrea.org.

What made Caracas truly extraordinary, however, were the three distinct and vibrant sectors that comprised the journalistic field: the private press, the state press, and the community media movement. The private press was old, well established, and widely viewed as the mouthpiece of the opposition. It consisted of several dozen privately owned and privately operated media outfits.21 Some were massive, for-profit corporations with national distribution like the television station Venevisión, the radio circuit Unión Radio, or the newspaper El Universal. These overlapped with regional newspapers, local radio stations, special interest magazines (e.g., sports, economy), a couple of privately funded news outlets, and a handful of news websites. The state press was a rapidly expanding media empire under the control of the Chávez government. In 2002 there were just three state-owned, state-operated news outlets.22 By 2012 the state press had ballooned to include more than a dozen media outfits across the print, broadcast, and digital spectrum.23 The community media was a loose network of grassroots media activists that won legitimacy under the Chávez administration. Across Venezuela there were hundreds

19 This was thanks in large part to its method of distribution. Over 90% of all newspapers were sold by the kiosks and vendors that populated every corner of the city. Author’s interview with supervisor in charge of newspaper distribution. December 22, 2008. 20 Sources: World Bank. “Internet users (per 100 people)” and Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people).” http://data.worldbank.org/ Accessed on June 12, 2012; Venezuelan Embassy. “Venezuela Ranks Fifth in the World in Use of Twitter.” http://venezuela-us.org/2011/05/31/venezuela-ranks-fifth-in-the- world-in-use-of-twitter/. Accessed on June 12, 2012. 21 None of these was a publicly held corporation and the vast majority were family firms. Unlike the United States, media ownership in Venezuela was not consolidated in the hands of a few corporations. There were at least ten major ownership groups and very little overlap between print or broadcast properties. 22 This is not counting the scores of radio stations acquired by the government in 1994 after a massive bank bailout. Up until this point, the state owned just two radio stations, but after the bailout it became “the biggest individual owner and direct administration of radio licenses” (Lugo and Romero 2003). For years these outfits were underfunded and largely ignored. 23 On the rise of the state press see Marcelino Bisbal’s edited volume Hegemonía y control comunicacional (Bisbal 2009). Javier Pereira and Adriana Rivera also provided an excellent overview in the Sunday, October 5, 2008 edition of the newspaper El Nacional (Pereira and Rivera 2008).

21 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? of community radio stations—both authorized and unauthorized—perhaps one hundred community newspapers, and nearly forty community television stations (Urribarrí 2009).24 Although most received support from the government in the way of equipment, the community media movement predated President Chávez by several decades.25 Important community media outlets like Catia TVe were independent outfits who had a complex relationship to the state (Fernandes 2010; Schiller 2011). Although there were important points of overlap between these sectors of the journalistic field, especially between the state press and the community media, they functioned independently and had their own spheres of influence.

By “journalistic field” I am referring to Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation of a “field” as a social setting that is governed by relations of force between actors who are differentially situated (Bourdeiu 2005:30). In most contexts it makes sense to talk about the field of journalism—or, for that matter, any other field—as a single, discernable sphere of cultural production (Benson and Neveu 2005). However, during the period of my research, the struggle between the Venezuelan government and the opposition divided the journalistic field into two camps that were increasingly autonomous. This rift was evident from the perspective of news content. The private press and the state press followed news agendas that were so radically different it was as if they were reporting from altogether different countries. Many Venezuelans were in the habit of shuttling back and forth between the private and the state press in order to try and “triangulate” the truth of any news event. This schism was even more apparent from the perspective of journalists. By the end of my fieldwork two separate professional tracks had emerged,

24 In 2007 there were 229 officially registered community radio stations and 36 community television stations across Venezuela. Because community newspapers did not require licensing, it was more difficult to estimate their numbers. However, in an interview with the General Director of Alternative and Community Media at the MINCI in January of 2008, he estimated that there were over 100 nationwide. One year later, the head of MINCI, Andrés Izarra, counted nearly 600 total alternative/community media outlets (Urribarrí 2009:167). 25 The current generation of community media activists—groups like Catia TVe and ANMCLA—trace their roots back to the economic and political crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s (Fernandes 2010; Schiller 2011). However, alternative media in Venezuela has a much longer, much older history. Since the 1960s intellectuals and activists like Antonio Pasquali were trying to rethink the use and abuse of mass media (Pasquali 1963). Venezuela played an important role in the creation of UNESCO’s MacBride report, One World, Many Voices (MacBride 1980).

22 Introduction and it was increasingly difficult to move between the state press and the private press.26 Although older generations of journalists had longstanding relations with their colleagues on both sides of the metaphorical aisle, most of the younger reporters and photographers were cut off from their fellow professionals. The decision to work in the state press could potentially exclude one from employment in the private sector and vice versa.

My research was conducted between 2006 and 2012, which roughly corresponded to President Chávez’s second term in office. During this period, the balance of forces in the journalistic field gradually shifted in favor of the Chávez government and away from the opposition. The government’s stated goal was to establish a “communicational hegemony” that would pave the way for profound socio-political changes. As the former Minister of Information and Communication explained, “We have to elaborate a new plan. What we are proposing is to build an informational and communicational hegemony—to construct hegemony in the Gramscian sense” (Izarra and Weffer 2007; Bisbal 2009). To that end, the once anemic state press was transformed into a veritable media empire that included six national television stations (two VHF and four UHF), three national radio networks, a press agency, and three Caracas-based newspapers.27 The project of communicational hegemony also included sustained attempts to convert, co- opt, or censor the radical elements within the private press. Undoubtedly the most dramatic and controversial move was the government’s refusal to renew the broadcasting license of RCTV. This move effectively removed Venezuela’s oldest and most popular private television station from the airwaves. The case of RCTV illustrated the selective enforcement of broadcast laws in ways that favored the Chávez government. Similar tactics were used against Globovisión and a number of radio stations, including the Belfort National Circuit (CNB). These were major developments that shook the

26 This emergence of two distinct “tracks” was made particularly evident in my interviews with the communications faculty at the new Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV) in Caracas. This new institution aimed to democratize access to higher education and it was closely associated with chavismo. Students earning degrees from the UBV were much more likely to be employed by agencies connected to the Chávez government than to the private press. Author’s interviews. May 21, 2008. 27 Television stations (6): VTV, TVes, Vive TV, ANTV, Ávila TV, Telesur. Radio Circuits (3): RNV, YVKE, Radio del Sur. Newspapers (2.5): Correo del Orinoco, Ciudad Caracas, and Diario Vea (privately owned, but almost entirely funded by the national government). News Agencies (1): ABN. For a more detailed description of the state press see Appendix 3.

23 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? journalistic field and provoked international condemnation. However, the private press did not disappear; nor did it go silent.

Despite the rapid expansion of the state press, it was still dwarfed by the private press in terms of audience share (Weisbrot and Ruttenberg 2010). Take the case of television. By the end of 2010, private broadcast television stations commanded just over 61% of the national audience; cable/satellite television had approximately 33% of the national audience; and state television accounted for a little less than 6% of the total national audience. In terms of audience share, the most impressive expansion of the last decade may have been in the private paid television sector (cable/satellite). Thanks to the government’s refusal to renew RCTV’s broadcasting concession, the audience share for cable and satellite television jumped from 18.72% to 26.23% overnight. That trend has continued, making private paid television the greatest growth sector in Venezuela.28

In contrast to global trends, the ownership of Venezuela’s private press was remarkably decentralized. For a variety of historical, political, and economic reasons, Venezuela resisted the consolidation of mass media empires so common in the United States and much of Latin America (Cañizález 1991; Cañizález and Lugo-Ocando 2008). Even the mighty Gustavo Cisneros—one of Latin America’s wealthiest and most influential media moguls—only controlled one major news property in Venezuela. During my fieldwork in Caracas, there were four important private television stations (including RCTV), three radio networks, and four major newspaper empires. All of these were owned and controlled by different groups.

28 All figures are drawn from the article by Mark Weisbrot and Tara Ruttenberg who, in turn, take their information from AGB Panamericana de Venezuela Medición S.A., a local affiliate of Nielsen Media Research International” (Weisbrot and Ruttenberg 2010). These figures demonstrate that the audience share for private broadcast television fell from approximately 80% in the 2000 to just over 60% in 2010. At the same time the audience share for state television and paid private television increased. State television had an audience share of just over 2% in 2000, and in 2010 it was approaching 6% of the national viewing audience. For brief periods during 2007, 2008, and 2009, the audience share for state television reached as high as 8.5%, mostly during periods of political contestation. During this same period, private paid television (cable/satellite) doubled its audience share from around 17% in 2000 to nearly 33% in 2010. Looking at the figures, there is no doubt that the revocation of RCTV’s broadcasting license had the effect of migrating a large portion of the Venezuelan audience to paid private television.

24 Introduction

Perhaps the most important development within the private press during the Chávez era was the renewal of political pacts. As Jairo Lugo and Juan Romero have argued, the Venezuelan media was traditionally kept in check by a series of informal pacts between political elites and media owners (Lugo and Romero 2003). If many of these pacts disintegrated during the 1980s and 1990s, the mid-2000s witnessed their resurgence. The best example would be the pact between the aforementioned Gustavo Cisneros and the Chávez government. Cisneros’ flagship television network, Venevisión, was one of the key actors behind the failed coup d’état of April 2002. Once it became clear that Chávez was back in power, the president and the media mogul struck a deal behind closed doors. Although the specifics of the deal are the subject of rumor, the existence of this pact is common knowledge (Cañizález 2007). As a result Venevisión shifted its “editorial line” (see Chapter 6) in a direction less antagonistic toward the government. A number of other media outlets opted for a similar path. While there was massive and vocal opposition to the Chávez government at the beginning of the decade, the tone of news coverage in the private was considerably less radical by the end of the decade. Let me be clear: this was not a conversion. The private press remained the focal point of oppositional politics in Venezuela. However, most pundits, editors, and media owners were convinced or coerced to moderate the tone of their coverage.

***

Studying crime journalism in Caracas meant working with the private press, an institution that was widely associated with the opposition. The state press rarely covered crime news. When it did, it was to announce a new security initiative, to publicize a successful police bust, or to rebut a story circulating in the private press. Crime news was similarly absent from the community media. The next section explains the methods that I used for studying crime news and the politics of security in Caracas.

25 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

Research Methods

Crime journalism is an important source for academic research on violence in the Americas. Scholars frequently turn to the press for information on homicide rates, patterns of violence, depictions of crime, and social responses to violence. The importance of news coverage of crime is reflected by a growing body of research on the content and the reception of crime news in Latin America (Martín-Barbero 1991; Bisbal 1999; Rey 2005; Briggs 2007; Rey 2007; Cañizález 2008). Yet there is a surprising dearth of research about the production of crime news—i.e., the people, practices, and institutions that shape the steady stream of crime stories in the media. An ethnographically grounded approach to the subject is significant because it affords a better understanding about how the politics of security and urban violence are reproduced from the ground up.29

This dissertation is based on nearly three years of fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela, between January 2006 and June 2012. Two exploratory excursions were made in 2006 (January 2006 and June-August 2006), followed by a two-year period of fieldwork (August 2007-August 2009), and three shorter research trips (March 2010, July-August 2010 and January-May 2012).

Broadly, my aim was to investigate the role that crime news plays in the politics of security in Caracas. To that end, I set out four main research objectives. 1) Analyze the production of crime news along with the institutions, disciplines, and experiences that shape the day-to-day practices of crime journalists. 2) Describe the discourse on urban violence in Venezuela and the larger political context in which crime news circulates. 3) Investigate how crime news circulates and how it is received by audiences. 4) Examine the political responses inspired by news coverage of crime on the part of the government and the state press. What follows is a brief description of the main ethnographic and qualitative methods that I used to meet these research objectives.

29 There is a small and important body of literature on crime journalism in North America that dates back to the 1970s and 1980s and “the sociology of news” (Ericson, Baranek et al. 1987; Fishman 1988). There is also a growing body of work by crime journalists writing about the experience of crime journalism in Latin America.

26 Introduction

The production of crime news

To understand the production of crime news from the inside out, I carried out three related research projects: participant observation alongside journalists on the crime beat, research inside two newsrooms, and life histories of twelve crime journalists and editors. Participant observation alongside journalists on the Caracas crime beat was conducted from December 2007 until August 2009, with two additional research trips in 2010 and 2012. Crime journalists in Caracas proved to be ideal subjects for ethnographic study. Although most journalists are intensely competitive and prefer to work alone, crime journalists in Caracas work together across competing news outlets and different media formats (print, radio, and television). The journalists meet on a daily basis to share sources, information, transportation, investigative tasks, and the responsibility for training newcomers. My own tenure on the crime beat was treated as an informal apprenticeship. Every morning I joined reporters and photographers from sixteen different newspaper, television, and radio stations at their meeting spot in downtown Caracas, traveling with them to press conferences, crime scenes, interviews, and the city morgue. This experience gave me a rare and intimate perspective on the process of newsgathering and the complex relationships between journalists and their sources.

While it was possible to observe the entire spectrum of crime journalists on the beat, I had to be more selective as to which newsrooms to study. My efforts centered on two newspapers—the elite, opposition newspaper, El Nacional, and the popular but moderate tabloid, Últimas Noticias. I chose to work with newspapers over radio or television stations for reasons of access and safety. Newspapers were more amenable to a participant observer than television studios due to the embattled status of several of the private stations. Just getting in and out of television studios was a challenge, as I discovered on visits to Globovisión, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), Venezuelan Television (VTV), Telesur, and Avila TV. Obtaining sustained access to any of these sites would have been difficult and politically risky for my subjects. In contrast, newspapers were better insulated from political attacks and my presence was welcomed. Radio studios were easier to access than television studios, but radio was considerably

27 Who’s Afraid of Caracas? less influential than television and newspapers when it came to setting the news agenda on crime.

When developing my research design, there were some who objected that broadcast news is the popular medium par excellence. They argued that by studying newspapers I was missing out on the best medium for crime news and the most common form of media consumed by the popular classes. This assumption, while common, is incorrect for a number of reasons. First, Caracas had high levels of literacy—upwards of 95% according to UNESCO (Pearson 2010). Tabloids like Últimas Noticas, Diario 2001, and Diario La Voz all maintained a very visible presence in the barrios and across the city. Indeed, the newspaper business was alive and well in Caracas thanks, in part, to its mode of distribution. Over 90% of newspapers were sold at large newspaper kiosks that dotted most street corners.30 In addition to newspapers, these kiosks sold everything from telephone cards and sweets to books and batteries. For many caraqueños, the kiosks acted as a meeting place and the newspapers were a prominent part of this sociality. Second, those who are adamant about distinguishing broadcast news from print news usually fail to recognize the symbiotic relationship between these different mediums. Not only do crime reporters work together across media (Chapter 4), they closely follow what the others produce. Television journalists constantly read the crime pages for more information on stories. Newspaper reporters watch the morning programs religiously to observe the breaking news. Most of the crime journalism that appears on the radio is done by print journalists working an extra shift. And everyone is on Twitter and Facebook.

Discourses of crime in the media

To describe how violent crime is represented in the Venezuelan media and the political context that shapes these representations, I conducted over one hundred semi- structured interviews and built an archive of crime news that spans eighteen months. Starting in August 2007, I interviewed journalists, government officials, law enforcement agents, human rights activists, and public intellectuals, with the intention of creating a conceptual map of the discourse on urban violence. My initial round of interviews

30 Author’s interview with newspaper distributor, December 22, 2008

28 Introduction

(August-December 2007) made it clear that political polarization strongly affected what interviewees would and would not say about violent crime. However, it was also clear that there were more than simply two “sides” to the discourse on crime in Caracas. To better understand the universe of positions, I conducted two more rounds of semi- structured interviews (June-August 2008 & June-August 2009), explicitly pushing respondents to explain the roots of the problem and to propose ideal solutions. These interviews targeted all of the major figures shaping the public debate on urban violence, including political leaders of the opposition and government ministers in charge of security and communications. As a result, I have a detailed picture of who is shaping representations of crime in Caracas and towards what ends. These interviews are augmented by a comprehensive archive of articles from Caracas’ three most important daily newspapers, El Universal, El Nacional, and Últimas Noticias (01/2008-08/2009).

The reception and circulation of crime news

To understand the reception of crime new, I conducted two rounds of interviews among readers and non-readers of crime stories from different socio-economic strata. The study provided a nuanced understanding of the motives and experiences of reading the crime pages. To track the circulation and consumption of crime news, I worked alongside street vendors who sold periodicals and held interviews with loyal readers of the crime pages. Participant observation with vendors and their customers provided an opportunity to study the public life of crime stories, the way in which “talk of crime” (Caldeira 2000) intersects with the commodity form.

Political responses crime

Finally, to explain the relationship between the press and political responses to crime, I conducted research on the state press. Through interviews with journalists, editors, and state officials, I attempted to understand how the government was reacting to the challenge of urban violence. These questions led me to do work alongside grassroots media activists looking to change perceptions of youth and crime. It also led me to follow new community policing initiatives sponsored by the Ministry of Interior and Justice.

29 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

Outline of the Dissertation

Deadline is divided into two parts. Part one traces the concurrent rise of three phenomena in Caracas starting in the late 1980s—urban violence, the growing power of the private press, and the emergence of a populist movement that later crystallized around Hugo Chávez. Part two shifts to the present, describing the everyday practices of crime reporters and their interactions with government officials, law enforcement agents, and the victims of violence.

Part I: Victimhood and Citizenship

Chapter One, “The Republic of Victims,” introduces the problem of urban violence in Caracas and explains how security and popular politics intersect in contemporary Venezuela. It traces the problem back to the 1980s as economic crisis and disillusionment with neoliberal reforms led to the demise of the country’s two-party system and the rise of a popular movement demanding governmental accountability. This chapter also describes the discourse on crime, which centers on the binary distinction between “sanos” (innocent or wholesome victims) and “malandros” (the shady, no good figure).

Chapter Two, “Denuncias, Populism, and the Rise of Press Power,” describes the historical relationship between media owners, journalism, and popular movements starting in the 1980s. Although scholars usually depict the rise of Hugo Chavez as a reaction to neoliberal adjustments, this story leaves out the crucial role played by the private press. I describe how during the 1980s the Venezuelan press began “speaking out” on issues of crime and corruption and how a new genre of reporting based on testimonial accounts known as denuncias came to dominate all facets of news coverage. The collapse of Venezuela’s two-party system and the rise of Chávez were due in part to the outrage generated by these mass mediated denuncias of crime and corruption.

Chapter Three, “The Photographer’s Body,” shows how nearly a decade later this style of news coverage thrust journalists into the spotlight as President Chávez’s fiercest adversaries, dividing the country into two camps. It tells the story of crime photographer Jorge Tortoza who was murdered during the failed April 2002 coup against Chávez.

30 Introduction

Tortoza was hailed as a martyr by both sides of the conflict, and the battle over his memory shows how the figure of the victim plays a crucial role in populist mobilization.

Part II: Crime Journalism in Caracas

Chapter Four, “Competition, Cooperation, and Control” shifts to the routines of crime journalists in Caracas. This chapter introduces readers to the practices of both reporters and photographers vis-à-vis a thick description of a day on the crime beat.

Chapter Five, “The Victim’s Voice,” shows how reporters and photographers mediate the testimonies of victims and witnesses of violent crime. Through attention to the practices of witnessing, I describe two contrasting ideals about the political role of journalism reflected in the writing practices of reporters. Drawing on fieldnotes and textual analysis of news stories, this chapter shows that while some crime reporters use denuncias to emphasize reform, others promote a more revolutionary or populist agenda.

Chapter Six, “The Thin Editorial Line,” moves from the crime beat into the newsroom, exploring how denuncias of crime are shaped by editors and owners. The editorial line refers to a news outlet’s political position, yet the “line” of any given paper or program is hard to pin down. I use the editorial line to explain how different kinds of denuncias are routinized by the culture of three different newsrooms.

31 Who’s Afraid of Caracas?

32 Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1: THE REPUBLIC OF VICTIMS

“The media puts itself on the side of the victim in the sense that they, the victims, are not interested in building a legal case with all of its procedural and probationary guarantees for the presumed offender, but rather with swift and direct punishment. … They [the media] conduct themselves as if they were the victims even though they are not. And the kind of conduct that in victims is understandable given their situation is, in the case of the mass media, a form of anti-institutional agitation” (Sarlo 2001:65). -Beatriz Sarlo

More than cops or criminals, news coverage of crime in Caracas focuses on the victims of violence. Journalistic portraits of victims represent more than personal tragedy. They symbolize a social condition in which the majority of residents have suffered some kind of attack on their person or property. Crime news reacts to the overwhelming levels of violence in Caracas by channeling the response of victims. In the process, it produces a vision of the world in which citizens are united through victimhood.

Susana Rotker was one of the first scholars to recognize the emergence of the citizen-victim in Latin America. Drawing on the experience of life in Caracas at the turn of the millennium, she described “a new form of subjectivity” born out of the overwhelming levels of violent crime (Rotker 2002). According to Rotker, “Violence rewrites the conditions of citizenship on the exposed body and creates the potential victim” (15). If victimhood was the terrain on which the politics of security plays out in Caracas, this was because the category of the victim collapsed socio-economic differences in a way that appeared to make everyone equal before the threat of violence. I stress the appearance of equality because not everyone was exposed to the same kinds of violence, nor were all victims recognized as fellow citizens.1

1 Undoubtedly, the citizen-victim speaks to the scholarship on biopolitics. Foucaldian approaches reveal much about still emerging strategies of government of the self and others, as anthropologists like Adryana Petryna, Joseph Masco, Andre Lakoff, and Steven Collier have demonstrated (Petryna 2002; Masco 2006; Lakoff and Collier 2007). Biopolitics, governmentality, and the politics of life are all excellent tools for understanding the way that liberal regimes of power reproduce themselves. They are not, however, the best instruments for explaining conflict. This is neither an oversight nor is it a weakness of Foucauldian analysis. It is, however, a limitation.

33 The Republic of Victims

The following chapter situates the figure of the citizen-victim within the social and political context of contemporary Caracas. Part one details how Venezuela’s capital city underwent a precipitous rise in urban violence over the past quarter century. I argue that the current problem can be traced back to the fragmentation of the city in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a process that has continued under the Chávez administration. Part two describes the politics of security in Caracas. I explain how, for the opposition, violent crime presented itself as an issue that they could use to challenge the Chávez government. For the president and his supporters, it became the issue that would not go away. Crime journalists found themselves caught between these warring camps.

Part three turns to crime news. Journalistic representations of crime are structured by the binary opposition sano and malandro, which roughly equates to innocence and guilt or purity and danger. The quality of innocent victimhood is an important factor that determines a story’s newsworthiness. Part four demonstrates how the innocent victims become the fulcrum for political mobilization. It describes two different cases. The first, drawn from my fieldwork on the Caracas crime beat, concerns the death of a bus driver Victor Javier Rosal and a spontaneous protest by his friends and family. The second occurred just months before my first visit to Caracas. The kidnapping and murder of the Faddoul brothers and their chauffeur Miguel Rivas was the most infamous crime of the decade. It sparked mass protests across Caracas, protests that momentarily threatened the legitimacy of the Chávez government.

The City in Fragments

By any standard, Caracas suffers from extraordinary levels of violent crime including homicide, assaults, robbery, and kidnapping. There is no denying the gravity of the situation. However, attempts to explain the causes usually neglect to mention how spiraling rates of violent crime are related to the changes in the fabric of the city. The rise of violent crime in Caracas2 coincided with the simultaneous expansion of political rights

2 The Caracas metropolitan area comprised five municipalities—Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo, Libertador, and Sucre. The largest municipality, Libertador, is also the District Capital, while the remaining four municipalities are all within the state of Miranda. With exception of El Hatillo (which is on the southeast

34 Chapter 1 and the implementation of neoliberal economic policies in Venezuela. Starting in the 1980s, democratization, decentralization, and neoliberal reforms transformed the political geography and the built environment of Venezuela’s capital city in a way that was similar to changes taking place across Latin America (Caldeira 2000). Neoliberalism transferred much of the fiscal responsibility for the city away from the central government to the state and municipal levels, and it privatized many services. Democratization meant that citizens with the ability to organize were able to reshape the urban infrastructure. The unanticipated results included the formation of wealth enclaves like the municipality of Chacao and the decimation of many public services. By the turn of the millennium, the Caracas metropolitan area was politically fragmented, unevenly serviced, and socio- economically segregated.3

The reforms that fragmented Caracas and led to rising levels of violent crime had their roots in the political economic crisis of the Venezuelan petro-state.4 Venezuela is one of the world’s leading oil exporters.5 Petroleum accounts for over 90% of the country’s exports and almost half of government revenues (Rodriguez Pons, Devereux et al. 2012). At the outset of the twentieth century, oil money allowed the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez to consolidate the Venezuelan state. Upon his death in 1936, the booming oil economy fueled a massive rural-urban migration, which had a major impact on Caracas. In a span of just fourteen years, from 1936-1951, the city’s population nearly

periphery), there is no obvious geographic separation between these five municipalities. Libertador comprises the western half of Caracas, while Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo, and Sucre are all in the eastern half of the city. However, an outsider would be hard pressed to know where west ended and east began 3 What is often overlooked in narratives about Venezuela in the late twentieth century is that both neoliberal elites and the popular insurgents agreed that deepening democracy was the solution to the country’s political and economic crisis. Popular demands for the deepening of democracy were entangled with neoliberal visions of privatization and decentralized control. These two projects intersected and overlapped so that revolutionaries and technocrats found themselves strange bedfellows (such was the case of Teodoro Petkoff, a leftist guerilla turned neoliberal finance minister). To describe the transformation of Caracas as simply the result of “neoliberalism” is dangerously naïve. Ideals of grassroots democracy were also incredibly influential. The alliance of popular democratic and neoliberal elements held for much of the 1980s and into the 1990s. What kept this coalition together was their common rejection of the old two- party political system. This points to the problematic relationship between violence and democratization, which has drawn the attention of anthropologists and other social scientists (Fein 1995; Caldeira and Holston 1999; Comaroff and Comaroff 2006; Arias and Goldstein 2010). 4 Roberto Briceño-Leon offers a slightly different interpretation of the relationship between violence and the crisis of the petro-state (Briceño-León 2006). 5 Venezuela and Iran were the two countries that took the lead in establishing OPEC. Thanks to rising costs of oil and new extraction techniques, Venezuela is believed to have the world’s largest reserves of oil.

35 The Republic of Victims tripled (Troconis de Veracoechea 1992). Along with this flood of migrants, oil brought miraculous feats of urban development to Venezuela’s capital. Under the regime of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, petro-dollars were funneled into the expansion of the urban infrastructure. Venezuela’s last dictator built roads, bridges, utilities, and public housing in Caracas on a grand scale until his ouster in 1958 (Coronil 1997).

The 1960s and 1970s are nostalgically remembered as the golden age of Caracas. For caraqueños, theirs was the most modern city in South America, the equal to the capitals of Europe and North America. Caracas was safe, clean, prosperous, and democratic. All of this was possible thanks to fantastic oil wealth. Under the two-party, pacted-democracy of Acción Democrática (Democratic Action) and COPEI (The Christian Social Party), oil rents were understood as national patrimony. Everyone was entitled to share the benefits of the petro-state economy through the redistribution of oil rents. When the boom went bust, so did the dreams of an oil-fueled modernity (Coronil 1997; Karl 1997; Mommer 2003).

Oil made Caracas a world-class city, but like many single-export commodities it proved to be an unstable economic foundation. The first, widely acknowledged sign of the larger crisis came on February 18, 1983, a day known in Venezuela as Black Friday. Despite an unprecedented spike in oil prices in 1973 and again in 1979, the Venezuelan government was forced to downgrade its currency in order to service its foreign debt. As oil prices plummeted throughout the 1980s, Venezuela’s pacted-democracy began to crumble under the combined weight of economic and political expectations. Foreign lenders pushed the country to adopt plans for structural adjustment, plans that included the privatization of the national oil industry. Talk of austerity was highly unpopular among the majority of Venezuelans. In December of 1988, the charismatic former President Carlos Andrés Pérez was elected to his second term in office on a platform that explicitly rejected such measures. Within days of assuming office he did an about-face and announced a series of shock adjustments. When the president raised the price of gasoline, the city’s bus drivers responded by raising fares. Residents of Caracas, already

36 Chapter 1 pushed to the brink by a decade of economic stagnation,6 exploded into protest. President Pérez’s response was to call out the National Guard. Hundreds, probably thousands of civilians were killed between February 27 and March 3, 1989, in what were the largest, most violently suppressed urban protests in Venezuelan history (Coronil and Skurski 2006).7

The Caracazo, as it came to be known, was a watershed event in Venezuelan and Latin American history.8 Internationally, it was the first popular uprising against neoliberal austerity measures and the so-called Washington Consensus. In Venezuela, it represented the beginning of the end of Venezuelan exceptionalism and the two-party rule of Acción Democrática and COPEI.9 Seen from Caracas, the protests and their violent repression marked the escalation of urban violence and the breakdown of the institutions of law.

***

Starting in 1989, the levels of violence in Caracas skyrocketed. In one year the per capita homicide rate in Caracas doubled; it went from 19 per 100,000 inhabitants to 45 per 100,000 inhabitants. Between 1991 and 1993 it doubled again. By 1994 the city had a homicide rate approaching 100 per 100,000 residents, or nearly five times the number of murders in 1988. There was brief respite in the mid-1990s before the levels of urban violence shot up once more beginning in 1999. This third escalation coincided with the first year of Hugo Chávez’s presidency and the tragic natural disaster in the neighboring state of Vargas.10 For much of the period of my research the homicide rate in Caracas

6 Between 1987 and 1992—a span of just five years—poverty levels in Venezuela jumped from 37 percent to 66.5 percent. By 1992 nearly 28 percent of Venezuelans were in a situation of “critical” poverty (Buxton 2001). 7 The official death toll was 277. Most experts believe that the actual figure was well into the thousands. 8 On the significance of the Caracazo see: (López Maya 2003; Coronil and Skurski 2006). 9 “Venezuelan exceptionalism” refers to the belief prevalent among social scientists and foreign policy analysts of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that the country was unlike its neighbors in Latin America. Democracy, prosperity, peace, and progress set Venezuela apart. The United States actively promoted Venezuelan exceptionalism, using Venezuela as an example for the region and as an important counterweight to the influence of the Cuban Revolution (Ellner 1989; Ellner 1997; García-Guadilla 2005; Ellner and Tinker Salas 2007). 10 The state of Vargas is separated from Caracas by a small coastal mountain range. For many years it was considered part of the Federal District. In December 1999, massive flooding and landslides ravaged the

37 The Republic of Victims fluctuated between 120 and 140 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. That was, by far, the highest official homicide rate of any city in South America, on par with the capitals of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica (PROVEA 2007; PROVEA 2010).11

Homicides Rates for Caracas and Venezuela (per 100,000) 140

120

100

0 1987 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1997 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2007 2009 2010 1986 1988 1996 1998 2006 2008 1989*

Caracas Venezuela

Figure 1: Sources PROVEA 2007, PROVEA 2009, Seguridad, Justicia, y Paz 2011. *1989: statistics from this year were greatly influenced by the official death count from the Caracazo.

Scholars have offered numerous explanations for the precipitous rise of violence in Caracas since 1989. Ana María Sanjuán attributed it to a crisis of legitimacy facing the Venezuelan state. This crisis “affected the guarantees of universal access to essential public health services and judicial order,” and “eroded [the state’s] ability to maintain a

area leaving thousands dead. The event, which came to be known as “la tragedia” (the tragedy), resulted in the dislocation of tens of thousands, many of whom ended up in Caracas (Fassin and Vasquez 2005). 11 The reporting of homicide statistics in Caracas is filled with inconsistencies, which have only worsened in recent years. My figures are drawn from the annual report published by Provea, a non-governmental organization dedicated to human rights in Venezuela. Provea, in turn, relied on the work of Ana María Sanjuán and the Centro Para la Paz (Center for Peace). Sanjuán conformed closely to official homicide statistics provided by the CICPC and, for that reason, I found hers to be the most reliable source of information. It is possible—and legitimate—to argue that the city’s homicide rate is either substantially lower than these official numbers or significantly higher. For a detailed accounting of the homicide rate in Caracas and the ways that it has been manipulated by various groups see the Appendix to this chapter, which I originally published as “Getting a Handle on Homicide Rates in Caracas” for the web blog Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights on August 17, 2012. The piece was republished in the Christian Science Monitor on August 21, 2012. Thanks to David Smilde and Rebecca Hansen.

38 Chapter 1 legal monopoly on violence” (2002:91). Roberto Briceño-Leon characterized urban violence as the result of a ruptured social pact between elites and the popular classes, which was sustained by the promise of oil rents. Once those rents dried up, the pact was broken and “criminals as well as common people felt more at ease with using violence” (Briceño-León 2006:321). Susana Rotker suggested that the problem was a lack of empathy for the popular classes. Rather than recognizing the suffering of the urban poor, the media portrayed them as the barbarians at the gate, further justifying their violent oppression (Rotker 2002).

Without downplaying any of these explanations, I want to highlight the fact that crime rates in Caracas soared at the very moment that neoliberal policies and democratic reforms segregated the city into an uneven patchwork of economic, political, and social territories. This uneven restructuring had three main features. First, as the metropolitan economy adjusted to global markets, there was a steep decline in the availability of formal sectors jobs, a drastic reduction in public services, and rising levels of income inequality. These developments were devastating for both the middle classes, who were exposed to new forms of vulnerability, and the poor, who lost access to necessary forms of assistance (Cariola, Lacabana et al. 1999; Schröder 2005; Lacabana and Cariola 2006). Second, the political decentralization of Caracas—which was at the heart of the democratic reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s—fragmented the city into five unequal municipalities. The sprawling Libertador municipality, which covered the entire western half of the city, was officially under the control of the national government and suffered increasing neglect. The eastern half of the city, under the government of the state of Miranda, fragmented into four separate municipalities: Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo, and Sucre. The smallest and most affluent of these municipalities, Chacao and El Hatillo, came to function as wealth enclaves, while the largest, Sucre, was further impoverished. As the economic geographer Jefferey Mitchell observed, the decentralization of Caracas “created incentives for the fragmentations of municipal government structures…and this fragmentation facilitated an increasing social differentiation of urban space” (Mitchell

39 The Republic of Victims

2000:149; García-Guadilla 2002).12 Third and finally, the social differentiation of urban space was exacerbated by fears of the popular classes. The growth of the informal settlements known as barrios meant that great wealth and great poverty crowded together in Caracas.13 During the 1980s and 1990s, fortified residential enclaves became more pronounced so that by the turn of the millennium Caracas was a veritable “city of walls” (Caldeira 2000).

The overall effect of urban restructuring was to further exacerbate already pronounced inequalities. Rather than strengthening civil society, neoliberal policies and democratic reforms produced new enclaves of privilege and zones of abandonment throughout the city.

***

The splintering of law enforcement serves as a prime example of the fragmentation of Caracas. Between 1990 and 2006, more than one hundred new state and municipal police departments were created in Venezuela (Gabaldón and Antillano 2006:83). By the time that I began my fieldwork, Caracas was patrolled by eleven independent law enforcement agencies. These policing agencies operated under the auspices of eight different municipal, state, and national entities, many of which were openly hostile to one another. From a policing perspective, the city was a chaotic patchwork of jurisdictions that overlapped with private security enclaves, autonomous zones, and places abandoned by the police.14 It is worth briefly setting out the chaotic tangle of jurisdictions that I encountered from 2007-2009.

12 Jeffrey Mitchell has shown that by 1997 Chacao generated “nearly five times the per capita revenues of any other municipality in Caracas” thanks to its ability to tax commercial and industrial activities within its jurisdiction (2000:156). Mitchell’s study is one of only a handful of works that look at the political- economic effects of decentralization on the urban infrastructure of Caracas. 13 Barrio has several meanings. The literal translation is “neighborhood.” In Venezuela it refers exclusively to the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Although the barrios are often described as “slums” or “shantytowns,” I prefer to retain the original Spanish term. 14 For much of the Chávez era the famed 23 de Enero (January 23rd) neighborhood was an autonomous zone policed by armed “collectives” that started off as leftist guerilla groups. Old and respected, the collectives of 23 de Enero were a law unto themselves, and the area was a no-go zone for the police. On several occasions incursions by the CICPC and Metropolitan Police were met with force, and in every instance the collectives prevailed. Other sectors of Caracas—especially the poorest barrios of Petare, Antimano, Caricauo, Catia, and San Augustín—had virtually no police presence.

40 Chapter 1

Municipal Police (5): Starting in the 1990s, Caracas was divided into five municipalities. Each of the city’s five municipalities had its own individual police force funded and controlled by five different municipal mayors. In Chacao and Baruta, the municipal police departments had a sizable presence, whereas the police forces of the two largest municipalities, Sucre and Libertador, were virtually invisible.

State Police (1): The eastern half of Caracas also fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Miranda. State troopers maintained a minor police presence along eastern and southeastern edges of the city.

Metropolitan Police, PM (1): The largest and most feared police force in Caracas, the Metropolitan Police (PM) had jurisdiction over the entire city, at least in theory. In practice, they were concentrated in the areas underserved by the municipal police, especially the western half of the city (i.e. the Libertador municipality) and the poor, easternmost municipality of Sucre. Until 2008 the PM was controlled by the metropolitan mayor’s office, a position that had been alternately controlled by chavismo and the opposition. Anticipating the loss of control over the PM, Venezuela’s National Assembly transferred control to the Minister of Interior and Justice who, in turn, reported directly to president Chávez. Near the end of my research, the Metropolitan Police was disbanded and replaced by the National Bolivarian Police (PNB).

Highway Patrol, VIVEX (1): A small, relatively weak police force known as VIVEX was supposedly in control of the city’s major viaducts. They reported to the Ministry of Interior and Justice.

National Investigative Police, CICPC (1): The second largest police presence in Caracas was the Scientific and Investigative Police Corps (CICPC), which was in charge of investigating crime. Whereas all of the other police forces were described as “preventative,” the role of the CICPC was to solve crimes that had already happened. They were the crime scene technicians, the anti-kidnapping experts, the police in charge of solving major criminal cases and providing the

41 The Republic of Victims

state’s attorneys with the necessary evidence. They were also the most important contacts for the crime reporters. The CICPC reported to the Minister of Interior and Justice.

National Intelligence Service, DISIP/SEBIN (1): A shadowy presence in Caracas, the secret police or DISIP (later SEBIN) was similar to the CICPC in that their primary role was investigation. Unlike the CICPC, though, the secret police dealt with threats to national security. If the CICPC resembled the FBI in certain respects, then the DISIP or SEBIN was the Venezuelan equivalent to the CIA. Its massive headquarters, known as the Heliocoide, loomed over the barrios of San Augustin, near the center of the city. Like the Metropolitan Police, their name and function altered slightly with the introduction of the National Bolivarian Police in 2009. The DISIP/SEBIN reported to the Minister of Interior and Justice.

National Guard, GN (1): The National Guard was in charge of borders, ports, and prisons. On numerous occasions, however, they were also called upon to take up a policing function in Caracas. During my fieldwork, it was common to encounter these green-clad troops stationed along the highway or at particularly vulnerable nodes of the city. Although they dressed like the armed forces, they reported to the Minister of Interior and Justice rather than to the Minister of Defense. That said, the internal dynamics of the National Guard meant that they were in some respects their own entity.

To understand how this relates to violent crime, consider the uneven policing of two neighboring municipalities, Chacao and Sucre. No perceptible landmark separated Caracas’s wealthiest municipality (Chacao) from its poorest (Sucre). Chacao was the smallest municipality in terms of area—it covered a mere 7.5 square km—and it was home to just over 70,000 residents. Although Chacao fell under the jurisdiction of five different police agencies, the strength and organization of the municipal police meant that this was their turf. Policía Chacao was better paid, better trained, and better equipped than any other police force in the city. The municipality had one police officer for every 85 residents and a homicide rate of less than 20 per 100,000 (Antillano 2007:88). It also had five times the per capita tax revenue of neighboring Sucre, which was one of the

42 Chapter 1 largest municipalities in Venezuela with over 600,000 inhabitants (Mitchell 2000). Entire swaths of Sucre—like the sprawling informal settlements of Petare, La Dolorita, and Filas de Mariche—were all but abandoned by the police. According to official statistics, there was one police officer for every 200 residents of the municipality (Antillano 2007:88). In reality, the police presence was minimal. Those officers who were on the streets were poorly trained and ill equipped for the kinds of situations that they faced. To make matters worse, the duty of policing Sucre fell to a haphazard assemblage of agencies including the Metropolitan Police (PM), the municipal police (PoliSucre), the state police (PoliMiranda), and the National Guard (GN). These policing forces were controlled by competing political interests, which meant that they did not work together. Little wonder, then, that in parts of Sucre the homicide rate exceeded 200 per 100,000 inhabitants.

***

Although the dramatic upswing in the homicide rate for Caracas predated the Chávez administration (Marquez 1999), the situation deteriorated and spread during the president’s first decade in office. This was especially true on a national level. According to the official statistics of the investigative police (CICPC), there were 4,550 homicides nationwide or 20 per 100,000 in 1998, the year before Chávez took office (PROVEA 2007). By 2008, that official figure peaked at over 14,500 or 52 per 100,000 (PROVEA 2010). Another survey, conducted by National Institute for Statistics in 2009 suggested that the figure might be even higher, potentially surpassing 21,000 homicides per year for a rate of more than 75 per 100,000 inhabitants (INE 2010). To put these figures in perspective, in 2009 the global average for homicides was 6.9 per 100,000 and the regional average for the Americas was 15.5. That same year, there were 15,241 homicides in the entire United States, which has a population more than ten times the size of Venezuela (UNODC 2011).

During the Chávez era a new pattern of urban segregation was superimposed over the old one. In addition to the partitioning of the city along social and economic lines, Caracas became polarized politically (see Chapter 3). The western half of the city was identified with Chavismo, while the eastern half was generally viewed as the opposition’s

43 The Republic of Victims turf. Rather than coordinating efforts across the five municipalities, political battles between elected leaders held the entire metropolitan area hostage. During the early years of the Chávez administration, the opposition was the main force behind political polarization. By 2006 the president and his supporters were firmly in the driver’s seat. They, too, pursued a divisive political agenda and waged an all-out war against their opponents. If booming oil prices once greased the wheels of political compromise, during my fieldwork petro-dollars were used to prop up a revolution that excluded a sizable chunk of the population. As many public employees learned, one paid fealty or one did not get paid. More than a decade of political polarization had a momentous impact on services that depend on coordinated efforts of the municipal, state, and national levels of government. Such things as sanitation, infrastructure, transportation, and public safety suffered thanks to the poisonous political atmosphere in Caracas.

The Chávez era also witnessed a massive institutional restructuring of the Venezuelan state, a restructuring that profoundly affected the capital city. Chávez’s first major act as president was to convoke a constituent assembly and rewrite the constitution. This was followed by a series of major shakeups, most infamously the purging of the state oil company. Over the next decade, the national government progressively defunded and dismantled old institutions, like the hospitals and the universities, in favor of alternative programs of public assistance. The goal was to provide better services to the most vulnerable sectors of society and to develop new institutions dedicated to the aims of the revolution. One of the effects has been institutional redundancy, as new agencies compete with the old (Ellner 2005). Although individual reforms deserve to be judged on their own terms, the proliferation of new initiatives under the Chávez administration caused large-scale institutional upheaval, which scholars have linked to spikes in violence (Fein 1995).

The Politics of Security

The way my friend Mendoza told it, the problem of violent crime in Caracas dated back long before the Caracazo to the late 1950s and the fall of the dictator General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Democracy and political freedom came at a price, and that price was public order. Crime had been on the rise ever since. I found this analysis troubling.

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Mendoza was a mild, grandfatherly type who managed a newspaper kiosk in Chacao. A self-identified chavista, he usually sported a red baseball cap and liked to read the pro- government newspaper Diario Vea. Whenever I asked him, casually, “What’s up?” he humorously responded, “La lucha (the struggle)!” So it surprised me that Mendoza was critical of the president on the subject of insecurity. Chávez was soft on crime, he told me. The country needed to return to the heavy-handed policies of old. I found that Mendoza was not exceptional in his beliefs. Indeed, many of the president’s most ardent supporters, especially the older generations, supported more vigorous and more openly repressive security measures.

It was no secret that violent crime was the Achilles heel of the Chávez administration. From 2006 to 2012, Venezuelan voters consistently ranked insecurity as the country’s number one problem, ahead of unemployment, political instability, corruption, and the economy (Provea 2009, 2011). Growing concerns about crime coincided with a measurable increase in the rates of violence, but they also reflected booming oil prices and improved economic conditions for the popular classes. For many, violent crime symbolized the failure of the Venezuelan state to capitalize on its good fortune. Nowhere was this failure more evident than in Caracas.

In Caracas, violent crime disproportionately affected the president’s political base among the urban poor. It represented the one issue that could potentially drive a wedge between Chávez and his supporters. For opposition leaders, including key figures within the private press, “insecurity” presented an important political opportunity. Strategists and politicians were alert to the possibilities of an anti-crime, pro-security platform. Many believed that in the hands of the right candidate, a tough-on-crime approach could unseat Chávez. This importance of security was conspicuous in the early campaigning for the 2012 presidential elections. After Henrique Capriles Radonski was elected as the unified opposition candidate, it quickly became one of his central messages. However, no political figure embodied the anti-crime platform better than Leopoldo López, the charismatic mayor of Chacao from 2000 to 2008.

One of the bright young stars of the opposition, Leopoldo López established his reputation as a law and order candidate by transforming Policía Chacao into a model

45 The Republic of Victims municipal police department. When I met López at a press conference in late 2007, he was positioning himself for the next step in his political career. It was the day after Christmas and the location was the gleaming municipal police headquarters. A large contingent of crime journalists was on hand. I counted six television cameras and maybe a score of reporters and photographers. Like most political figures, López was running late, but the police press secretary, Johan Merchán Salazar, was on hand to greet the journalists. A former crime reporter, he alternated between handing out factsheets and hugs to his old colleagues.

Ostensibly, the purpose of López’s post-Christmas press conference was to announce the end-of-year crime statistics for Chacao, but it was also an opportunity for him to tout his new “Plan 180: A Proposal for Justice and Security in Venezuela.” Plan 180 promised to turn the problem of insecurity around 180° in 180 days by reforming the justice system from the bottom up. The one hundred and forty page proposal included everything from programs for at-risk populations (i.e. children, the homeless, and former prisoners) to suggestions for transforming the police, the courts, and the prison system (López 2007). It promoted Chacao as a model for the rest of the country, and the timing of the press conference was meant to reinforce the same message. Christmas was the worst time of year for homicides. Murder rates easily doubled or even tripled in the short period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Without fail, the press repeated the same “Bloody Christmas” story every year during the holiday season. By holding a press conference the day after Christmas, López was highlighting the stark contrast between Chacao and the rest of Caracas.

When López finally arrived at the press conference he was accompanied by the municipal chief of police, who treated the journalists to a twenty-minute power point presentation. According to the chief, crime in Chacao decreased by 8% in 2007, which included reductions in theft (9%), auto theft (12%), robbery (3%), and homicide (15%). More impressively, over the span of five years the overall crime rate in Chacao had been cut in half. López compared the falling rates of crime in Chacao to the rest of Caracas. The rest of the city was a war zone, he said. Every week there were 44 homicides and most of these cases went unsolved. In the midst of all this, Chacao was an island of safety

46 Chapter 1 or a “secure territory,” as López liked to call it. Through his Plan 180, he was offering “to make the rest of Caracas and Venezuela as secure as our municipality.”

Although a number of prominent opposition candidates campaigned on a security platform, López had the best track record, thanks to his success in Chacao. That and his fiery rhetoric made him one of the president’s most formidable political adversaries. It was no coincidence that in late 2008 López was barred from running for political office by a dubious court ruling (IAHCR 2009). Although the ban stretched through 2014, in 2009 he established a new political party, Voluntad Popular or Popular Will, and explored a 2012 presidential run. Again López campaigned on a security platform. In an op-ed piece for the newspaper El Nacional, he wrote: “There is no concept that better describes the desire of Venezuelans than that of security. This country’s path to peace, wellbeing, and progress that we will build starting next year will guarantee a territory that is secure for living, secure for working, secure for studying, secure for investing, secure for progressing” (López 2011). López’s message was simple. The Chávez administration was responsible for the overwhelming levels of violent crime in Venezuela. López was promising, once again, to turn things around.15 With him at the helm, all of Caracas could be just like Chacao.

***

President Chávez rarely spoke about violent crime, and his relative silence on the issue was the subject of much speculation. When forced to confront the uncomfortable rise of urban violence, he typically returned to a few main themes. These themes have been analyzed by criminologist Andrés Antillano in an unpublished article on the politics of security in Venezuela (Antillano 2008). In it Antillano demonstrates that the president’s discourse on security was remarkably consistent over the years. Even before he began campaigning for the presidency, Chávez emphasized social and economic exclusion as the root cause of violent crime. The best way to go about solving the

15 As Luis Duno-Gottberg points out, the attempt to link President Chávez with criminality is a longstanding element of opposition discourse. In López’s case it is a question of the government failing to provide security. More radical elements in the opposition have criminalized the president and his followers (Duno-Gottberg 2011).

47 The Republic of Victims problem of insecurity was to attack poverty, inequality, and marginalization. Take the following excerpt from an early interview:

“For example, public insecurity: how are you going to fight it? With more police, more patrols, more searches, more guns on the street? No. Not without fighting the root [of the problem]—hunger, unemployment, abandoned children, and that has to do with the social and economic model and the role of the state” (Blanco Muñoz 1998:626; cited in Antillano 2008). More than a decade after this interview, Chávez continued to insist that crime would diminish only if the structural roots of the problem were addressed. He was similarly consistent in his repudiation of “the repressive model” of security. Chávez regularly criticized the mano dura or heavy-handed vision of security even though it was popular with voters on both sides of the political spectrum. Instead, he declared himself in line with “humanist,” “preventative,” or (much later) “socialist” ideals of public security (Antillano 2008). Despite a growing crisis and accusations that his government had no interest in protecting its citizens, Chávez remained steadfast on this point.

Under President Chávez, the Ministry of Interior and Justice (MIJ) was the agency responsible for citizen security.16 A sprawling bureaucracy, the ministry changed hands eleven times in a span of thirteen years (1999-2012). Every time a new minister was appointed, new personnel were brought in and new security initiatives were launched. This carousel of ministers alternated between a mano dura approach to crime and experiments with what James Ferguson has called “a left art of government” (Ferguson 2011).17 It was only near the end of Chávez’s first term in office that crime became a major political concern. Between 2005 and 2006, a string of highly publicized kidnappings and murders led to a series of protests and demonstrations. Under mounting

16 “Citizen security” is an expression used in much of Latin America, including Venezuela, to signify the protection of person and property as a positive right. On the rise of citizen security as a rights-based claim see Daniel Goldstein’s article “Human Rights as Culprit, Human Rights as Victim” (Goldstein 2007). 17 The longest serving Minister of Interior and Justice has been Tarek El Aissami, who took up the post in 2008 after serving as the Vice Minister of Citizen Security. El Aissami was trained in criminology and, like the president, he rejected the heavy-handed approach to security. Under El Aissami, the Ministry of Interior and Justice breathed life into a program of police reform, which incorporated leading scholars and experts on urban violence, security, and human rights (El Achkar and Gabaldón 2006; Gabaldón and Antillano 2006). As in much of Latin America, the direction favored by the ministry has been towards a model of community policing (Frühling 2007; Müller 2010), one that rejects the zero-tolerance approach promoted by New York City’s former mayor Rudi Giuliani and former police chief William Bratton.

48 Chapter 1 public pressure (see below), the administration was forced to reconsider its earlier stance on the issue of urban violence.

When I began fieldwork in 2006, at least three contradictions were evident in the government’s stance on citizen security. First and most obviously, the problem of violent crime had not subsided despite efforts to fight the social, economic, and political exclusion of the popular classes. Privately and publicly, the Chávez administration was forced to admit that the problem of violent crime was unlikely to simply vanish. In their search for an explanation, government officials modified their argument about the social structural origins of urban violence. According to these officials, crime was an inheritance of previous governments that the country was still struggling to shake off; it was a worldwide problem that was linked to neocolonialism and neoliberalism; and it was a product of the rapacious influence of capitalist culture.

Second, despite the president’s public stance, policing in Caracas and throughout Venezuela became brutally repressive. Although the new constitution included a number of progressive laws guaranteeing civil, political, and human rights, police practices went in the opposite direction. In the five years from 1995 to 1999, an average of 627 persons were killed per year for “resisting authority.” These figures, while alarmingly high, were steady until 2000, when the number of police killings jumped to 943, a figure that reached a peak of just over 2,300 in 2003. During the five-year period from 2000 to 2004, the average number of people killed resisting authority was 1,674 (Goldstein 2007; PROVEA 2007). This is not to say that the Chávez administration gave a green light to use of deadly force or looked favorably on extrajudicial killings. However, it was one of many pre-existing problems that steadily worsened despite the president’s stated commitment to a humanitarian vision of citizen security.

For the Chávez government, the single greatest security threat was not violent crime but conspiracies to overthrow the government. Security meant national security, especially in the wake of the failed 2002 coup d’état. Plots abounded. By the beginning of his second-term, the president began taking a hard-line stance toward his adversaries in the press. In this atmosphere, popular consternation over crime merged with attempts by leaders of the opposition to oust the president. The government responded with a barrage

49 The Republic of Victims of accusations against the press, which was accused of everything from sensationalism to “media terrorism.” Take the following excerpt from the president’s 2011 end-of-year address to the Congress:

“There are some media outlets that send journalists to the morgue to see how many cadavers arrive. Some think that we are hiding the truth. No? This is something sick. Counting how many cadavers there are in the morgue. On one occasion they took a terrible, terrible photograph of the morgue. No? Now who is doing this? I am sure that they are not contributing to solving the problem. No. It makes them happy—I believe, I believe. Pardon me in advance if I am wrong … –-I think that those that are hunting deaths, I imagine that they’re happy to see how many cadavers there are. The more there are the better it is for them. This is terrible. It is terrible and it’s part of the problem. …According to [the public opinion poll by] Latinobarómetro, Venezuela is the country where there is the greatest difference, the greatest distance between the reality of insecurity and the perception of the problem. This does not mean that we are downplaying the magnitude of the problem. No. But you have to take this into account because it is part of the problem. The media” (Chávez 2012). Chávez and his supporters clearly recognized the political threat posed by news coverage of crime. In this charged environment, stories and images of crime were not simply information. They were tools of political struggle, weapons in “the battle of ideas.”

***

The politics of security was waged on behalf of the citizen-victim. Leaders of the opposition advocated for victims and accused the government of failing to protect them. President Chávez and government officials could not deny the problem for fear of alienating their own political base. Although the president often denounced the politicization of security, the legitimacy of victims and their demands was beyond question.

Journalists on the Caracas crime beat positioned themselves as victims’ advocates. This put them in a position that was simultaneously powerful and precarious. On one hand, their work had profound social significance and they were treated as experts on a subject of critical importance. Crime journalists regularly participated in talk shows and panels about the problem of violence in Venezuela. Instead of being dismissed as practitioners of yellow journalism, they were hailed as knowledgeable sources in their

50 Chapter 1 own right. On the other hand, crime journalists were targets of intense political pressure and even physical attacks. After all, crime journalism was almost exclusively the domain of the private press, i.e., “the opposition.” As tensions around the subject of urban violence escalated, crime journalists found themselves drawn further into the decade-long clash between the Chávez government and powerful private media owners.

Clashes between the government and the private press influenced the daily routines of crime journalists in Caracas. The most striking example was the closing of the press offices of the investigative police (CICPC) in January 2003. For nearly three decades the press office in Parque Carabobo was the primary source of official information for crime reporters, and it functioned as the hub of journalistic activity on the crime beat.18 Daily, scores of reporters and photographers would pass through the doors of the CICPC into the care of a small staff that kept journalists abreast of new cases and ongoing investigations. By all accounts these offices were essential, albeit humble. Journalists recounted to me how they had to use their own money to pay for printer ink. During office hours, anyone with press credentials was welcome to look through the “news book,” a detailed file that contained copies of the most recent police reports.19 This arrangement worked well for everyone. It gave the journalists an effective tool for streamlining the information-gathering process and it gave the CICPC a way to manage sensitive material. When the press offices were closed it transformed the dynamic of the crime beat, starting with the relationship between journalists and the police.

The conflict between the press and the president only strengthened the ties between crime journalism and the victims of violence. As access to official sources became more restricted, crime reporters and photographers turned to the relatives of victims as a primary source of information. However, it was not simply the close daily contact that led crime journalists to empathize with victims.20 Many journalists had gone

18 Most crime reporters are closely linked to the police via an official police press office. In his classic ethnography of a California newspaper, Mark Fishman describes how the police press office acted as a primary definer of newsworthy events (Fishman 1980). 19 Literally, it was known as the “libro de novedades” or “book of novelties.” 20 On any given day, reporters conducted upwards of a dozen interviews with the friends, relatives, and victims of violence. Photographers and cameraographers took hundreds of shots of families and victims at crime scenes or the morgue. These encounters with victims-cum-sources were generally brief, but they had

51 The Republic of Victims through similar experiences. Multiple instances in which reporters and photographers were threatened, robbed, kidnapped, and even murdered occurred during my fieldwork. Although journalists were rarely targeted for assassination as in Mexico or neighboring Colombia, they were vulnerable to the same kind of violence that affected everyone else. Journalists on the Caracas crime beat identified closely with victims because they recognized themselves as such. Little wonder, then, that news coverage of crime in Caracas concentrated on the plight of innocents.

Purity and Victimhood “He was a young sano, without vices, dedicated to his studies, and responsible. We are at the mercy of the underworld” -Sister of twenty-year-old, male homicide victim

“My son was not a malandro. He was a good kid, a niño sano.” -Mother of twenty-four-year-old, male homicide victim

Crime stories are morality tales that attempt to make sense of violence. In popular culture, the crime journalist is often imagined as a sleuth or a superhero who cracks the case and restores order to the world. This is, of course, a fantasy. Reporters quickly learn how difficult it is to untangle even the simplest of details like the time and place of death. Accounts vary, often widely, and journalists in a city like Caracas rarely have the luxury to investigate competing claims. There are too many cases and too little time. Reflecting on his experience as ombudsman for the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, Germán Rey writes: “Journalists, unlike detectives, are not concerned with solving the crime; their mission is to recount it” (Rey 2007:8). Instead of getting to the bottom of things, crime journalists, their editors, and their audiences rely on shared presuppositions to make sense of otherwise senseless events.

Of all the principles that oriented news coverage of crime in Caracas, none was more fundamental than the binary opposition sano and malandro. “Sano” literally means

an intense effect on crime journalists. Dori Laub, writing about the testimonies of Holocaust victims, writes that the listener also participates in recreating the traumatic event (Laub 1992). Crime journalists openly acknowledged that such experiences took their toll.

52 Chapter 1

“healthy,” “wholesome,” or “clean.” It is a term with sanitary overtones and when applied to a person it indicates that he or she is pure, innocent, and within the moral order (Douglas 2002 [1966]). “Malandro” is somewhat more complex. The root is “mal”—evil or bad—and, as one commentator points out, the second part resembles “ladron,” the Spanish word for thief. However, the malandro is not precisely a criminal or even a delinquent. Instead, he is a shady character who inhabits the fringes of the moral order (Pedrazzini and Sánchez 1992; Ferrándiz 2003; Ferrándiz 2004).

The opposition sano/malandro was critical for understanding the figure of the citizen-victim and, by extension, the politics of security in Venezuela. Everyone who died a violent death was judged according to this moral scale. It was not just journalists who made these judgments. Friends and community members, police and state officials were actively involved in weighing the relative innocence or guilt of victims. Dead “malandros” received minimal recognition in the press. Those who fit into the category “sano” were treated as subjects worthy of mourning and deserving justice.

What were the indications that a victim was sano? How did audiences know who deserved their sympathy and who deserved their fate? Compare the following article excerpts. The first two deal with the death of victims who were clearly marked as sano.

Article #1: Héctor Azuaje

[Headline]: “I am never going to be able to ease this pain” [Second headline]: 12 year-old boy dies inside of jeep that was assaulted [Third headline]: Thieves shot at the passengers because the driver resisted.

A 12 year-old boy died after receiving a shot in the head when a subject, who attempted to assault the jeep [taxi] in which the child was riding, shot because the driver resisted being robbed.

The minor was identified as Héctor Alejandro Azuaje Padrino, the second of three siblings and residents of sector Los Mangos of La Vega.

“My little one was in sixth grade in the José Venicio Adames school. Saturday night he went with his siblings Geraldine (17) and Giovanny (10) to a friend’s house of my eldest daughter to look for some books to finish a project for school,” recounted the mother of the minor, María Lourdes Landaeta.” … [June 9, 2008; Últimas Noticias; top left/center; 450 words]

53 The Republic of Victims

Article #2: Alberto Revette

[Headline]: “When I went out, I found my boy dead” [Second headline]: Alberto Revette studied Electrical Engineering at the UCV. [Third headline]: Juana Reyes, mother of the victim, denounced that there are no police patrols in the sector

Twenty-year-old Alberto Revette left his residence on 32nd street of Coche at 1:00 in the afternoon on Saturday to buy movies to entertain himself. Half an hour later, the youth was dead. They killed him for his cellular telephone. He received one shot in the back when he was returning and was two blocks from his house.

Revette was in his second semester of Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and belonged to the [club] soccer team. Every day he went to the wholesale market in Coche to help his father for half the day in the food stall that he has there. … According to [his mother] the youth avoided going out at night, due to the increasing violence on the streets of the city. “The insecurity is horrible. It should not be possible that they are killing all the people who are young and sano.” … [February 23, 2009; El Nacional; top left/center; 500 words]

The subject of the first article, Héctor Azuaje, is an archetypal sano. The twelve- year-old boy was an innocent bystander shot in a failed carjacking. All of the newspapers placed great emphasis on the boy’s age. More than any other element, his youth stands as a testament to his purity and to the tragedy of his death. Other important details include his status as a student, the errand to get books, the fact that he is riding in the jeep with his siblings, and his mother’s inconsolable grief. Most readers would also recognize that Azuaje lived in one of the poor barrios or informal settlements of western Caracas. In sum, the article portrays him as a victim of circumstances beyond his control.

The second article presents another archetype, the good student murdered for his cell phone. Alberto Revette lived in a working class neighborhood and attended the most prestigious public university in Caracas, the UCV. Most readers would assume that he and his family aspired upward. Again, there are additional details that the article provides to support such an assumption. These include the fact that the boy helped out his father, belonged to the soccer team, and avoided going out at night.

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Both victims are depicted as good citizens, upright boys who lived in zones that had become progressively more dangerous. Both articles are prominently featured at the top of the page. Each piece exceeds 450 words, provides a detailed portrait of the victim, and is accompanied by photographs of the families.

Victim narratives like these are laden with assumptions about masculinity, youth, and violence as well as racial and economic stereotypes. Unless otherwise stated, it is assumed that the perpetrators of violent crime are poor, ethnically marked men in their teens and twenties. If the victim is also a young man—as is often the case—audiences suspect that the attack was an ajuste de cuentas, a settling of scores between malandros.21 Women, children, and the elderly are generally assumed to be innocent victims. Similarly, young men from middle class or well-to-do backgrounds are shielded from suspicion by their social status. This, in turn, is closely related to racial hierarchies, which imagine persons of European descent to be more civilized than those with African or indigenous heritage. None of this is to say that poor, dark-skinned young men cannot be sanos. However, the closer a victim is to the stereotypical figure of the malandro, the heavier the burden of proof.

It is crucial to recognize that the sano and the malandro are moral categories that are not determined by any single characteristic. What orders them is the distinction that Mary Douglas describes between purity and danger (Douglas 2002 [1966]). The sano is one who resides within the moral order, while the malandro is one who stands outside of it. Generally speaking the sano is depicted as someone who has a family; who participates in loving, hetero-normative relationships; who is employed or in school; who participates in the church or civic organizations; and who generally abides by the law. In contrast, the malandro is associated with the street, with gangs, with unemployment, with illicit goods, and with sexual deviance. Whereas the sano is a person, the malandro is judged to be little more than a savage.

21 Violence against women is not ignored, but it is usually treated differently. During my fieldwork, many of the news outlets ran regular features about domestic violence and violence against women. However, it was less common for specific cases to be reported in the press. There were a number of reasons for this, including concern for the safety of the victims and the reluctance of victims to go to the press.

55 The Republic of Victims

To understand the distinction malandro/sano, consider the following article in which the boundary between the two is blurred. Because it is a much shorter piece (scarcely 230 words), I have reproduced it in full.

Article #3: Gang Shootout

[Headline]: Shootout between gangs leaves 2 dead, 5 wounded in Los Erasos [Second headline]: The [police] identified gunmen who operated in the barrio of San Bernardino.

An armed confrontation between two rival gangs, which operate in the barrio Los Erasos of San Bernardino, led to the death of two people. Another five were wounded.

The shootout happened in the principal street of the slum at four in the afternoon this past Saturday. The victims were taken to the emergency room…. Nerwin Jesús Tejada Vegas (22) and Máximo Iturriado (27) died. Andreína Blanco Cisneros (26) and Erwin Gabriel Reverón were wounded in the shooting along with three other people who refused to be treated in the aforementioned private clinic.

Senaida Iturriago, sister of Máximo Iturriago, demanded that his death be clarified. “My brother was not a delinquent. Come Monday the minister [of justice] will say that this was a settling of scores. … He was a gardener. He was married….”

“My brother never messed with anybody. The gangsters threatened him and so he hid in an abandoned house in Carapita and then left for the house of my brother in Los Erasos. This is hell. They are the ones who rule. Every day so many innocent people die in this country! What pain! What impotence!”

Officers from the Símon Rodríguez police station identified the killers.

[April 7, 2008; El Universal; lower right; 230 words]

All that the reader knows from this article is that there was some kind of armed confrontation in the barrio Los Erasos. According to the police the dead and wounded were members of two rival gangs. Other than names and ages, no additional information is provided about any of the victims except one, Máximo Iturriado. The sister of Iturriado is fully aware that the police have branded her brother a malandro and a gangster. She forcefully denies this account. According to Senaida Iturriago, her brother was an honest man, a worker who was fleeing violence in another part of the city. Other than this

56 Chapter 1 declaration of innocence, the piece contains very little information and no photographs. The six other victims are passed over in silence. Most readers would assume that they were malandros or worse.

In the malandro and the sano, we have a moral hierarchy that structures narratives about crime and victimhood according to preexisting assumptions about gender, class, race, and age. This is part of what Charles Briggs calls the “communicative cartography” of crime in Venezuela (Briggs 2007). Audiences, journalists, victims, and the police all share certain assumptions about who deserves sympathy and support. An analysis of the categories sano/malandro would certainly demonstrate how forms of privilege and oppression are reproduced. Upper and middle-class white victims are assumed to be good citizens, and they receive all the benefits of citizenship. Poor and ethnically marked men are assumed to be dangerous, unless someone speaks up for them. The journalistic treatment of victims often reinforces these inequalities, but not always, and certainly not unfailingly.

If all persons are potential victims, not all victims are recognized as citizens. There are no rallies for dead malandros. However, innocent victims feature prominently in political mobilizations against crime in Caracas.

Mobilizing in the Name of Victims

This chapter opens with a quotation from noted Argentine intellectual Beatriz Sarlo. Writing about journalistic representations of crime in Buenos Aires, she accuses the press of populist demagoguery. Rather than promoting justice, the media assumes the posture of a victim hell-bent on revenge. “The kind of conduct that in victims is understandable, given their situation is, in the case of the mass media, a form of anti- institutional agitation” (Sarlo 2001:65). If Sarlo’s condemnation of the media is somewhat extreme, it highlights the intimate relationship between the victims, the press, and populist mobilization. To conclude this chapter, I want to describe two clear examples in which victims became symbols for political action thanks to the interventions of the press.

57 The Republic of Victims

The Missing Bus Driver

June 14, 2009. Just before noon on Sunday a line of buses and jeeps rolled up to the Caracas city morgue, their horns blaring in symphony. Across the windows of each vehicle were hand-painted messages: “Victor Javier we love you,” “Victor Javier was my friend,” and “Enough with all this death.” In a matter of minutes, several hundred people filled the narrow street and the small carport in front of the morgue. The spontaneous protest erupted in the wake of statements made by the Minister of Interior and Justice about the death of a young bus driver, Victor Javier Rosal. More than two-dozen reporters, photographers, and cameramen were on hand to capture the protest live.

At the center of the demonstration was the young man’s father, Juan Rosal. He was furious. “If it is the child of [poor] ‘Pablo Pueblo’ that dies, then they say that he was a delinquent. But if a murder takes place in a wealthy neighborhood like this one, you can be sure that they are going to investigate the case.”22 Victor Javier Rosal had disappeared a week earlier on his way home from work. His family and colleagues believed that he had been kidnapped, murdered, or both. Despite going to the authorities, the police did nothing to find the young man. Finally, his family organized a search party and began scouring the city.

The crime journalists stumbled on the case Friday morning when Rosal’s mother Milagros and his brother Danny turned up at the morgue searching for him. The reporters whom I accompanied saw them and sensed a story. Both mother and son were well spoken and modestly dressed—the former in wire-rimmed glasses and a denim jacket, the latter in a baseball cap and button-down shirt. All the cues pointed to a “good” family. The photographers snapped a few shots while the reporters took down a statement about the situation. The last time anyone saw Rosal was Monday night as he was returning from work as a driver for the private bus line Los Heroes. At 9:30 p.m. he dropped off a cousin and was heading home on a black Yamaha motorcycle.

22 Rodríguez, Gustavo. June 16, 2008. “Protestaron en la morgue el asesino de un conductor” in El Universal.

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One detail in particular stood out—Victor Javier Rosal was a driver for one of the many private bus lines that crisscrossed the city. Under normal circumstances, this fact would be unexceptional. Robberies are all too common, and transportation workers in Caracas are constantly blocking highways to protest insecurity. However, the situation began to escalate in May of 2008 and protests became more frequent. Around this same time the crime reporters began keeping a tally of how many bus drivers, jeep drivers, and taxi drivers had been murdered in Caracas.

Counting victims is a common practice among reporters because it allows them to connect individual cases to larger patterns of violence in the city. Most newspapers publish a weekend homicide count every Tuesday, a number which functions as a general barometer of insecurity and a way of constantly reminding people of the gravity of the situation. Similarly, the number of drivers killed tells a story about a highly vulnerable system of transportation that millions of people use every day. As the count of murdered bus drivers and taxi drivers mounted near the end of May, so did the pressure on the government to make the daily commute safe. By the middle of June, there had been a string of protests by transportation workers, all of which received ample press coverage.

Early Saturday afternoon, Rosal’s body was discovered in a wooded ravine off the side of the road. Later that day the new Minister of Interior and Justice gave a televised press conference during which a reporter asked him about Victor Javier Rosal and 35 other transport workers murdered in Caracas that year. The minister bluntly denied that Rosal’s death deserved to be counted along with those of the other transportation workers and referred to him as a probable delinquent.23

For family and friends, the protest at the morgue on Sunday was about clearing the young man’s good name and their own. I overheard a short, round woman lecturing one of the reporters. “In the barrios we are workers. We are not malandros, we are professionals.” Beside her, a young, handsome woman lamented. “The insecurity is everywhere in Caracas, but most of all it is in the barrios.” Then there was Juan Rosal, complaining bitterly about the treatment of his son and his family. Not only was Rosal

23 Blanco, Felicita. June 15, 2008. “Noticia” in Diario El Carabobeño. June 15, 2008.

59 The Republic of Victims trying to clear his son’s name, but he was also publicly calling into question the police, the minister, and the entire system of justice.

“The police did nothing to find him and now this minister comes along and says that my son was not a bus driver. He died with his uniform on! Not one of my four children is a delinquent. I would like to tell [the minister] to leave his bodyguards behind and come visit my neighborhood at night…. I want the minister to know that professionals come out of these poor neighborhoods, although many parents cannot take their children to the schools because of the shootings that are going on.” 24 The case of Victor Javier Rosal made an effective denunciation because it allowed reporters to connect his death to a larger pattern of insecurity through numbers (he was the 36th transport worker murdered in Caracas in less than 6 months), through public protests, and through direct accusations against a high-ranking authority. It merged with other murders, other protests, and other condemnations to give the impression of a growing crisis in the city’s transportation system.

The same day that Victor Javier’s family and friends descended on the morgue en mass, President Chávez announced plans for a new program titled “Secure Roads” that would place one police officer and two National Guardsmen on every bus. This newly hatched program was clearly a response to growing pressure from transport workers, pressure that the private press was effectively channeling.

The Faddoul Brothers

No case did more to propel violent crime into the political spotlight than the kidnapping and murder of the three Faddoul brothers—John (17), Kevin (13), and Jason (12)—and their chauffeur, Miguel Rivas. In late February of 2006, the four were abducted on their way to school by a gang that included officers of the Metropolitan Police. Six weeks later their bodies were found in a field outside the city. Forensics reports clearly indicated that they had been tortured and executed. Overnight, their death became the subject of widespread mourning in Caracas. For nearly a week, the story received the kind of wall-to-wall media coverage reserved for only the most

24 Rodríguez, Gustavo. June 16, 2008. “Protestaron en la morgue el asesino de un conductor” in El Universal.

60 Chapter 1 extraordinary events. During the early weeks of April 2006, pressure on the government became so intense that the Minister of Information and Communication, William Lara, threatened at least two television stations, RCTV and Globovision, with charges of incitement (HRW 2008).

The story began innocuously enough: on March 2, 2006, the family held a press conference at their home in Bella Vista, a well-to-do neighborhood of Caracas.25 All of the major Caracas papers published photos of the three brothers along with short articles about the kidnapping and its possible links to the Metropolitan Police.26 The kidnapping took place the morning of February 23 as Rivas was driving the boys to school. According to witnesses, they were stopped at a police checkpoint not far from their house. Over the next several days more stories appeared that looked at the possible involvement of the Metropolitan Police and the agony of the families.27 It was around this same time that friends and neighbors began painting signs with the demand, “Free the Faddouls” in the windows of cars and businesses.28

It would be hard to invent characters better suited to the role of innocent victims than the Faddoul brothers and Miguel Rivas. The Faddouls were from a very wealthy family of Lebanese descent; they were devout Catholics; and they were active in the church and their community. All three of the brothers were well-regarded students who attended a nearby private school. The middle child, Kevin, was born with a birth defect

25 El Nacional, May 21 2006. “El secuestro de los Faddoul.” D. González, S. Guerrero. 26 El Nacional, March 3, 2006. “Suecuestraron a tres jóvenes en Terrazas de Bella Vista.” Thabata Molina; El Universal, March 3, 2006. “‘Se llevaron a mis tres corazones.” Reinaldo Vargas; 27 Along with the family’s suffering, the involvement of the PM was the main focus of early reporting on the case. For example, see the early coverage by Últimas Noticias. March 4, 2006. “Dos policías estarían implicados en plagio de hermanos Faddoul.” María Alejandra Monagas; March 5, 2006. “256 policías ‘matones.’”; March 6, 2006. “Un cabo de la PM raptó a los Faddoul,” María Alejandra Monagas. 28 El Nacional, May 21 2006. “El secuestro de los Hermanos Faddoul.” D. González, S. Guerrero.

61 The Republic of Victims that left him paralyzed on the right side of his body. His two brothers, especially the younger sibling, Jason, had cared for him most of his life. Miguel Rivas was also a sympathetic figure. A devoted father, he worked hard to support his family. By all accounts he had a very close relationship with the Faddouls. Along with employment, they allowed him, his wife, and his two young children to live rent-free on the floor above one of their businesses in the working class neighborhood of Antimano.29

What marked the case as exceptional was the public campaigning of the Faddoul family, their friends, and their neighbors. In most kidnapping cases, the news only becomes public after the fact. Many families do not even go to the police out of fear for the victims, and it is only in rare instances that a kidnapping is reported by the press before it has been resolved. Instead of silently cooperating, the family and friends of the Faddouls were vocal in their attempts to bring the victims home. More unusual still, these public manifestations were not angry denunciations of the state or the perpetrators. Rather, the family and their friends adopted the posture and practices of religious supplicants. As one journalist reported,

“While the authorities carry out their investigations, neighbors have put their faith in God. Every night they hold mass and vigils on 2nd street in Vista Allegre and in the church Our Lady of the Valley. Classmates have dedicated themselves to placing signs in the streets rejecting the crime of kidnapping. With their few resources they have also made photocopies of the photos of the three brothers. One text reads: ‘We want the return of our companions, the Faddoul brothers. Please, have consideration and help to pray for them. United we are going to do it. We say the Lord’s Prayer and recite the rosary for them.’”30

29 Popular memories of the episode are closely tied to narratives of innocent victimhood as I discovered in my interviews with audiences of crime news. Take the following recollection of the case by an avid reader of crime news. Interviewer: “Are there any cases that stand out in your memory?” Respondent: “The case of the kidnapping of the Faddoul brothers. This was the case that they kidnapped three adolescents and their chauffeur and later they appeared dead in a manner that should never happen. Of course no one should ever take anyone’s life, much the less these who were adolescent boys who I don’t believe had ever done anything wrong to anybody. And the chauffeur was a person who was working [to support] his family. That wasn’t right either. And then afterwards they appeared bound and shot like animals, worse than animals. This was a case that remains with me because I saw the photos in the newspaper and on television that showed the family crying and all their friends and classmates. Ahem. Well, it was disastrous, monstrous because these are boys of 16, 15, 12 years old who … were innocents. And those delinquents had no reason to kidnap them, much less kill them.” Author’s interview, February 10, 2009 30 Rodriguez, Gustavo. El Universal. “Vecions repudian el secuestro.” March 23, 2006.

62 Chapter 1

By the end of March the story of the campaign to free the Faddoul brothers was gaining momentum. Although there was little news about the progress of the investigation, crime journalists began publishing articles with headlines such as “Neighbors Repudiate Kidnapping,” “Neighbors of the Faddouls in Permanent Vigil,” and “Human Chain to Demand Liberty.” These stories accompanied photographs of people wearing t-shirts and carrying banners that read “Free the Faddoul Brothers” and “No to kidnapping.” As the ordeal wore on, these images and articles proliferated as did the activism of the family and friends.

Undoubtedly, the most extraordinary figure in the whole ordeal was Gladys Diab, the boys’ mother, who publicly channeled both her suffering and her faith. An intensely religious woman, Diab made several public pronouncements. The most famous and widely remembered was the letter in which she addressed the kidnappers. She circulated the letter to all of the major media outlets in Caracas on March 22, just in time for the one-month anniversary of the abduction. In it she begged “misericordia” (loving- kindness) for the captives. She renounced hatred against the kidnappers and thanked them for her suffering through which she had come closer to her family, her friends, and the divine. Addressed to “los señores secuestadores,” the letter opened with these lines: “You cannot imagine the enormous damage done to a family by a kidnapping and, hence, to a society as beautiful as Venezuela. In the name of God and thousands of mothers in the world I want to tell you: I forgive you.”

To many, the tone and content of Gladys Diab’s letter was the single most bizarre element of the entire case. Several of the journalists who covered the story privately conveyed their amazement and confusion. In her letter and in her interactions with the kidnappers, Diab adopted the posture of someone bent on martyrdom. Take the following passage, which comes near the end of her letter:

“If God chose you to end the mission of these young creatures, I can do nothing to prevent it. I am no one before you, nor before God. I only beg you that you do it rapidly and while they sleep. I beg you to give them a photo of a saint so that they do not feel alone. All that I can do on my part is pray to their angels that their ascent to Heaven will be fast and beautiful.”

63 The Republic of Victims

As opposed to addressing the state, Diab turned to Catholic theology. Although it was clear that she was a victim, her suffering was not fully intelligible within the dominant, secular idiom. The families of kidnapping victims are expected to beg for life, to rail against injustice, and to pour forth their inconsolable sadness. They are certainly not expected to calmly accept the violent death of their loved ones. Little wonder, then, that Diab is often remembered as a mother gone mad with grief.

The timing of the kidnapping was also important in drawing attention to the case. Stretching back to the summer of 2005, a number of high profile crimes rocked Venezuela. In June, undercover police officers massacred three university students at the entrance to the Kennedy barrio, near the southwest periphery of Caracas. The Kennedy case, as it came to be known, created a public furor that had only just subsided when the Faddoul brothers and Rivas were abducted. Around the same time, there were two other high profile murder-kidnappings in Venezuela. In the neighboring city of Maracay, a powerful businessman and friend of the president Chávez, Filippo Sindoni, was kidnapped and murdered in March of 2006. In the southern state of Bolivar, Carolina Di Lucca, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of Colonel Robert Di Lucca, was also kidnapped in May of 2006. She, too, was later found dead, allegedly at the hands of Colombian paramilitaries.

An explosive cocktail of elements came together to make the story of the Faddoul brothers and Miguel Rivas a national cause célèbre—the innocence of the victims, the public appeals of the family, the pious suffering of the mother, and the timing of the case. As public interest in the kidnapping grew, references to “the nation” proliferated and articulated with themes of social and moral decay. Increasingly, the case became a symbol for the failures of the Chávez government.

However, it was not until the afternoon of April 4, when the four bodies were found face down in a clearing about an hour south of Caracas, that the story was transformed from back-page reading material to full-blown national tragedy. Public mourning over the deaths soon turned to anti-government protests, and the protests threatened to blossom into much more. For three days this was the central focus of broadcast media and the print press. Newspapers went cover-to-cover with the story.

64 Chapter 1

Faddoul dominated the front page, the politics page, the obituaries, the op-eds, and, the crime pages. Every facet of the story was analyzed, including the media coverage itself.

To make matters worse, a veteran photojournalist from Últimas Noticias was murdered covering the story. Jorge Aguirre was just blocks from the protest in the wealthy Altamira district of Caracas. An unidentified motorcyclist approached his car and told the driver to turn around. When they refused to comply he fired a single shot into the vehicle, killing Aguirre. His death provoked a furious response from Últimas Noticias, which has the largest audience of any newspaper in Caracas. It also galvanized his colleagues who saw shades of the events of April 11, 2002, and the murder of another crime photographer, Jorge Tortoza (Chapter 3). Unlike the Tortoza case, however, Aguirre’s murderer was later identified as a troubled ex-police officer. For a moment, though, the city seemed to be on the verge of a popular uprising.

At the height of the furor the Minister of Communication and Information accused the press and the protesters of being in league with an opposition conspiracy. Opposition leaders defended themselves saying that the protests were a “spontaneous reaction to the vile and monstrous murder of the Faddoul brothers.” What no one would contest was the politically charged tone that surrounded the case.

Were it not for the mother, Glady Diab, it is likely that the protests would have become even more politically charged. Her most important interventions were two live interviews on the national television station RCTV. In the first interview she spoke of her suffering and her wishes for the future. The death of her sons and Rivas was not an end but “the beginning of a Venezuela that all of us want. We want a Venezuela that is united, without distinctions according to creed, race, social or political position” (Rosas 2008:107). These first statements were interpreted by some as a rallying cry. However, the next day Diab gave a second televised interview with RCTV in which she explicitly rejected the politicization of the case. Moreover, she spoke highly of President Chávez and his humanity in her time of grief. She referred to humanity. “I do not want my pain to be used towards political ends,” Diab said.

“I do not need to start a rebellion or political front against anyone. That does not interest me. My interest is simply to humanize, to think, and to know that there

65 The Republic of Victims

exists a God above all of this…. To those persons who want to use my words for political ends, I ask you, I beg you to respect my pain, because my pain is the pain of millions of people the world over” (Rosas 2008:108). Diab was explicit because the story had gained enormous political momentum. If ever there was a case that lent itself to mass mobilization, it was the case of the Faddoul brothers and Miguel Rivas. The four came to symbolize the betrayal of innocent citizens by the very authorities sworn to protect them. As such it called into question not only the legitimacy of isolated institutions but also the entire political structure, especially the administration of President Chávez. For the first six years of his administration, Chávez had been all but silent on the subject of violent crime. The Faddoul case marked a turning point. It did not drive Chávez out of office, but it forced his administration to confront the politically damaging fact of urban violence.

***

The two cases that I have described are both excellent examples of how news coverage of crime creates the conditions of possibility for populist mobilization in Venezuela. Victims and their families make powerful political symbols. This is doubly true under the conditions of extreme urgency that confront the inhabitants of Caracas. In later chapters, I examine some of the journalistic institutions, beliefs, and practices through which the press becomes a fulcrum for populism in Venezuela. My purpose in this chapter has been to underscore the potency of victimhood and its potential as a tool of political struggle.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have described how the high levels of violent crime in Caracas have become a subject of intense political contestation. This struggle centers on the figure of the citizen-victim, whose importance is acknowledge by both supporters and opponents of President Chávez. Rather than taking victimhood at face value, it is important to pay attention to how victims are differentially produced. Narratives of crime and victimhood coalesce around entrenched socio-political assumptions about innocence and guilt. As a symbol of purity and righteousness, the figure of the citizen-victim has become the political symbol par excellence in Caracas.

66 Chapter 1

Urban violence first emerged with the democratic and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s/1990s. These reforms had the unintended consequence of fragmenting the social, economic, political and spatial geography of the city. The terrible irony is that this fragmentation continued apace during the Chávez era thanks to the polarizing struggles between opponents and supporters of the president. I am not suggesting that “unity” is the solution. However, it is important to recognize that the figure of the citizen-victim has become one of the instruments of struggles for sovereignty in Venezuela, a subject that I turn to in Chapter 3.

67 The Republic of Victims

Chapter 1: Appendix Getting a Handle on Crime Statistics In 2008, Charlie Devereux and I published and article for the San Francisco Chronicle on crime in Caracas.31 Drawing on sources with access to official government statistics on crime we concluded that Caracas had the highest homicide rate of any city in South America. “In 2007,” we wrote, “there were 2,710 homicides or 130 per 100,000 citizens, up from 107 per 100,000 in 2006.” However, while checking the numbers, I noticed something curious: they did not add up. By my own calculations the official homicide rate should have been considerably lower.

The experience of writing that article made me particularly sensitive to the inconsistency of crime statistics reported from Caracas. Depending on the source, Venezuela’s capital city has a homicide rate that ranges anywhere from 71 per 100,000 citizens to over 200 per 100,000 citizens (2010). The lowest estimates are alarming, but they are not entirely out of line with the regional trends in Latin America (easily a dozen cities in the region have higher homicide rates). The highest estimates would make Caracas the deadliest city in the world.

What is behind this massive discrepancy in homicide statistics? And why is it so hard to get reliable figures? Anyone who has watched Season Five of the television show The Wire knows that crime statistics are highly influenced by political and bureaucratic pressures. In this appendix, I want to give a quick overview of how crime statistics are calculated. Given Venezuela’s charged political context, it should come as no surprise that homicide rates are alternately underestimated and overestimated.

***

The most reliable source for crime data in Venezuela is the CICPC, which is the country’s equivalent of the FBI. The CICPC handles every homicide investigation in the country and they have detailed records on violent crime. It is well known that under the Chávez administration the CICPC restricted access to crime figures. What has gone

31 San Francisco Chronicle. November 16, 2008. “Crime runs amok in Caracas’ slums.” C. Devereux and R. Samet.

68 Chapter 1 unmentioned is that, for years, experts were miscalculating the homicide rate by using the wrong population estimate in their calculations.

Until quite recently, the official homicide rate for Caracas was overestimated by approximately 33%. The official numbers reported by several Venezuelan NGOs— including Provea and Centro Para la Paz—suggested that the city’s yearly homicide rate had climbed as high as 130 murders per 100,000 citizens in 2007. Yet, this figure was based on a gross miscalculation of the population of the Caracas metropolitan area.

During the period of my research (2006-2012), metropolitan Caracas had a population of just over 3.2 million people. Like New York City, this population was divided between five municipalities. Violent deaths in all five municipalities passed through the same morgue and the same CICPC medical examiners. Whether or not someone died in the far eastern or the far west of metropolitan Caracas, they all ended up in the Bello Monte facilities. Yet, the experts were all calculating the homicide rate based on population statistics of just one municipality (Libertador), which had a population of 2.1 million.

Adjusted for population, the official 2010 homicide rate in Caracas falls from 109 per 100,000 to just 71 per 100,000. These are still incredibly high, incredibly alarming figures. However, in comparative perspective they are much less likely to grab the attention of international journalists or their editors.

Most articles on crime in Caracas published before 2011 cite official homicide rates that are based on these grossly overestimated figures. For example, our piece in the San Francisco Chronicle should have reported a homicide rate of around 85 per 100,000 for 2007. Instead we reported 130 per 100,000.

When I pointed out the error to my sources—experts who had access to the official CICPC statistics—they shrugged and told me that 2.1 million was the official population of Caracas and that these were the official numbers. Whether this was an error on the part of the CICPC, the experts, or both is something that I am unable to determine.

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Regardless of who was at fault, it is hard to see this as anything other than a self-inflicted black eye on the part of the Chávez government. For decades, violent crime has preoccupied Venezuelans and since 2006 it has been the single greatest voter concern. However, until 2011 the official statistics were systematically overestimating the crime rate of the country’s largest, most politically prominent city.

***

Of course, the case can also be made that the problem is far worse than advertized. In Venezuela, as in many other countries in Latin America, the police exclude certain deaths from the official homicide statistics.

For example, every year hundreds of killings are classified as “resistance to authority.” These are cases in which the police or military use deadly force against suspected criminals. In 2010, the Ministry of Interior and Justice reported 3, 482 such cases across Venezuela. According to experts with knowledge of police protocols, none of these killings were classified as homicides.

Another example of possible homicides excluded from the official statistics is the category “deaths under investigation.” These are deaths that could potentially be suicides, accidents, or murders. In 2010, more than 4,508 violent deaths fell into this undetermined category.

Some social scientists claim that an accurate statistical snapshot of homicide rates should include these uncounted deaths. However, for regional or global comparisons they present a distorted picture, because such omissions are common in police departments throughout Latin America (Graham Denyer Willis, personal communication).

***

The slipperiness of official police statistics has led some researchers to seek alternative methods for gathering data on the homicide rates. In 2009, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) conducted a victimization survey as part of the government’s program of extensive police reform (CONAREPOL). Unlike the police who count homicide cases one by one, the INE survey estimated homicide rates using a random

70 Chapter 1 sample of some 20,000 households. The advantage of such a model is that it cuts through bureaucratic red tape. The drawback is that it relies on a different kind of knowledge and there is skepticism about the results that these methods produce. According the leaked INE report, the homicide rate in the Caracas Metropolitan Areas may be as high as 233 per 100,000. A number of journalists and social scientists have used the results of the victimization survey to bolster claims that Caracas is “the most violent city in the world.” Such comparisons seem dubious at best.

Another method has been employed by the Mexican-based NGO, Seguridad, Justicia, y Paz. Most of the Caracas newspapers report the number of violent deaths that pass through the city morgue on a weekly and monthly basis. Seguridad, Justicia y Paz tallied these numbers and estimated that 70% of these deaths were homicides. Through newspaper research, the NGO arrived at a homicide rate of 118.6 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2010.

A third method for measuring Caracas’s homicide rate without relying on CICPC is to use vital statistics from the Ministry of Health. Using this data, graduate student Dorothy Kronick estimated the Caracas homicide rate at 92 per 100,000 in 2008, which was the most recent year available (personal communication).

All of these are valid albeit somewhat imprecise methods of estimating homicide rates in Caracas. Such alternative methods have become necessary due to the opacity and uncertainty of official police statistics in Venezuela.

***

There is no question that Caracas has a serious crime problem. If the roots of this problem date back to the late 1980s, urban violence has grown incrementally under the Chávez administration. Opposition leaders have seized on this surge in violent crime as a political opportunity. After all, crime is an abiding concern of most citizens and a visible failure on the part of the Chávez government. In response, the government blocked direct access to the official police statistics.

71 The Republic of Victims

That said the inconsistent reporting of homicide rates in Caracas was not simply or even primarily the product of political polarization. I suspect that the wide discrepancies in reported homicide rates reflected two competing tendencies. On one hand, many intellectuals and activists tended to publicize higher homicide rates in an effort to draw attention to the problem. On the other hand, the government and police officials tended to understate the problem in their attempts to forestall a moral panic.

Ironically, the Chávez government’s attempts to alleviate public concerns may have worsened perceptions of crime in Venezuela. At least in the case of Caracas, better access to official police statistics would have made social scientists and journalists like myself less likely to portray Caracas as one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Blocking access to official crime data fueled speculation that the government had something to hide, that it was manipulating the data for political purposes, or both. Greater transparency could represent an important step towards greater cooperation.

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CHAPTER 2 DENUNCIAS, POPULISM, & THE RISE OF PRESS POWER

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Venezuelan politics in the early twenty- first century has been the standoff between the private press and President Chávez. More than simply acting as a mouthpiece for the opposition, the press has been the mobilizing force of political insurgency against the Venezuelan government. This oppositional stance predates the first Chávez administration by more than a decade. Ironically, many of the same media owners, editors, and pundits agitating against the president abetted his meteoric rise.

The following chapter describes how the private press created the conditions of possibility for the populist movement that coalesced around the figure of Hugo Chávez. During the socio-economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the press functioned as the single most powerful political institution in Venezuela. It channeled widespread discontent into a populist backlash against the two political parties that had governed the country since the fall of the Perez Jimenez dictatorship in 1958. Although there is a massive body of literature about this social-crisis and the rise of Hugo Chávez, little has been written on the concomitant rise of press power (Hernandez 1995; Lugo and Romero 2003; Botía 2007:91). Such silence is curious because the media was widely acknowledged as the single most influential political institution in Venezuela for most of the decade.

This chapter examines the simultaneous rise of press power and a new wave of populist movements in Venezuela at the close of the twentieth century. It argues that the press became influential thanks to mass mediated denuncias of government corruption. The term denuncia translates as “denunciation,” “accusation,” or “complaint.” In the legal field a denuncia is a report filed with the police or the courts that initiates an investigation. Outside of the juridical realm, the term denuncia retains its accusatory significance but takes on aspects of public performance. It is a shaming of sorts. Starting in the late 1980s Venezuelans witnessed the emergence of what was referred to as el periodismo de denuncia, which could be roughly translated “the journalism of denunciation.” During this period, news outlets were flooded with denuncias of

73 The Rise of Press Power corruption. A revolving door of politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen were accused of illicit dealings that bankrupted the country. Only a handful of them were ever tried. Eventually, such blatant impunity in the face of an ever-expanding web of corruption scandals justified the ouster of the old political parties and the formation of a new populist project.

The struggle to purge the state of corrupt elements served as the rallying cry for the failed coup d’état led by Hugo Chávez in February 1992 against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. One year later, another widely publicized corruption scandal finished what the military had started. In August of 1993, President Pérez was removed from office on corruption charges related to the misuse of a discretionary fund in a scandal referred to as “La Partida Secreta” (“The Secret Consignment”). The failed coup and Pérez’s forced removal from office drew on popular outrage over corruption.

My contention is that the proliferation of mass mediated denuncias catapulted the private press into the vanguard of this populist movement as both the moral conscience of “the people” and the avenging hand of justice. Recent scholarship on populist movements and anti-corruption campaigns in Venezuela provides ample support for this argument. Aníbal Pérez-Liñán has demonstrated that mass mediated corruption scandals played a decisive role in the downfall of the president and Venezuela’s two main political parties (Pérez-Liñán 2007).1 Kirk Hawkins shows that these mass mediated corruption scandals gave rise to a series of populist movements, of which Hugo Chávez’s Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, MBR-200, was just one of several examples (Hawkins 2010).2 In

1 Aníbal Pérez-Liñán shows that sustained exposure to mass mediated corruption scandals during this period decreased presidential popularity, fueled public outrage, and increased the probability of presidential impeachment (Pérez-Liñán 2007). If anything, Pérez-Liñán understates the effects of corruption scandals by limiting their effects to presidential impeachment. The wave of corruption scandals that swept over Venezuela during this period presaged more than simply the fall of a president. They also consolidated an anti-institutional backlash against the system of pacted democracy, thereby setting the stage for the emergence of new political actors. 2 Hawkins “conceives of populism as a normative response to crises of legitimacy resulting from widespread systematic violation of the rule of law that citizens can construe as corruption: it requires not only some policy failure, but also a backdrop of political institutional failure that populist discourse can sensibly interpret as a violation of democratic norms” (148). My own understanding of populism is very close to that of Hawkins, with three important caveats. First, I would stress that corruption is just one symbolic possibility. In Venezuela, corruption is a very powerful populist argument. But that is a historical fact, not an overarching definition that can or should be applied universally. Second, Hawkins locates

74 Chapter 2 this chapter, I argue that journalistic denuncias are the grounded practice that gave rise of these mass mediated corruption scandals. They are tied directly to the reemergence of populist movements and the rise of press power in Venezuela.

Following denunciation as a journalistic practice provides a glimpse of the role that mass media plays in the formation of populist movements. In later chapters, I describe these practices ethnographically. Here, I trace the historical and ideological roots of the denuncias that appeared in the press during the second half of the twentieth century.3

Mass mediated denunciations function according to a particular political logic, one that informs the beliefs and professional norms of journalists. This logic could be subsumed under what communications scholar Silvio Waisbord describes as Watchdog Journalism in South America, in which the press is imagined as a necessary check on state power (Waisbord 2000). However, denuncias enable the press to do more than simply stand guard over democracy. Under the right circumstances, mass mediated denunciations function as the building blocks of populist movements. By exposing wrongdoing, denuncias make visible the shared discontent of distinct sectors. They articulate disparate, often contradictory demands, into what Ernesto Laclau calls “chains of equivalence,” a process that this chapter explores in some depth. To put it another way, denunciation creates the semblance of unified opposition among groups of actors whose interests and political commitments would otherwise be unaligned. This is precisely what we see in Venezuela at the end of the twentieth century. During decades of crisis that culminated in the rise of Hugo Chávez, mass mediated denunciations of corruption created a shared sense of moral outrage. Shared outrage, in turn, merged a heterogeneous

populist discourse in the mouths of charismatic leaders. For purposes of measurement, this can be quite useful. Yet, neither discourse nor populist movements can be said to originate with charismatic leaders. Populism, in my definition, is an outgrowth of popular sovereignty, and a by-product of the modern nation state. It is a political logic, as Ernesto Laclau understands it. Third, and finally, Hawkins argues that corruption only becomes a major concern after 1995, with the campaign of Hugo Chávez. However, there are ample surveys from the late 1980s and early 1990s that place corruption as a major concern much earlier on (Templeton 1995). 3 A genealogy of denuncias has yet to be written. In Latin America, denunciation grows out of a testimonial tradition that has deep roots in the inquisition, Spanish colonialism, tropes of Christian witnessing, and the formation of modern nation-states (Silverblatt 2004). Thanks to Thomas Blom Hansen for these observations.

75 The Rise of Press Power group of actors into a unified force of popular opposition and propelled the press into the vanguard of Venezuelan politics.

My narrative is divided into four main sections. Part one describes the growth of press power in Latin America and the rise of the new style of journalism. I am particularly interested in the concurrent emergence of watchdog journalism and testimonio literature as tools of popular mobilization in the Americas. Viewing journalistic denuncias through the lens of testimonio provides a fresh perspective on how the professional outlook of Venezuelan journalists differs from their North American peers thanks to subtle distinctions in the politics of representation. Part two explains the crisis that gripped Venezuela at the end of the 1980s and the expansion of corruptions scandals in the mass media. This serves as the backdrop against which we can understand how the so-called journalism of denunciation emerged in Venezuela and why corruption, as a particular form of criminality, came to symbolize the crisis in its entirety. Part three examines the constitutive relationship between denuncias and populist movements. It analyzes how the journalism of denunciation provides the medium through which disparate social sectors coalesce around a shared grievance. Finally, part four focuses on the “Dogs of War” case. This early corruption scandal provides a concrete example of denuncias in action. Investigated and denounced by the noted journalist and future vice president of Venezuela, José Vicente Rangel, it involved irregularities in the sale of arms to the Venezuelan military. Following the case provides a perspective on how journalists understand political advocacy as an act of service on behalf of the Venezuelan people.

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Watchdogs and Denouncers

“The denouncer-journalist [is] only committed to the truth and discovers secret dealings. He is the guardian of honesty, the incorruptible server of justice.”

-Angel Rama on the Argentine journalist, Rodolfo Walsh4

The rise of the press as a political force in Venezuela was part of a regional phenomenon in which Latin American journalists transformed themselves into crusaders against the abuse of power. The emergence of what communications scholar Silvio Waisbord calls “watchdog journalism” represented a profound departure from the old style of reporting. For most of the twentieth century the mainstream media in Latin America was subservient to ruling elites (Waisbord 2000; Alves 2005; Pérez-Liñán 2007). Military regimes and entrenched political parties used a combination of coercion and brute force to silence opposition from the mass media. Journalists rarely denounced wrongdoing under these circumstances. However, this pattern of behavior changed abruptly in the 1980s and 1990s with a series of press-driven scandals in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and, of course, Venezuela.5 Suddenly, the mainstream media was flooded with muckraking stories about political malfeasance, economic corruption, and human rights abuses.6 Unlike its “lapdog” predecessors (Alves 2005), watchdog journalism prioritized the discovery and denunciation of such wrongdoings.7 Not only did this crusading style expose the sordid underbelly of ruling

4 Cited in Waisbord 2000; 30. 5 On Argentina see Waisbord 1994, 2000; on Brazil see Pérez-Liñán 2007, and Waisbord 1994, 2000; on Colombia see Pérez-Liñán 2007; on Mexico see Hughes 2006, Castañeda 1997, and Lawson 2000; on Peru see Conaghan 1996 and Waisbord 2000; on Paraguay see Pérez-Liñán 2007 (Waisbord 1994; Conaghan 1996; Castañeda 1997; Lawson 2002; Hughes 2006) 6 Aníbal Pérez-Liñán (2007) provides a glimpse of the quantitative jump in mass mediated scandals in Latin America. Drawing on the database of news stories gathered by the Foreign Broadcast Information Services (FBIS), he observes that FBIS registered 200 stories on corruption in 1993 whereas a decade earlier, in 1983, only 11 such stories were registered (2007; 65). 7 This new paradigm of journalism in Latin America has been referred to variously as “the vanguard press” (Alves 1997), “civic journalism” (Hughes 2006), and mass-mediated scandal (Pérez-Liñán 2007). In Venezuela it was referred to as “the journalism of denunciation” throughout the 1990s (Gallardo and Hernandez 1993). Here I use the term “watchdog journalism,” because of it broadly describes the phenomenon in which journalists take upon themselves the task of holding powerful actors accountable for

77 The Rise of Press Power elites, it transformed the press into a formidable political force in countries across Latin America. Nowhere was the rise of press power more evident than in Venezuela, where journalists, scholars, and pundits observed the emergence of what was widely known as “the journalism of denunciation” (el periodismo de denuncia).

A number of factors contributed to the sudden emergence of the press as a political force in Latin America. Democratization clearly played an important role, as did the adoption of market-based economic strategies, the spread of television, and the expansion of the journalistic profession (Pérez-Liñán 2007, Waisbord 2000). The wave of political reforms that swept across the region in the 1980s created better conditions for investigative reporting. As the countries of Central America and the Southern Cone began transitioning away from authoritarian rule, press freedom came to be viewed as part of a broader rights-based struggle and tolerance for outright censorship gradually waned. If the kind of brutal censorship that is associated with the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s was not present in countries like Venezuela, civilian governments were quite forceful in their dealings with the press, often employing similar tactics of repression and intimidation. During the three decades of pacted-democracy in Venezuela (1958-1992), press freedoms were regularly sacrificed in the name of national security. Despite laws safeguarding political expression, journalists were frequently intimidated and often jailed for publishing denunciations of political corruption or human rights abuses (Díaz Rangel 1974; Pedroza 1994). Suppression and intimidation of the press peaked under the administration of President Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989) whose government used an array of unsavory techniques to silence journalists (Morris 1989).

Across Latin America, financial coercion was often more effective in containing opposition than outright force. In Venezuela and elsewhere, news organizations were heavily subsidized by government advertising, which made them hesitant to publish

wrongful actions (Schultz 1998; Waisbord 2000; Alves 2005). In the United States this is most frequently referred to as “investigative journalism,” however this moniker presents certain problems. Among other things, it suggests that a method of information gathering is the defining characteristic of this style of reporting. However, journalistic denunciations of wrongdoing may or may not use investigative methods, and in many cases accusations are published without conclusive proof. Protess et al. have pointed out similar shortcomings with the term “investigative journalism.” What I am referring to as “watchdog journalism,” is, in many respects, similar to what Protess et al. call “the journalism of outrage” (Protess, Cook et al. 1991).

78 Chapter 2 critical views for fear of loosing their funding. Even those organizations that managed to free themselves from outright dependence on government advertising were still beholden to the state which controlled broadcast concessions and import subsidies for raw materials like paper and printing equipment.8 Even under conditions of political democracy, the press has been tied via purse strings to bureaucratic authority in Latin America. The adoption of market-based economic strategies in the 1980s had the effect of separating news organizations from their financial dependence on the state. As news outlets, especially newspapers and periodicals, created a measure of financial autonomy watchdog journalism began to flourish.9 In Venezuela during the 1980s, the most powerful instrument of control was the preferential exchange rates (known as RECADI), which granted necessary industries a preferential rate on dollars. When RECADI was abolished in 1989, the government lost a powerful tool that it had used to pressure media owners.10

It was not just newspapers that were responsible for the turn toward watchdog journalism. As television spread across Latin America during the 1980s, there was a veritable mass media boom, which furthered watchdog journalism in two ways. First, television fostered the new style of reporting by expanding the audience for scandal and transforming politics into entertainment. Even in Venezuela, where television was already well established in the metropolitan centers, the industry underwent a period of rapid growth. In 1970 there were 89 television sets per 100,000 inhabitants. By 1990, that figure had reached 160 per 100,000 (Pérez-Liñán 2007; 75).11 This television boom created fierce competition for audiences and advertising dollars. This, in turn, drove

8 Broadcast concessions and import subsidies continue to be powerful tool that the Venezuelan government can use to pressure its opponents in the press. Two glaring examples during the Chávez administration have been the revocation of RCTV’s broadcasting license in 2007 and repeated attempts to block the importation of print materials by the newspaper El Nacional. 9 Rosental Alves provides a particularly compelling argument for how financial vanguard newspapers owed their political autonomy to new economic models that reduced their dependence on advertisers and the state (Alves 1997; Alves 2005). 10 Former press secretaries Roberto Giusti (Fernandez 1993) and Pastor Heydra (Pedroza 1994) were quite forthcoming on this point. Both stated that the second Pérez administration was helpless before the onslaught of journalistic denuncias because they lacked an effective means of applying pressure. 11 During this same span of time, the majority of advertising revenues migrated to television and away from print periodicals. By 1990, the television industry, which had barely broken 30 percent of total advertising revenues two decade prior, claimed more than 70 percent of the market (Pérez-Liñán 2007).

79 The Rise of Press Power many editors and owner to publish political scandals in the hopes of boosting sales. Second, the boom in television journalism created greater demand for content and greater need for trained journalists. It was during this period that journalism begins to take shape as an autonomous profession. Institutionally, this was reflected in the growth of journalism schools12 and civil society groups like the National Association of Journalists (CNP) in 1976. In addition to a sense of solidarity, the professionalization of the field fostered a distinctive identity on the part of journalists that encouraged the investigation and denunciation of wrongdoing.

***

Although the mainstreaming of watchdog journalism in Latin America caught many observers by surprise, this style of reporting was not the spontaneous product of democracy, free-markets, and new technologies, nor should it be interpreted as an example of North American ideals migrating south. Waisbord traces the roots of watchdog journalism to the emergence of an alternative press in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s (2000; 26-33).13 In contrast to the well-pacified mainstream media, the alternative press practiced “a journalism at the margins of the dominant order that opposed ruling political, economic, and social structures” (27). It was “alternative” in that it provided a rare avenue for dissident political positions. One of the earliest and most outstanding practitioners of this style of journalism was the Argentine Rodolfo Walsh (1927-1977), who fused his political sympathies with an investigative style that emphasized evidence over opinion. Unlike his North American contemporaries Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walsh never feigned impartiality. Works like Operation Massacre (1957) and Who Killed Rosendo (1968) were openly sympathetic to leftists causes. However, he was committed to fact-based reporting, which made his denuncias all the more difficult to dismiss (Walsh 1957). In Venezuela, alternative journalism arrived in the late 1960s and early 1970, the most notable example being the magazine

12 The first journalism school in Venezuela was founded in 1947 in Caracas, at the UCV (Universidad Central de Venezuela), followed in the 1960s by programs at LUZ (Universidad de Zulia) and the UCAB (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello). In the nine years between 1982 and 1990 the country’s five largest communications programs in Venezuela graduated 3,815 students (Aguirre 1998:209). 13 In this regard it paralleled rather than parroted the rise of investigative journalism in the United States.

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Reventón founded in 1971, which openly aligned itself with anarchist principles (Botía 2007:94).

Alternative journalism was just one manifestation of a larger political conjuncture that came to be known internationally through the circulation of testimonio (testimonial) literature. There have been numerous debates about the formal and historical parameters of testimonio, which I will not revisit here (Barnet 1969; Beverley 1989; Yúdice 1991). Suffice it to say that during the late 1960s testimonio gained recognition as a distinctive literary genre in which the popular sectors, long silenced, asserted their right to self- representation. George Yúdice has defined testimonial writing as “an authentic narrative, told by a witness who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation (e.g. war, oppression, revolution, etc.).” This is not biography per se because the witness is doing more than describing his or her own life story. He or she is performing as a self- conscious agent of el pueblo who denounces “a situation of exploitation and oppression” (Yúdice, 1991:17). Testimonio is popular culture in that its urgency and authenticity is predicated upon its identification with popular struggles. The ideal protagonist of testimonio is both a representative of the popular sectors and a witness to their suffering. Undoubtedly the most famous example of the genre is I, Rigoberta Menchú (Menchú and Debray 1983). The collaborative product of the young, female, indigenous, Guatemalan activist, Rigoberta Menchú (who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize), and the Venezuelan anthropologist, Elizabeth Burgos Debray, their book-length testimonio won international fame and became a magnet for controversy (Arias 2001).

The power of works like I, Rigoberta Menchú was that they promised to move people who had been marginalized throughout history to the center of national and international politics (Beverley 1989). Testimonio represented the hope for a popular democratic movement in which subaltern populations finally claimed their rightful place as citizens. Per John Beverley’s famous formulation, testimonio is nothing less than the cultural form taken by popular struggles for political representation in the late-twentieth century. Just as the 18th century novel heralded the rise of the European bourgeoisie, testimonio was the literary expression of popular resistance in the Americas.

81 The Rise of Press Power

Scholarly interest in testimonio as an emergent cultural form has focused almost exclusively on film and book-length works, yet the alternative press played an equally important role in the popular political struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Like testimonio the alternative press functioned as a forum for popular resistance in which tropes of witnessing and denunciations of wrongdoing were laden with a palpable sense of political urgency. And like testimonio it provided a medium through which popular political identities became visible as such. From the standpoint of cultural production, testimonio and alternative journalism emerged from the same historical conjuncture, included many of the same figures, and drew on similar representational strategies (Moody 1986; Randall 1991).14

Testimonio helps us understand watchdog journalism as a cultural form whose political stakes are linked to a particular representational logic (Beverley 2004).15 Like testimonio, the conventions of watchdog journalism mark a subtle, but important departure from the ideal of “objectivity” enshrined in North American journalism.16 “Truthfulness” is the dominant ideal that is recognized by Venezuelan audiences and journalists alike.17 While facts are one important element in constructing a truthful account, Latin American journalists do not put their faith in empiricism alone. Truthfulness means recognizing that facts are situated within a social-political context and that journalism, as such, is an explicitly political endeavor. These values are implicit in the practice of watchdog journalism, which channels popular outrage over persistent injustice and the hidden wrongdoings of the powerful. Angel Rama’s “denouncer-

14 The line between literature and journalism is particularly difficult to distinguish in a Latin America given the tradition of the letrado (Rama 1996). Men (and later women) of letters wrote across many genres, so that literary and journalistic careers often overlapped. 15 One of the great disservices done to testimonio was the refusal on the part of some North American critics to recognize these unique representational practices, despite the fact that both testimonio and scholarly analysis was always very explicit on this point (Pratt 2001). 16 As a journalistic ideal, objectivity is a relatively recent invention. It emerged in the wake of World War I, at the very moment that doubts about the perfectibility of democracy and the possibility of unvarnished facts crept into the consciousness of North American journalists. As Michael Schudson brilliantly argues, it is an ideal/ideology that emerges in response to relativism (Schudson 1981). Latin American journalism confronted a similar conundrum, but resolved it in a different fashion. 17 Truthfulness as opposed to objectivity was a recurring theme in my interviews with journalist, editors, and media owners in Caracas.

82 Chapter 2 journalist” cited in the epigraph above speaks truth to power in the name of popular democratic struggles.18

The point is not to elevate one ideal—truthfulness or objectivity—over the other. Rather, it is to insist that different regimes of knowledge (Foucault 1980) produce different outcomes and function according to different logics. Objectivity, as it has come to be understood in the Anglo-American tradition, is tied to ideals of consensus and the public good. These dominant beliefs are encapsulated in Jürgen Habermas’s description of the bourgeoisie public sphere, the hopes and foibles of which are well known (Fraser 1990; Calhoun 1993; Negt and Kluge 1993; Robbins 1993; Habermas 1996). Truthfulness, as it functions in Latin America, is more closely associated with ideals of self-determination and popular sovereignty (i.e. government of the people, by the people, and for the people). It is not the public, but el pueblo, “the people,” that dominates discourse on the body politic. This is not to say that a powerful belief in the public good is absent in Latin America or that the Anglo-American tradition has abandoned the people and popular sovereignty. Nor is it to say that these particular ideological configurations will persist indefinitely.19 Both concepts of the people and the public were crucial to the development of modern republics at the dawn of the nineteenth century and they remain the constitutive poles of democratic representation. However, it is fair to say that in Latin America, the people and popular sovereignty are the ideals that are most often invoked in political discourse, including the discourse of democracy (Martín- Barbero 1993).

*** We must situate watchdog journalism in Venezuela against this historical and ideological backdrop in which “the people” represent the sine qua non of politics. As a

18 For the time being a brief illustration must suffice in place of further elaboration on “objectivity” and “truthfulness” as two regimes of knowledge. In the Anglo-American tradition, news outlets are frequently accused of bias, but they are almost never accused of lying. Indeed, labeling someone a “liar” is almost unthinkable in the North American journalistic tradition. In Venezuela, the charge of bias is superfluous and almost never made because it is assumed from the start. However, it is quite common to call a news outlet, a journalist, or a politician a “liar.” The measuring stick for journalistic integrity in Latin America is truthfulness rather than bias. 19 To wit, the recent resurgence of the “the people” in the U.S. political discourse around two recent popular movements, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

83 The Rise of Press Power style of reporting, watchdog journalism is concerned with mobilizing popular, democratic resistance to the wrongdoings of the powerful. Journalistic denunciations are not intended to foster rational-critical debate on the part of one or many publics. Rather, they are imagined as an articulation of the popular will.20

The euphoria of democratization that swept across Latin America at the end of the twentieth century led some observers to imagine that watchdog journalism presaged a shift towards liberal democracy. Change was, indeed, afoot. However, with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that this new style of reporting did not signal a decisive break with the past or the adoption of liberal norms. Contra the assumption of many Anglo- American scholars, democracy is thinkable outside of a liberal framework. Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini have gone furthest in probing how the media works in a political system that is democratic but not explicitly liberal. Their description of polarized pluralist systems is a good starting point for describing the press in Venezuela (Hallin and Papathanassopoulos 2002; Hallin and Mancini 2004). Like their colleagues in Latin America and Southern Europe, Venezuelan journalists advocate for specific causes. They are tied to such causes by a combination of social, economic, and historical forces. As Hallin and Mancini have observed, the price of advocacy is professional autonomy, a critique that Venezuelan journalists often echo. Still to be explored are the ideals that lead many journalists to embrace their role as advocates despite such misgivings.21 For practitioners of watchdog journalisms in Venezuela, nothing was more democratic than the denunciation of elite wrongdoing. Taking the side of the people against entrenched

20 This appeal to the popular will is not limited to Latin America. In their study of investigative journalists in the United States, Ted Glasser and James Ettema observe, “the pitting of the press against power, particularly the power of the state, reflects a fundamentally populist conception of the press” (Glasser and Ettema 1989:3). In another important study on investigative journalism in the United States, David Protess and colleagues argue that “the journalism of outrage” does not promote social change through popular political mobilizing popular, but rather through elite backroom deals (Protess, Cook et al. 1991). However, the study was situated in a time and place where popular mobilization was never a likely political outcome; it is difficult to imagine a population that was more pacified than the United States circa 1990. This does not mean that popular mobilization was inconceivable. To the contrary, watchdog journalism is effective because it always holds the possibility, be that ever so slight, of mobilizing popular outrage against powerholders. 21 Jesús María Aguirre is responsible for a significant body of scholarship on this subject, most notably his lengthy survey La estructuración de la identidad professional del comunicador social en Venezuela (Aguirre 1998) and El perfil ocupacional de los periodistas de Caracas (Aguirre 1992). The two most commonplace professional identities cited by Aguirre are what he describes as “The Witness Reporter: Hero of the News” and “The Dedicated Militant: Informant of the People” (1998:276-323).

84 Chapter 2 powerholders was a conscious choice on the part of a handful of powerful journalist and one that coincided with the professional obligation to expose the truth. Putting themselves at the service of the popular will, journalists became political protagonists and created the conditions for populist mobilization.

The Delinquent Society

“It was the perception that there was something rotten that only benefitted a few, that there was an insurmountable breach between words and deeds, which converted the mass media into the political vanguard of Venezuela’s twentieth century.”

-Nelson Rivera 2004

Before talk of violent crime became a national obsession, the Venezuelan press was awash in talk of corruption. Amidst the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s when democracy itself seemed on the verge of collapse, the mass media was flooded with denuncias of official malfeasance. For three decades petro-dollars insulated Venezuela from the social and economic strife that plagued other countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. The country’s two-party, pacted democracy rested atop an oil platform and the explicit promise that oil rents were public patrimony. When the wealth dried up and the political pacts between elites began to come unraveled, one question reverberated in the collective consciousness. “Where has the money gone?”22 Pressed to explain the sudden failure of Venezuela’s fortunes, accusations of corruption and ineptitude were leveled at the government, particularly the two main political parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and the Partido Social Cristiano (COPEI). Popular opinion held that the parties were manned by a crew of incompetent liars and thieves who had squandered or stolen the bounty of successive oil booms (Templeton 1995; Pérez-Liñán 2007; Gates 2010; Hawkins 2010). As the promise of national prosperity soured, it was

22¿Donde están los reales? was COPEI’s slogan during the successful 1979 presidential campaign of Luis Herrera Campins. Cited in Coronil 1997:357, Karl 1997:156.

85 The Rise of Press Power replaced with a discourse about a corrupt, delinquent society fueled by greed and rotting from the inside out (Pérez Perdomo 1990; Chitty La Roche 1993; Coronil 1997; Rivera 2004). A crime had been committed against the Venezuelan people, or so the story went, and the press set out to discover who done it.

The press did not create the crisis that engulfed Venezuela, but it certainly channeled popular responses to it. Thanks to extensive media coverage, corruption scandals became the most visible explanation for the country’s declining fortunes. In one neat package, the corruption hypothesis explained why the project of modernity had failed and who was to blame. This is not to say that corruption was a figment of the journalistic imagination. There is evidence that fraudulent dealings were on the rise in Venezuela (Weyland 1998), but it is important to stress that corruption was just one facet of a much larger crisis tied to the perils of Venezuela’s rentier economy (Coronil 1997; Karl 1997; Mommer 2002) and fractious, intra-party struggles (Coppedge 1994; Crisp and Levine 1998; Kornblith 1998; Buxton 2001). Nonetheless, it came to symbolize the enormity of Venezuela’s political and economic failures. Corruption was the master signifier for a whole host of problems, which extended far beyond the misuse of public patrimony. And it was underneath the banner of anti-corruption campaigns that a series of new populist movements became visible for the first time (Hawkins 2010).23

Corruption is a recurring theme in Venezuelan politics; at different moments in the twentieth century it has been the animating force behind popular struggles to remake the state. Accusations of corruption leveled against the ghost of the military dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935) provided the impetus for successive democratic revolution, first in 1945 and then again in 1958 (Coronil 1997, Pedroza 1994). The theme receded from the limelight after the establishment of Venezuela’s two-part, pacted democracy. Although the early democratic administrations (1959-1974) were not immune to charges of corruption, their promise to “sow the oil” by reinvesting petro-dollars for the greater good was accepted in good faith. At the end of this golden era, the specter of corruption

23 Hawkins (2010) argues that the denunciation of corruption is a hallmark of populism. More importantly for my argument, he shows that this was a shared feature in the presidential campaigns of both Rafael Caldera (1993) and Hugo Chávez (1998). According to Hawkins, populism was the common denominator of nearly every political project following the fall of Venezuela’s two-party pacted democracy.

86 Chapter 2 returned with a vengeance. The first administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974-1979) overlapped with a massive oil boom, which flooded the country with foreign currency.24 But by the end of Pérez’s term in office, the dream of using petro-dollars to build a “Grand Venezuela” had soured and it was replaced with talk of oil’s corrupting influence. Evidence suggests that illicit dealings expanded under the administrations of Luis Herrera Campins (1979-1984) and Jaime Lusinchi (1984-1989). By the time Carlos Andrés Pérez took office for the second time (1989-1993) corruption scandals were rampant. The Dictionary of Corruption, a three-volume compendium of dedicated to Venezuelan politics, describes this period as the frenetic culmination of a creeping social decay in which “all the wrath of the gods is unleashed.” During the late 1980s and early 1990s “administrative disorder grows at a vertiginous speed and magnitude and denuncias multiply… as if there is a pool of corruption cases that appear with certain frequency in the collective conscience only to be forgotten all over again, like wayward phantoms searching for the grave” (Capriles Méndez 1993:10). Pérez’s second term culminates with his removal from office thanks to his direct involvement in yet another corruption scandal and the emergence of a new wave of populist candidates campaigning on an anti- corruption platform.

To appreciate the growth of corruption scandals in Venezuela at the end of the twentieth century, compare President Pérez’s first term with his second. During the first administration corruption became a widespread concern, but given the financial prosperity of the period it carried little political weight.25 Pérez himself was the Venezuelan version of the Teflon president, consistently tied to rumors of corruption without ever being convicted. Near the conclusion of his first presidency two notable cases—the assassination of attorney Ramón Carmona (1978) and the purchase of the

24 In Pérez’s first term, the fiscal revenues of the Venezuelan government quadrupled from 7.4 billion to just a hair under 30 billion bolivars per year thanks to the rising price of crude. In an attempt to manage the economy, Pérez centralized control through executive fiat. One of the results was that the political pacts— which had held together Venezuela’s two-party democracy—began to unravel at the very moment that rent- seeking practices became more pronounced (Karl 1997). 25 Both Coronil (1997) and Karl (1997) trace the corruption scandals of the 80s and 90s back to Pérez’s first term.

87 The Rise of Press Power ocean freighter Sierra Nevada (1979)—received extended press coverage.26 These cases were tied to the highest levels of the government, involving the police, the judiciary, the political parties, and the president himself, and they spurred talk of a criminal state and a delinquent society. By the end of Pérez’s first administration, oil wealth had come to be seen as a curse; rather than fulfilling the promises of modernity and democracy, it only brought corruption and social decay. As Fernando Coronil writes, “during the oil boom criminality established its claim as a normal form of sociality. Its ideals were brought out in the open. It heroes left the clandestine world and proudly paraded in public places” (1997:359). This pattern repeated itself under Presidents Herrera and Lusinchi. A handful of major corruption scandals punctuated the close of each presidential term at the very moment that a new round of electoral campaigns geared up. The elites who were denounced for corruption not only survived, they continued to prosper.

Contrasted with his first term, Pérez’s second administration was mired in crisis, controversy, and corruption scandals from the start. The Caracazo (see Chapter 1) cast a long shadow over the entirety of his term in office. Although the Venezuela’s economic situation improved ever so slightly in the ensuing years, the political situation continued to deteriorate as wave upon wave of corruption scandals washed over the country. As the height of the Caracazo, as civilians were being massacred by the hundreds, the newspaper El Nacional published the first article in an extended series about a massive arbitrage scandal around the Regime of Preferential Currency Exchange, RECADI (Beroes 1990). “The Secret Agenda of RECADI” followed what one observed called “the culminating expression of the moral denigration of contemporary Venezuela” (Capriles Méndez 1993:559). It involved the two former presidents, the inner circles of both parties, and Venezuela’s entire import/export sector. Augustín Beroes estimated that well over $11 billion in public funds were missing thanks to RECADI, yet aside from a lone Chinese

26 On the Carmona case, see Fernando Coronil’s remarkable reconstruction in The Magical State (1997: Chapter 8). Carmona’s murder was only exposed thanks to the relentless pursuit of the case by his widow. Eventually, an arrest warrant was issued against Manuel Molina Gásperi, the national Chief of Police. Molina escaped justice by fleeing the country. He would later provide strong evidence that he was only acting on orders from the president and his consort, Celia Matos. The Sierra Nevada case was less gripping, but even more damning because it linked Pérez directly to the embezzlement of public funds for personal use. The freighter, Sierra Nevada, was purchased as a gesture of goodwill towards the Bolivian government at a price several million dollars above its actual value, with the additional funds funneled to the president. Although Pérez was censured by the Congress, he was never indicted.

88 Chapter 2 businessman no one was convicted of wrongdoing. Other major corruption scandals followed in rapid succession. The “Turpial,” “Margold,” and “Van Dam” cases exposed fraudulent dealings within the armed forces. The “Intimate Entourage” linked President Pérez to the trafficking of arms and influence in the state of Tachira via his mistress, Celia Matos. The “Jeeps” and “La Partida Secreta” cases showed how public funds had been subverted to finance the political campaigns of Acción Democrática (Capriles Méndez 1993). Denuncias of corruption even made their way into the fiction of the time, most notably RCTV’s popular telenovela Por Estas Calles (Through These Streets), which depicted a pair of morally bankrupt characters who were openly modeled after former President Jaime Lusinchi and his mistress Blanca Ibáñez. Conservatively, it is has been estimated that during President Pérez’s second term in office, the press revealed one major corruption scandal every three months.27

The spike in corruption scandals at the end of the 1980s reflected a shift in the practices of mainstream news organization in Venezuela. It was not that corruption suddenly proliferated, but that the press began speaking out against it (Pérez Perdomo 1990; Pérez Perdomo 1995). For decades mainstream new outlets were complicit in covering up stories of official misconduct; corruption was a public secret that was widely acknowledged, seldom denounced, and almost never investigated by the mass media.28 However, as the crisis of the Venezuelan state deepened, the mechanism of controls that kept the press in check diminished appreciably (Lugo and Romero 2003). By the end of President Lusinchi’s term in office, “the media had become a sounding board for anyone who wished to make a denuncia” about official corruption (Pedroza 1994:151).

27 Pérez-Liñán’s excellent analysis is nonetheless based on a very conservative estimate, which only includes scandals that were tied directly to the Pérez administration. Many of the most damning scandals, including the RECADI case, are not factored in to his analysis. This is because Pérez-Liñán is primarily concerned with demonstrating that mass mediated corruption scandals are tied to presidential impeachment and political “destabilization.” If this is clearly an important part of the story, Hawkins (2010) and Gates (2010) have both demonstrated that these scandals also paved the way for a series of new political movements. 28 Templeton argues that Venezuelans were very tolerant of behavior usually classified as corruption. For example, a 1991 survey, which asked respondents to rate certain behaviors, showed that the majority of Venezuelans did not consider government officials exchanging favors with businessmen bidding on a contract to be especially bad behavior (Templeton 1995:91).

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Journalists took it upon themselves to battle the great sin of Venezuelan society, the criminality gnawing away at the very soul of the moral order.

The Journalism of Denunciation

“Venezuela needs every citizen to be a denouncer. The denuncia has an ethical foundation and I understand it as a public service. It is a basic institution of democracy”

-José Vicente Rangel29

As Venezuela’s socio-economic crisis deepened, a handful of powerful editors, owners, and journalists began pursuing accusations of corruption with such single- minded determination that commentators heralded the genesis of a new style of journalism. The expression el periodismo de denuncia originated at the close of the 1980s, and by 1990 it was sufficiently well established for the National College of Journalists to hold a four-day forum in Caracas on, “The Journalism of Denunciation as a Social Good” (Gallardo and Hernandez 1993). Early attempts to describe the journalism of denunciation as a style or a genre of journalism focused on its watchdog attributes. One account defined it as “the type of journalism that has as its ends vigilance over governmental institutions” (Gallardo and Hernandez 1993; 116-117). Another concentrated on its emergence in times of crisis as a genre of journalism that “exposes the deterioration and corruption” of powerful organizations (Pedroza 1994; 5-6). Both definitions are more or less in line with the phenomenon that Waisbord calls watchdog journalism. However, the idiom “journalism of denunciation” highlights a practice that Waisbord downplays—the centrality of denuncias.30

What are denuncias? Across Latin America, the term has two connotations depending on the context. Properly speaking, a denuncia is the report filed by a victim in

29 Cited in Gallardo & Hernandez 1993:145. 30 For Waisbord denuncias are associated with what he calls “denuncismo,” a quick and easy style of reporting that substitutes rumors from one or two high-level sources for solid investigation (103).

90 Chapter 2 order to initiate a trial or an investigation. For criminal cases, the denuncia is usually the victim’s testimony that is made to the police. In this context, it operates as the bureaucratic vehicle through which a crime is registered and an investigation initiated. For civil cases, it is the indictment through which one party brings charges against another. In this situation it has the more litigious function of initiating a legal proceeding. In both cases denuncias are official, legal documents. However, denuncias are not limited to the official organs of justice.

The denuncias described in this dissertation are accusations that circumvent the police and the judiciary and go straight to the court of popular opinion. In this sense, a denuncia is the act of publicly bearing witness to injustice or wrongdoing. Such an act can originate from a variety of sources. A denuncia can be made openly in the presence of cameras and tape recorders; it may originate from a concealed source; or it can be based on information that journalist gathered independently (i.e. by the journalist). Similarly, denuncias can take aim at a variety of targets. Often denuncias are accusations aimed against specific persons or institutions. For example, in a corruption case, a whistleblower may provide the names of parties involved and details of the offense that they have committed. However, a denuncia can also be a more general act of bearing witness about societal failures and the sufferings that they cause. Corruption is often denounced broadly without placing blame on specific persons or institutions. What all denuncias have in common is that they are performances that aim to reach the widest possible audience.31 In later chapters, I deal with the formal characteristics of denuncias; here, I focus on how the journalism of denunciation created the conditions of possibility for a series of new populist movements in Venezuela.

***

31 In contemporary Latin America denuncias are generally associated with publicity, this is not true of all denunciations. Under the Soviets and the Nazis, denunciations were passed privately to state officials instead of being published openly, as documented by the edited volume Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (Fitzpatrick and Gellately 1997). The secretive nature of denunciation under totalitarian regimes contrasted markedly with the situation in revolutionary France as described by Colin Lucas in the same volume (Lucas 1997).

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For years, one of the puzzles that confounded scholars of populism was its apparent lack of ideological coherence. Rather than representing a single constituency or cause, populism mobilizes a series of heterogeneous, often contradictory demands (Di Tella 1965; Weffort 1966; Germani 1978). What holds together such a coalition? How does a movement that is at cross-purposes with itself emerge in the first place? Ernesto Laclau has gone furthest in explaining this enigma in his influential writings on populism. According to Laclau populist movements emerge when a series of heterogeneous demands are discursively joined into a “chain of equivalence” (2005a, 2005b). To illustrate this logic, he gives us the following example:

“Think of a large mass of agrarian migrants who settle in the shantytowns on the outskirts of a developing industrial city. Problems of housing arise and the group of people requests some kind of solution from the local authorities. Here we have a demand which is perhaps only a request. If the demand is satisfied, that is the end of the matter; but if it is not, people can start to perceive that their neighbors have other, equally unsatisfied demands—problems with water health, schooling and so on. If the situation remains unchanged for some time, there is an accumulation of unfulfilled demands and an increasing inability for the institutional system to absorb them” (Laclau 2005a:73). Laclau’s example demonstrates how otherwise unrelated demands are linked through their shared opposition to the institutional system. Yet how are demands of this nature carried beyond an immediate context? What are the mechanisms through which this logic of equivalence transforms diffuse pockets of discontent into movements with a wide base of support? This is where the Altusserian concept of “articulation” becomes essential to Laclau’s theory of populism (Althusser and Balibar 1970 [1965]; Althusser 1972; Laclau 1977; Laclau and Mouffe 1985). Articulation can be defined as the discursive process whereby disparate elements are joined into an apparently seamless whole. In this sense it draws on the two senses of the word “articulate,” which means “to link” and “to speak” (Hall and Grossberg 1986). The concept is particularly useful because it allows us to see the contingent, historically situated circumstances that help determine any particular political formation (Gramsci 1971). Articulation is more than simply a social-structural fact. In respect to populist movements, articulation is also the practice through which chains of equivalence are formed (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). My contention is that in Venezuela journalistic denuncias function as an articulating practice

92 Chapter 2 through which demands are transformed into the raw material of national popular movements. To state it somewhat differently, mass mediated denuncias join otherwise disparate demands for political change through appeals to shared discontent; they are the vehicles through which chains of equivalence take shape.

As an articulating practice, denuncias allows us to examine the activities that give birth to “the people,” that all-important subject of populist movements. Like the public (Warner 2005) or the state (Abrams 1988 [1977]; Gupta 1995) the will of the people is never self-evident. Rather it is a performance of collective identity. Populist identities invariably invoke the righteousness of the people against the transgressions of the powerful; while the former is portrayed as the embodiment of good, the latter is treated as the personification of evil. The creation of an external enemy is crucial to the articulation of populist identities, and I describe that process in greater detail in the following chapter. Here, I want to focus on the “linking” and “voicing” effects of denuncias. The journalism of denunciation articulates popular identities through two, simultaneous processes; it links disparate social sectors behind a common cause and it gives voice to the discontents of an otherwise mute entity, the people. Properly speaking these are part of the same process, however for purposes of analysis we can distinguish between a “linking effect” and a “voicing effect.”

The linking effect: Cross-class alliances are one of the hallmarks of populist movements. During the 1980s and 1990s, denuncias of corruption created the terrain upon which populist alliances could form between otherwise unaligned sectors of Venezuelan society. Keep in mind that corruption was not the only grievance that people had during this period. It was not even the principle concern among voters. Opinion polls from the height of the crisis show that unemployment and inflation were the primary issues of the day (Templeton 1995). What such polls elide is the fact that there was no consensus over the necessary steps to improve Venezuela’s economic crisis. Neoliberal adjustments roiled the popular sectors, while the middle classes were silently complicit in such policies. These otherwise disparate sectors had at least one thing in common: shared outrage over corruption and the seeming impunity of powerful elites. The journalistic

93 The Rise of Press Power crusade against corruption created a common cause, which linked these sectors into a powerful political block.

The linking effect of denuncias is evident in the diverse coalition of journalists who came together as political force behind accusations of corruption. It is widely acknowledged that a small group of powerful persons and news outlets were responsible for the sudden proliferation of corruption scandals. Some of the most renowned journalist-denouncers were Rafael Poleo, Marcel Granier, José Vicente Rangel, Alfredo Peña, and Miguel Henrique Otero. Rafael Poleo, the editor/owner of the newspaper El Nuevo País and the magazine Zeta, and Marcel Granier, the owner of Radio Caracas television (RCTV) and host of the show Primero Plano, were founding members of the Roraima group, which promoted doctrines of neoliberalism and privatization in Venezuela. For the Roraima group the country’s crisis was the result of overdependence on an “omnipotent” state and ossified political parties (Granier 1984). It was a strange political twist of fate that aligned these neoliberals with a stalwart socialist like José Vicente Rangel. The popular host of several opinion programs, Rangel and his supporters saw rampant capitalism and free markets were the problem not the solution. Finally, Alfredo Peña and Miguel Henrique Otero could be described as centrists whose political orientation tilted leftwards. Peña was the host of a controversial television show on Venevision and later became the editor of El Nacional, the newspaper founded by Miguel Henrique’s Otero’s illustrious grandfather. Politically, these journalists represented at least three constituencies that had very little in common other than their opposition to the longstanding “partyarchy” of AD and COPEI.

The voicing effect: Populist movements become coherent through claims to represent the unified will of the people. By speaking out against rampant corruption, journalists positioned themselves as the voice of the silent majority. They became the conduit through which popular outrage manifest itself. If the journalism of denunciation was unashamedly partisan, in contrast to previous epochs this partisanship was not tied to any particular party or political faction. Time and again, high profile journalists justified the campaign against corruption by declaring their allegiance to “the people,” “the country,” or “the majority of decent citizens.” A fairly typical example is the editor

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Franklin R. Whaite’s explanation for his newspaper’s dogged pursuit of the RECADI scandal. El Nacional published account after account about the RECADI scandal as part of a “patriotic campaign” in defense of Venezuelan democracy. “Corruption is corroding the foundations of the democratic system,” Whaite wrote. “As a result, the people demand that the guilty be searched out and punished without a political cover-up. The democratic system must be saved. The management of public funds must be saved. The thieves must be thrown out, wherever they are. Or there will be no democracy to defend” (Beroes 1990:xiii-xiv). This same posture is evident in José Vicente Rangel’s defense of denuncias as a fundamentally democratic institution (see below), a position that led one of his fellow journalists to hail him as nothing less than “the sovereign voice of the people” (182).

Through denuncias of corruption, journalists transformed themselves into the people’s champions, a role often reserved for charismatic leaders. Although much of the writing on populism in Venezuela focuses on the person of Hugo Chávez, the private press was actively fulfilling this role long before his rise to prominence.32 News outlets like El Nacional, El Nuevo País, Zeta, and RCTV assumed the position of political vanguard. As the people’s advocates, journalists broke their alliances with the old political parties, established elites, and much of the state bureaucracy. For a time the media rivaled and even surpassed the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary branches as the most influential institution of state power in Venezuela (Pérez-Liñán 2007). Sociologist Tulio Hernandez writes:

“The media began to echo the frustrations of the population becoming more active than ever in the diffusion of denuncias of corruption. The majority of media corporations assumed an open position to all kinds of information, denuncias, or analyses that confronted [the political] leadership, marking the beginning of a battle that pitted the media against the government, the institutions of the state, the political parties, and ultimately the ruling class.” (Hernandez 1995, cited in Botía 2007:306)

32 Overwhelming evidence has demonstrated that populist movements emerge before populist leaders, notwithstanding Kurt Weyland’s attempts to redefine populism as charismatic leadership (Weyland 1996; Weyland 2001). Until recently, the charismatic leader was a peripheral figure in the scholarship on populism. In contemporary U.S. politics, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street both serve as excellent examples of how the emergence of a populist movement is in no way dependant on a populist leader.

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By taking on corruption in the name of the Venezuelan people, the journalism of denunciation augmented the power and prestige of the press. It was through the press that nascent populist movements became visible as such.

“The linking effect” and “the voicing effect” are two aspects of denunciation as an articulating practice, which allow us to see the discursive labor that goes into creating populist identities. Before the people can emerge as the protagonists of popular struggles, they must be invoked. Denuncias provide the performative scaffolding for such invocations. They are a discursive form through which a multitude of demands are transformed into an expression of the popular will. Like all performances, denuncias do not necessarily achieve their desired outcome—they are not always “felicitous” as J. L. Austin would say (Austin 1965). Timing is essential as is the skill of the performer. In conclusion, I want to turn a scandal involving the most skilled denouncer-journalist of his generation. More than any of his colleagues, José Vicente Rangel harnessed the journalism of denunciation to the service of a new popular democratic project.

José Vicente Rangel and “The Dogs of War”

“Venezuelans would prefer to live in a democracy that is dangerous, with the creative risks of debate—which is the risk of the truth—rather than in a democracy that is silent and fearful.”

-José Vicente Rangel33

Noted scholar and journalist Eleazar Díaz Rangel was among the first to recognize the importance of journalistic denuncias in Venezuela in conjunction with corruption scandals.34 In 1988 he published a book-length compilation of news articles, television transcripts, and opinion pieces pertaining to an early corruption scandal, which he titled The Right to the Denuncia: José Vicente Rangel, the Dogs of War, and the

33 Cited in Díaz Rangel 1988:130. 34 Díaz Rangel is quite famous in his own right. Currently the editor of Últimas Noticias, Venezuela’s largest newspaper, Díaz Rangel is the former chair of the UCV’s school of communication, the Secretary General of the National College of Journalists, and an ex-senator for the socialist party MAS.

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Military Secret in Venezuela (Díaz Rangel 1998).35 The “Dogs of War”36 scandal revolved around accusations that high-ranking military officials were negotiating a purchase of arms from a dealer directly linked to the Iran-Contra affair at a price that was more than $200 million dollars over market value. Stretching from January to May of 1988, the scandal was covered extensively by the national news media. The principle protagonists included the President of Venezuela, Jaime Lusinchi, whose term in office was nearing an end, the Minister of Defense, General Eliodoro Guerrero Gómez, the international arms dealer Oscar Martínez González, and the journalist and ex- congressman José Vicente Rangel (who would go on to serve as the Vice President of Venezuela under Chávez from 2002-2007). Over the span of five months, scores of pundits, politicians, former military officials, and government functionaries weighed in on the case. Anyone who was anyone, it seemed, had something to say. Compared to the massive revelations that were made the subsequent years, the Dogs of War case was a relatively minor corruption scandal. Most of the drama transpired over the period of approximately one month. The advantage of such a case is that it encapsulates, in concentrated form, the dynamic of denunciation and allows us to observe how a denuncia is made and what kind of reactions it engenders. In this respect the Dogs of War case was typical of the corruption scandals that came later. However, in another respect, it was quite exceptional. Along with the specific charges, the scandal engendered a heated debate about the value of denuncias and the implications of their use by journalists. As such, it provides acute insights into how the figure of the denouncer-journalist is imagined by both its defenders and its critics.

The Dogs of War scandal first appeared in the press on January 7, 1988. On that date, the newspaper El Mundo published allegations by North American professor and anti-war activist Alex Pulido about a dubious arms deal in the works. Pulido sent the letter along with documentary evidence to several news outlets as well as to the President Jaime Lusinchi. Thus, it came as some surprise when the following day, General Eliodoro Guerrero Gómez, Lusinchi’s Minister of Defense, claimed that the President was

35 Except where otherwise noted, all citations are drawn from this volume. 36 “Dogs of War” or “perros de la guerra,” is a colloquialism that refers to arms dealers.

97 The Rise of Press Power unaware of the letter. The Minister dismissed the allegations of impropriety and affirmed that, although the military was in the process of procuring arms, they were not working with Geomilitech, the party named in Pulido’s denuncia. Shortly thereafter the well- known journalist José Vicente Rangel entered the fray. Rangel presented conclusive evidence that the military had, indeed, been working with Geomilitech and another company International Business Corporation (IBC), both of which were tied to the arms dealer Oscar Martínez González. Moreover, Rangel discovered that the deal of more than half a billion dollars had been overpriced by nearly $200 million. Confronted with concrete evidence, President Lusinchi suspended the deal and expressly forbade future dealings with Oscar Martínez González.

Scarcely three months later the deal was in motion again.

Up to this point, José Vicente Rangel’s denuncias were powerful, but relatively discreet. Although he presented his evidence publicly, Rangel first took his concerns to President Lusinchi. Upon discovering that the military intended to go through with the same arms deal, using the same intermediary, at the same exorbitant cost, and in contradiction with the President’s orders, Rangel again contacted Lusinchi. Unsatisfied with the president’s response, the journalist went public with the information. On April 4, during his television show “Lo de Hoy,” Rangel reviewed the details of the arms deal and made a case for an investigation. The government’s response was quick and unsettling. On April 5, Rangel was detained and questioned by the military police (DIM) for more than five hours. That same afternoon, the office of the president disseminated a press release that claimed that the arms deal was legitimate, that Rangel’s denuncias were false, and that the journalist was questioned by the police because his accusations “call into doubt the seriousness and integrity of our Armed Forces” (13). For his part, the Minister of Defense refused to publicly acknowledge Rangel or his accusations, referring dismissively to him as “that man.” Rangel fought back. After all, the president himself had ordered the deal halted. To deny the validity of the accusations and to accuse Rangel of sowing dissention for pointing out the violation of a presidential order was patently absurd.

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By now, the story was national news and it was followed extensively by every major news outlet. The government and its supporters firmly denied wrongdoing and rejected further investigation on the grounds that it would compromise “military secrets.” The Minister of Defense accused Rangel of plotting to destabilize democracy, claimed that he was an agent provocateur, and made several not-so-veiled threats of reprisal. Yet, it was Rangel who held the upper hand. He produced evidence of potential wrongdoing, evidence that was ratified by the president himself months earlier. Moreover, he was careful not to make wild accusations. Rangel stuck closely to his original story, insisting only that the president’s order should be upheld and the case should be properly investigated. Finally, and most importantly, Rangel’s track record as a journalist and a politician was impeccable.

José Vicente Rangel became the foremost denouncer-journalist of this era thanks to a reputation for integrity built over a long career as an activist, politician, journalists, and lawyer. In his youth Rangel fought against the military junta that ousted Venezuela’s first democratically elected president and was subsequently exiled to Chile. Upon returning a decade later, he served five successive terms in congress. A lifelong leftist, Rangel went on to run for the presidency on two occasions with the Socialist party MAS (1973, 1978) and then a third time with the center-left party MEP (1983). Even more than as a political candidate, Rangel won fame as a journalist. Over the course of career, he was variously employed as columnist, reporters, and radio personality. During the 1960s he served as the editor of two dailies papers, La Razon and Clarín, but he was best known as the host of the televised opinion program José Vicente Today. On at least two previous occasions, he raised the alarm about official wrongdoings and on both occasions Rangel’s denuncias were vindicated.

Rangel’s reputation mattered for several reasons. First, it made the denuncia newsworthy. Thanks to his renown as a journalist and politician, the scandal spawned hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces. Without a journalist like Rangel behind the denuncia, it is unlikely that the story would have been covered by more than a handful of news outlets. Second, Rangel’s reputation gave the denuncia teeth and allowed it to withstand scrutiny. Almost without fail, denuncias of corruption are turned back on the

99 The Rise of Press Power denouncer so that corruption scandals quickly become webs of accusations and counteraccusations. As the primary witness, Rangel’s credibility was essential. Despite the Minister of Defense’s threats and accusations, Rangel received an outpouring of public support. The columnist Sanin called him “the civic, legal, legal and moral conscience of the country.” His denuncias merited serious consideration because “over the course of thirty years of democracy, Rangel has proven—in the Parliament, in the press, in the public tribunals—that he is a serious, responsible man, who deserves the confidences of Venezuelans.” (181) Finally, Rangel’s good name mattered because much more was at stake than an arms deal. The denuncia was an indictment of the highest levels of the Venezuelan government. Moreover, the government’s reaction against the denuncia was seen as an attack on the right to make a denuncia. If someone as reputable as José Vicente Rangel could be threatened with military justice for a denuncia that had all the trappings of sincerity, then no one was safe.

The Dogs of War scandal quickly came to symbolize the crisis that engulfed Venezuela and struggles over corruption, democracy, and the rule of law. Under the Lusinchi administration, talk of corruption was suppressed forcefully. Reflecting on this period, journalists described it as the most repressive administration of the democratic era (Morris 1989). Humorist Aníbal Nazoa37 portrayed this regime of silence in an imagined dialogue between two neighbors who, through a series of grunts, gestures, and oblique references, carry on a conversation about the scandal without ever mentioning anyone or anything by name. “To a foreign reader this back and forth would be somewhat difficult to comprehend, but in Venezuela is perfectly clear and intelligible; any citizen of this country…would realize that they are talking about José Vicente Rangel’s denuncia” (316). For Rangel, denuncias were necessary to break the silence about widespread corruption and restore the rule of law. In numerous interviews and articles he portrayed the fight against corruption as Manichean struggle of good versus evil. “The problem is that in this country the honest people, the decent people, the people with principles are the majority but they are not organized. In contrast the country of the corrupt, of the traffickers, of the speculators is organized and efficient” (276). If the honest, decent

37 Published under his favored pseudonym Matías Carrasco

100 Chapter 2 majority of Venezuelans were being overrun by the corrupt minority, denuncias promised to turn the tide. Through denuncias of corruption “the decent are gaining strength” (276) and Venezuelans could hope to reestablish the principles of “popular sovereignty” and “the rule of law” (331).

Rangel and his supporters saw denuncias as a last line of defense against the criminal deterioration of the country. Time and again they argued that denuncias were both a fundamental democratic right and a means through which citizens could enforce the rule of law. The denuncia represented freedom of expression in the service of the moral and legal order. Addressing himself to the House of Representatives’ Defense Committee, Rangel depicted the right to the denuncia as the dividing line that separated democracy from dictatorship. “If there is no difference between the way that democracy and dictatorship treat denuncias, then there is no reason to fight for the former. Democracy is the rule of law, it is the right to the denuncia” (27). To stifle denuncias was to suppress protest. It was to deny citizens their right to justice. It was to repudiate the very foundations of democracy. Rangel’s position was met by a groundswell of support. In early May of 1988, a petition “backing José Vicente Rangel” was signed by hundreds of prominent intellectuals, journalists, and political luminaries.

“The denuncias of the citizen JOSE VICENTE RANGEL cannot be interpreted as destabilizing because they demand, to the contrary, respect for the legal order and the validity of the rule of law. The direct or indirect threat made by the State towards any citizen because of their denuncias and their legitimate exercise of freedom of expression is a violation of human rights and an arbitrary manifestation that violates the national juridical order. This is unacceptable for those Venezuelans who have made democracy a way of thinking, of living, and of feeling.” (332) Denunciation was an affirmation of democratic principles as opposed to an attempt to undermine them. The denouncer was not one who set out to merely expose corruption, but one who concerned with nothing less than the salvation of Venezuelan democracy.

Reflecting back on the scandal, Rangel credited the success of his denuncia to its truthfulness. The truth was not simply a commitment to honesty or the discovery of hidden secrets or the courage to speak out in the face of injustice. If the truth encompassed all of this, it also meant something more.

101 The Rise of Press Power

In what was to be the final act in the Dogs of War scandal, Rangel addressed a sympathetic audience at a tribute held in his honor. His subject: Bertol Brecht’s essay “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties” (Brecht 1966 [1934]). The German dramatist had a very particular notion of truth as an instrument of popular political struggle. For Brecht, the truth was a matter of performance. Similarly, Rangel explained that his denuncias were successful because of their timing. They coincided with “a moment of truth,” a moment when people were ready for someone to speak truth to power. It was a truth that people already knew. It simply needed to be articulated publicly. 38

Rangel would go on to make many more important denuncias, most notably the case of La Partida Secreta or the Secret Consignment, which culminated in the impeachment of Carlos Andrés Pérez. The future Vice President of Venezuela likened the reception of his most infamous denuncia to the way that the country reacted to the failed coup d’état led by Hugo Chávez on February 4, 1992. “The country didn’t see the coup leaders as a group of extremists but as an expression and representation of the country. The same was true of the press. This created a vast movement on a national and international scale. The 4th of February is the moment that the silence is broken” (Pedroza 1994:158-160).

Conclusion

The truth is belligerent; it strikes out not only against falsehood, but also against the particular people who spread falsehood.

-Bertol Brecht, from “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties”

Just after 9:00 a.m. on February 4, 1992—when it was evident that their military uprising against President Pérez had failed—Lt. Colonel Hugo Chávez made his first nationally televised appearance. Few moments are better remembered than the 90-second televised statement that propelled Chávez to overnight fame. The “por ahora” speech is

38 Glasser & Ettema identify truth as one of the fundamental values of investigative reporters in North America (Ettema and Glasser 1998). Yet, truthfulness as Rangel understands it has different dimensions than the concept of truth as understood by Glasser & Ettema’s subjects. The extent to which investigative journalism as practiced in North America and watchdog journalism as practiced in Latin America share common understanding of “truthfulness” is an empirical question that deserves further study.

102 Chapter 2 so famous that it often overshadows the buildup to this moment. We are left with the image of a charismatic leader who emerges fully formed from popular unrest ready to heroically shoulder responsibility in a country where no one was responsible for anything (Gott 2005). Yet the stage was set long before the failed coup d’état. While Chávez and his fellow officers were secretly plotting revolution, the press was openly questioning the legitimacy of Venezuela’s political establishment. Denuncias of corruption channeled frustrated demands into a wave of anti-institutional sentiment. The journalism of denunciation legitimized opposition to the old system and created the conditions of possibility for the rise of new populist projects. I stress the plurality of populisms, because chavismo was never a foregone conclusion. It was simply one of several possibilities that emerged out of the crisis. After the fall of Pérez the vast majority of political candidates were competing to direct the crescendo of popular outrage (Hawkins 2010).

During his time as prisoner in San Francisco de Yare, Chávez became a folk hero thanks, in part, to extensive media coverage (Cañizález 2010:56-58). His popularity only grew after being pardoned by President Caldera in March of 1994. Chávez’s candidacy for president was strongly supported by certain sectors of the press, most notably the newspaper El Nacional and the television station Venevision. In addition to the owners of these two outlets—Miguel Henrique Otero and Gustavo Cisneros—the ex-military man garnered the support of many high profile pundits and television personalities like Alfredo Peña and (of course) José Vicente Rangel. Otero’s first wife, Carmen Ramia, was appointed Chávez’s first Minister of Information and Peña would go on to be elected as the mayor of Caracas on a pro-Chávez ticket. Both would break with the president soon after, joining a loose political coalition that is known simply as “the opposition.” Rangel, in contrast, has been one of Chávez’s most loyal supporters, serving as vice president from 2002-2007. Since his retirement, he has gone back to journalism as host of his old television show José Vicente Today.

The journalism of denunciation did not disappear after the fall of Pérez or the rise of Chávez; it remained an important, albeit contentious, practice in Venezuela. As the accusations of wrongdoing became a commonplace feature in the mainstream media,

103 The Rise of Press Power there was growing apprehension within the profession that denuncias were being abused. One of the most notable figures to voice concern was none other than Eleazar Díaz Rangel, the author of The Right to the Denuncia (previous section). Díaz Rangel worried that denuncias had “won the media the favor of the populace, but that the media has not assumed its role of disseminating the truth responsibly” (Fernandez 1993:76). Journalists were publishing accusations from all manner of sources with little or no investigation into their veracity. Denuncias were becoming tools of political intrigue the true beneficiaries of which were powerful editors and owner who “have the power to manage the whims of public opinion and pull strings to benefit themselves or their friends” (Fernandez 1993:75). These concerns echo those of his colleagues across Latin America. By decades’ end, journalists had grown decidedly more ambivalent about denuncias. Much of the literature on denunciation in journalism discusses the responsible use of such accusations—how they can best be verified, under what circumstances they should be considered newsworthy, and how they are abused (Waisbord 2000).

Just as journalistic denuncias gave rise to the Chávez phenomenon, the same tactics have helped coalesce the opposition chavismo. Today, Venezuelan is divided between two populist projects, both of which have their origins in the private press. The next chapter turns to consider the populist dynamic that has characterized Venezuelan politics in the Chávez era.

104 Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S BODY: VICTIMHOOD AND THE LOGIC OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION

An imaginary dividing line cuts across Caracas. For nearly a decade, the political antagonism between supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chávez has been the most salient feature of everyday life in Venezuela’s capital. Jobs are won and lost, friendships made and broken, institutions funded and dismantled, laws enforced and overlooked, violence committed and constrained based on where a person is judged to stand vis-à-vis the chavista/opposition divide. Unlike more familiar identities of class, gender, and race with which it overlaps, this imaginary divide is not stamped indelibly on the body. However, caraqueños have become experts at detecting the telltale signs of political allegiance. Often, the signs are obvious. Many people, projects, and institutions self-consciously identify themselves as “chavistas” or “opposition”—good examples being the bright red colors associated with chavismo or the impassioned anti-government rhetoric indicative of the opposition. Other times, the signs must be divined. Those who are not openly aligned with either political tendency find themselves subject to speculation, rumor, and innuendo. Indeed, the work of categorizing people and things into camps is so widespread that it is difficult, if not impossible, to claim to be outside, in-between, or unsympathetic to one side or the other. In contemporary Venezuela, political identity is not simply the outcome of individual decisions, but the coproduction of a larger system of meanings.

This chapter argues that Venezuela’s political polarization reflects the shared logic of populism. It is a testament to the weight of the chavista/opposition divide that commentators and scholars have heretofore ignored the dynamic that fuels the production of these antagonistic political identities. As a result, this divide is glossed as a battle of left vs. right, subaltern vs. elite, authoritarianism vs. liberal democracy, socialism vs. capitalism, etc. If this may be an accurate portrait of how the political struggle appears from the viewpoint of various protagonists, it tends to grant an ontological status to the divide itself. Instead of assuming that these political identities necessarily correspond to any specific ideological position, this essay looks at how the chavista/opposition

105 The Photographer’s Body antagonism is produced and policed. What I hope to demonstrate is that, despite their different political orientations, these antagonistic identities share striking similarities starting at the level of political practice. Specifically, I focus on the way that populist coalitions, in Venezuela and elsewhere, are predicated upon the distinction between friend/foe and how this distinction represented through images of victimhood and suffering.

Populist movements champion the sovereign will of “the people” as a righteous force against the wrongdoings of power. Presidents, political parties, foreign rulers, and entrenched elites have all served as the negative backdrop against which the popular will becomes manifest. Ironically, these external enemies are often more sharply defined than the populist coalitions themselves. This is because the identification of an enemy is crucial to resolving the internal contradictions that suffuse all populist movements (Laclau 1977; Arditi 2005; Panizza 2005; Hawkins 2010). Scholars have long recognized that such movements are not tied to a set of stable political beliefs (Di Tella 1965; Weffort 1966; Germani 1978). Instead, they opportunistically assemble the grievances of disparate social sectors into a bricolage of popular dissent. For this reason, poles of political antagonism are more important to the formation of populist collective identities than any ideological program. In this regard, the chavista/opposition divide does not reflect the breakdown of Venezuelan politics, but rather the ground upon which it is constituted. What these warring factions share is a political discourse that is based on the binary distinction between friend and enemy.

It is with an eye to the discursive production of friends and enemies, victims and victimizers, that I follow the death of photojournalist Jorge Tortoza. Examining the events leading up to Tortoza’s murder and the afterlife of the investigation allows us to glimpse the populist logic that animates contemporary Venezuelan politics. In particular, I concentrate on the way that self-identification with victims provides the idiom for populist mobilization.

I first encountered Tortoza’s story in January 2008 during the early months of my fieldwork with journalists on the Caracas crime beat. For the crime journalists, the case symbolized the turbulent political atmosphere that placed the press at the center of a

106 Chapter 3 fierce political struggle to determine the future of Venezuela. Killed during the failed 2002 coup d’état against President Chávez, Tortoza was adopted as a martyr by both the opposition and chavismo. This was possible because, like most photojournalists, Tortoza was a liminal figure. In his professional capacity as a photojournalist, he was associated with the opposition because he worked for the single most vocal anti-Chávez institution in Venezuela, the private press. Strip away the camera and the badge, however, and Tortoza was likely to be taken for a chavista due to his dark-skin and his working class background. The struggle over his memory—was Tortoza a martyr for the opposition or for chavismo—illustrates both the importance of these political identities and the work that goes into maintaining them.

--The Life and Death of Jorge Tortoza--

Jorge Tortoza was, by all accounts, a quiet man. For the better part of eleven years he covered the Caracas crime beat as a photojournalist for the newspaper Diario 2001. Colleagues remember him as a consummate professional, punctual and meticulously groomed. If the press office of the investigative police opened at 7:00 a.m., Tortoza would be there at 6:30 dressed in his trademark suit and tie, camera at the ready. His punctuality and his style earned him the nickname “el gallo”—“the cock” or “the rooster”—and from the handful of photographs that I have seen, the name fit the man: his square jaw, dark moustache, and small, expressive eyes all seem to radiate a mixture of virility and distance, a countenance more like a police officer than a journalist.

“He was silent, he didn’t talk much,” recalls Fernando Sánchez, one of Tortoza’s closest friends on the crime beat.1 On that point everyone agrees. The phrase that repeats whenever anyone reaches for a description is “muy callado”—“very quiet.” Rarely would he indulge in the pranks or practical jokes that are the norm among most of the photographers who cover the crime beat, preferring to focus on his work. Tortoza was so reserved, in fact, the other journalists knew very little about his personal life outside of a few details. He lived in Catia, a working class neighborhood. He was once married, but

1 Author’s interview, March 13, 2010

107 The Photographer’s Body divorced. He had a young daughter. He enjoyed the occasional beer. He supported President Hugo Chávez although he rarely, if ever, shared his political views. Beyond these scattered details, Tortoza’s personal life was a secret, the man himself something of a cipher. As Simon Clemente, director of photography at Diario 2001, told me, “There was much I never knew about his life, and I did not push him to tell me anything. It wasn’t any of my business.”2

It is no small irony that a man who was so reserved in life would become the center of so much attention upon his death. On April 11, 2002, Tortoza was covering the clashes between opposition marchers and government supporters near the presidential palace when he was shot in the back of the head and did an impossible somersault towards the pavement. Over the following weeks, photos and videos of his death were widely circulated along with conflicting stories about what exactly happened that afternoon. Both sides of the political spectrum claimed Tortoza as a martyr for their respective causes. Editorials in opposition newspapers depicted him as a “defender of press freedom,”3 a man whose commitment to journalism put him in the path of the government and its “savage hordes.”4 In contrast, government supporters, including Tortoza’s own family, claimed him as a chavista hero and the victim of an opposition conspiracy. The controversy made Tortoza the most emblematic victim of the most emblematic event of the Chávez era, what is known as “the events of April,” “the April coup,” “the massacre,” or simply (and most diplomatically) “April 11th.”

The curious case of Jorge Tortoza is tied to the coup d’état that briefly deposed President Hugo Chávez. In total, nineteen people died and scores were wounded on the afternoon of April 11, 2002 amidst violent confrontations in the streets of downtown Caracas.5 Responsibility for the deaths was initially laid at the feet of the national government, and less than twelve hours after the shootings subsided, members of the armed forces escorted President Chávez out of the Miraflores presidential palace. Barely

2 Author’s interview, March 10, 2010 3 Diario 2001. June 27, 2002. “La figura de hoy: Jorge Tortoza” 4 Diario 2001. June 28, 2002. “Homenaje a un mártir” 5 Although the number of dead is generally agreed upon, the number of injuries varies from source to source. Venezuela’s Defensoría del Pueblo puts the number of wounded at 69 (2003); Sandra La Fuente and Carlos Meza estimate that there were more than 100 (2004: 177); Brian Nelson puts the number at over 150 (2009: 6).

108 Chapter 3 halfway through his term in office, it appeared that Hugo Chávez was finished. On April 12, the chairman of the national federation of private business chambers, Pedro Carmona, swore himself in as Venezuela’s acting president on national television, dissolving the constitution, the national assembly, and the presidential cabinet to thunderous applause. That evening most of the high profile members of the old government were in hiding; however a few of the president’s most ardent supporters started a vigil around Miraflores. Despite a concerted media blackout, details of the situation began leaking out and by Saturday afternoon residents of city’s poor barrios had surrounded the palace demanding the return of their president.6 Behind closed doors, the new government was rife with division. The Carmona regime failed to gain the support of key figures within the military and began to come undone almost as soon as it was announced. On April 13, less than 48-hours after he was forcibly removed from office, Hugo Chávez made a miraculous return to power.

It would be hard to overstate the symbolic importance of April 11 to contemporary Venezuelan politics, and accounts of what happened that day bifurcate along political lines. Within chavismo the coup has been enshrined as a mythical moment in which the will of the people triumphed over the machinations of the old regime. Supporters of President Chávez believe that this was a classic coup that involved a conscious conspiracy, which was aided and abetted by the private press (Bartley and Briain 2003; Britto García 2003; Wilpert 2007; Villegas 2010). The telling and re-telling of the coup story reinforces the belief that, in the final instance, the government of Hugo Chávez is supported by popular mandate. In contrast, the Venezuelan opposition is openly skeptical of the coup narrative. A number of accounts suggest, convincingly, that there was not a deliberate strategy in place but rather a chaotic series of events that led to a temporary vacuum of power (La Fuente and Meza 2004; Nelson 2009). These accounts tend to emphasize the size of the popular uprising against the Chávez government and the responsibility of the president and his followers for the initial outburst of violence. Between these two competing versions of the April 11 story there is little neutral ground.

6 Últimas Noticias. April 13, 2002. “Manifestaciones a favor del ex presidente en Caracas”

109 The Photographer’s Body

The vast majority of Venezuelans either subscribe to one version of events or the other, and trying to keep both in view is like suffering a bout of double vision.

As with the story of April 11, there are conflicting accounts of who killed Jorge Tortoza. My purpose is not to get to the root of what happened that day by playing the detective or teasing truth out of rumors. Instead, I am interested in the stories themselves and what becomes visible in their telling. In particular, I am interested in how divergent stories of Tortoza’s death illustrate the work that goes into maintaining the boundary between the chavista and opposition camps.

--The Chavista/Opposition Divide--

Photojournalists like Tortoza are liminal figures in terms of the boundary between antagonistic political identities. They illustrate the fact that, despite its rhetorical force, the dividing line between chavismo and the opposition is in no way self-evident. These two political identities subsume pre-existing racial, gender, and class divisions, which are bound up with deep histories of imperialism, colonialism, and revolutionary struggle in the Americas. If it is common to categorize these divisions in terms of their cardinal directions (e.g. “left” vs. “right” or “global north” versus “global south”), the enactment of political and social identity always exceeds such dichotomies at the very moment that they pronounce them. This is because as loose political coalitions both chavismo and the opposition encompass multiple, conflicting social identities so that each coalition is crisscrossed by its own internal divisions. The boundaries that define these two alliances and that distinguish one from the other are all the more important because they are so porous. Each side is constantly working to undermine their adversary’s coalition. For the opposition, revealing the internal contradictions of chavismo is just as important as papering over the tensions within their own alliance. The same is true of chavismo. The work of classifying politics into these warring camps goes on not despite such ambiguities, but because of them.

To paraphrase Ernesto Laclau, populist movements in Venezuela have no necessary class, racial, or gendered content, yet their claims to represent the true voice of the people are predicated on the performance of such identities. Take chavismo. During

110 Chapter 3 the 1990s, the movement that crystallized around Hugo Chávez valorized “el pueblo” against a corrupt “oligarchy.” In Venezuela, as in much of Latin America, the figure of el pueblo carries strong racial and socio-economic connotations, which chavismo fashioned into a powerful, positive political identity. For chavistas, el pueblo is a masculine force of revolutionary, democratic change. For the opposition, it is a poor, uneducated, racially inferior mob. As Luis Duno-Gottberg has argued, el pueblo is the insurgent threat that always hangs over the city (Duno-Gottberg 2009; Duno-Gottberg 2011). Yet, despite the explicit political equation of chavismo with the popular classes, it is not clear that the movement is disproportionately supported by the urban poor. Both Carlos Lagorio and Noam Lupu have demonstrated that support for President Chávez cuts across socio- economic divisions. (Lagorio 2009; Lupu 2010) This suggests that chavismo does not simply “represent” the discontent of the popular classes, but it produces it as an expression of its own political legitimacy.

A similar performance of socio-economic identity is essential to the opposition. In contrast to chavismo, the opposition is not associated with any single person, but rather with a heterogeneous collection of institutions, parties, and public figures. The opposition first emerged as a political movement shortly after President Chávez came to power, and it gained momentum during the 1999 constitutional referendum. From the beginning, it embraced a range of political positions—neoliberal, social democratic, even dissident Marxist—not to mention divergent networks of patronage. Along with the private press and the Catholic Church, the opposition includes the two parties that ruled Venezuela for nearly thirty years (Acción Democrática and COPEI) along with almost half-a-dozen newer parties (Causa R, Nuevo Tiempo, Podemos, and PPT) many of which were formerly part of President Chávez’s political coalition. Conspicuously absent from this heterogeneous coalition is any form of ideological coherence.

The only thing that holds the opposition together is its strident rejection of chavismo and its claim to speak out on behalf of “respectable citizens.” In many regards this valorization of respectability resembles the paternalistic populism of an earlier era, which imagined a tutelary relationship between enlightened elites and el pueblo (Coronil and Skurski 2006). If government supporters are seen as a multitudinous throng of dark, dangerous, and poor Venezuelans, then the opposition associates itself with an educated

111 The Photographer’s Body elite. However, the presentation of a refined civil society manifests itself in decidedly uncivil assertions of status. No figure exemplifies the contradictions of the opposition quite so well as Maria Alejandra López, a fictitious character from the satirical website El Chiguire Bipolar. A white-skinned, white-haired, upper middle-class grandmother, López is unremarkable except in her hatred of President Chávez and his supporters, which stretches the limits of absurdity. Since September of 2009, she has kept up a running commentary vis-à-vis her Twitter account, which is filled with dreams of coups, revolutions, and the sudden death of the man she calls “the tyrant.” After a late night out on the town, a hung-over López tweeted “Headache and heat, all the fault of the government,” followed by an impassioned curse “The nuns and my parents taught me not to curse but then they never had twitter, so DAMN CHAVEZ!!”7 On the occasion of the President’s 57th birthday López proposed to send him “a cannibal,” “a ticket to Chernobyl,” and “an immense suitcase where he can put all of the shame that he should feel.”8 Such over-the-top performances put the reactionary populism of the opposition in a humorous light. Fueled by anxieties about the urban poor, these performances of outrage mirror the combative discourse of President Chávez—not simply in their animosity, but also in their claim to represent the only true voice of the nation.

Both chavismo and the opposition draw on preexisting socio-economic divisions that provide the idiom of political struggle. This struggle is couched in Manichean terms. Whereas “el pueblo” and respectable “citizens” are the positive, legitimating political identities that aim to recruit the largest possible support base, the figure of the enemy is the negative category, a kind of scapegoat, against which each movement defines itself. There is no opposition without the “abomination” that is Chávez and his supporters. Likewise, without the opposition of “esquálidos,” the chavista movement would lose all coherence. It is the perceived injustice, corruption, and wrongdoing on the part of these enemy others that forms the basis of both movements. This sense of victimhood and outrage is articulated in the language of race, class, and gender. From the perspective of the opposition, rightful authority has been usurped by a gang of poor, dark, and

7 López, Maria Alejandra. June 12, 2011. Twitter, @MariaAleLopez. http://twitter.com/#!/MariaAleLopez. 8 López, Maria Alejandra. July 28, 2011. Twitter, @MariaAleLopez. http://twitter.com/#!/MariaAleLopez.

112 Chapter 3 dangerous thugs; from the perspective of chavismo it has been stolen by the same effete, white elites that have rapaciously oppressed the majority for centuries. Either way you look at it, partisans of chavismo and the opposition see themselves as victims who mobilize the force of popular sovereignty against the abuses of power.

Photojournalists like Jorge Tortoza find themselves precariously perched between these worlds. Their professions link them to the opposition and the elite world of cultural production, yet most beat photographers come from the popular classes and eke out a very modest existence. In the context of April 11, this in-between status became untenable. As battle lines were drawn, cameras took on the aspect of weapons and photographers were transformed into friends or foes.

--The News Coup--

“Whoever killed Tortoza shot him because he was taking photos.” Seated behind the editor’s desk in the spartan offices of Diario 2001, Ricardo Mateus speaks with the authority of someone who was there. On the afternoon of April 11 he was working the crime beat just a few blocks from where Tortoza fell. For veterans like Ricardo, Tortoza’s name brings back memories of that fateful day, memories that kaleidoscope with the unsettling awareness of their own vulnerability. Rather than disappearing into the background of the event that they were covering, journalists found that they were targets of attention on April 11. This was particularly true of the photographers, who stood out because of their equipment. “It was not a stray bullet,” Ricardo emphasizes. “It was aimed at him.”9

Tortoza died during the bloody finale of what was one of the largest political demonstrations in Venezuelan history.10 Despite a light drizzle, hundreds of thousands of anti-Chávez marchers gathered on the morning of April 11 demanding the president’s resignation. The march was scheduled to snake across the affluent eastern districts of

9 Author’s interview, June 2009 10 As with the number of injured on April 11, estimates as to the exact size of the march vary widely. Gregory Wilpert believes that the demonstration drew 300,000 - 500,000 marchers (2007: 12), La Fuente and Meza estimate that it was at least half a million (2004: 64), while Brian Nelson claims that it drew “close to a million” (2009: 7).

113 The Photographer’s Body

Caracas and to culminate in a rally at the steps of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state oil company and the engine of Venezuela’s economy. Around noon, incited by the rally, the marchers swung westward, crossing the invisible boundary that partitions the city down political and socio-economic lines. Although the march permit only extended to the offices of PDVSA, there had been talk that the demonstration would continue all the way to the Miraflores presidential palace, more than eleven kilometers away in the heart of chavista territory. In anticipation, several thousand Chávez supporters had surrounded the palace. There was a general sense that if the two groups met, there would be bloodshed. Sonia Tortoza had said as much to her brother over coffee that morning (Ledezma 2006). Indeed, the march had been in the back of Tortoza’s mind that morning when he chose to wear a photographer’s vest and jeans rather than his traditional suit. The vest gave him more room to store additional lenses and the jeans would make it easier to move quickly in case of trouble.

It was the looming threat of violence that explains why crime reporters like Tortoza were covering a political rally in the first place. Earlier that morning, Tortoza and his colleagues made the trip to the town of San Francisco de Yare, nearly an hour outside the city, to cover the aftermath of a much smaller demonstration, in which a dozen opposition protesters sustained injuries. The trip was long and uneventful. As it turned out, the injuries to protesters were relatively light, and so all of them had been discharged from the hospital. Tortoza and his work partner, the reporter Jenny Oropeza, arrived back in Caracas around the same time that the opposition marchers were streaming toward the presidential palace. After following a false alarm to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), the two journalists split up to cover the march. They would meet again an hour later on the edge of the conflict. Fearing for her safety, Oropeza headed back to the newspaper while Tortoza elected to stay behind.11

One of the last people to see Tortoza alive was his fellow photojournalist Henry Solórzano. The two met near the massive white stairs of El Calvario, just south of Miraflores and drifted a few blocks east to the corner known as La Pedrera on Baralt Avenue. This was one of the main corridors of the conflict, the site where the shootings

11 Personal communication, April 12, 2008.

114 Chapter 3 were the most concentrated. Here the two parted ways. Solórzano remembers glimpsing Tortoza one last time through the smoke and confusion, then moving up another block looking for a better photograph. When he returned a short while later, Tortoza had disappeared. “People were shouting that a photographer had been shot. Seeing the body on the ground, I ran towards him shouting ‘Tortoza! Tortoza!” A few other journalists were around him, including Tortoza’s close friend and fellow photojournalist Fernando Sánchez. It was Sánchez who had the presence of mind to convince one of the metropolitan police officers to use his motorcycle as a makeshift ambulance and transport Tortoza to the Vargas hospital where he died later that night (author’s interview, August 2010).

Journalists who covered the events of April 11 unanimously believe that Tortoza was intentionally singled out. It was not just Tortoza though. Anyone who was carrying a camera or who looked like a journalist was a potential target. This is one of the few points of agreement that different versions of the story share. No fewer than seven journalists were wounded covering the events of April 11; a total of six photographers or cameramen were shot and one reporter was struck in the head with a baseball bat.12 Often added to this tally is an eighth victim, an undercover intelligence officer who was disguised as a photojournalist (Nelson 2009:34). To the list of injuries, there were a multitude of threats and near misses. Simon Clemente from Diario 2001 was threatened with his life just north of Miraflores.13 Alex Delgado with El Nacional remembers bullets whistling past his head in El Calvario.14 Francisco Toro and videographer Megan Folsom were told by a mysterious stranger that they should leave immediately because the camera made them likely victims (Nelson 2009:46-47). Rather than working under the aegis of neutrality and being allowed to fade into the background of events, photojournalists were treated as active participants during the events of April 11. The

12 These included Jonathan Freitas of the newspaper Tal Cual, José Antonio Dávila of the now defunct television channel CMT, Enrique Hernández of news agency Venpres (now AVN), his brother Luis Enrique Hernández of the newspaper Avance, Jorge Recio, a freelance photographer, and Miguel Escalona, a reporter from El Carabobeño (Defensoría del Pueblo 2003). 13 Author’s interview, August 2010 14 Author’s interview, August 2010

115 The Photographer’s Body camera did not hide them or protect them. It made them immediately visible and therefore doubly vulnerable.

Tortoza’s death came as tensions peaked between the private press and the Chávez government. It is not small irony that the private press had become the president’s most visible adversary. Throughout the political crises of the 1980s and the 1990s, the Venezuelan press promoted the popular movement that eventually brought Chávez to power. The history of this turbulent period is well documented, especially the protests and subsequent massacre of thousands in Caracas at the hands of the Venezuelan armed forces (Cendes 1989; López Maya 2003; Coronil and Skurski 2006). What is often overlooked by scholars is the critical role that the press played in channeling popular outrage over crime, corruption, and neoliberal reforms against Venezuela’s two-party system. Journalists are acutely aware of this history. Moreover, the crisis forged an unspoken alliance between the press and the city’s popular sectors. During my interviews and conversations with veteran on the Caracas crime beat, many recalled the solidarity expressed by residents of the city’s poorest neighborhoods during these turbulent times. After Chávez won the presidency in 1999, all of this would change.

Although key sectors of the private press had supported the candidacy of Hugo Chávez, within less than a year all four of the city’s major television stations (RCTV, Venevision, Globovision, and Televen) and all but one of the newspapers (El Universal, El Globo, El Nacional, El Mundo, Diario 2001, and El Nuevo País) had adopted a stridently anti-Chávez editorial line.15 The feud between the president and the private press became very bitter and very public. Chávez lashed out at his adversaries and the “media dictatorship” that was trying to usurp his government and the popular revolution (El Nacional 2001). In turn, the president was branded “a dictator,” “a tyrant,” “an autocrat,” and another Castro in the making.

Accounts of April 11 that are sympathetic to President Chávez—most famously the documentary film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—argue that the Venezuelan media masterminded the coup (e.g. Britto García 2003). Although this perspective tends

15 In Caracas, the only exceptions were the state-owned television channel VTV and the popular newspaper Últimas Noticias, both of which continued to support president Chávez.

116 Chapter 3 to downplay the culpability of the president and his supporters, there is ample evidence that a powerful group of media owners, editors, and opinion makers helped set events in motion. In the months leading up to April 11, news coverage returned time and again to two subjects: the president’s declining popularity and loud rumblings of discontent within the military (Botía 2007:263-70). Press elites fanned rumors of a coup, and in at least one important case these elites actively and intentionally planted them (La Fuente and Meza 2004). The press also played a pivotal role in promoting the march. The time and place of the demonstration was only decided at the last minute (April 9), and it took a Herculean effort on the part of the private television and radio stations to get the word out. Without the massive pro-bono publicity campaign it is unlikely that anyone at all would have showed up on the morning of April 11. In addition to promoting the march, some of the more radical news outlets pushed it towards a confrontation. For example, on the morning of April 11 the headline of El Nacional read, “The final battle will be at Miraflores.”16 It is not simply that this headline used combative imagery it publicizes intentions to violate the marching permit by crossing into chavista territory. When violence broke out, it was immediately interpreted as “a massacre” instigated by the president and his supporters. The best evidence of the massacre was video footage of government supporters firing from the Llaguno overpass. Although they were in a shootout with the Metropolitan Police, it was make it look like they were firing on unarmed opposition marchers. Images and stories like this one gave the ensuing coup d’état a patina of legitimacy. Finally, on April 13, while a group of powerful owners and directors met privately with Pedro Carmona (Villegas 2010), the rest of Caracas was experiencing a news blackout. Journalist-turned-opposition-blogger Francisco Toro recalls searching the television and radio stations in vain for any kind of news. “If the anti-Chávez news media were not reporting, it must mean that the new anti-Chávez government was in trouble. By not covering the news they were, in effect, trying to prop up Carmona” (Nelson 2009:216-17)

Setting aside question of responsibility, there can be no doubt that Venezuela’s mainstream media outlets threw their weight behind efforts to oust Chávez. If the people

16 El Nacional. April 11, 2002. “La batalla final sera en Miraflores”

117 The Photographer’s Body driving these efforts were owners, high-ranking editors, and opinion makers, it was beat journalists like Tortoza who found themselves, literally and metaphorically, caught in the crossfire.

--The Janus-Faced Martyr--

In death, Jorge Tortoza became a political symbol, visible in a way that he had never been in life. Along with numerous obituaries and articles memorializing his career, Tortoza was honored with no fewer than four posthumous awards for journalism, including two national prizes.17 The press office of the investigative police in downtown Caracas was renamed the Jorge Tortoza Press Office.18 A commemorative plaque in his name was placed on the corner of La Pedrera “in honor of those who fell for the country.”19 His name was included on the Journalists Memorial in the Newseum in Washington, D.C.20 Each of these honors presented another opportunity to publish more articles about Tortoza and the circumstances of his death, articles that shrouded tragedy in the idiom of Christian sacrifice.

This sacrificial idiom is nowhere more apparent than in the images of the fallen photojournalist. Three photos of Tortoza, which were widely circulated, correspond to three overlapping aspects of his posthumous identity as victim, hero, and martyr. First, there is the photo taken moments after he was shot. Tortoza is laid out on the pavement his camera still lassoed around his neck and a trickle of blood pooling behind his head. This is Tortoza the victim (figure 1). Second, there is the photo taken by his friend Carlos Ramirez some years earlier, in which the photojournalist is leaping off the roof of a news truck, surrounded by smoke, his camera in hand and his jacket billowing up like a cape. Tortoza the hero (figure 2). The last photograph is the least spectacular, but it is the one that has had the longest lifespan. It is a headshot of the photographer looking sadly

17 El Nacional. June 27, 2002. “Jorge Tortoza recibirá homenaje póstumo”; El Universal. July 4, 2010. “Otorgan Premio Nacional de Periodismo póstumo a Jorge Tortoza” 18 Diario 2001. July 24, 2002. “Inauguran Sala de Prensa” 19 Aporrea. April 11, 2004. http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n15625.html. “En Caracas marcha revolucionaria rinde homenaje a Jorge Tortoza.” 20 Diario 2001. July 2002. “Nombre de Jorge Tortoza sera incluido en el Newseum de Washington”

118 Chapter 3 towards the camera, his white shirt unbuttoned and a cross dangling against the naked skin of his chest. Tortoza the martyr (figure 3).

The opposition immediately appropriated Tortoza’s sacrifice in the service of its cause. With one or two exceptions, the private press cast him as the victim of attacks on journalists that were incited by Chávez himself. Overnight, Tortoza became a symbol for resistance to government aggression, a man who put his own body on the line in pursuit of press freedom. His story merged with the larger narrative about April 11 as a massacre of innocent citizens at the hands of the president and his horde of followers. Prominent journalist Roberto Giusti summed up this view in a speech dedicated to his fallen colleague. “On April 11, Tortoza was turned into a symbol, an object of hatred thanks to the government’s criminal and irresponsible instigations against journalists. Tortoza did not die accidentally; they killed Tortoza for being a reporter, because his camera carried the proof of a massacre of which he ended up a victim.”21 This speech was delivered months after the failed coup. By this time it was widely known that Tortoza had been sympathetic to President Chávez, but this did not stop Giusti from framing the photographer’s death as a selfless act of opposition against the government.

Although chavismo was somewhat slower in appropriating Tortoza’s death, it was even more explicit in its use of the sacrificial idiom. The pro-government version of April 11 likens Chávez’s calamitous fall and his miraculous return to the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ. Within this narrative, Tortoza and other victims of April 11 were adopted as martyrs who sacrificed themselves on behalf of the popular revolution. There were faint hints of this story in the private press. However, clearer evidence of this perspective is buried in Tortoza’s old locker in Diario 2001 in the form of a six-stanza poem, handwritten on a single sheet of white typing paper. Dated April 12, 2002, and titled “Homage to a great Hero,” the poem was written by one Miguelina Campos, who “did not know you…/ but felt a great pain/ when I saw you fall/ bathed in blood, sir.” Campos’s poem echoes the same tropes that we find in Giusti’s speech. What is peculiar, though, is the fifth stanza: “You are, Tortoza, a great Hero/ Of this great Revolution/

21 Diario 2001. June 29, 2002. “Estamos sumidos a una agónica lucha por preservar la libertad de expression y el derecho a la información”

119 The Photographer’s Body

With your death you helped/ To free our Nation/ From many things, Sir.” The phrase “great Revolution” indicates that the poet, in all probability, identified Tortoza with chavismo. Within weeks, this link between Tortoza and chavismo was strengthened thanks to the interventions of his family. Insisting that the fallen photographer had counted himself among the president’s supporters, the Tortoza family denounced the perversion of his death by the very institution that he had served in life. Like Chávez, Tortoza would come to be portrayed as the victim of media manipulation, a man whose legacy was scandalously appropriated against his own wishes.

Figure 1

Figure 2 Figure 3

120 Chapter 3

When the shootings stopped and the sharp pain of suffering was replaced by the pale fame of martyrdom, Tortoza was the one victim claimed by both communities of mourners. To which camp did Tortoza belong? Who could rightfully claim the victim’s suffering, the hero’s daring, the martyr’s sacrifice? This is the question that confronts investigations into the photographer’s death, yet it tends to obscure the underlying political dynamic at work. Rather than forcing us to “choose a side,” these mirror images of Tortoza demonstrate how the legitimacy of both of these “sides” is reproduced through the sanctification of his death.

Through the idiom of sacrifice, the two dominant stories of Tortoza’s death transformed his victimhood into a rationale for popular mobilization against an external enemy. This deployment of sacrifice is consonant with some of the characteristics identified by classical anthropology. Dating back to William Robertson Smith (2002 [1894]), studies of ritual sacrifice have traced a correlation between violence and the formation of collective identities (Girard 1977; Freud 1990 [1913]; Bloch 1991; Frazer 1995 [1922]). Sigmund Freud, René Girard, and Maurice Bloch have all argued that self- identification with the sacrificial victim serves as a medium for group formation. For Freud, the victim of sacrifice was the father or alpha male, who was simultaneously an object of envy and reverence (Freud 1990 [1913]). Similarly, Girard’s scapegoat is a surrogate victim that is chosen from within the community (Girard 1977). Bloch is even more explicit about this self-identification with victims, placing it at the center of his analysis of ritual transformation from prey into hunter (Bloch 1991). Every one of these accounts shows how the assertion of power—by the father, the king, the hunter, the state—derives legitimacy from its identification with the victim. Populist claims to sovereignty mimic a similar pattern.22

22 The difficulty with adapting these theories of sacrifice to populist movements is that they tend to read collective identities as the outcome of ritual violence. However, in the case of April 11, political identity predated the outbreak of political violence. As such, interpreting Tortoza’s death through the lens of religious sacrifice tends to obscure the real historical practices through which the violence was appropriated for specific ends. If Tortoza was not a sacrifice in the traditional sense, it is nonetheless clear that a sacrificial idiom framed the narrative of his murder. In this case the sacrificial idiom is related to populism as an element of Christian political theology that links victimhood to sovereignty.

121 The Photographer’s Body

Self-identification with victims is a recurrent albeit underappreciated feature of populist movements. Time and again, scholars have described how the insurgent force of popular sovereignty grows out of a shared sense of injustice that pits righteous victims against the iniquities of the powerful. It is from this position of victimhood that populist movements assert themselves as the true and legitimate expression of the popular will. As with sacrificial rituals, suffering becomes the grounds upon which a collective identity is established and sovereignty is asserted. Such a dynamic was clearly present in the stories about Jorge Tortoza and the other victims of April 11. It was through their association with the victims of April 11 that both the opposition and chavismo portrayed themselves as the legitimate response to the illegitimate use of force. I do not mean to suggest that the sanctification of these victims was a conscious ruse to justify political action. Nonetheless, the act of mourning served as a powerful public spectacle through which both camps claimed the mantle of popular sovereignty against an external enemy.

In the turmoil that followed the failed coup d’état, the idiom of sacrifice acted as a privileged medium for the performance of popular sovereignty, a performance that simultaneously sanctified the victims and demonized their killers. The investigation into Tortoza’s death was more than merely a quest for justice. It had the potential to become a search for scapegoats against whom popular outrage could be channeled. Through Tortoza, both the opposition and the Chávez government attempted to portray themselves as victims, their opponents as murderers. Each coalition attempted to perform its own version of legitimate power by drawing a distinction between the righteousness of their cause and the wickedness of their political adversaries. One of the casualties of this struggle was the humanity of the victims.

Tortoza’s fellow photojournalists did their best to extricate their friend from this posthumous predicament. Just a few weeks after his death, the National Circle of Graphic Reporters held a march under the banner “Tortoza somos todos”—“we are all Tortoza.” Everyone wore white t-shirts with the slogan framing the mournful photo of the martyr. His mother Rosa was there along with his two-year-old daughter in pigtails and two hundred or so photojournalists. According to the spokesman for the association and the

122 Chapter 3 march, the purpose was to repudiate the politicization of Tortoza’s death, to call for national unity amidst tragedy, and to urge for the speedy resolution of the case.23 No politicians were allowed to join the procession and the document that they presented to the National Assembly asserted their political neutrality. “We do not opine, we do not interpret. We merely collect information and that is the work to which we are dedicated.”24 It was to no avail. Their own newspapers and television stations continued to portray Tortoza as a freedom fighter. In the streets people continued to see the photojournalists as political partisans. And despite their efforts to reach out to Tortoza’s family, the photojournalists found themselves the objects of suspicion.

--The Investigation--

Who killed Jorge Tortoza? Nearly ten years after his death, this remains one of the unsolved mysteries of April 11. Despite numerous public declarations that the case was nearing its conclusion, no one was charged in the shooting. There is, however, no shortage of hypotheses. Over the course of my research, I encountered perhaps a dozen different versions of the story. Most of these belong to what I call the “dominant” political discourse, which reads April 11 down partisan lines. On the surface, these accounts seem to be antithetical. One blames Tortoza’s death on chavista gunmen and sets blame at the feet of the government, while the other describes it as part of an opposition conspiracy that leads back to the private press. Both versions of the story agree that Tortoza’s murder was politically motivated and that his killers are responsible for setting in motion the chain of events that eventually led to the death of nineteen civilians and the ouster of President Chávez. In the dominant political discourse, identifying Tortoza’s killer means assigning blame for what happened that day. However, there are also two accounts of Tortoza’s death that trouble the chavista/opposition divide. I call these “subaltern” accounts because they contradict the dominant framing of April 11 and because they are formulated from a position of socio-economic marginality. One

23 Author’s interview, August 2010 24 El Nacional. April 26, 2002. “Más de 200 reporteros gráficos marcharon por la paz y la unidad”

123 The Photographer’s Body of these subaltern accounts belongs to Tortoza’s brother, Edgar. The other belongs to Tortoza’s fellow photojournalists on the Caracas crime beat. Both refuse to make Tortoza a martyr for chavismo or the opposition. Following the ways in which these stories diverge from the dominant discourse allows us glimpse the dynamic that collapses multiple accounts into a set of opposing narratives about Tortoza’s death and, by extension, about who bears ultimate responsibility for April 11. Before describing these subaltern accounts, it is necessary to provide the briefest sketch of two widely accepted versions of the case.

The first account of Tortoza’s death, generally associated with the opposition, maintains that he was killed by chavista gunmen. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, public scrutiny fell on a group of armed civilians firing from the Llaguno overpass, a bridge three blocks north of where Tortoza fell. These suspicions were fueled by a video of the shooters captured by the television channel Venevision and broadcast repeatedly by the private press.25 However, forensic evidence later would dismiss the hypothesis that the Llaguno gunmen had killed Tortoza. Instead the investigative police (CICPC) determined that the shot came from ground level and that it had been fired from a much closer range. Seven months into the investigation, reports surfaced that the CICPC possessed photographs of the presumed shooter, a man who was mingling with pro-Chávez demonstrators on Baralt Avenue.26 Shortly thereafter, these pictures were leaked to the press showing a wiry man in his late forties or early fifties, wearing blue

25 The footage was deemed so important that in 2002, Venevision reporter Luis Alfonso Fernández was awarded the prestigious King of Spain Prize for broadcast journalism. A great deal of controversy surrounds this footage because it pinned blame for the death of Chávez’s supporters and helped legitimate the president’s ouster. The controversy begins in the editing of the footage, as summed up by two dueling documentaries, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Bartley and Briain 2003) and X-ray of a Lie (Schalk 2004). The former documentary argues that the gunmen were not shooting on peaceful marchers, and that they were actually returning fire with the metropolitan police. Using the same footage that was edited by Venevision, Revolution shows a wide-angle shot of the scene, and the following commentary. “What the TV stations did not show is this camera angle, which clearly shows that the streets below were empty.” X- ray of a Lie argues that the editors of Revolution were themselves guilty of manipulation, editing out the presence of the police truck at the very top of the screen. While some have accepted this as a debunking, this argument caricatures Revolution in much the same way that Revolution caricatures the opposition. What all of these accounts leave out is the possibility of mutual complicity on the part of multiple actors across conflicting sectors. 26 Diario 2001. November 26, 2002. “Photo del asesino del Jorge Tortoza está en poder de los detectivos de la División contra Homicidios”

124 Chapter 3 jeans, a white oxford shirt, and a yellow baseball cap with a blue brim.27 Although the investigative police originally confirmed that the man in the yellow hat was a potential suspect, they were never able to identify him and would later deny the validity of the photos altogether. To this day, most of the crime reporters who are still familiar with the case believe that this mysterious figure is the one responsible for the murder. From their perspective, the inability or refusal to find the man in the yellow hat smacks of a government cover-up on the part of the investigative police.

The second account, generally accepted by Chávez supporters, ties Tortoza’s death to a conspiracy hatched within the military and tacitly supported by the press, the private sector, and the United States government. According to this version of events, Tortoza and several others were gunned down by hidden snipers who were planted by the coup plotters with the intention of creating a violent confrontation.28 The story’s logic is baldly sacrificial: it argues that the opposition manufactured a martyr in order to force the president out of office. It is supported by first-hand experience of the march’s bloody conclusion. Witnesses to the event believed that shots were coming from the upper levels of nearby buildings. In the aftermath of the killings, police searched three of these buildings for hidden gunmen and arrested ten suspects. All of them were eventually released. Although a thicket of rumors surrounds these arrests, the police dismissed what they called “the sniper myth” just a few months into their investigation.29 The story refused to die thanks, in part, to the testimony of CNN correspondent Otto Neustaldt. On April 10, Neustaldt received a phone telling him that there would be a number of deaths during the demonstration after which a group of high-ranking military officials would make a statement. Although the CNN correspondent would later distance himself from these statements, most pro-government accounts of April 11 focus on this story as evidence of a premeditated plot.

27 El Universal. January 7, 2003. “Identificado presunto asesino del fotógrafo Jorge Tortoza” 28 The story clearly invokes the February 1989 massacre of hundreds of civilians in Caracas by the Venezuelan armed forces. This event—commonly referred to as the Caracazo or El Sacudón—marked the beginning of the end of Venezuela’s two-party democracy and a series of failed neoliberal reforms. In his run up to the presidency, Chávez frequently invoked this period as a turning point in his political consciousness and in the consciousness of the el pueblo. For an explanation of the historical and political significance of the Caracazo, see Coronil & Skurski 2006, López-Maya 2002 29 El Nacional. June 11, 2002. “A dos meses de la massacre”

125 The Photographer’s Body

Edgar Tortoza’s Story

We are sitting in a café in downtown Caracas overlooking the National Assembly, old newspaper articles spread out in front of us like evidence. “The whole thing was premeditated,” says Edgar Tortoza. “My brother found out something about the newspaper that he was not supposed to know. He wanted to leave.”30 Edgar speaks rapidly with a strong caraqueño accent, his hands resting atop the blue half-shell of his motorcycle helmet. For nearly ten years, he has pushed for a resolution to his brother’s death, which he believes was masterminded by Israel Márquez, the former director of Tortoza’s own newspaper.31 Despite his government connections—Edgar is president of the government-backed Association of Victims of April 11 (ASOVIC), and he works part time for Celia Flores, the speaker of the National Assembly and one of the most powerful figures in the Chávez government—the case came to a standstill long ago. Edgar and the Tortoza family have few resources at their disposal and he, for one, feels that justice has not been served.

Most of the crime reporters dismiss Edgar’s story as political propaganda, but even they admit that the circumstances surrounding the case are unusual. Hours after Tortoza was killed, the two sons of Israel Márquez along with a companion Carlos Aristimuño, were detained as suspects in the murder.32 All three were carrying concealed weapons (a Walther PPK, a Beretta 9mm, and a Glock 22) and they were in possession of Tortoza’s camera. According to the brothers, they were innocent bystanders who were near the head of the march when Tortoza fell. Recognizing the photographer, they immediately contacted their father and then rescued the camera at his behest. According to the arresting officer’s report, members of the crowd identified the three men as shooters. However, gunshot residue tests seemed to confirm that their weapons had not been fired and so the three were released within twenty-four hours. Nearly four years later, the attorney general’s office re-opened a case against the arresting officer on

30 Author’s interview, August 2010 31 In March 2010, Israel Márquez was murdered outside his home. He was shot seven times while trying to defend himself and his wife with a pistol from what the police claim was a carjacking. 32 One year later, El Nacional published a list of people presumed responsible for more than 20 crimes on April 11 (2003c). In this article, Nelson Marquez is the person connected to the murder of Jorge Tortoza.

126 Chapter 3 charges of tampering with the evidence.33 According to Edgar, the original residue tests were forged and they marked the beginning of a cover-up intended to shield the Márquez family and the newspaper Diario 2001.

Following the twists and turns of Edgar’s story is like falling into a mystery thriller, complete with missing photos, falsified documents, and a ballistics riddle. It involves everyone including the police, the courts, the public prosecutor’s office, and figures inside the Chávez government. At the center is the Márquez family who plotted the murder and then conspired to cover it up as part of a personal vendetta. Although the story seems to merge with the larger narrative about April 11 as a “media coup”, Edgar maintains that his brother was the victim of a private feud and not a political assassination. In this key respect, his story is very much at odds with the official versions of what happened on April 11.34 Rather than associating Tortoza’s death with the coup plot, he believes that the circumstances were merely a diversion that served to hide a common murder. Seen from Edgar’s perspective, unmasking the killer will not unravel the riddle of who is to blame for the violence that day. More striking still, he believes that powerful individuals appointed by the Chávez government were party to the cover-up. Aside from the deceased prosecutor Danilo Anderson (who was investigating Tortoza’s death at the time of his own spectacular assassination), Edgar trusts no one, not even his ostensible allies. According to him powerful “interests” prevented the resolution, interests that implicated actors on both sides of the political divide.

33 El Mundo. September 12, 2006. “Fiscalia imputará a PM por ocultar datos sobre muerte de Tortoza.” Although some have expressed skepticism about the case set in motion by public prosecutor Danilo Anderson, it is important to note that the hypothesis of the Márquez brothers is more than a fringe conspiracy theory. Four years earlier, the highly regarded opposition the newspaper Tal Cual leveled similar charges about a cover up. Tal Cual claimed that the documents were changed, that bullets were hidden, and that the guns of the Márquez brothers were, in fact, fired (June 11, 2002. “Caso Tortoza: No coinciden el parte y el acta procesal”). This accusation was reprinted the following year in El Nacional (April 12, 2003. “Policía Judicial no pudo identificar en 365 días al asesino de Jorge Tortoza”). As recently as 2007, reputable journalists like Vladimir Villegas continued to link Tortoza’s murder to the Márquez family (El Nacional. July 31, 2007. “El crimen de Tortoza o la solidaridad médiatica”). 34 El Nacional. April 13, 2003. “Francotiradores del Ausonia se fugaron del país gracias al acutaciones de la Disip”

127 The Photographer’s Body

The Photographers’ Perspective

Tortoza’s brother and his closest colleagues—his fellow photojournalists—face one another from either side of the chavista/opposition divide. If the former has embraced his political position, the photographers find themselves hailed as members of the opposition because of their association with private press. While the two parties have very different interpretation about what happened that day, there are surprising resonances between Edgar’s story and the one told by the photojournalists. At the outset of my research, I fully expected that the crime photographers would echo the account given by the crime reporters, i.e. that Tortoza was killed by the chavista gunman in the yellow hat. After all, they work with the reporters day in and day out, so it would seem natural for them to reach the same conclusion. Much to my surprise, most of the crime photographers explicitly rejected the chavista gunmen theory. They remain convinced that Tortoza and the other photographers were targeted by snipers. When asked who killed Tortoza, they all shrug their shoulders and say that they do not know, that we will probably never know. However, they are certain that the shots were coming from above, although they refuse to speculate whether they hidden gunmen were working under the auspices of the government or the opposition. From their perspective, that misses the point entirely.

The point, for the photojournalists, is their own vulnerability. Caught between warring factions, they found themselves the targets of animosity of pro-government supporters and the sacrificial victims of the opposition. As one photographer put it, they were “cannon fodder” (Ortiz, Castello et al. 2002). Like Edgar they are suspicious of authorities on both sides of the political spectrum. If most distance themselves from the Chávez government, they entertain no illusions about the benevolence of their own employers. Indeed, labor disputes frequently put them at odds with owners and high- ranking directors. Photojournalists and cameramen in Venezuela are poorly remunerated and rarely recognized despite the dangers of their work. They have developed a strong sense of professional solidarity with one another based on shared work experiences and a common socio-economic background that is different from their employers. They were deeply impacted by Tortoza’s death and they resented the way that the newspaper deflected financial responsibility. They saw, clearly, that they were the ones taking on the

128 Chapter 3 all the risks for a cause in which they had little or no stake and from whose success or failure they had little to gain. I interpret their silence about the identity of Tortoza’s killer as an indictment of powerholders on both sides of the political spectrum and a tacit acknowledgment that danger comes from “above.” Their perspective offers us an alternative way of understanding the political dynamic that created two Tortozas, each a mirror image of the other. ***

Taken together, these divergent accounts of Tortoza’s death provide a glimpse of the tenuous alliances behind the façade of political polarization. The point is not that multiplicity somehow disproves the division of the country into opposing factions. Rather, it demonstrates that polarization is a powerful political dynamic that orders disparate social groups into two, seemingly coherent political blocs. These factions are always provisional and a more complete story of the coup would need to consider the social sectors aligned and in conflict for control of the state, not to mention the material conditions governing these relations. Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this essay. By following the figure of the photojournalist Jorge Tortoza, my aim has been to demonstrates how the chavista/opposition binary is stamped into political consciousness. As it stands, the vast majority of accounts of Tortoza’s death are also arguments about who bears responsibility for the violence on April 11. They are narratives that create a distinction between friends and enemies, which allows no space for third parties. When taken to its logical conclusion, this representational practice of sorting the world into opposing camps creates a kind of split vision. This, in turn, might help us to explain why, despite their commonalities, the Tortoza family and his fellow photojournalists were estranged almost from the start, or why a third narrative—of collusion and shared responsibility between elites on both sides of the political divide—is rarely acknowledged.

--Conclusion: The Photographer’s Body--

The Tortoza case is just one example of the political logic that divides Venezuela into two camps, each a reflection of the other. Just as there is a chavista Tortoza and an opposition Tortoza, nearly every issue of political import in Venezuela appears in split

129 The Photographer’s Body screen. A visitor who turns on the evening news cannot help but notice that the state press and the private press seem to report from two different worlds. It is not simply that these outlets have different standards by which they define newsworthiness, but they have different beliefs about what is factual. Dueling narratives about violent crime, health care, urban infrastructure, the impact of social programs, and the state of the national economy reflect two conflicting attempts at constituting reality.

One of the challenges of an ethnographic approach to contemporary Venezuela is finding a space from which to understand the phenomenon of political polarization without succumbing to it. What I have argued in this chapter is that, starting at the level of collective identity formation, we find important parallels that that link Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution and the reactionary movement against it. Both movements adhere to a populist logic in which they define themselves in the role of victims in opposition to an external enemy. By pointing to this parallel I am not suggesting there is no difference between the two movements. Quite the opposite, it is through the differentiation of friends and foes that chavismo and the opposition constitute themselves as mirror images of one another. If the former associates itself with socialism, the state, and the rule of el pueblo, then the later champions capitalism, privatization, and the leadership of an enlightened elite. However, each movement derives its legitimacy from its claim to represent the sovereign will of the people against the machinations of power.

Photojournalists like Jorge Tortoza are essential to these populist performances of sovereignty. They mediate the distance between the corporeal bodies of citizens and the imagined body politic, between mortal persons and the immortal “people.” The suffering body bridges this divide. If such suffering is indispensable for the functioning of modern sovereignty (Hansen and Stepputat 2005; Hansen and Stepputat 2006), it is the photographer-as-journalist who transforms the suffering body into spectacle. This is not simply a mechanical transformation in which bodies necessarily become fodder for a political machine (although this is one possibility). Rather the spectacle of suffering is a performance through which sovereignty is repeatedly asserted, subverted, and reconfigured. In populism, these spectacles of suffering—of crime, punishment, torture,

130 Chapter 3 disaster, deprivation, and abject poverty—link the performance of political identities to the figure of the victim.

Populist mobilizations are justified by an idiom that internalizes sacrifice and externalizes guilt. It is through this sacrificial idiom that victims are transformed into martyrs and lines of allegiance are drawn. In Tortoza’s case, death made him a candidate for martyrdom for both the opposition and chavismo. This transformation from victim into martyr was incomplete for two reasons: first, it was impossible to resolve his existence in life with a simple political identity upon his death; second, it is still not clear who bears the ultimate responsibility for his murder. However, the unsuccessful attempts to appropriate his suffering allow us to glimpse the manner in which populist movements attempt to manifest sovereignty. It is through victimhood that “the people” can be, momentarily, conjured.

This yearning for an unmediated expression of sovereign power, in which the people become flesh, is a yearning for an impossible union. The experiences of photojournalists attest to fraught practice of suturing diffuse, fragmented bodies into a single body politic. Nowhere is this more evident than in the testimonies of photographers who cover violence. Take the case of Tortoza’s colleague Fernando Sánchez who is still haunted by his memories of April 11. It was not just the death of a close friend that troubled him, but his own divided loyalties in the aftermath of the shooting. Seeing Tortoza’s lifeless body on the ground, Sánchez’s first instinct was to marshal help, to lend comfort, to mourn. Yet, amidst the trauma and tragedy of Tortoza’s suffering, Sánchez was aware of his own predicament. When he returned to the newsroom, he could not go back empty handed. To do so would mean tendering his resignation. Thinking back on the incident he imagines the voice of his old colleague chiding him, “You have to do it. You have to take the shot. If I were in your place, I would do the same.” That disembodied voice provides some solace for the traumatic memory of training his camera lens on the body of his dying friend. He refers to it as an act of desdoblamiento, which literally means splitting or dividing and figuratively refers to an out of body experience. In that moment, Sánchez imagines himself divided between

131 The Photographer’s Body two bodies, trapped between a body in pain, which desperately calls out for his attention, and an imagined body politic that it is his duty to serve.

If populism attempts to unify disparate experiences under a common political banner, ethnography reveals the contingency of these populist articulations (Laclau 2005a). Both chavismo and the opposition are fraught with internal contradictions that the spectacle of suffering effectively conceals. The point is not to condemn populism, but to probe the limits of democratic politics. If popular sovereignty is the positive condition of our political present (Chatterjee 2006), what happens when that sovereign is stripped of its liberal garments? What choices do we face? At the dawn of Thatcherism, Stuart Hall cast the future as a competition between democratic-popular and authoritarian populism (Hall 1980; Hall 1985). Whether or not we accept this as an accurate description of the current conjuncture in Venezuela, Hall’s analysis returns in the form of a question. Is it possible to imagine a popular solidarity that starts with a community of sufferers yet resists the temptation to extract its pound of flesh?

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CHAPTER 4 COMPETITION, COOPERATION, & CONTROL: A DAY ON THE CARACAS CRIME BEAT

It was just after dawn on Saturday and I was having coffee with a former crime reporter. Although it took a bit of coaxing before he agreed to the meeting, the reporter recounted his experiences on the Caracas crime beat with a storyteller’s flair. “There are two rival groups, two gangs,” he explained while drawing a map in the air with his finger. “One is in a café over here and the other one—the smaller group—is in another café down the hall.” The gangs that he was referring to were actually two groups of crime reporters. Animosity between them was so high that it divided the crime beat into two camps making neutral ground hard to find. “You’ve gotta’ see it yourself,” he concluded. “It’s like a mafia thing.”

This chapter examines the dynamics of the Caracas crime beat, concentrating on the routines and relationships that shape news of crime. For this purpose I have chosen to detail one of the more than two hundred days that I spent working on the crime beat. Monday, February 25, 2008, was chosen because the activities of that day allow readers to see crime reporters in three typical situations—working with victims outside the morgue, visiting a crime scene, and attending a press conference. Along with analyzing the peer relationships between crime journalists, this chapter provides an introduction to the daily routines that shape news of crime.

Crime journalism is notoriously competitive and not just in Venezuela. One of the best-known stories of journalistic rivalry is described by Lincoln Steffens the famed nineteenth century muckraker. In his autobiography Steffens describes how he once “made” a crime wave (Steffens 2005 [1931]). It all started thanks to the competition between Steffens, who worked for the New York Tribune, and his colleague Jacob Riis at the New York Evening Post. According to Steffens, the crime wave began when he scooped Riis with a story about a burglary in uptown Manhattan. Riis’s editor demanded to know why the New York Evening Post had gotten the story and not the Tribune. Not to be outdone, Riis assured his editor that this kind of crime story was easy to track down. The next day, Riis scooped Steffens with news of a different burglary. Over the next few

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weeks, the competition between the two papers and their journalists spiraled back and forth. In the process, other reporters and other papers were drawn into the fray. Stories that had previously gone ignored were suddenly front-page news. In just a matter of weeks, the morning papers were reporting a full-blown crime wave. It was not crime that had increased—simply news coverage of crime. As Steffens wryly commented, “It was indeed one of the worst crime waves I ever witnessed” (288).

What the Steffens anecdote illustrates is how the relationship between journalists has an enormous impact on the manner in which crime is reported. Competition is one way that journalists relate to one another, and there are few things that motivate reporters and photographers like the threat of being “scooped.”1

Once upon a time, journalists on the Caracas crime beat were intent on scooping the competition. Journalists would conceal their stories, mislead their competitors, and even dupe their sources. A retired journalist told me that they used to take all of the photos of a homicide victim from the grieving family so that when the rival paper arrived they would have no images to publish. This was, admittedly, extreme behavior; however, during this era it was to be expected.

Over time, beating out other journalists became a much less important facet of crime reporting. Indeed, the dynamic that I witnesses was better described in terms of cooperation rather than competition. Although there was a fierce rivalry between the two aforementioned “gangs” of crime journalists, these same reporters cooperated closely with other members of their groups. These rival groups were actually the outcome of attempts by crime journalists to do away with the dynamic of scoops. Reporters who lived through the earlier period explained to me that cooperation between crime journalists began to emerge sometime in the late 1970s. This practice was well established by the time that Damary Márquez Balza published her study, The Crime Reporter (El reportero de sucesos) in 1983 (Márquez Balza 1983). By this period the crime pages were becoming homogenized; reporters from different papers were

1 It is an odd term, “scoop,” one that is equally odd in the jargon used by Venezuelan journalists, “tubazo.”

134 Chapter 4 publishing the same stories albeit with different emphases.2 This is not to say that competition disappeared from the Caracas crime beat—far from it. Instead, competition began to play a different role in the production of crime news.

The following chapter describes both cooperative and competitive behaviors of crime journalists. This, in turn, provides insight into how crime news is reported and the kinds of crime stories that are published.

Monday, February 25, 2008 7:00 A.M. – Meet “The Power Rangers” Weekday mornings the bright orange booths of Il Subito café in downtown Caracas were filled with half-a-dozen crime reporters drinking coffee, trading gossip, and sharing notes about the spiral of violence that had this city on edge. Just two doors down from the old press offices of the investigative police (CICPC),3 Il Subito looked out over a neighborhood collapsing under the weight of neglect. A small oasis of order, the café’s interior was a relic of an earlier, more prosperous era. Four rows of white plastic tables and bright orange booths were anchored to the floor. Across the back wall was a sign in English that read “Restaurant Pizza,” and underneath it a massive black menu with prices that never changed. From morning until dark, a friendly staff served up sandwiches, baked goods, and small cups of coffee. However, Il Subito’s most noteworthy feature— and what brought the reporters—was the front of the café, which was open to the sidewalk and had a good view up and down the block. Even if the official channels of communication had been shut down, from here the reporters could monitor the comings and goings of the police and, from time to time, chat with their old friends on the force. Thanks to a friendly agreement with the café’s owners, the pair of orange booths closest to the street were usually reserved for the reporters who began trickling in as early as 7:00 a.m.

2 Cooperation and homogenization on the crime beat probably coincided with the rise of press offices among the police. However, this history still needs to be established. 3 This acronym stands for “Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas, Penales y Criminalísticas” or “Corps of Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations.”

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The crime reporters who gathered every morning in Il Subito were predominantly women, and they worked the crime beat as a team despite being employed by competing news outlets. Collectively, they exercised considerable influence on the field of crime journalism in Caracas. For a time they even jokingly referred to themselves as “The Power Rangers,” after the children’s show featuring a team of superheroes dressed in kitsch, multi-colored uniforms.

GG4 was undoubtedly the leader of this crime-writing team. Perhaps the most influential reporter on the beat, GG had been covering crime in Caracas since the 1980s. Taciturn and reserved, it was hard to believe that she got her start in television. As a young correspondent she won the National Journalism Prize for investigative reporting on the so-called “monster of Mamera,” a case that was so infamous in its time that it inspired a movie, a book, and hundreds of articles. Not one to seek the spotlight, GG eventually traded the microphone for the pen. Most of her career was spent at El Nacional where she earned a reputation for Spartan prose and meticulous attention to detail.

GG was the kind of “facts first” reporter who would feel perfectly at home in a U.S. newsroom. Her style of journalism stood in contrast to the more ornate, literary writing that was prevalent in many Venezuelan papers. It was not just GG’s writing but her entire approach to reporting that eschewed overt political commentary and dramatization. She was cautious about drawing conclusions based on circumstantial evidence, demanding of her sources, and wary of publishing anything that was falsifiable. One journalist commented, wryly, that her writing read like an elegantly crafted police blotter. That same journalist was quick to add, however, that over the last quarter century GG had reshaped the crime beat in her own image and changed the face of crime reporting in Caracas.

The influence of GG’s style may have owed more to her dedication as a mentor than to the precision of her prose. She had a hand in training nearly every reporter who

4 In accordance with anthropological norms, I have concealed the names of journalists in this chapter and changed/concealed key pieces of information. This contradicts journalistic best-practices. However, it is the safest way to protect the identities of my sources.

136 Chapter 4 passed through the crime beat over a span of three decades. More than one journalist who was sitting behind an editor’s desk got started working under her watchful eye. Indeed, my own apprenticeship on the beat began with GG. She showed me the rounds, demonstrated how to conduct interviews, explained what facts were significant and what should be kept “off the record,” introduced me to sources, and gave me a general idea of how crime reporting was done in Caracas. With the disappearance of the press office of the investigative police, the guidance of veterans like GG became particularly important for rookie reporters. Young reporters no longer had the opportunity to tour the inside of the morgue or waltz into the police station uninvited. Without some knowledge of policing, teamwork became all the more crucial for these new journalists.

Like most beat journalists, GG had a routine that she liked to follow. Her mornings began at 5:30 a.m. with the early news programs on RCTV or Globovision. This gave her a sense of the stories that other news outlets were covering and what she needed to pay attention to during her rounds. By 7:00 a.m. she was on the phone with her sources. If there was important breaking news she might go directly to a crime scene or a press conference. Otherwise she walked a few blocks from her apartment in the middle- class Candelaria neighborhood to Il Subito café. There she waited for the team to assemble, making more phone calls and staying on the alert for anything newsworthy.

Between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. GG would leave the café and head to the city morgue, riding in the backseat of the unmarked SUV that belongs to El Nacional. Cut off from official contact with the investigative police, the city morgue was the closest thing to a central source of news on crime in Caracas. At the morgue GG and her colleagues interviewed the families and friends of homicide victims, a process which could take upwards of an hour on a busy day. Depending on what they found, GG would decide whether or not to follow a story, visit a crime scene, attend a press conference, or continue waiting at the morgue.

On a good day, GG had all of her stories in hand by 11:30 a.m. before returning to Il Subito with the rest of the team. Back at the café the reporters pooled their notes, checking to make sure that everyone agreed on the key facts (names, ages, places, etc) and shared any important updates. If one reporter received a tip from a source, visited a

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crime scene, or attended a press conference that the others missed, that reporter slowly dictated his or her notes to the team. Most afternoons GG and two other veteran reporters lunched at a nearby restaurant that they had been frequenting for more than a decade.

After lunch, GG would head across town to the offices of El Nacional where she reported to the editor of the crime desk. Based on the number of stories that GG brought back and the amount of space that needed to be filled, the editor would then choose a layout. The remainder of GG’s afternoon was spent at her desk, where she quietly went about the business of writing two, three, sometimes as many as four articles in a day. Like most reporters, she had to work fast to meet the 5:00 p.m. deadline, at which point she was done for the day.

Of course, journalists’ routines were constantly subject to change. Although most Monday mornings GG was seated at her usual spot in the front corner of the café, on this particular day she was pulled away to work on a special story. In her place was TT, the youngest reporter from El Nacional, who was typing rapidly on her Blackberry when I arrived. With her at the table, smoking and chatting over a make-up catalogue, were two other veteran members of the team. AA was the long time crime reporter for Últimas Noticias, and BB was the correspondent for the newspaper El Carobobeño. The three of them all greeted me with a warm shower of “hellos” and BB asks me with mock seriousness, “What should I go with, Robert? The coffee or the caramel base powder?”

Sitting down at the booth I busied myself with the morning papers, handing a copy of Últimas Noticias to AA and El Nacional to TT. The previous day’s big news was the bizarre conclusion to a string of bombings in the city by a group calling itself “Frente Venceremos.”5 GG called me at 7:00 a.m. to inform me that one of the bombers had tripped his own explosive device and met an untimely end outside of the Federated Chambers of Commerce (Fedecameras). Interested to know more about the case, I asked TT if there were any updates.

5 The name references the nationalist slogan of chavismo —“Patria o muerte. ¡Venceremos!” (Fatherland or death. We will be victorious!). This later became “Patria, socialismo, o muerte. ¡Venceremos!” (Fatherland, socialism, or death. We will be victorious!).

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She shrugged, “GG’s working on it.” “Was the bomber really carrying police credentials?” I asked, incredulously. “What do you think?” she said, darkly. “How weird,” was all I could manage to say, not sure what TT was getting at. “It is not weird at all. Chávez has been arming the barrios for years. Frente Venceremos is just a bunch of malandros.”

It was not even eight o’clock and I had already stirred up a political hornet’s nest. I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, but TT just chuckled. “Malandros,” she said decisively. As we were talking EE and CC, two more members of the team, arrived and there were greetings all around. I got up to buy a round of coffees and when I returned the group was making ready to leave for the morgue.

8:30 A.M. – The News Tree

While the Power Rangers gather at Il Subito, the photographers, cameramen, drivers, and all the journalists who were not Power Rangers usually congregated at a nearby street corner that they call la matica. La matica got its name from a small fruit tree that provided a canopy of shade and low hanging branches good for leaning. Like the café it had a good view of the old investigative police building and the surrounding area. It was not a particularly attractive location—it bordered an abandoned strip of dirt that on Sundays served as a soccer field and it sat catty-corner to four massive dumpsters whose contents were usually overflowing and strewn along the sidewalk. But it was a convenient place to park.

The photographers, cameramen, and drivers who worked the crime beat were all men, most of them in their fifties and sixties, and la matica had a boys’ club atmosphere. Between assignments they passed the time with practical jokes, sports talk, salsa music, and admiring “compliments” directed at unaccompanied women. These daily sessions started around 6:00 a.m. Since the majority of these men lived in the populous neighborhoods outside the city center, that meant leaving the house long before dawn and waiting patiently for the reporters to arrive. Every now and then they rushed off to early morning assignments—a body in the street, an accident on the highway, a shootout with the police. However, between bursts of activity they spent long stretches of the day watching and waiting.

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Early on, I wondered about this gendered division of labor. Why were so many crime reporters women? Why were all of the crime photographers men? The answers that I received from editors and directors were telling. Women made good crime reporters, they reasoned, because they were better equipped to create rapport with the victims of violence. They were more adept at drawing out testimonies and soliciting denuncias. However, the same gendered politics that made them suitable for crime reporting also marked them as potentially vulnerable when venturing into the poor barrios or covering tense protests and demonstrations. My first interview in Caracas was with a section editor who expressed no small concern for the safety of two young women in his care. One of the tacit assumptions was that working class men were better equipped for the dangers associated with the crime beat, particularly the risks associated with taking photos and being visibly marked as a journalist in neighborhoods that were strongholds of support for President Chávez. So while the women worked to create rapport with the victims of violence, the photographers doubled as scouts and guardians tasked with protecting the vulnerable female body.

Once upon a time crime reporting was an exclusively male domain, however the profile of the ideal crime reporter changed with the exigencies of the Caracas crime beat. The masculinist image of crime-reporter-as-detective was predicated on the close association between journalists and the police. Under ordinary circumstances, the police and the judiciary are the best sources of information for crime reporters (Hall, Critcher et al. 1978; Fishman 1988; Schlesinger and Tumber 1994). In Caracas, however, the official channels of communication between the police and the journalists were shut down in 2003, with the closing of the press offices of the investigative police. Although the veteran reporters still had unofficial police sources, they became increasingly reliant on the testimonies of victims of violence. As their sources changed, the crime reporter began to be associated with a different figure, that of the victim. Women reporters were charged with channeling victimhood in their reporting. The gendered division of labor on the crime beat had everything to do with the growing importance of victims’ testimonies and the emphasis on denunciation (see Chapter 5).

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The best place to gather such testimonies, the place that became a surrogate press office for the crime journalists, was the city morgue in Bello Monte. Most mornings the journalists make their way to the morgue, where the families and friends of homicide victims waited to claim the bodies of their loved ones. There were other stops during the day, including crime scenes, press conferences, confidential interviews, and demonstrations against urban violence. However, these were always sporadic events, which were neither centralized nor predictable. In contrast, the morgue and the grieving families that congregated outside its doors were a tragic constant of life and death in Caracas.

This morning the Power Rangers were running late and la matica was almost empty. When we arrived just two men were standing under the tree, their cameras hanging loosely around their necks. One of them, a photographer with cropped grey hair and a light blue guayabera, shouted playfully, “Look! The party animals finally rolled out of bed!” TT smiled and BB yelled back with feigned indignation, “Ay, DD!”

DD was one of the most senior photographers on the crime beat. He had worked for El Nacional since 1977 when he got his start in the newspaper’s dark room. Slender and graceful, DD played the Puck to GG’s Oberon—he was an impish prankster, fond of loud jokes, parties, and the occasional drink. None of this got in the way of his skill as a beat photographer, however. DD was quick with the camera and constantly looking for a distinctive shot, one that escaped the other photographers. GG trusted him completely, as did TT. Indeed, one of the secrets to his longevity on the beat may have been his comfortable working relationship with GG and the other crime reporters at El Nacional.

The occupational hierarchy that sets reporters above photographers and cameramen was at times a source of tension on the crime beat. This hierarchy was reflected in the pay scale. Reporters were often paid twenty, thirty, even forty percent more than photographers. It was reflected in terms of “cultural capital.” Reporters were generally accorded greater respect within the journalistic profession. Finally, and most crucially, it was reflected in the working relationship between reporters and photographers. While they were together, the reporters called the shots. On more than one

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occasion I heard reporters refer to their colleagues as “my photographer” or “my driver” despite the fact that these men were often thirty years their senior.

DD, like many of his colleagues, called to himself a “graphic reporter” rather than a photographer. This was a conscious attempt to legitimize his labor, to draw out its informative content, and to set it on an equal plane with the written word. Many of the self-identified graphic reporters on the crime beat had achieved some degree of professional parity thanks to their long tenure on the beat and their status within the profession. Along with DD, men like SS and LL had established themselves as respected journalists in their own right.

Although DD did not call the shots, he was taken seriously as a fellow journalist. The front seat was always reserved for him just in case he saw a photo opportunity and on days when the news truck was crowded it was hard not to envy him. Since there were only two cars, six of us crammed into the El Nacional vehicle. It was a tight fit, but no one complained. For freelancers and journalists from small newspapers, transportation was one advantage of teamwork (see also Pedelty 1995). Although the television channels and the big Caracas papers provided their reporters with cars and drivers, news outlets with fewer resources expected journalists to find their own means of transportation. If not for the Power Rangers these reporters would have had difficulty doing their jobs.

The “No-Names”

By the time our team departed, the rival faction had already arrived at the morgue and set to work. The tension between these two groups meant that they went to great lengths to avoid one another. Members of the rival group never enter Il Subito. When the Power Rangers arrived at la matica or the morgue, their rivals often retreated to their cars. If the two groups encountered one another on the beat, they acted like complete strangers; there were no greetings or even looks of mutual recognition. Communication was completely cut off, and the only thing that they seemed to have coordinated was a schedule that allowed both groups to work independently.

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The rivalry had the air of a family feud, one that was irreconcilable and yet determinate of something fundamental. A handful of reporters bridged the factions. However, for most journalists on the beat the rule was that you were with one group or the other—anthropologists included. This arrangement went without saying. It was not part of the orientation given to rookie reporters, nor was it casual gossip to be batted about. Even though several journalists had told me the details of the situation, it was not until the very end of my tenure on the beat that the picture came into focus.

The rival group was made up of reporters who all had between five and eight years of experience on the crime beat—they were too old to be considered rookies and too young to be veterans. Their ranks were thin. There were, at most, five reporters who belong to this out-group. Among the Power Rangers they were sometimes referred to as “the no-name brands.”6 While they are aware of this label, they did not feel the need to rebrand themselves. Their lack of interest in a group name was indicative of one of the central differences between the two factions. In contrast to the Power Rangers, the No- Names functioned less as team and more as a federation of outcasts, people who had been turned upon by the pack.

The Caracas crime beat exhibited some of the same characteristics of “pack journalism” that Timothy Crouse describes in The Boys on the Bus, his classic work about media coverage of the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign (Crouse 1972). As Crouse explains, the journalists who followed the presidential candidates, “all fed off the same pool report, the same daily handout, the same speech by the candidate; the whole pack was isolated in the same mobile village. After a while, they began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories” (8). While crime reporters in Caracas did not have the luxury of official reports, they shared the same sources, followed the same figures, traveled to the same press conferences, and—more often than not—covered the same stories. Rather than trying to disguise the collective nature of beat reporting, the Power Rangers decided to take advantage of it.

6 The no-names were sometimes called the tapas amarillas-- literally “yellow tops” or “yellow caps.” In Venezuela, this moniker refers to a generic brand of consumer of household cleaning goods. In the United States the equivalent would be “no-name brand,” and hence my translation.

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There were a number of good reasons for working as a team. It helped to minimize the number of times grieving families had to be interviewed by the press. Instead of conducting eight separate interviews, teamwork allowed reporters to conduct one. It also provided greater security for journalists who were working on potentially dangerous assignments. As threats and attacks on the press increased, traveling in a group provided some protection to journalists who were venturing into the barrios or covering a political demonstration. Finally, and most importantly, pooling their labor and resources reduced the workload of the reporters and increases their information-gathering abilities. The Power Rangers argued that this kind of teamwork actually raised the all-around level of crime reporting and the accuracy of the information that they disseminated.

For young reporters trying to establish themselves in the profession, however, the pack could become a hindrance. It moved slowly, claimed all the best stories and breaking news, and put the toughest tasks on the shoulders of the newest reporters. Breaking with the pack, however, had consequences. No one knew this so well as JJ, probably the most controversial figure on the crime beat and the closest thing that there was to a leader among the No-Names. Very fast and very capable, JJ was an unapologetic outsider. Before she was hired by one of the major papers in October 2003, she had never read the crime pages in her life. Aside from internships and assignments for weekly papers, this was her first real job in journalism. She had no contacts and little context for reporting on crime. Nonetheless, she was asked to start working the beat on just her second day on the job.

“I arrived early and was introduced to the photographer, SS, and the driver, NN. Then I met GG who has always been the leader of the group. GG was very kind to me at this early stage, in fact I consider myself responsible for the whole problem. GG and the others took me in, they explained to me a little about how it works. I think that there had been a shootout that day and we all went to the shootout…and so began the whole dynamic. You give me information; those who have sources call them. It is a big cartel. I was very new, this was the dynamic, and I stuck to it for several months. I remember that there was a day when there were some disturbances and we showed up at them and GG says to me, ‘Okay, girl, go with the photographer and bring us the information.’ The only one who moved was me. That day I said to myself, ‘What is this? Am I going to be their shadow?’”

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It was not long before JJ came to a realization about working with the group. “If I want to be someone, I cannot keep following this cartel. As luck would have it at that moment I was doing a lot with the theme of prisons and I had a good vibe with the people from the Venezuelan Prison Observatory and they helped me a lot. By beginner’s luck I managed to put out three pieces [that none of the other had] and GG hit back at me hard because I put them out first and she had nothing. They crucified me. From this day GG made my life a living hell. Of course, instead of talking with her or with the group … I went and threw myself off this cliff. I never asked forgiveness for the great sin that I committed of putting out three things without sharing them and from this day GG stopped talking to me.” For JJ “being someone,” meant breaking with the pack. Her ambition drew more than just silent treatment from her colleagues. The other reporters did everything that they could to cut her off from their sources and to prevent her from knowing what stories they planned to cover. An isolated reporter is in a dangerous position, particularly when the competition is working together. Nothing displeases and editor more than missing a big story that all the other newspapers are reporting.

While JJ was concerned with making a name for herself as a journalist, for GG and the other Power Rangers this was about the potentially destructive dynamic of competition. It was not so much about the danger that reporters would revert to scooping each other senseless, like in the old days. Rather, GG believed that the dynamic of competition bred careless journalism. “The important thing is not that you get it first, but that you get as close as you can to the truth, to the original version, to what happened.”

Feuds between factions predated the Power Rangers and the No-Names. Veteran journalists told me stories about older rivalries between teams of reporters that were every bit as acrimonious. RR, who got his start on the crime beat in the late 1950s, told me a story that suggested that with new forms of collegiality and teamwork there also emerged new forms of competition and control. According to RR, a few of the journalists decided to start pooling information about the important stories of the day because “we realized that scooping another newspaper benefitted neither the reporter nor the sales of the paper.” The test of this system was a new reporter who had just started on the crime beat and was completely clueless about where to begin. RR and the other reporters sat him down, gave him some pointers, and then tipped him off about the day’s story. Rather

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than repaying the favor, the new journalist turned around and intentionally scooped them a few days later. As punishment, the rookie never got another tip and was eventually run off the beat—a hard lesson indeed.

9:00 A.M. – The Morgue in Bello Monte

The No-Names were nowhere in sight when our small caravan pulled up in front of the morgue in Bello Monte. Ever since access to the investigative police was cut off, the city morgue served as a kind of surrogate press office for one simple reason: sooner or later every homicide in Caracas passed through its doors. Housed in the sagging remains of the old Pampero Social Club, the morgue sat up in the hills of Bello Monte, just southeast of the city’s center. A low, rectangular building divided into two wings, the morgue was visually non-descript. All that could be seen from the street were two floors of windows opaque with stains and a covered carport with a sign that read “National Coordinator for Forensic Sciences.” Everything else was hidden behind tropical vegetation. The only thing that gave away the building’s purpose was an overpoweringly thick and sickly sweet smell, which filled the air like a miasma. On this particular day it was especially bad. Stepping out of the car, I saw TT pass her hand in front of her nose, warding off the initial shock. From the front seat, DD mischievously waved a yellow tin of tiger balm at me. The photographers sometimes applied a dab of it to their upper lips to counteract the smell, although in my experience this remedy was as uncomfortable as the affliction. I grinned back at him and hopped out of the car trying not to hold up traffic on this narrow road.

The morgue was not originally designed for forensic police work, which was evident from its location. Although there were a few office buildings in the neighborhood, Bello Monte was almost exclusively a residential enclave, and a well-to- do one at that. The nearest metro stop was over a mile away. Getting to the morgue without a car meant catching a private bus or taking a taxi. Other than a few newspaper kiosks, there was nowhere to eat, rest, or pass the time; and since there was no waiting room inside the morgue, families and friend clustered around the front of the building. Those who could bear the smell sat in the fixed green waiting chairs that lined the front

146 Chapter 4 patio. The journalists preferred to hang back a short distance from the main entrance, not just on account of the smell but in order to survey the scene.

That Monday the morgue was packed. The small carport was even more cramped than usual and the narrow street that ran in front of the morgue was lined with cars on either side. The patio was filled to capacity, and clusters of people spilt out onto the low, stone walls fronting the building. Across the road, the newsstand was doing a steady business selling drinks and snacks, as were his two competitors who had set up shop on either side with coolers and coffee thermoses. One of them was loudly singing out his menu to whoever will listen: “Arepas-Pastelitos-Jugo-Sandwiches-Café!”

Scattered among the crowd were nearly two-dozen journalists from most of the major news outlets in Caracas. We spotted a group of photographers in the shade of the newsstand, digital SLR cameras slung loosely around their necks, leaning against the high retaining wall that held back the steep hillside. DD popped out of the front seat with camera in hand and headed over to the group with me in tow. The fraternity greets us warmly by our nicknames. “Hey, Bocanegro, we thought you were lost,” one of them chuckles before turning to greet me with a wide-eyed smile. “Oh, it is pollo crudo!” Such names are teasing, affectionate and often tinged with racial humor. Dark-skinned DD is sometimes referred to simply as “el negro,” and after a couple weeks on the beat I was baptized “raw chicken” in reference to my uncooked coloring, although for a brief period after a trip to the beach I became “fried chicken.”

The friendly banter continues as DD pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket. “So what have we got today?” he asked one of the other photographers who was fidgeting with his camera. Without looking up the photographer replied softly, “A guy that disappeared last week and a double from Filas de Mariches. The double is over there by the front entrance.” Then to me he said, “Stand still,” and fired off half a dozen shots of a cluster of people using my body to conceal the telephoto lens.

Across the street the reporters stationed themselves near the mouth of the carport. They quietly surveyed the scene all the while avoiding the rival group of reporters who were just down the block. Picking out potential stories takes a discriminating eye and it

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was the reporters, not the photographers or cameramen, who were responsible for reading the telltale signs of victimhood. On a day like this one, when the morgue had nearly one hundred visitors, it took a keen observer to distinguish who was here and for what purpose. The clues are subtle, but after a few years on the beat, most of the reporters could pick out the relatives of homicide victims with remarkable accuracy.

Class was the first and most important marker that reporters registered. Experienced crime reporters often said that they could distinguish the families of homicide victims based on what the people were wearing. “If they look disheveled, like they do not care about their appearances, like they just rushed out the door, then they are probably here because of a murder.” Appearances indicated much more than proximate circumstances, however. In Venezuela, a country that is renowned for producing beauty queens, appearances are everything.7 Along with skin complexion, a quick glance at a person’s clothing, hairstyle, makeup, cell phone(s), and accessories was almost always sufficient to make a judgment about class position and more. These judgments were then refined during the interviewing process.8

If identifying the families of victims took a matter of seconds, getting them to talk could be much more challenging. Today, EE and OO had the delicate task of initiating contact. Notepad and Blackberry at their sides, I watched as the pair drifted toward two women seated near the front entrance of the morgue. One of the women, in her early twenties, was wearing a long black ponytail and white pendant earrings, which gave her a schoolgirl air. The second woman was much older, with blocky glasses and a dome of curly black hair framing a weathered countenance. EE took the lead, addressing the elder woman in a respectful tone. “Excuse us. Are you relatives of someone killed in an act of violence?” The grandmotherly woman glanced over at the younger one who nodded, “Yes, my brother.” EE murmured his condolences and continues.

“Where did it happen?” “In Filas de Mariche,” she said, a grieved look on her face.

7 See Ochoa 2006 8 The next chapter, “Witness, Testimony, Denuncia” looks more closely at interviewing and the way that reporters judge whether a victim was a healthy, wholesome person (“sano”) or a possible delinquent (“malandro”).

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“You were with him?” EE asked, gently easing the girl toward an interview. “No I was at home. He was there with friends.” The girl’s voice was filled with emotion but her response was positive and engaged. The reporters took this as a good sign. Raising her Blackberry, OO inquired, “When was this?” EE also had his notebook in hand and was writing rapidly.

Within a matter of minutes a small crowd of reporters gathered around the two women. The story that began to emerge was horrible even by their standards—a party brutally interrupted by a gang that entered uninvited, turned off the lights, yelled “Surprise,” and opened fire on everyone inside. According to the sister’s testimony, the metropolitan police refused to enter the zone for lack of reinforcements. The older woman, who turned out to be a member of the local communal council, talked about the outbreak of violence in the neighborhood and the absence of the police. While the reporters were busy asking questions and scribbling notes, the photographers were stalking the edges of the circle looking for a good shot, sometimes jostling one another or gently pushing the reporters aside. After the main details of the story were established, the reporters waved the television cameramen over. Their attention fell on the victim’s sister who for a few minutes became the focal point of nearly a dozen cameras. I counted eighteen reporters, photographers, and cameramen around her. The scrum was so dense that her neighbor had to duck her head awkwardly to avoid being suffocated by microphones. Eventually the spectacle peaked, the cameramen and photographers got their shots and the reporters found their quotes. As the journalists began slowly drifting away, I overheard one comment, “This is a good one.”

Outside the spectacle of a media scrum, reporters were engaged in other forms of information gathering while they were at the morgue, most conspicuously calls to and from sources. No moment was too sacred to field a call from an important contact or follow up a lead on another possible story. It was not uncommon for reporters to interrupt an interview with these kinds of calls or to isolate themselves from the group in order to have a private conversation.

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In contrast, the reporters were quite discreet about conducting the weekly body count. Most newspapers kept a running tally of the number of violent deaths9 that passed through the morgue each day. The figure that received special attention was the weekend total,10 which usually appeared in the Tuesday papers. Gathering these numbers took hard work, good connections, and cooperation between journalists. These numbers had taken on a special importance, thanks to claims by the new Minister of Interior and Justice to have halved homicide rates during his short time in office. The previous weekend total was 32. This Monday, the number was 29.

The reporters reviewed the weekend body count with one another in a low whisper, making sure that no spies from the rival group were within earshot. Although I was privy to the daily figures I was explicitly warned not to share them with the rival gang. Perhaps the only moments that the rivalry was spelled out for me was another Monday morning when one of the reporters pulled me aside and told me, “Do not give these numbers to those JJ, even if she asks you for them. Just say that you don’t know.” She seemed to be as concerned about protecting me as she was about keeping the information from the No-Names.

Outside the city morgue in Bello Monte

9 According to the Ministry of Interior and Justice, “violent deaths” include homicides, traffic accidents, and people who died from undetermined causes. However, the vast majority of violent deaths that pass through the city morgue are homicides. 10 Weekends are defined as the 72-hour period that stretches from Friday morning to Monday morning.

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9:45 A.M. – The Bloodhound’s Call

The Power Rangers were still going over their notes when a sudden flurry of activity captured their attention. All of the television crews were rushing to their trucks and in a matter of seconds RCTV, Televen, Globovision, and Canal-i had cleared out of the morgue. TT and AA were immediately on their Blackberries trying to figure out what just happened, when EE received a call. He reported that there was a shootout in the barrio Pinto Salinas involving the investigative police. “XX is there,” he added. The reporters quickly weighed the information. BB and EE elected to stay behind at the morgue, while the others dashed to their cars.

The mere mention of XX meant that most of the journalists were duty bound to follow this story. XX was the senior crime reporter for El Universal and the one journalist whose renown equaled or exceeded GG’s. He had been reporting on crime in Caracas for some twenty years. Unlike most of the other journalists, crime was the only beat that XX had ever worked. Indeed, it was the only beat he ever wanted to work. As a student of journalism at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), he realized that while politics, economics, culture, and even sports were all coveted assignments, crime had a bad reputation, and the quality of crime reporting suffered as a consequence. He set out to change this.

XX’s dedication to the crime beat earned him the reputation of being “a bloodhound.” Completely bald, with light brown skin and perpetually squinted blue eyes, he carried himself with an air of tragic aloofness like he just stepped out of a 1950s film noir. Chain-smoking and struggles with the bottle completed the image. Along with his journalism degree, XX trained with the investigative police and owned a master’s degree in criminology. He was comfortable at a crime scene and on close familiar terms with many of the officers in the CICPC. Among crime reporters he was revered for his knowledge of forensics and his willingness to follow a case wherever it led. The bloodhound routinely went to places that most of the other reporters were afraid to set foot, like prisons, hospital morgues, and the barrios. Predictably, the bloodhound worked alone.

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Thanks to his professional stature, XX was one of a handful of crime reporters— mostly men—who stood outside the factional struggles of the crime beat. While his work was undoubtedly affected by the internal rivalries, he had the freedom to move between camps without fear of retribution. While he may not have possessed the broad “agenda setting” capacity of the Power Rangers, editors paid attention to what he published. If XX had a story and all the television stations had that same story, then the Power Rangers were more or less obligated to cover the story, too.

10:15 A.M.– Barrio Pinto Salinas (Official Sources, Part 1)

The barrio of Pinto Salinas is located near the city center, in the shadow of the Avila mountain range that forms Caracas’ northern boundary. At the time, the neighborhood had a bad reputation for violence thanks to stories circulating about “Los Capriceros,” a gang named after one of the streets in this neighborhood. Driving into the sector DD took the lead, leaning out the front window, asking for directions, and looking for the scene of the shootout. He and the driver were both from 23 de Enero, one of the most famous barrios in Caracas, and they were visibly more at ease in this environment than the reporters. Whenever the team from El Nacional headed into the city’s poor, populous neighborhoods, DD played the local guide shielding his charges. It was a role to which he had grown accustomed.

Thanks to DD’s efforts we found the right street without much trouble. The caravan parked under a gnarled tree whose roots buckled the asphalt. Our destination was a five-story tenement block that rose up above rows of red brick shacks. To get there we passed through a narrow opening in a chain link fence and across an empty parking lot to the back of the building, before circling around to the front entrance. A crowd of maybe thirty people was gathered near the stairwell beside a convenience store fortified with thick iron bars. We spotted a couple of reporters inside the building and followed them up to the third floor.

The hard, concrete stairs of the building were slippery and congested with journalists. As we rounded the corner to the third floor landing, a woman on the second floor emerged with a bucket of water that she was using to rinse blood out of the hallway.

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The reporters were bunched together against the far wall of the third floor. One of the No-Names talked quietly with an officer wearing a bulletproof vest, while the cameramen and photographers were focused on the closed door of one of the apartments.

Mixed in with the journalists were about half-a-dozen heavily armed agents from the investigative police (CICPC). Despite the closing of the press offices, there were still close ties between crime reporters and CICPC agents responsible for investigating every homicide in Venezuela. For veteran reporters their careers were intertwined with the careers of the CICPC brass, whom they knew from a lifetime covering the beat. Before the era of political polarization, reporters were privy to all manners of off-the-record information. In turn, they fed CICPC leads from their own investigations. Back then, many of the reporters and agents could be found eating or drinking together downtown. In fact, the relationship between crime journalists and the CICPC was so close, that some journalists earned the reputation of being “half cop, half reporter” (Márquez 1983).

Given the political climate and the conflicting political allegiances of both the press and the police, this relationship had cooled considerably. The last two directors of the agency, Marcos Chávez and Wilmer Flores Trosel, both vowed to make the police loyal to the Chávez administration. As a result, officials who were otherwise sympathetic to the crime reporters were not keen on being seen with them in public. Still, the press had its uses and from time to time the CICPC would feed reporters basic information in return for positive news coverage. Given the avalanche of bad news and mounting pressure to show reductions in violent crime, the CICPC was eager to publicize any kind of success—gangs dismantled, arms decommissioned, hostages rescued, and drugs seized. So if the cozy relationship between the press and the investigative police was no more, there was still a good deal of give and take, both on and off the record.

However this morning’s gathering was unusual. Generally, encounters between reporters and the CICPC took place in the police stations or over the phone. While there were always three or four officers from the CICPC at the scene of a crime for purposes of forensic analysis, the men in this hallway were not here as part of the post-mortem. When I asked what was going on, one of the journalists told me that this was a potentially big story about Los Capriceros. It was not the shootout that interested the reporters, but

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rather the search being conducted behind closed doors. Los Capriceros gained infamy for filming a string of seemingly senseless murders and posting them online. There was reason to believe that the recordings could be inside this very apartment.

As the group was milling about one of the neighbors pushed her way through the journalists, hand in front of her face. Before the reporters even registered her presence she said angrily and to no one in particular, “No you cannot interview me.” Then she disappeared into her apartment. The woman one flight down was more willing to talk with the reporters, but on the condition that they did not take her photo or publish anything that she said. She chatted with them briefly, bucket in hand, then disappeared again.

After about ten minutes of waiting the official version of the story emerged wearing a navy blue suit and a dark tie. Captain Alfredo Montero explained that his officers had been following members of the gang and that Leinad Oswaldo Blanco was shot resisting arrest. Surrounded by microphones and cameras, he calmly fielded the reporters’ questions. No, he was not here during the shoot out. Yes, they had reason to suspect that tapes of the murders might be inside. No, the subject did not die inside the apartment but rather in route to the hospital. The camera lights were bright in this dim hallway and the captain was in control.

After the cameras went off, the reporters hung about the hall a little longer speaking with the captain and the other officers. He seemed to be on particularly good terms with the No-Names, and I heard one of them compliment him on his suit. They continued back and forth for a few minutes, alternately flirtatious and serious. As the police started to trickle out of the building we followed them. Months earlier, on my first trip into the barrios with the crime reporters, GG explained, “When the police go so do we.”

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11:00 A.M. – Meet the Minister (Official Sources, Part 2)

Although the press conference with the new Minister of Interior and Justice (MIJ), Ramón Rodríguez Chacín was scheduled for 11:00 a.m., the Power Rangers were in no particular hurry to get there. “This is politics, not crime,” said one in a defiant tone. “I’m not going.” The rest of the reporters were undecided on the issue. For many news outlets, press conferences with the MIJ bordered a grey zone. On one hand, the Ministry was in charge of all things having to do with crime and policing, including the investigative police (CICPC) and the metropolitan police (PM). On the other hand, ministers were, first and foremost, political appointees of the president. Ultimately, the decision about whether a crime reporter or a politics reporter would cover the press conference was up to individual editors. Although it was clear that no one was eager to go, about half of the group grudgingly made their way to the designated location.

We arrived in Plaza Venezuela to find it decked out for the affair.11 Two large white tents billowed gently in the breeze. The first tent was enclosed on three sides by white canvas walls. Inside was a small lectern flanked by two large television screens, three standing microphones, and a wall of posters displaying crime rates for Caracas and Venezuela. The space was set up so that television cameras could capture both the speaker and these wall-sized charts and graphs. Off to the side was a table filled with coffee and pastries. The second tent was taken up with two aisles of white plastic chairs. There were, by my count, one hundred and eighty seats set out for journalists and ministry staff. Three walls of potted palms marked the outer boundary of the space and created a sense of intimacy.

Official press conferences were one of the only situations in which the crime journalists came into contact with their peers from the state press. While we were waiting for the minister to arrive, I spoke with a cameraman from Venezuela Television (VTV), the oldest and most influential of the state-television channels. There were also journalists from two newly created state television stations, Vive TV and TVes, as well as

11 Located at the heart of Caracas, Plaza Venezuela is a glorified traffic circle which has undergone countless renovations over the years. At the time of this press conference, it was little more than a large expanse of grass.

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representatives from ABN (the state press agency) and RNV (a state-owned radio station). These journalists mingled and overlapped with half-a-dozen press officers from the MIJ dressed in matching red jackets and badges. However there was minimal interaction between these representatives of the state press and the crime journalists. They formed two cliques. Although a few members of each clique made a concerted effort to greet friends and acquaintances on the other side of the political divide, the separation was unmistakable.

For almost an hour, the two cliques of journalists milled about the tents chatting, checking their Blackberries, making phone calls, examining the posters, and munching on pastries. It was a lively scene. Between the private press, the state press, and a handful of representatives from community media outlets, there were almost eighty journalists on hand, representing more than three-dozen outlets across the print and broadcast spectrum.

Around noon the minister roared into the plaza atop a black Yamaha motorcycle accompanied by four other bikers. Dressed in black from helmet to boots, he appeared on the scene like a rider out of some post-apocalyptic fantasy. Images of Mad Max sprung to mind. However, when the black helmet came off it was not Mel Gibson underneath but a short, aging bureaucrat with protruding ears and thinning hair. A former naval officer and an intelligence specialist, Rodríguez Chacín served two terms at the helm of the MIJ, once in 2002 and then again in 2008. A loyal supporter of the president, he helped lead the second of two unsuccessful coup d’états against President Carlos Andrés Pérez back in 1992.

Rodríguez Chacín’s second stint as the Minister of Interior and Justice had gotten off to a rocky start. One month into his term, he announced that his new “Secure Caracas Plan” had reduced homicide rates in the city by more than sixty percent. The Secure Caracas Plan was initiated right after the Christmas holidays, which is always the worst time of the year for violent crime. Homicide rates regularly doubled during this period. Celebrating a 60% decrease in homicides since Christmas as evidence of the success of an anti-crime program was a bogus claim, and the press attacked him for it. As one reporter told me, it was like claiming that declining consumer sales after Christmas was

156 Chapter 4 evidence of a recession. Even a staff member close to the minister acknowledged, privately, that this had been a tactical error.

Taking the podium, Rodríguez Chacín reluctantly admitted that his earlier claims were erroneous, but he still insisted that the Secure Caracas Plan was producing results. The success of the program was the main theme of this press conference. “During the first eight weeks of 2008,” the minister began, “we have cut the average weekly homicide rate in Caracas by more than 40%.” In 2007 there were an average of 52 homicides per week in Caracas. During the first weeks of 2008, that figure had fallen to an average of 31 homicides.

The minister’s remarks stretched for just over half an hour. Near the midway point, I looked up and realize that I was the only one taking notes. Most of the reporters were looking on dully, with glazed eyes. This attitude only changed near the end of the press conference when Rodríguez Chacín turned his attention to the recent spate of bombings by the group calling itself Frente Venceremos. At this point, everyone started writing furiously. According to the minister, the man who died in the explosion early Sunday morning was one Hector Serrano. Although he was carrying police credentials, Serrano was not an officer for the Metropolitan Police but rather an official informant. Rodríguez Chacín described the group who carried out the bombings as “terrorists” and “anarchists” possibly linked to a militant factions of the opposition known as Bandera Roja. He was careful never to use the name Frente Venceremos, despite the fact that this was the name that appeared on leaflets associated with the bombings.

After Rodríguez Chacín concluded his remarks, the ministry staff led a carefully staged question-and-answer session. The only questions permitted were those vetted ahead of time. A total of eight reporters took turns approaching the microphones, including reporters from the four private news networks: Televen, Globovision, Venevision, and RCTV. The vast majority of the questions concerned the bombings and Frente Venceremos. One reporter asked if all police informants carried credentials. Another asked about alleged ties between Héctor Serrano—who lived in 23 de Enero— and the armed civil defense groups, Tupamaro, known to operate out of this area. A third wanted to know how the police ascertained that all four bombings were connected. The

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minister seemed relieved to talk about something tangible like an ongoing investigation. He answered all of the questions crisply, confidently.

As the question-and-answer session wrapped up, the television crews began hurrying back to their respective studios. The Power Rangers headed back to their vehicles. On a normal day, they would all meet back at Il Subito café in Parque Carabobo. Thanks to the press conference, though, they were running behind schedule. Consequently, most of the reporters and photographers made their way back to their respective newsrooms to file their stories.

1:00 P. M. – Competition, Cooperation, and Control When I returned to the café, just a few members of the group were present. One of the journalists was missing notes about the shootout in barrio Pinto Salinas between the police and the alleged members of Los Capriceros. Another reporter had missed the press conference with the minister and needed a quick overview of what happened. Everyone knew the drill. The reporters took turns dictating from their notes while the rest of the group scribbled down the details.

Sharing notes was not limited to the Power Rangers; it was a common practice among most reporters on the Caracas crime beat. Nearly everyone helped out colleagues with the expectation that the favor will be returned. What separated the Power Rangers from the rest of the journalists was the way that they synchronized their reporting. Not only did they share notes, but they also worked to establish an official version of the story. In the case of crime stories, that included everything from determining key details like the time and place of the crime, the names and ages of the victims, potential motives for the crime, important witnesses, and key quotes. It also involved deciding which sources were reliable, which details were too sensitive to publish, and which stories took precedence. What made their collaboration especially powerful was that the Power Rangers represented perhaps half-a-dozen different news outlets. By synchronizing their work, the group had an agenda-setting power that even editors had to respect.

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There are those who see this kind of journalism as an anathema. It homogenizes news coverage. It discourages investigation. It produces complacent reporters and predictable stories. Many of the crime journalists privately criticized the dynamic of the crime beat. As one reporter commented, “The presence of [a pack] of journalists means the absence of news.” Similarly, editors were critical of the cozy relationship between reporters from competing outlets. They encouraged their journalists to distance themselves from this kind of reporting, albeit with mixed results. After all, the Power Rangers were the ones who did all of the on-the-job training, and most journalists who worked on the crime beat were beholden to them in one way or another.

Cooperation on the crime beat served an important function. Beat journalists were underpaid and overworked. Most of them had little chance of professional advancement. Although they viewed their job as a vocation, most of the veterans rightfully insisted that their labor was abused by their editors and by media owners. It was not just their time but also their ideals that were often compromised. By working together, they created a community of professionals who were powerful in their own right.

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CHAPTER 5 THE VICTIM’S VOICE: DENUNCIATION AND THE POLITICS OF VIOLENCE

It was hardly 9:00 a.m. but the cramped patch of asphalt fronting the Caracas city morgue was already the scene for the first impromptu press conference of the day. A dozen or so cameras and crime reporters surrounded the father of a sixteen-year-old boy who was murdered in broad daylight for a cheap, one-cylinder motorcycle. Voice quavering, the man defiantly named the gang responsible for his son’s death and accused the police of complicity. “The western district police are working with the gangs that killed my son. They have records. They know who they are. So why aren’t they doing anything?” Such an accusation, commonly referred to as a denuncia, could be extremely dangerous especially for the vulnerable populations who live in zones that were most afflicted by urban violence. Yet propelled by his own sense of outrage, the grieving father poured out a litany of accusations until a reporter pushed a microphone under his chin and asked, “And as a parent, how do you feel? No doubt you had already seen other cases in the morgue, but this time it touches you personally.”

Encounters like this were a daily occurrence on the Caracas crime beat. One of the best windows for viewing the practices of crime journalists—and the larger relationship between the press and politics in Venezuela—was through their use of denuncias. The most common denuncias used by crime journalists were those that came directly from the mouths of the victims of violence. Such accusations were emotionally charged and pointed at figures of authority like the police, the judicial system, or elected officials. Crime journalists routinely used denuncias to link individual tragedies to larger arguments about political negligence, institutional breakdown, and police corruption. In the process, denuncias shaped the discourse on crime and security in Caracas.

Denunciation is absolutely essential to understanding how the politics of violence in Venezuela formed from the ground up in the name of victims. In this chapter, I argue that journalistic denuncias functioned as an articulatory practice, which shaped the discourse on urban violence through references to overlapping demands. “Articulatory

161 The Victim’s Voice practice” is a term that I have borrowed from Erensto Laclau and by it I mean to highlight the way that denuncias simultaneously gave voice to specific complaints and linked these complaints one to another (See Chapter 2: Laclau 2005a; Laclau 2005b). As Laclau has explained, such practices are absolutely essential to the formation of popular movements. The articulation of heterogeneous demands into “chains of equivalences” is what allows these movements to become visible as such (Laclau 2005a:67-128). What has gone unmentioned, however, is the crucial role that the press plays in this process. Journalists do more than simply describe popular movements. Often, they help constitute them. The relationship between the so-called “Tea Party” movement and Fox News provides a convenient illustration: the former came to attention as a national phenomenon thanks in no small part to the militancy of the later. In Venezuela, a similar logic was at work in journalistic denuncias about crime. News coverage routinely merged demonstrations against urban violence with political opposition to Hugo Chávez, creating the semblance of a full-blown popular uprising.

In what follows, I describe the journalistic practices surrounding denuncias, explaining the ways that crime reporters gathered, selected, and represented them. Manifest in these practices were performances of ethical and political commitments through which the journalists positioned themselves, their subjects, and their audiences. It is tempting to imagine crime journalists as intermediaries who bridge the testimonies of victims and the mass audience of crime stories. The problem with this approach is that it takes for granted the role of reporters and photographers as go-betweens rather than recognizing that the work which goes into mass mediation includes the performance of this in-between status. Turning towards “the performative” reveals crime journalism as a fluid, dynamic field of relationships in which ethical and political positions are neither fixed nor clearly defined (Austin 1965; Derrida 1977; Butler 1997). Viewing the ethics and politics of crime journalism through a performative lens was in keeping with the radical contingency of Venezuelan politics. Its precarious balance of alliances and hostilities was precisely what made the voicing of denuncias so significant.

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Denunciation gives us an alternative model for thinking about the relationship between journalism and democracy. The ascendancy of liberalism1 in the late twentieth century coincided with the broad acceptance of “mediation” as the dominant metaphor of communication. The liberal ethics of mediation—epitomized by Jürgen Habermas— coalesce around the negotiation of differences. In contrast, “performatives” embody a popular democratic ethos that is based on forging alliances against a common adversary. Focusing on performatives allows us to think about an entire chain of communicative actions and the work that goes into articulating disparate social sectors around a shared political project. Rather than a dialectical model, performatives better resemble rhizomes, networks, or assemblages. As I hope to demonstrate, the key to denuncias is the performative dynamic of repetition and difference. Each denuncia—be it spoken, written, or broadcast—repeats tropes drawn from those that come before it. For the performance to be “successful” it must simultaneously mimic other denuncias and break with them in order to emphasize its own importance. Without subtly distinguishing itself from other performances, a denuncia is liable to fall on deaf ears. Following the performativity of crime reporting allows us to see the ethics and politics of journalists in a whole new light.

Let me return for a moment to the grief stricken father standing in front of the morgue, surrounded by cameras and microphones, that nightmarish question hanging in the air: “As a parent, how do you feel?”

“I will tell you the same thing that I said to the other journalist. What I said to her was that I always used to watch her show “The Informer.” I watched her narrate these same kinds of cases in this same morgue, never thinking that one day she would interview me. This is what I cannot get over. It is like a dream that you cannot believe. You see in the news that in Iraq they killed twenty people with a bomb, but here [in Venezuela] they kill a hundred every week. How is a country supposed to function like this? … If the police and the government know who the gangs are, why don’t they confront them? They know that [a particular gang] have been operating in our zone for more than ten years. The whole world knows it, but they keep killing without fear. If they had killed the son of some high official, the police would have taken over. Those of us who have no connections have to be

1 Although most definitions of liberalism share a few central characteristics including political rights, property guarantees, and above all the assertion of individual freedoms, it is not clear that there is (or ever was) a singular liberal tradition. For purposes of this paper, I draw on Chantal Mouffe’s definition of liberalism, which owes a debt to Carl Schmit (Schmitt 1996; Mouffe 2005)

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content with divine justice. Who am I going to run to? Who am I going to tell? Nobody!” There was nobody for him to tell except the press. For so many Venezuelans, journalists had become the final court of appeal, their last hope for any kind of justice. The grieving father clearly understood this. He also recognized that through his testimony the singular case of his own son’s death would merge with all the other crime stories that he had watched from the comfort of his own living room. This realization only seemed to propel the denuncia. Indeed, his complaint echoed the same tropes that repeated themselves time and again in the news coverage of crime, for example comparing Venezuela to Iraq. In the chapter that follows, I attempt to show how the performative repetition of denuncias such as this one served as the basis for a communicative ethos that championed “the people” and positioned journalists as the victim’s voice.

The Sano and the Malandro

Early on March 26, 2010, Yelitza Rojas took a jeep-taxi, then the subway, then a battered bus from her home in Petare to the morgue in Bello Monte, carrying a dark brown folder with her. Uncertain what to do when she got there, Yelitza sat down on a low wall near the front entrance and squinted through the morning brightness. This was how the reporters found her, waiting patiently, hands crossed over the folder in her lap, a simple black purse at her side. Since it was a slow morning they did not cut her off when they learned that she was not here on account of a homicide. Her case was tucked into the folder and, as she talked, out came signed letters of employment, diplomas, identification cards, and a story about how ten days ago the police dragged her husband and four other members of her family from their living rooms to a prison in the state of Yare. Their wrongful arrest and incarceration was the result of an inter-familial feud over something seemingly trivial—a shared front porch and a group of noisy children. For nearly half-an- hour Yelitza presented herself and her evidence with quiet confidence. The reporters, who warmed to her almost immediately, were convinced that she, indeed, had a legitimate case. They gave her the number of an NGO that works with families of police violence and promised to publish her side of the story. True to their word, the article appeared the following morning in the crime pages of Últimas Noticias. “Denuncia: the

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CICPC dragged them from their homes without a warrant; Family is certain that detainees are innocent; Attribute the accusations to act of vengeance within the family.” This was why Yelitza traveled all the way across the city, a journey that from door to door probably took the better part of three hours. She did not come to see the police or to file a report. She came looking for the crime reporters, denuncia in hand.

Everyone in Caracas knew where to find crime journalists. They had become notorious for hanging around the city morgue waiting for interviews with the friends and family of homicide victims. Mention the crime beat to any journalist in Caracas and almost without fail they shuddered or made some comment about cadavers. Indeed, the morgue in Bello Monte became so central to crime reporting that anyone who watched the afternoon news or read the crime pages was familiar with its image. Hardly a day went by without the newspapers running a photo of grieving relatives waiting to claim the body of a loved one, and they regularly published articles about the morgue itself—its poor facilities and long waits, its dearth of forensic pathologists and the foul odors that emanated from within. For the crime journalists the morgue in Bello Monte became a metonym for the overwhelming levels of violence in the city and the ineffectiveness of its judicial system; for their colleagues and audiences it was a symbol associated with the people who wrote stories of misery and death.

If the morgue was the epicenter of crime reporting in Caracas, it was because the victims of urban violence and their relatives were journalists’ most important source of news. In his article “The City of Crimes,” David González, a journalist for the daily newspaper El Nacional, reflects on his experience as a crime reporter in Caracas:

“If I had to choose just one site in the city where the marks of violence are most concentrated, I would choose the morgue in Bello Monte. […] Lined up there are the relatives of victims. I have spoken with hundred of them about their family members and the circumstances in which they died. Students, workers, fathers, athletes, artists … from the most distant corners of the city all of them have ended up there” (González 2008:23) It is telling that González selected the morgue and his encounters with the relatives of victims as the most emblematic experience of crime reporting. Twenty-five years earlier, when Damarys Marquez Balza published her study of The Crime Reporter in Caracas

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(1983), the focus was exclusively on the relationship between journalists and the investigative police (Márquez Balza 1983). However, the closing of the press offices of the investigative police and the freezing of official channels of information pushed the journalists towards friends and relatives of victims. Compared to their colleagues in other parts of Latin America, the journalists who worked the Caracas crime beat were extraordinary in their reliance on victims as a source of news. According to a recent content analysis of 14 newspapers from across Latin America, victims and witnesses made up fewer than 12% of sources cited by crime reporters.2 In contrast, I estimated that families and friends of victims accounted for nearly one-third of the original sources for crime stories in the Caracas dailies.

Despite this reliance on the testimony of relatives and friends, the relationship between crime journalists and the victims of violence was tenuous at best. Reporters and photographers showed up at times of intense personal grief, a group of strangers with cameras, microphones, and notebooks who asked people to perform their pain. Some found the experience of being photographed and interviewed cathartic, just as many found it intensely alienating, demeaning, or even disrespectful. For crime journalists this was part of the job. To lessen the shock of the encounter they developed an informal interviewing etiquette: approach people delicately and not en masse, respect the wishes of those who do not wish to speak or be photographed, keep the tone of the questioning gentle and sympathetic, and avoid interviewing the same person repeatedly. Yet even the most seasoned approach could not mitigate the discomfort of these encounters, the sense that the journalists had intruded into the sacred space of mourning and death. Nor could it overcome the deep distrust of journalists that many relatives of homicide victims harbored.

There were good reasons for the relatives of victims not to trust crime journalists. The way that the reporters told it partisan politics was to blame. Although it was true that political differences often exacerbated tensions, particularly among staunch government

2 According to the study directed by German Rey, the sources most frequently cited by crime reporters are: Government/State/Other = 34.2%; Police = 31.9%; Academics = 12%; Judges = 10.2%; Victims = 6.5%; Witnesses = 5.2%.(Rey 2005).

166 Chapter 5 supporters who perceived journalists as operatives of the opposition, this explanation downplayed the inequalities between crime journalists and the victims of violence. These interactions often (although not always) involved people from different class backgrounds with vastly disparate access to the means of representation. An identifying quote, a revealing photograph, or an erroneous detail hardly affected the journalists. For the victims and their relatives, however, it could have serious consequences, including violent reprisals. Standing before a crowd of reporters and photographers, they were vulnerable and they knew it. Take the following example from my fieldnotes:

April 20, 2009: It is a busy Monday at the morgue. While a group of us are standing just outside the front door, Juana3 strikes up a quiet conversation with a round woman in a sweat suit who looks to be in her early thirties. Juana is taking notes and asking a few gentle questions. The answers are short, but forthcoming. I overhear snippets of a conversation about a husband killed by a stray bullet while playing a game of dominos in barrio Julian Blanco (Petare). The two are speaking for scarcely two minutes when an older woman, probably the victim’s mother, loudly interrupts, ending the conversation mid-sentence: “What are you doing talking to the press? You know what they’re going to say. They’re going to say that he was a delinquent. It’s obligatory for them. Everyone who dies in the barrios is a malandro.” The chastened wife falls silent and the (presumed) mother walks off leaving the rest of us to sit in awkward silence. A little bit later another veteran reporter tells me that the woman’s outburst against journalists was politically motivated. “Chavista,” he shrugs. It was possible that the woman was a Chávez supporter, but what is interesting is that the reporter’s analysis omitted an important detail. Rather than acknowledging the unequal power dynamic between journalists and the victims of violence, he interpreted the mother’s outburst as a simple case of partisanship on the part of a “chavista.” This omission was all the more telling because it elided the central question that drove every interview with the relatives of victims—the question of guilt or innocence.

The key tension in the encounters between crime journalists and the relatives of victims concerned the categorization of the dead. Reporters were constantly looking for clues that would help them ascertain the dead person’s moral status and where he or she

3 For the purposes of confidentiality, the names of journalists and victims have been changed.

167 The Victim’s Voice fit within the binary “malandro/sano.” Although it was never explicitly stated, one question always hung in the air: Was the victim a sano or a malandro, a good kid or a good-for-nothing? For the relatives, this represented an interrogation of their own moral status and the status of their loved ones. For the journalists, this was an equally complex process of trying to detect and judge the circumstances surrounding a violent act.

Detecting the moral status of a victim required journalists to search for any number of clues, starting with the comportment of the victim’s family and friends. How were they dressed? How were they holding themselves? Did they seem upset or indifferent? This was not simply a question of rich or poor but of aspiration. Initial impressions were refined or reworked during the interview with the relatives. Was this a good family? Was the victim a child, a student, or a worker? Did the victim have children or a (heterosexual) spouse? Was the victim involved in the community? Reporters also searched for clues in the forensic details. When, where, and how was the person killed? Did the evidence point to an accidental death, a random act of violence, a crime of passion, or a targeted assassination? The impressions that reporters gathered from these interviews, in turn, were weighed against conversations with police sources as well as conversations among reporters. Journalists spent a great deal of their time trying to determine the relative guilt or innocence of homicide victims. Whereas the murder of an “innocent” victim was a tragedy that often warranted an extended retelling, the death of a malandro was just a fact of life and, perhaps, a justified fate.4

Proof of innocence, at least in homicide cases, often depended upon the willingness of family and friends to testify on behalf of the victim. Crime journalists tended to favor stories told by relatives who openly shared their grief and outrage, who showed up at the morgue with photos of their loved ones, who divulged details about their life and the circumstance of their death, who gave reporters their phone numbers

4 Take the following excerpt from one of my interviews:“Esa visión equivocada que tenemos Robert, cuando vamos a la morgue y nos dicen a un muchacho de 17 años lo mataron de 15 tiros y todos hacemos: ‘AHHHH’ y nos parece un muerto caliche porque nosotros asumimos que ese chamo estaba metido en problemas, o sea que uno asume que el chamo estaba metido en problemas o que mató a alguien o que estaba en tráfico de drogas o algo, esa visión es la visión cortada por la policía. O sea, ese es el lineamiento de un policía y entonces yo no soy policía. A veces a un chamo al que hayan matado de 15 tiros lo único que hizo fue no prestarle la moto un día a un balandro que se la pidió prestada y con eso fue suficiente para que lo mataran.” Author’s Interview, February 24, 2009.

168 Chapter 5 and agreed to do follow up interviews (sometimes in their own homes). Such testimonies were usually interpreted as a sign of innocence and victimhood. In contrast, journalists often assumed that those who were not willing to testify had something to hide. Even though they were acutely aware of the manifold reasons for victims and their relatives to avoid the press—including the fear that their own testimonies could make them the next victim—silence was incriminating. On several occasions I was told that persons who flatly refused interviews were “probably the relatives of malandros.”

This dynamic goes a long way towards explaining journalistic representations of malandros and sanos. While film, fiction, and the true crime genre often provided rich visual and linguistic depictions of the malandro in Venezuela, in the news the perpetrators of violent crime were shadowy presences who rarely had faces (they were always covered), names (they often went by aliases), or anyone to speak on their behalf. From time to time journalists would do a piece about a notorious gang or an infamous criminal. However, the main focus of the crime news industry was on victims and victimhood, themes that were explored in great detail. Victims’ faces regularly appeared in the press, often from an old photo or a copy of an identification card. Along with this visual description of the victim, the papers regularly published their full name, the names of their family members, descriptions of their accomplishments, stories about their life, and poignant reflections on their dreams.

The distinction between innocent victims and dangerous malandros was part of a wider symbolic universe much like the one described by Mary Douglas in which order and purity are associated with positive values; disorder and dirt with negative values (Douglas 2002 [1966]). Anthropologists and criminologists have demonstrated, repeatedly, that this discourse criminalizes the subaltern sectors, transforming their vulnerability into dangerousness and thereby justifying their violent oppression (Hall, Critcher et al. 1978). The preponderance of crime journalism reproduces this symbolic order. Crime stories police the border between good citizens and evildoers, in much the same way that moral panics create folk devils (Cohen 1972) or “talk of crime” reproduces the category of the criminal (Caldeira 2000). However, scholarly scrutiny on the construction of the criminal has the tendency to collapse the politics of urban violence to

169 The Victim’s Voice a single dimension. Concentrating on criminality draws attention to the repressive dimension of power, often at the expense of examining what it enables. In particular, it neglects the different, sometimes contradictory ways that victimhood is mobilized.

Representations of victims in the Venezuelan press were crucial because this was the terrain on which the politics of violence was most clearly articulated. As with malandros, stereotypical markers of race, class, sex, gender, age, and aspiration were mobilized in depictions of victimhood. It would not be difficult to demonstrate that, in Caracas, the poster-child of innocence was fair-skinned and from a “good home.” It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the portraits of victims circulating in the newspapers and on television were homogenous. Indeed, it was quite the opposite. Persons from all social strata appeared in crime stories—rich and poor, young and old, women and men, dark and light complexioned, etc—so that audiences could not distinguish victims based on outward appearances alone. Consequently, what victims looked like was, perhaps, less important than what they said.

Performing Pain

Near the end of my first month on the Caracas crime beat, a friend pulled me aside and made an observation. “Follow the interviews closely,” he said, nodding towards a small cluster of reporters. “Have you noticed the kinds of questions that some of them are asking?” I had, in fact, noticed that along with the standard “who-what-when-where- why-and-how” routine, reporters regularly prodded people to voice their opinions. Questions like “what do you think about insecurity” or “do you believe the government’s claim that violence is decreasing” tended to elicit a few different responses. Some people shrugged and said that violence was everywhere. Others reacted angrily saying that the reporters had no right to politicize their personal tragedy. Needless to say, neither of these two responses typically made the news. What the reporters were looking for were people who used this question as an opportunity to denounce the government, the police, the courts, the gangs, the lack of justice, or the cloud of violence and fear hanging over the city. These denuncias were sometimes tearful, sometimes angry, but always followed closely by the reporters who jumped to film them or to copy them word for word into their notebooks.

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Denuncias linked victimhood to the politics of urban violence, and over the course of my fieldwork I came to see their use as the defining characteristic of crime journalism in Caracas. Denuncias were not just angry opinions plucked from the mouths of grieving friends and relatives, although these frequently appeared in the press. Rather, they were part of a “muckraking” style that attempted to reveal the roots of crime and corruption (See Chapter 2). As such, a denuncia could be a pointed accusation of wrongdoing against specific persons that was backed up with evidence (a la Watergate), or it could be something more general, like expert testimony about the failures of the judicial system in Venezuela or an ongoing series that investigated the high homicide rate in Caracas. For the reporters and photographers who covered the crime beat, denuncias gave meaning to their work. Instead of hawking lurid stories of death, denuncias allowed journalists to take up roles as investigators who probed the causes of violence, witnesses who testified to its destructive effects, and advocates who attempted to purge the problem through the light of publicity. From merely reporting events, then, journalists become protagonists who advocated particular interpretations of them.

Although the force and political tenor of any particular denuncia was contingent on a multitude of circumstances, journalistic denuncias all shared at least three common features. First, they were made in the name of victims, either directly, as quotations, or indirectly, as photos, statistics, expert opinions, and moralizing narratives. Second, they claimed to reveal wrongdoings of the powerful, not to the courts, but before the tribunal of the Venezuelan “people.” Finally, denuncias were self-conscious actions that were recognized by both performers and their audiences. In this last respect, they took the form of what J.L. Austin referred to as “speech acts” or “performative utterances”—statements that, in the proper context, “do” things (Austin 1965). Like a wedding vow or a ship’s christening, denuncias attempted to do what they said, although as Austin would caution they did not always do what they intended nor, for that matter, did they always fully realize their intentions. Context was, of course, the key to success, and it was around the issue of context that Jacques Derrida extended and problematized Austin’s work. Before venturing further into scholarship on “the performative” and the relationship between denuncias, journalism, and victimhood, some context of our own might be helpful. To

171 The Victim’s Voice that end, I want to focus on just one of the many denuncias that I witnessed while working on the Caracas crime beat.

On March 31, 2010, the back page of establishment newspaper El Universal carried a full-color photograph of a woman’s face frozen mid-sentence, her eyes fixed on the reader and her lips rounding into a large “O.” At the top of the page the headline was set off by bold type and quotation marks. “This Holy Week they left us locked in a bloodbath.” The article, in its entirety, covered almost half a page, most of it dominated by quotes from the woman depicted in the photograph. Both the face and the words belonged to one Karina Vallania, whose angry testimony stretched for more than twenty minutes. Vallania arrived at the morgue on Tuesday morning along with two other family members to collect the body of her nephew who was gunned down at 2:00 a.m. on Palm Sunday. More than two dozen crime journalists were gathered at the morgue that day. Reporters from El Universal and the television station Televen were the first to interview Vallania. When they finally waved the rest of us over, she was already mid-denuncia.

CV: “When they come to kill you they don’t say, ‘Excuse me sir, are you with the government?’ They don’t ask that. They didn’t ask my nephew. ‘Excuse me kid, are you with the government or against the government?’ No. ‘Excuse me, are you with Globovision5?’ No. They don’t ask that kind of stuff. All they say is, ‘Hey man, take that!’ Bam! Bam! Bam!” The journalists all nodded appreciatively—Vallania was talking their language. Her argument about the apolitical nature of violent crime was a pointed statement in support of the private press and against the Chávez administration. Yet the testimony was out of order. Except for the two reporters from El Universal and Televen, none of the other journalists knew why Vallania was at the morgue or what had provoked her outburst in the first place. The reporter from Televen tried to get her back to facts of the case and the circumstances surrounding the crime, but the denuncia had already gathered too much momentum.

Reporter #2: “Did they say something to your nephew when they shot him?”

5 Television station Globovision is Venezuela’s most visible opposition news outlet and one of the most outspoken critics of President Chávez.

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CV: [To the reporter] “Lady, no one said anything, no one heard anything, no one was listening, damn it. No one knows anything. And we don’t have enough money to take his body back home to Machiques.6 Why not? Because we don’t have the means. Why not? Because none of us little people work. Why not? Because there is no work here. Here the only people who are employed are the malandros! Ah? Malandros!” … [Shouting] “I need the government to answer me! I need the government to tell me why my nephew was murdered! ... He was young, honest, a hard worker. Why? When the malandros here do whatever they want. Ah? And here there is no government that responds.” [Turning dramatically towards the television cameras] “But I’ll tell you if it is a child of someone in the government who is killed, everybody goes running to help! Everybody goes running, saying “Ay they killed so-and-so.” They defend the government people. Yes, they have the police. Yes, they have the National Guard. Yes they have all kinds of stuff. But us, the poor, we don’t have a damned thing. Where is the love that this man [President Chávez] has for us? What love girl? He was going to do away with hunger. What happened? I want to know this. I’d like this man to tell me when, at what point, are we the poor going to stop starving to death? [He says] there is no hunger in Venezuela? Yes there is! There is no injustice here? Where do you live! What do you eat! There is no poverty? Yes there is! Too much!” Reporter #1: “Has anyone offered to help you?” CV: [Pauses momentarily before resuming in a loud voice]. “What? No, nothing.” [Begins shouting again]. “Nobody helps anybody here. We eat one another like meat because we don’t have the resources to transport the body or for a funeral home or for a damned thing. What has the government done for us? Nothing. They left us locked in a bloodbath this Holy Week! One more year of blood in our house! This is the security that we have here? What security do we have here? I wish that this state channel would tell the truth for god’s sake. The truth! But they just keep repeating, “Globovision is a coup plotter, Globovision is a coup plotter!” … The truth must be told. And here for telling the truth you go to jail. What nonsense is this! Here you cannot talk, you cannot have an opinion.” By this point, the political tenor of Vallania’s denuncia was unmistakable. She was speaking out against the Chávez government from among the ranks of the urban “poor,” which formed the base of the president’s political support. Rather than focusing on the victimization of her nephew, she chose to concentrate on the victimization of a class of

6 A Venezuelan town in the state of Zulia, near the northwestern border with Colombia and more than a day’s travel from Caracas.

173 The Victim’s Voice people, of which both she and her nephew were members. Starting with a specific event, the denuncia spiraled outward to encompass chronic insecurity, unemployment, poverty, and freedom of expression, all of which were laid at the feet of government. For anyone who followed crime news in Caracas, this denuncia would have a familiar ring. The tone of outrage and the accusations of negligence were characteristic of denuncias published by many (although certainly not all) of the newspapers and television programs in Venezuela. Along with witnesses like Vallania, pundits and political figures aligned with the opposition used the same language to connect high levels of violent crime in Caracas to failures of the Chávez government.

The repetition should come as no surprise since denuncias were meant to be repeated. Venezuelans who made denuncias in front of the press expected that their accusations would be restaged for the consumption of readers and viewers. This was the common sense shared by crime journalists, their sources, and their audiences. Such knowledge was implicit in the words of Vallania’s testimony, particularly in her references to the Venezuelan press. It was also present in the performance itself, which was exaggerated even for a grieving relative. The demonstrative shouting, the evocative phrasing, the refusal to answer questions—all of this had her two companions rolling their eyes and stifling embarrassed laughter. Her performance was over the top, and everybody knows it. Eventually, even Vallania cracked a smile at her own audacity. Just a few minutes after her eloquent explosion, she was in the middle of a large group of journalists, chatting happily and predicting the future of a pregnant reporter with theatrical flair. Permit me, if I may, to interpret this mixture of fury and levity through a brief reading of the performative vis-à-vis J.L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler.

According to Austin, the success or failure of a performative, its “felicity” or “infelicity,” must be gauged in relation to the circumstances of the utterance, which he calls the “total speech situation.” Viewed from Austin’s perspective, the effectiveness of a denuncia depends primarily on its context. Who made the denuncia? Did the speaker strike the right tone? Was the utterance sincere? Was the setting appropriate? Who was there to witness it? While Austin is clearly aware of the limitations of context, this

174 Chapter 5 argument appeals to common sense assumptions about human agency, which privilege a delimited scene of utterance (action) and an original speaker (source). This is the assumption that Derrida critiques in the influential essay “Signature, Event, Context” (Derrida 1977).

For Derrida, performatives are repetitions, echoes of a distant signifier, which are tethered neither to a unique context nor to an original speaker/source. As proof, he argues that performatives can always be taken out of context through quotation, imitation, or forgery. According to Derrida, the force of performatives inheres in their iterative nature rather than the unique moment of their utterance.

In respect to denuncias, Derrida’s point is well taken. It was not simply that denuncias echoed one another but also that they contained a political logic that exceeded the performer’s attempts to contain and control them. They repeated, competed, piled-up, and faded into one another. By following the structural logic of denuncias, we begin to glimpse the overarching dynamic between journalism and politics in Venezuela. Yet, it would be impossible to explain this dynamic without also recognizing how denuncias were structured by a particular social-historical context—for example, the discourse on innocent victims and dangerous malandros or the political polarization that pitted the private press against the Chávez administration—and how this, in turn, loosely delimited the performative possibilities of both journalists and their sources. If the performative politics of denunciation spiraled outward gradually mutating into new and different demands, then every denuncia was nevertheless situated in a particular context that determined each and every re-articulation.

Judith Butler’s work on hate speech shows that these positions are not mutually exclusive; if context matters, “a politics of the performative” hinges on the possibility that through repetition the speech act can break with the past to create new meanings out of old words (Butler 1997). In the case of Karina Vallania, her denuncia indexed both the immediate context of its performance and its reiteration within a journalistic field that was saturated with similar denuncias. From the start, her testimony was limited by her position (context) within a discursive field that judged guilt and innocence along prejudicial lines. Her nephew did not fit the profile of an “innocent victim.” Murdered in

175 The Victim’s Voice the middle of the night in a notoriously dangerous sector of the city, his background and his whereabouts already made him suspect in the eyes of both the journalists and their audiences. Worse still, in a country where homophobia was the norm, the facts of his personal life—he lived alone, had no children, and worked in an HIV clinic—marked him as a “deviant” personality, more malandro than sano. Little wonder, then, that the nephew’s victimhood was abstracted and framed as a partisan denuncia. Nonetheless, an appeal to politics alone would not have been enough to make this story “newsworthy.” What drew the attention of the crime journalists was Vallania’s furious tone, a dramatic performance that distinguished her denuncia from the scores of testimonies that reporters witnessed on a weekly basis. It was this break from the routine that made her words repeatable.

What I find most interesting in all of this is the way that denuncias were restaged by the crime journalists. Along with their editors, journalists were the ones responsible for maintaining the entire performative chain that linked denuncia to denuncia. This was not simply a matter of passive quoting or even active fact gathering, but rather a performative engagement with the politics of violence. Crime journalists used the words, images, and narratives gathered on the Caracas crime beat to make their own denunciations of urban violence. If they were dependent on outside sources, journalistic denuncias were, all the same, self-conscious performatives. In other words, the discursive practices of denunciation were linked to the reproduction of narratives of urban violence. Through their repetition, journalistic denuncias did enormous political work, much of it through the idiom of victimhood.

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The Victim’s Voice

For journalists on the Caracas crime beat denunciation was an ethical practice through which they situated themselves and their work. Although crime reporters did not always agree on what constituted “good journalism,” they did share common assumptions about the socio-political role of journalists. Like many of their peers, crime reporters tended to cast their work in a heroic light.7 They saw themselves as daring investigators who went to great lengths to report the news and engaged advocates who interceded on behalf of the people (Aguirre 1998).8 The journalistic use of denuncias was intertwined with these self-perceptions. It was the grounded practice through which the vision of the journalist as investigator and advocate was expressed.

In both formal and informal conversations, crime reporters described their use of denuncias as an active engagement with the politics of violence in the name of victims and the greater social good. One of my first interviews was with a young television reporter. For him, the crime journalist’s professional duty was to serve the greater good by making insecurity apparent to the police and to government officials. “We are the

7 Important comparison can be drawn to journalism in the United States (Protess, Cook et al. 1991; Ettema and Glasser 1998). 8 Here I am summarizing the work of the Venezuelan scholar Jesús María Aguirre on professional identity among journalists in Venezuela and in Caracas (Aguirre 1998).

177 The Victim’s Voice mouthpieces of this insecurity that exists. We are the ones who transcribe this reality that otherwise might never reach those in power.”9 Another veteran reporter put it somewhat differently. In her mind, the fundamental function of crime journalism was to broadcast the suffering of victims and their families. “As a crime reporter you denounce. You transform yourself into the person who speaks for the dead.”10 What stood out in both of these statements, however, was their emphasis on speech and the role of the reporter as the metaphorical “voice” of victims.

For all of the crime reporters that I worked with, the responsibility of voicing victimhood meant actively interceding in the politics of violence through the force of their own journalistic performances. Sitting outside the Caracas morgue, a third reporter eloquently explained how this use of denuncias gave her a sense of purpose that allowed her to go beyond the lurid details of other people’s suffering.

“For me the fundamental role of the crime beat is the denuncia. In a city like Caracas you cannot stand by and allow there to be thirty, forty, up to fifty deaths every weekend. I mean, the purpose is that you have to make it better, that one has to change things. … Each story is—I don’t want to say an excuse—but rather a link that allows you to make denuncias every day, so that you can show this is a macro-level project.”11 What was remarkable about this statement was that the reporter verbalized the implicit knowledge shared by all of the journalists on the crime beat. Journalistic denuncias self- consciously fused the suffering of specific victims with larger narratives about urban violence.

Denuncias were powerful because they made larger political demands visible by linking specific grievances to the figure of the victim. In the case of crime journalism, denuncias were the evidence that lent weight to claims that urban violence had spiraled out of control and that far-reaching reform or radical change was necessary. The story of Karina Vallania (above) was just one of several dozen examples that circulated every week in Caracas’s privately owned press. A regular consumer of crime news would

9 Interview, January 11, 2008. 10 Interview, March 10, 2008. 11 Interview, March 15, 2008.

178 Chapter 5 encounter hundreds of denuncias every year all of them speaking out against injustice in the name of victims. It is easy to imagine how depictions of grieving relatives, heinous crimes, and impotent officials can feed a sense of “moral outrage” (Protess, Cook et al. 1991; Ettema and Glasser 1998). Following denuncias gives us a very clear understanding of how such outrage is constructed, in what directions it is channeled, and what kind of outcomes it may portend.

If the politics of violence was shaped through the articulatory practice of denunciation, the key struggle was over representations of victimhood. I want to conclude by describing how victimhood was differentially constructed and mobilized by crime reporters. Who could claim to be a victim was absolutely essential. Equally important, however, was how claims of victimhood were made. It is here that I want to distinguish two styles of denunciation adopted by crime journalists—radical and reformist. This distinction does not refer to the content of specific denuncias but rather to the strategies that they mobilize.

The radical style of denunciation articulates multiple, often contradictory, demands into “chains of equivalence.” It is through the use of a master signifier—in this case the victim—that these chains of equivalence condense seemingly heterogeneous demands under one overarching concept or figure. For crime journalism, radical denuncias made in the name of victims tied a whole raft of complaints about crime and corruption to the failures of the Chávez government. A radical strategy of denunciation makes victimhood the common ground that unites disparate socio-economic sectors (i.e. elites and the working poor) into an anti-institutional movement.

In contrast, the reformist style of denunciation is more modest. It focuses on specific problems and resists the impulse to make victimhood a rallying cry for political opposition. Instead, reformists press for the resolution of specific cases and institutional changes within the police, the judiciary, and the Ministry of Justice. Whereas reformists were content to work within the system, radicals believed that the only solution to urban violence was “regime change.”

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Most journalists on the crime beat steered a careful course between radical and reformist strategies of denunciation. To distinguish these tendencies, I will profile a pair of journalists who stood out as paradigmatic examples of each style. Spelling out the political and ethical commitments of these two reporters, provides greater conceptual clarity about the kinds of decisions that crime journalists made on a daily basis.

The Radical

During my fieldwork, XX was a senior crime reporter and an outspoken critic of the Chávez administration. One of the most respected crime journalists on the beat, he had been reporting on crime in Caracas for over twenty years. Among crime reporters XX was revered for his knowledge of forensics and his willingness to follow a case wherever it might lead.

In his interactions with me, XX was usually taciturn and aloof. I imagine, and other reporters suggested, that he saw me as a chavista and kept me at arms length. That said, I observed him daily for the better part of two years. I heard stories from other reporters, had brief but cordial exchanges, and even managed an interview. Most importantly, I read his articles with direct knowledge of his sources, so I developed an intimate understanding of his style that would not be apparent to the average reader.

XX loved a good scoop and he excelled at finding stories that other journalists missed. Friends and colleagues told me that behind the gruff exterior was a man of deep emotions, who cared profoundly for the victims of violence. These attributes along with his political leanings and his stature on the crime beat, pushed him toward a style that was markedly more radical than most of his peers. Nowhere was this more obvious than his day-to-day reporting on the number of violent deaths in Caracas. All of the crime reporters kept count of the number of dead who passed in and out of the central morgue. The numbers reported by the press served as a barometer for the severity of violent crime in the city. People regularly cited these figures as evidence that insecurity was rampant and that the Chávez government had failed to do anything about it. Because of this, the government tried to make it harder for reporters to get access to these numbers. In his zeal to reveal the severity of the problem, XX broke with the tradition of only counting

180 Chapter 5 deaths that go through the central morgue and began adding “unreported” deaths to the total figure. As a result the figures that XX reported were any where from 10-25% higher than those of his colleagues. On several occasions other reporters voiced their concern. Take the following excerpt from my fieldnotes:

Monday July 13, 2009: … I comment to a reporter who worked the weekend shift that it must have been a busy pair of days covering almost 60 murders. The reporter immediately corrects me. “There were 52 this weekend, not 60. I don’t use XX’s numbers. He says he is pulling numbers from the hospitals, but I think it’s more accurate to wait until they pass through the morgue. It’s just not trustworthy.” The numbers game was just one of many areas in which XX’s approach was more radical than that of other crime journalists. He was also a regular contributor on a television show for the channel RCTV, which is known for its anti-government editorial line. Although a handful of other crime reporters also made similar appearances, XX was more inclined to voice his outrage openly. Take the following snippet from a program that aired on March 2, 2010. In it, XX is commenting on the son of a chavista official who was murdered in the neighboring city of Maracay:

“It’s terrible what happened to this 25 year old kid in Maracay, they killed him, the shot him full of holes ... It means that the underworld is taking everyone regardless of what political flag they fly. The underworld does not ask for an identification badge before they kill someone. And unfortunately it is not a priority of our government to confront and combat insecurity for everyone’s benefit. Their priority is a long-term political project. Meanwhile the rest of us are paying in blood for the broken dishes of this political project.”12 Note the way that XX linked a particular tragedy of a “25 year old kid” to an “underworld” run amok to the “long-term political project” of the Chávez government. We glimpse here the radical style of denunciation that creates a chain of equivalences between seemingly heterogeneous demands. Note also the date, March 2, 2010, and the resemblance to another denuncia that I have described, that of Karina Vallania (above), which aired less than a month later on March 30, 2010. XX was one of the reporters interviewing Vallania that day. After the interview was over and the cameras put away,

12 March 2, 2010. Interview on Los Chismes de la Bicha (RCTV).

181 The Victim’s Voice he approached her warmly. “Thank you so much for your words Karina,” he said, beaming. “It takes courage to say what you did. I wish more people would have the strength to tell the truth like you.” While all of the other Caracas papers glossed over her story—including the three tabloids that specialize in crime stories—XX dedicated an entire eight columns above the fold to her truth telling. The denuncia that he recreated in the pages of the newspaper belonged to XX as much as Karina.

The point here is not simply “partisanship.” Rather, I am trying to show how XX’s style of denunciation made victimhood the common denominator of a larger political struggle against the Chávez administration. This radical style stood in direct contrast to the reformist stance of one of my closest informants on the crime beat.

The Reformer

Among crime journalists ZZ was a rarity. Tall and round-faced he hailed from a rural province known for its cattle and expansive grasslands. When he moved to Caracas to attend college he brought with him an abiding love of the twangy joropo music that was so popular in his hometown and a repository of folksy sayings, which he enunciated slowly and deliberately like an actor or an elementary school teacher. As a transplant from the countryside, he had a perspective on the city that was markedly different from many of his colleagues. For starters, he knew the barrios intimately having lived in Petare, Antimano, and El Valle. Moreover, ZZ was one of only a handful of reporters who considered himself a Chávez supporter, a fact that surprisingly had not diminished his popularity.

My first day on the beat with ZZ was Saturday, February 16, 2008. There were four of us in total: CC (the driver), QQ (the photographer), ZZ (the reporter) and me (the anthropologist). For most of the morning we followed the pack, starting off at the morgue and continuing to the scene of a failed bombing in downtown Caracas. After an interview with someone who saw the explosion, the rest of the reporters headed off in pursuit of a fatal traffic accident across town. Rather than sticking with the group, ZZ decided to follow a different story. He directed the driver to a funeral home where witnesses to a double homicide were attending a wake.

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The story—a classic example of a denuncia—appeared in the morning edition of Últimas Noticias under the provocative headline “Investigative Police accused of executing two men; Witnesses saw them detained.” According to several eyewitnesses, two men, Félix López and Rafael Matute, were rounded up at a police checkpoint on Wednesday afternoon for no apparent reason. Thursday morning their lifeless bodies were discovered in a nearby park. In the article, a relative of López denounced the arrests and described the marks of violence on the bodies, which suggested that the men were tortured and then executed. More importantly, he named the branch police station where the victims were taken after their arrest, which meant that strong circumstantial evidence pointed to the involvement of a small circle of officers.

All of this added up to a serious allegation, and as we were en route to the funeral home ZZ wondered aloud why the other reporters chose the traffic accident over the double homicide. Since it involved several credible denuncias against the Investigative Police he assumed that it would have generated more attention. Although ZZ and the team at Últimas Noticias covered the story for the next two weeks, it went almost unmentioned by the other major newspapers.

The execution of López and Matute was emblematic of the type of denuncia routinely published by Últimas Noticias, and there was no crime reporter who personifies this style better than ZZ. He relished investigative work, particularly on cases that other reporters consider “too small” to warrant attention. ZZ frequently took up stories on behalf of people who could not defend themselves, particular the working poor and the popular classes. When following these stories, he was not simply reporting the facts but also hoping to influence their resolutions. For ZZ, good journalism had “the power to uncover these small injustices that are kept quiet, that nobody will listen to because the bureaucracy here is terrible.”13 More importantly, a good journalist was prepared intervene on behalf of his subjects.

“Here the justice system is elitist. I mean here there is no possibility that they are going to investigate a case and so the case will remain. The mother of the dead boy doesn’t have money to pay for a lawyer to handle the case and so it remains

13 Interview, February 12, 2008

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unsolved. I think of this every day when I am writing. Why do I think about this? Because most of the information that we write is a denuncia against this elitist system of justice, this system to which, unfortunately, the poor have no access.”14 During our time together, ZZ investigated dozens of denuncias. There were accusations against a group of Metropolitan Police officers extorting protection money, an investigation of government-sponsored death squads in his home state, and reports about misconduct on the part of an ex-judge in a key criminal case, just to name a few. ZZ shared each of these stories with me from behind a desktop computer surrounded by stacks of documents, binders, books, notepads, newspapers, and the odd photograph. Every visit to the newsroom of Últimas Noticias occasioned a review of some new piece of evidence: handwritten letters from ex-police officers, old transcripts of court cases, financial records, interviews with government officials, press releases, homicide statistics, or eyewitness testimonies. He shared it all enthusiastically along with rumors, gossip, and updates about the latest threats his reporting had provoked.

Impressed by his dogged pursuit of denuncias, I once remarked to another crime reporter that ZZ was a real bloodhound. This was at the end of another long, political season and she seemed irritated by my comment. “Sure, ZZ is a real pest when he has found something damaging on the opposition, but he clams up when it is something that makes Chávez look bad.” The reply struck me as telling, although not in a way that is immediately obvious.

All of my interviews with ZZ and my fieldnotes, which span the better part of two years, indicated that despite his political loyalties the vast majority of denuncias that he investigated were potentially damaging to the Chávez government. He told me, repeatedly, that as a reporter his passion was “to reveal what the State wanted to keep hidden” regardless of who was in charge.15 In fact, his snooping got him barred from the Supreme Court by an important presidential appointee, the magistrate Luisa Estella Morales, who called the editor of Últimas Noticias with an ultimatum—get rid of ZZ or else. So why this remark that ZZ’s reporting was biased in favor of the Chávez

14 Interview, March 8, 2010 15 Interview, February 2008

184 Chapter 5 administration? Was it just the effects of the campaign season or was something else afoot?

Despite his commitment to denunciation, ZZ rarely, if ever, linked these failing directly to President Chávez. Even his broadest denuncias were accompanied by suggestions for reforms that could be instituted by the government. This was in keeping with the style of Últimas Noticias, but it made him suspect in the eyes of his peers who were convinced that the entire justice system was corrupt from top to bottom.

Conclusion: On Populist Culture

I have provided two distinct examples of how journalists use denuncias. XX and ZZ both give voice to demands that challenge the state, but they do so in quite different ways. The denuncias mobilized by XX linked individual cases to a larger indictment of the Chávez administration. He was not just denouncing violent crime, but the government’s oppression of journalists, its failure to make good on promises of social justice, and its overall failure to govern. By claiming to represent the voice of the subaltern, he drew together a heterogeneous series of demands into a powerful indictment of President Chávez. In contrast, the denuncias mobilized by ZZ generally targeted a specific problem, in this instance the murder of two innocent citizens by the very officers sworn to protect them. If the denuncia was far reaching in its calls for justice and police reform, it did not present itself as an indictment of the Chávez government as a whole. It simply targeted the persons and institutions immediately involved. ZZ’s aim, and the aim of his newspaper, Últimas Noticias, was to pressure the government into action. They regularly held talks with the Minister of Justice and Interior, offering advice and pushing for reforms. In this sense they were unique. Most of the other news outlets used denuncias to stir popular outrage, either against the government or against the opposition. With newspapers like El Universal and El Nacional there was little talk of any kind of reform short of “regime change.”

For most journalists, the approaches of XX and ZZ represented ethical and political extremes. Frustrated with the overwhelming levels of urban violence, they sympathized with XX’s political commitments, yet often faulted his journalistic

185 The Victim’s Voice judgment. Despite his stature on the crime beat, many of his peers privately questioned the extent to which his beliefs colored his reporting. Likewise, they felt that ZZ’s political leanings made him unfairly forgiving. It was not so much that they questioned his journalistic judgment, but that its execution failed to generate any kind of outrage. As such they saw him as a willing collaborator covering up the larger failings of the government. The vast majority of reporters in Caracas were somewhere in between these two extremes. If they were more cautious in their use of denuncias than XX, unlike ZZ they were prepared to use violence and victimhood as an indictment of the Chávez government.

Victimhood was the situated category through which the performative politics of violence played out in Caracas. As I have shown, denuncias allowed Caracas crime journalists to link specific acts of violence to broader claims of victimhood, which were made within the context of national and local politics. This takes us a long way from the binary dilemmas of spectatorship—the voyeur vs. the witness—which failed to explain the interventions of crime journalists or the pressing political questions that surrounded images of suffering. In its place I have tried to show how the journalistic ethos of denunciation is better understood in terms of a performative logic. Portraits of victims “do things” and no one understands this better than crime journalists. The point is not that politics trumps ethics, but rather that we are looking a very particular representation logic, one that is actively reconfiguring not just crime reporting but the field of journalism more broadly conceived.

Denuncias ask us to rethink deeply held assumptions about journalism and democratic politics. Whereas the liberal ideal of journalism imagines the press as a distant power that promotes rational-critical debate, denuncias replace demands for objective reporting with the exigencies of political change. Under these conditions the journalistic mania for “facts” gives way to an obsession with uncovering “the truth.” My point is not to argue for or against ostensibly “liberal” ideals like press freedom or journalistic neutrality. Instead, I am interested in how these ideals—and along with them, the political dynamic between the state and the privately owned press—are being transformed through the use of denuncias. As this mode of journalism becomes

186 Chapter 5 increasingly common, following the practices of journalists may offer clues about the evolving relationship between the ideals of democracy and the grounded practices of the press. However, it would be erroneous to imagine that beat reporters are the only political operatives responsible for these changes. In the next chapter, I turn to examine how journalistic denuncias are shaped by the culture of the newsroom.

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188 Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6 THE THIN EDITORIAL LINE

“What’s your editorial line?” the woman asked me with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. We were standing at a busy intersection near the charred rubble of a two-room police module. She had her groceries in hand and I had my notebook. My first and only news assignment for the San Francisco Chronicle brought a fellow freelancer and me to La Dolorita, a barrio on the eastern edge of Caracas. Two days earlier a teenaged boy was murdered here in broad daylight when he was walking out of a bakery. It happened right in front of the police module, which was unmanned as usual. We were trying to piece together the chain of events that led residents to burn down the empty module and demolish an abandoned ambulance. This was the first person that I tried to interview and her question caught me off-guard. “Is it anti-chavista?” she wanted to know. I assured her that I was not there to write an attack piece, which made her a bit more comfortable talking to me.

The editorial line was frequently invoked by Venezuelans.1 It refers to a news outlet’s political predilections, “the criteria by which certain information and opinions are ordered according to a tendency or general ideal that the newspaper upholds” (Bosc- Bierne de Oteyza and Tablante 2002:69). Everyone knew that news outlets had an editorial line. This was a simple fact of journalism in Venezuela accepted by the people who made the news and the people who consumed it.

Despite widespread familiarity with the concept, audiences and journalists had different understandings of how the editorial line functioned. Among audiences “the line” was imagined along a political spectrum. Most Venezuelans distinguished news outlets that were pro-government from those that were anti-government from those that fell somewhere in-between. In my audience research, I found that this editorial spectrum helped orient the reception and interpretation of the news. For example, a fervent Chávez

1 “Editorial line” is a literal translation of the Spanish idiom, línea editorial. References to the editorial line in Venezuela are so common that it came as a genuine surprised to discover that this concept is alien to North American journalists. Thanks to Ted Glasser for conversations and comments on the editorial line.

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supporter took me through the crime section of his favorite newspaper, Últimas Noticias, to demonstrate how it was slanted against the government and how he had learned to read between the lines. Although an extreme case, it illustrated how perceptions of bias guided the consumption of news. Be it television, radio, print, or online journalism, Venezuelan audiences assumed that each news outlet was uniformly colored by a dominant political position. There was no doubt that these political allegiances played an important role in the production of news content. However, audience tended to overlook the diversity of perspectives within any individual media outlet as well as the ongoing struggles that characterized the production of news.

Among journalists, identifying “the line” was rather more complicated. Early on, I assumed that I could simply ask after the editorial line and receive an informed response about how it affected news coverage. Journalists had a clear sense of their leanings and the leanings of their news outlets. Where things became unclear were in the accounts of how these leanings were reflected in the selection and presentation of news. A handful of editors and journalists could clearly formulate the relationship between their reporting and the editorial line. More often than not, though, journalists simultaneously acknowledged the existence of an editorial line and disavowed its impact on the news that they produced. Over time, I came to see the editorial line as the common sense of the newsroom. More precisely, it was the common sense of a group of professionals who worked together day in and day out—the kind of knowledge that “goes without saying because it comes without saying” (Bourdieu 1977). Seen from their perspective, the editorial line of a news organization could not be reduced to a predetermined political predisposition. Journalists argued that the line was never fixed, that it was constantly shifting, that to understand even a single article you need to understand the universe of practices and relationship that produced it. What journalists tended to overlook—what they must actively not see—were the processes of discipline and differentiation at work within the newsroom, which had the effect of standardizing journalistic output.

The following chapter considers how the common sense of the newsroom shaped news coverage of crime in Caracas. Specifically, it focuses on how newspapers mobilized denuncias of crime towards different political ends. To demonstrate how these practices

190 Chapter 6 of denunciation were influenced by the culture of the newsroom, I spotlight the crime desks of three national newspapers that were based in Caracas: El Nacional, Diario Vea, and Últimas Noticias. These three papers were selected for their distinct editorial lines. El Nacional and Diario Vea were respectively aligned with the opposition and the Chávez government, while Últimas Noticias was the news outlet with the strongest reputation for political balance in Venezuela. During my fieldwork, I had frequent access to the newsrooms of El Nacional and Últimas Noticias. I visited each on more than thirty occasions, conducting interviews, attending editorial meetings, hovering over the shoulders of journalists, hanging out in the cafeterias, shuffling through the archives, shadowing editors, and absorbing their atmospheres. My access to Diario Vea was more limited, but even a partial description of this newspaper helps to round out the picture of how the editorial line shapes news coverage of crime.2

Along with brief portraits of these three newspapers and their most influential personalities, this chapter describes how denuncias featured in their coverage of crime. To this end, I have chosen to focus on two emblematic campaigns, which allow us to see how discreet tragedies are assembled into larger portraits of crime and victimhood in

2 I chose to work with newspapers over radio or television stations for reasons of access and safety. Newspapers were more amenable to a participant observer than television studios due to the embattled status of several of the private stations. Just getting in and out of televisions studios was a challenge, as I discovered on visits to Globovision, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), Venezuelan Television (VTV), and Telesur. Obtaining sustained access to any of these sites would have been difficult and politically risky for my subjects. In contrast, newspapers were better insulated from political attacks and my presence was welcomed. Radio studios were easier to access than television studios, but radio was considerably less influential than television and newspapers when it came to setting the news agenda on crime. When developing my research design, there were those who protested that broadcast news is the popular medium par excellence and that by studying newspapers I was missing out on the best medium for crime news. This assumption, while common, is incorrect for a number of reasons. First, Caracas had high levels of literacy—upwards of 95% according to UNESCO (Pearson 2010). Tabloids like Últimas Noticas, Diario 2001, and Diario La Voz all maintained a very visible presence in the barrios and across the city. Indeed, the newspaper business was alive and well in Caracas thanks, in part, to its mode of distribution. Over 90% of newspapers were sold at large newspaper kiosks that dotted most street corners (Author’s interview with newspaper distributor, December 22, 2008). In addition to newspapers, these kiosks sold everything from telephone cards and sweets to books and batteries. For many caraqueños, the kiosks acted as a meeting place and the newspapers were a prominent part of this sociality. Second, those who are adamant about distinguishing broadcast news from print news usually fail to recognize the symbiotic relationship between these different mediums. Not only did crime reporters work together across media (Chapter 4), they closely followed what the others were producing. Television journalists constantly read the crime pages in search of stories. Newspaper reporters watched the morning news religiously to observe the breaking news. Most of the crime journalism that appears on the radio was done by print journalists working an extra shift. And everyone is on Twitter.

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Caracas. The reformist style of denunciation was the driving force in the month-long Últimas Noticias campaign “Insufferable Insecurity,” which ran from September to October 2008. This campaign explicitly used the newspaper’s influence to goad the government into action against urban violence. The populist style was evident in the international firestorm provoked by El Nacional’s publication of a graphic photograph of the Caracas morgue. Published just weeks before parliamentary elections, the photo became a flashpoint in a showdown between the government and the private press. Finally, I consider Diario Vea’s reaction to the morgue controversy, which shows the conservative response to denuncias of crime.3 The newspaper downplayed the problem of violent crime and attempted to expose the questionable political objectives at work.

Before turning to these three newspapers and their respective anti-crime campaigns, though, I want to consider editing more generally.

Hierarchies of Judgment

The editorial line was reproduced through the ubiquitous and almost imperceptible work of editing. For purposes of this chapter, editing refers to a set of diffuse practices that discipline journalists and produce consensus about the news. Like power in its capillary form, “the editing that occurs at all stages of the newsmaking process has an invisible quality” (Ericson, Baranek, and Chan 1987; 297). Most of the editorial decisions that guided news coverage of crime were internalized by reporters and photographers so that it was impossible to observe them in isolation. The editorial line was, to a large extent, the common sense that editing fostered. To understand the practices of editing and the reproduction of the editorial line it helps to understand how the professional identities of journalists intersected with the unspoken newsroom hierarchies that set the judgments of owners above editors, editors above reporters, and reporters above photographers.

3 My point is not that Diario Vea is “conservative” in its approach to crime. Indeed, its emphasis on white- collar crime and the wrongdoings of international actors like the IMF or the U.S. military makes it quite radical. Whereas the discourse on crime promoted by most of the private press dealt exclusively with interpersonal violence, the Chávez government and its allies focused on threats to national sovereignty. This point is further elaborated in my portrait of Diario Vea as is the relationship between radical denunciation and conservative responses.

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All of the newsrooms that I observed were hierarchical work environments. Although the organizational structure of each news outlet varied, they all included three basic strata: 1) owners and directors, 2) editors, 3) reporters/photographers. Journalists across all these strata contributed to the life of their respective news organization and the reproduction of its editorial line. They did not, however, contribute evenly.

At the top of the pyramid, owners and a handful of prominent directors/editors played a powerful role in establishing the tone and the political leaning of each news organizations. All of the privately owned newspapers in Caracas were essentially family businesses: El Nacional was owned and operated by the Otero family, Últimas Noticias by the Capriles family, and Diario Vea by the García Ponce brothers. This was common knowledge. Generally, these families had ultimate control over the content of their newspapers. However, the manner in which they exercised their control varied substantially. In the case of El Nacional and Diario Vea, the families were very close to the day-to-day operations. In the case of Últimas Noticias the owners were further removed from newspaper, which allowed the director (Eleazar Díaz Rangel) to be the most influential presence.

It is important to stress that the editorial line of any news organization was not handed down by some all-powerful cabal of owners. Even the most tightly controlled family firms were subject to internal pressures and competing interests (cf. Yanagisako 1991; Yanagisako 2002). Although I was not privy to the innermost workings of these ownership groups, like most journalists I heard stories about the businesses and in some cases I had direct contact with the family members. Even the most casual observers recognized that profits, intra-familial politics, and the editorial line were all closely related. During my fieldwork, the Chávez government was pressuring news organizations to fall in line or risk serious legal and economic sanctions (including the revocation of broadcasting licenses, the interruption of preferential exchange rates, and criminal prosecutions). These pressures impacted the day-to-day operation of most news organizations. Rumors suggested that they also affected relationship within the owning families as well as the editorial line that each news organization adopted. A full account

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of the editorial line, then, would mean considering the complex relationship between property, family, and the state.4

Along with the intra-familial dynamics, the editorial line was also shaped by the relationship between owners and their employees. If the editorial line started at the top, owners could simply stamp their worldview onto their employees. For all their influence, they still had to conform to the professional norms of journalism. This was what made editors indispensable.

Editors represented the middle strata, the managerial labor of the newsroom. They acted as the keepers of the newspaper’s worldview, the people who translated the judgments of owners and directors into a journalistic product. Editors were responsible for assessing a multitude of discrete events and assembling them into a definitive version of the news. They decided what stories to cover, which reporters covered them, and where the articles appeared. Among editors, there was also a chain of command. At the top sat the senior editors, who supposedly had a global vision of the newspaper and its day-to-day operations. Senior editors made the final decisions on the relative newsworthiness of different stories. They were the people who directed the editorial meetings, decided what was worthy of being front-page news, managed the opinion columns, and determined the broad arc of news coverage. At the bottom were the section editors, whose job was to oversee specific segments of the newspaper. Section editors managed the output of reporters and reviewed the content of their work. Once an article had been filed, the section editor reviewed it, wrote the headline, and made the final decisions about the images that accompanied it. Additionally, most section editors also authored their own articles and opinion pieces. Many of them produced as much if not more written content than the reporters.

Every editor that I met had much to do and little time to do it. The most valuable characteristic—the one for which most editors were promoted from out of the ranks of beat journalists—was the ability to make sound journalistic judgments at a breakneck

4 Thanks to Sylvia Yanagisako for these observations on family firms and the crucial nexus that links property, family, and the state.

194 Chapter 6 pace. If most editors admitted that their job was stressful, it carried distinct privileges. They enjoyed greater prestige within the profession, better remuneration, and far more latitude in their writing. In return, editors were expected to manage the output of beat journalists, pushing them to produce as much content as possible and making sure that these articles were in keeping with the standards of their newspaper.

Although beat reporters and photographers were at the bottom of the newsroom hierarchy, they had a large degree of autonomy. This was due, in large part, to the professionalization of journalism in Venezuela. Since the 1970s, all Venezuelan reporters have been required to possess a bachelor’s degree from an accredited school of social communication along with membership in the National College of Journalist (CNP). The CNP had its own written code of ethics and was governed by the Law of the Exercise of Journalism (1994). In addition to the CNP, journalists belonged to numerous civil associations and labor unions like the like the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP). This strong organizational infrastructure meant that established beat journalists were comfortable asserting their own expertise. They could always defend their work by pointing to the norms and ethical standards of the profession to which everyone, including editors and owners, was accountable. Under these circumstances, it was very difficult to force a beat journalist to follow the dominant line of thinking. However, more subtle forms of pressure were exerted on journalists, starting with their pocketbooks.

Despite the professionalization of journalism in Venezuela, low wages and stiff competition limited the independence of most beat reporters and photographers. At the beginning of my tenure on the Caracas crime beat, the average monthly salary for a full- time reporter was around Bs.1800 (around $1000), a full-time photographer around Bs.1500 (less than $800). Keep in mind that Caracas was the most expensive metropolitan area in South America, with prices for housing and goods on par with major North American cities. Surviving on $1000 per month within an upper-middle class milieu was next to impossible. This forced most journalists to find other ways of supplementing their income and many of them worked two jobs. To make matters worse, the annual inflation rate in Venezuela hovered between twenty-five and thirty percent. By the end of my tenure Bs.1800 was worth less than $500. Rather than receiving an

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automatic pay raise, journalists at most newspapers had to fight for new contracts. Over the course of two years, I observed long and unpleasant strikes at El Universal, El Nacional, and Últimas Noticias.5 While most of the editors were sympathetic to the plight of their colleagues, as management they were on the other side of the picket line.

***

These strata reflected more than simply a division of labor; they also represented a hierarchy of professional judgments. This hierarchy clashed mightily with the professional self-image of most journalists. Newsrooms are envisioned as democratic spaces by their inhabitants. Their built environment says as much. With one exception, every newsroom that I visited had an open floor plan, which created a busy, sometimes boisterous sense of collective endeavor. The message was reinforced by the fact that even the offices set off from the main floor were only semi-private. In such a setting, journalists were constantly talking about the news, comparing their opinions, and sharing their judgments. It was an atmosphere that reinforced a sense of professional autonomy, especially among reporters.

Rather than outright coercion, I found that the editorial line reflected a consensus built within the newsroom.6 More often than not consent was produced through an acknowledged hierarchy of judgment. To work inside a newsroom meant accepting the aforementioned division of labor and acquiescing to the journalistic judgment of ranking editors, directors, and owners. As a general rule, the higher a person was positioned within a news organization the more significant their editorial judgment. Those judgments informed daily routines of newsmaking—everything from the layout and the

5 Such callous treatment of workers was not limited to private industry. More than one government agency was guilty of taking advantage of inflation at the expense of its employees or sub-contractors. 6 Journalists were rarely if ever forced to author pieces that ran contrary to their journalistic judgment. After all, reporters and photographers had ultimate say over what stories and images bore their signature. On several occasions I watched editors attempt to pitch unpopular projects to reporters. More often than not those editors ended up shelving the topic or writing the story themselves. Which is not to say that beat journalists flaunted their autonomy. Pushing back had to be done carefully so as not to seem like outright rebellion. Indeed, I found that younger journalists were considerably less likely to assert themselves when they disagreed with editors. Many of them talked resentfully about having their stories changed or their photos cropped without their permission. Occasionally they even spoke of outright censorship on the part of editors and owners. Nonetheless, coercive behavior on the part of editors was the exception rather than the norm.

196 Chapter 6 writing style, to guidelines about sources and judgments about newsworthiness. All of these judgments impacted the way that crime news was reported. While beat reporters and photographers had some degree of input, they did not set the tone of news coverage. Those journalists who were in sync with the prevailing opinions of editors and owners received the choicest assignments and were most likely to have their work featured on the front pages. Those whose judgments ran contrary to the newspaper were often marginalized. They published fewer stories and they were less likely to have their articles singled out for praise. Most beat journalists internalized the judgments of their editors, just as editors internalized the judgments of their directors and media owners.

***

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The People’s Voice: Inside Últimas Noticias

Popular tabloids are usually associated with sensationalistic coverage of crime and the old cliché “if it bleeds it leads.” Últimas Noticias became the best- selling newspaper in Venezuela by doing Founded: 1941 exactly the opposite. Although it ranked Weekday Circulation: 180,000 Sunday Circulation: 360,000 among the most important sources for crime President: Miguel Ángel Capriles López Director: Eleazar Díaz Rangel news in Caracas, the crime section of Últimas Noticias was buried in the middle of the paper just before the editorials. Crime journalists at Últimas Noticias tended to downplay the kind of lurid stories that other popular news tabloids covered and they scrupulously avoided unsubstantiated rumors.

Rather than blood, sex, and scandal, Últimas Noticias was famous for its folksy style and its editorial balance. Written for a popular audience, it featured bright illustrations and snapshot coverage of national politics, crime, sports, and entertainment. What set the newspaper apart from the competition was its colorful use of language and focus on life in the barrios. The writers and editors at Últimas Noticias intentionally echoed the syntax of informal conversation, which lent the newspaper a down-home profile that was simultaneously playful and serious. Its pages were peppered with colloquial references to “chamos” (kids), “panas” (buddies), and “rumbas” (celebrations). Such language intended to hail the popular classes and demonstrated that Últimas Noticias was a newspaper of the people. This commitment was further reflected in the newspaper’s coverage of life in the popular settlements of Caracas and the surrounding areas. Entire sections of the paper, like “Superbarrio,” were dedicated to the challenges and successes faced by communities marginalized by other news outlets. Similarly, sections like “Voice of the Reader” and “Put It There” served as vehicles for letters, text messages, and petitions from the popular sectors. Between its coverage of life in the barrios and its stylistic appeal, Últimas Noticias successfully established itself as the newspaper of the common people. This alone made it remarkable. However, it became the most respected newspaper in Venezuela for another reason.

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From an editorial standpoint, Últimas Noticias was unique because it successfully staked out a middle ground between chavismo and the opposition. Journalists and readers alike regarded it as Venezuela’s most balanced news outlet.7 This reputation was established through techniques familiar to North American audiences. Últimas Noticias framed politically sensitive issues as debates between opposing sides, something that it had been doing since the very beginning of the Chávez era. Often the debate was simulated by juxtaposing different political views on the same page. If there were two competing rallies, the newspaper was careful to give both equal attention and it usually placed the stories side-by-side. In the lead up to an election or a referendum, the paper invited spokespersons from both camps to make their case directly to the readers. When the editors decided to publish a damning accusation against the government, they usually balanced it out with denunciations against opposition officials.

The Editor’s Line

Eleazar Díaz Rangel was the man most often credited with the success of Últimas Noticias. Poised but affable, he cultivated the air of an intellectual from Latin America’s Boom Generation. He had a square jaw, a painter’s brush moustache, and expressive eyebrows that arched and furrowed as he talked. Díaz Rangel was one of the best known journalists of his era: he won the national journalism prize (2006), served as president of the state television channel VTV (1994-1996), and was the head of the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP). He was also a prolific scholar who had authored more than half- a-dozen books on journalism in Venezuela and served as the chair of the country’s oldest department of communication at the Central University of Venezuela (1983-1986). Finally, Eleazar Díaz Rangel was a lifelong leftist and the single most prominent voice of support for the Chávez government in the private press. Many journalists speculated about the circumstances that led Miguel Ángel Capriles López to hire Díaz Rangel, a known chavista, as director of Últimas Noticias. After all, the Capriles family was openly

7 According to Díaz Rangel, the polling firm Datanalisis did a survey in 2005 that revealed that 74.5% of Venezuelans thought that Últimas Noticias was a balanced publication, 16% saw it as a chavista outlet, and 6% saw it as an opposition newspaper. Author’s interview, November 27, 2007

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aligned with the opposition. Regardless of the motives, the arrangement worked out well for everyone involved.8

When Díaz Rangel took over as the director of the newspaper in 2001, it was lagging behind the competition with a daily circulation just over 100,000. By 2009, the paper was selling approximately 180,000 copies of its weekday editions and over 360,000 copies of the Sunday paper. Rangel credited this growth to a variety of factors including the introduction of color printing, a redesigned layout, and the decision to embrace an informal writing style. However, in his estimation, the single most important reason for the rise of Últimas Noticias was its editorial line. During the highly polarized period from 2002 to 2004, the paper differentiated itself from other news sources. Últimas Noticias was one of only three news outlets that did not support the failed 2002 coup d’état or the subsequent efforts to oust Chávez from power. In the short term, this won the paper the goodwill of many of the president’s supporters. More importantly, though, Últimas Noticias began establishing a reputation for journalistic professionalism and editorial balance. As a sales technique, editorial balance has a proven record. Early twentieth century newspapers in the United States cultivated the appearance of impartiality as a tool for reaching the widest audience possible. Something similar transpired with Últimas Noticias. Thanks to its reputation, it circulated among people of different political orientations without calling attention to itself as the product of either camp. In an atmosphere in which a newspaper was a political statement as much as a source of news, it captured a valuable commodity—the appearance of neutrality.

Perhaps Díaz Rangel’s greatest contribution to Últimas Noticias was to the culture of the newsroom. Although his own weekly column was unapologetically pro- government, he was deeply committed to journalistic ideals of professionalism and editorial balance. In both of our interviews as well as in our informal conversations, Díaz Rangel stressed the importance of following a story no matter where it might lead. “In

8 Several journalists told me that upon the death of the newspaper’s founder, there was a dispute over ownership of the paper. Thanks to proceedings in Venezuelan’s Supreme Court (TSJ), the Chávez government indirectly controlled the future of Últimas Noticias. Rumor had it that in order to mollify the government a deal was struck, which involved appointing Díaz Rangel as director. Díaz Rangel would not speak on this subject or about the newspaper’s owners.

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Últimas Noticias the objective is to search out the truth and tell it. Sometimes the truth favors the government; sometimes it goes against the government. Either way we publish it. And if we are wrong we correct it.”9 He also had great confidence in the judgment of his editors and journalists, despite the fact that most of them supported the opposition. On at least two occasions, Díaz Rangel proudly told me about the results of an informal vote held in the newspaper just before the 2006 presidential elections. “37 for Rosales, 17 for Chávez, and 10 abstentions.”10 This was exceptional as was the congenial, collaborative atmosphere of Últimas Noticias. Like any workplace it had its moments of tension and crisis, including a major work slowdown that lasted for several months as the press worker’s union tried to negotiate a new collective contract. But it was one of the rare places in Caracas where a kind of political co-existence had been forged.

Along with Díaz Rangel, there were three senior editors who strongly influenced the editorial line and the culture of the newsroom at Últimas Noticias—Erys Wilfredo Alvarado (Editor-in-Chief), Hilda Carmona (Chief of Information), and Luz Mely Reyes (Chief of Weekend Editions). I came to think of these editors as the “Big Three.” They were the ones tasked with running Últimas Noticias on a daily basis. Every morning the Big Three met around 10:00 a.m. to discuss the major stories and sketch the general outline of that day’s paper. Around 5:30 they met again, this time with Díaz Rangel, to review the paper section by section and to select the images and stories for the front page. Watching them run an editorial meeting, I realized that they were intimately familiar with one another’s judgments and that they had long ago reached a consensus in their interpretation of the newspaper’s outlook. In fact, it was the Editor-in-Chief, Erys Alvarado, who provided the most succinct definition of the editorial line at Últimas Noticias. “Our philosophy is that the readers are the judges so we don’t have to be. We do not have to overthrow the government nor do we have to applaud it. What we have to do is to obtain the facts and every fact has two faces. Like a coin, there are always two sides.” Clearly, the Big Three used this philosophy to guide their interpretations of news. This was not always as simple as presenting both sides of an argument. At least in the

9 Author’s interview, April 23, 2009 10 Author’s interview, November 27, 2007

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newspaper’s coverage of crime, the editorial line meant carefully weighing its relationship to the government and the politics of urban violence.

The Crime Desk

The offices of Últimas Noticias were located on the second floor of Torre de la Prensa, the fifteen-story building that, for years, was home to the Cadena Capriles media conglomerate. Visitors to the newspaper walked through a dimly lit atrium, past a small security desk, and up a spiral staircase into a modest but neat reception area. To the right were a handful of private offices, conferences rooms, and lounges. To the left was the main newsroom, which was organized around an open floor plan. Six rows of workstations, approximately seventy desks in all, were separated by low dividers so that an editor or a seated journalist could easily survey the entire room. On busy days, the newsroom buzzed with pockets of activity. The crime reporters were clustered between the second and third row of desks, near the entrance of the office, just over the shoulder of the group that reports on national politics.

Through the glass wall of an office brimming with papers and cigarette smoke, Wilmer Poleo looked out over the workstations of the four reporters directly under his charge. The section editor for “crime” and “tribunals” at Últimas Noticias, Wilmer was a tanned, active man in his mid-forties with a crew cut and an intense, albeit friendly, gaze. Along with four full-time reporters, he also oversaw “one-and-a-half” photographers and maybe a dozen part-time correspondents who reported from outside of Caracas. This small stable of journalists generated two, three, sometimes four pages of news content per day, and Wilmer’s attention slid back and forth between phone, blackberry, desktop computer, and the screen of a small television parked beside his desk. It was all managed with the practiced ease of someone who had worked the crime beat for more than fifteen years.

My first meeting with Wilmer was characteristically efficient. On a balmy December afternoon just a few weeks before Christmas, my research assistant and I squeezed into the sliver of space between the desk and the door of his office. I came with questions about why a newspaper known for its studied neutrality toward the Chávez

202 Chapter 6 administration had adopted an openly critical stance on violent crime. Although I expected an evasive answer, Wilmer was direct. “My style is to emphasize insecurity at any cost,” he said, punctuating the point with a sharp drag on his cigarette. “In one way or another we must manage to break through the barrier [of silence] so that for once the government acknowledges that what is happening is true.” He proudly pointed to his weekly column, “Police Code,” which came out every Monday. That day’s edition was titled “Bloody Extra Inning.”

“I called it that because President Chávez—who has never spoken about the theme of insecurity—talked about it in one of his [recent] speeches. He said something about how he was convinced that insecurity is a problem that does not have a solution and that the police are not going to solve the problem of insecurity but rather el pueblo must organize against it. He is saying that we are going to solve the problem of insecurity with communal councils [that don’t exist]. That gave me the sense that we’re going a bloody extra inning, because he is not going to do anything to stop delinquency … we’re supposed to sit here waiting until the [communal councils] form, which could take years!”11 This critical assessment of the Chávez government and its security policies echoed the judgments of most of the crime journalists. What made it unusual and lent it greater force was that Wilmer considered himself a supporter of the Chávez administration. For nearly thirty years he lived in 23 de Enero, the famous Caracas neighborhood known as the epicenter of popular support for the president. Despite these political sympathies, the neighborhood bowed to no one—it was best described as an autonomous zone—and Wilmer’s columns took on a similarly defiant tone. He regularly published denuncias of the government, of the police, of known gangs and alleged criminals. Informed by an entire team of reporters but unconstrained by the conventions governing news content, “Police Code” provided a glimpse of the rumors, opinions, and accusations that crime reporters carried with them but which rarely saw the light of day. “You can imagine the number of enemies that I have on the street,” he said, grimacing.

Generally, Wilmer’s denuncias were accompanied by concrete suggestions about how to remedy the problem: more police in a particular zone, better lighting on the streets, sweeping reforms of the judiciary, better conditions in the prisons, etc. This

11 Author’s interview, December 19, 2007

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reformist style, which is part denuncia and part recommendation, exemplified the tone of crime news at Últimas Noticias, which explicitly attempted to influence the government in the name of its readers.

The Insufferable Insecurity Campaign

Over the course of my fieldwork, I observed numerous instances of this style of denunciation in action. The most outstanding example was the “Insufferable Insecurity” campaign, a month-long series that Wilmer spearheaded and which ran in the pages of Últimas Noticias from September to October of 2008. The first installment was announced with great fanfare on the front-page of the newspaper. “Insecurity must be halted,” read the headline in big, bold letters. “Últimas Noticias initiates a campaign to reduce criminality.” By way of introduction, the newspaper’s director, Eleazar Díaz Rangel, explained the motivation for the series. “Months ago, insecurity became the country’s number one problem,” he wrote. “Yet, the efforts of the Government have not been successful. How many security ministers have passed through office? How many plans have been announced? With meager results.” In the face of political inertia, the newspaper seized the initiative to create a platform for action. For the next five weeks, Últimas Noticias featured daily installments of the series. The first major article concerned a stalled project for sweeping police reforms (CONAREPOL), which was initiated in January 2007 and then abandoned. Thereafter, the campaign focused on expert interviews with leading criminologists, ex-police officials, legal scholars, and human rights activists. Some of these experts, like the sociologist Roberto Briceño Leon or the former judge Mónica Fernández, had ties to the opposition; others like Luis Gerardo Gabaldón and Soraya el Achkar worked with the Chávez government. Each of them was asked a similar question: “If you had the power to make changes, what kinds of changes would you make?” Rather than simply denouncing the government or the police or the judicial system, each of them was asked to suggest concrete solutions.

Starting in its second week, the Insufferable Insecurity campaign began soliciting denuncias from readers. A selection of these emails formed a separate column of material that corroborated the expert testimonies. The vast majority of these denuncias came from Caracas. Each described a specific locale (e.g. “Apartment Blocks 3 & 4 in Lomas de

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Urdaneta, Catia” or “the third street in Las Mayas, Coche”) so that they functioned as fragmentary maps of the city and its dangers. There were shoot-outs between gangs in the East; crooked cops in the West; prostitution in the center city; pickpockets among the street vendors lining the boulevards; drug dealers operating out of the poor, hilltop settlements; auto thieves casing the middle class zones. Using these denuncias as evidence, the newspaper made an appeal for reforms directly to the Chávez government, specifically the newly appointed Minister of Interior and Justice, Tarek El Aissami. The editors were careful to frame the denuncias as petitions from the ranks of the president’s political base rather than hostile attacks. Nonetheless, they contained an implicit threat. If the government ignored these denuncias and the efforts of Últimas Noticias, it would be ignoring its core political constituency for which there were consequences. In a column titled “The Voice of the People,” Wilmer reveals as much:

“Hopefully, the Ministry of Interior [and Justice] has designated a team that can at least verify the certainty of these denuncias. We are not dealing with the incessant denuncias of experts nor are they part of a campaign by sectors of the opposition. They are the urgent expositions of the people themselves, of the man on the street, of those who live in the working class districts and who feel that they have been abandoned by the State. These are the true experts, because they have to live—or survive—with this problem, which has been denounced time and again. The other option would be [for the Ministry] to ignore the voice of the people, to turn a deaf ear to this desperate clamor, which reverberates all the way to the top.” 12 When we met to discuss the progress of the campaign, Wilmer was visibly pleased. The new Minister, Tarek El Aissami, had responded positively to the newspaper’s efforts, agreeing that it was time to evaluate the problem of violence. More importantly, he promised to convene a council of experts dedicated to the subject. Wilmer was looking forward to concluding the Insufferable Insecurity campaign. “In a few weeks,” he explained, “we are going to systemize our findings and have a breakfast with the Minister in which we will present our work.” This had been the plan from the beginning, to use journalistic resources to put pressure on the government in a way that, hopefully, yielded results. Under the leadership of the Díaz Rangel and the Big Three, such tactics were common. Wilmer described similar campaigns around the problems of

12 September 29, 2008. “Código Policial: La voz del pueblo,” Últimas Noticias.

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garbage and automobile traffic in Caracas. Like investigative journalism in North America during the 1980s and 1990s (Protess et. al. 1992), they aimed to influence rather than inflame. In contrast with other news outlets, Últimas Noticias was not trying to mobilize popular outrage against the government; rather they used the simmering threat to move officials to action.

What Goes Without Saying

Although the Insufferable Insecurity campaign presented itself as the public face of Últimas Noticias, it was largely the work of three people. Eleazar Díaz Rangel (the director) originally proposed the campaign and his political clout made it possible. Most of the content was produced by Wilmer Poleo (the section editor) and Eligio Rojas (one of the four, full-time crime reporters). From the perspective of newsroom hierarchy, these three represented different “levels” within the division of labor. The director proposed the project and the section editor carried it out with the help of one of the beat reporters. However, there were several section editors that the director could have selected. Likewise, Wilmer recruited Eligio out of a larger pool of possible reporters. Why these three? What brought them together on this project?

I would suggest that these three came together on the campaign because they shared a similar outlook on politics and security. If all of them sympathized with the Chávez government, they were outspokenly critical of the administration’s failure to stem the tide of violence. During working hours, it was not uncommon to find them in conversation with one another. In fact, it was thanks to Eleazar Díaz Rangel that I met Wilmer and Wilmer, in turn, put me in contact with Eligio. There was no mistaking the hierarchy here. Still, such a campaign does not form itself out of force, but out of the production of consent. In this case, consensus was already in place between these three journalists. This was not a conspiracy, but rather the fluid way in which power worked inside most of the private news organization that I observed. A similar dynamic was at work in El Nacional, although the editorial line that journalists were expected to follow was considerably different.

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The Crusaders: Inside El Nacional

Although elite broadsheets are not usually associated with crime news, El Nacional had one of the largest crime desks in Caracas and it employed some of the most respected crime journalists in the city. Thanks to the influence of Founded: 1943 Weekday Circulation: 80,000 Sandra Guerrero and the Power Rangers (Chapter Sunday Circulation: 230,000 President/Editor: Miguel Henrique Otero 4), El Nacional set the agenda for crime Editor-in-Chief: Cenovia Casas journalism in Caracas. The coverage of its principle rival, El Universal, was more daring, and some of the tabloids were more extensive in their scope. However, El Nacional shaped the way that crime was reported, starting with the central importance of the morgue, the emphasis on victims, and the use of populist denuncias.

El Nacional aspired to be the newspaper of Venezuela’s political and cultural vanguard. An elite broadsheet with a national audience, it was a tireless critic of the Chávez administration and one of the most important mouthpieces of the opposition. The newspaper regularly waded into the thick of political battles, daring to publish materials that other outlets avoid for fear of the repercussions. Confrontation was nothing new to El Nacional. Founded in 1943, the newspaper’s long-time owner and editor Miguel Otero Silva (1908-1985) was an avowed Marxist who repeatedly clashed with the government. His son, Miguel Henrique Otero, who was the head of El Nacional, could be described as a classical liberal: he was a defender of private property, limited government, the rule of law, and political tolerance. Under his stewardship the newspaper drifted towards the center of the political spectrum. The adversarial tradition, however, persisted. During the 1980s and 1990s El Nacional took up a radical stance against government corruption that helped bring an end to the country’s two-party, pacted-democracy (see Chapter 2). Throughout the Chávez era, it has played a similar role, denouncing the president as an authoritarian who rules by command rather than consensus. Despite its activist editorial line, readers and reporters looked to El Nacional as a paper of record, a more radical version of the New York Times or Washington Post.

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The Editor’s Line

Miguel Henrique Otero (hereafter Otero) was the person most responsible for El Nacional’s active role in Venezuelan politics and its hard-line stance against the Chávez government. Tall and bespectacled with a thin, graying beard, his professional background was not in journalism but in politics. Formerly a member of the Venezuelan parliament, he assumed the position of president and editor of the newspaper upon his father’s death in 1985. Otero set the editorial policies for El Nacional. He selected the editorial staff, developed the newspaper’s business model, and articulated its core political principles. It was with good reason that people sometimes referred to El Nacional as Miguel Henrique Otero’s newspaper.

During our first interview, I asked Otero about the newspaper’s political activism. Was it appropriate for El Nacional to intervene so forcefully on the issues of the day? He thought for a moment, and chose his words slowly, deliberately. “El Nacional has always pushed for change,” he explained. “It is a newspaper that has always wanted things to run better—culturally, politically, democratically.” In the current environment, Otero believed that this meant exercising the right to publicly critique the government. The Chávez government had consolidated power to such an extent that he felt the country was on the brink of authoritarianism. “Without an independent press, you would have a dictatorship. We are the only public power that is not controlled by the government. We are the last line in the defense of democracy.”13

Otero identified with what he called a radical vision of political transformation. “There are two lines of thinking in the opposition. There are ‘the lights’ who believe that Chávez can be defeated by elections, people like Teodoro Petkoff.14 I am not one of those.”15 To the contrary, Otero believed that Chávez would only go when he was forced out of office. He emphasized that he adamantly opposed any kind of coup d’état, which would be both undemocratic and unacceptable to the majority of Venezuelans. Instead,

13 Author’s interview, November 21, 2007 14 Teodoro Petkoff was a former guerilla, an ex-senator for the Socialist part MAS, and the founder/director of the newspaper Tal Cual. He was also a vocal opponent of Hugo Chávez. 15 Author’s interview, June 22, 2009

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Otero envisioned that the same kind of popular uprising that brought Chávez to power would also bring about his downfall. Invoking the Berlin Wall and Venezuela’s last military dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, Otero was convinced that “The people will throw him out. People protesting in the streets.”16 This conviction led him to form the December 2nd Movement for Democracy and Freedom (Movement 2D), whose activities and manifestoes were closely followed by El Nacional.

Movement 2D was an excellent example of how the political activities of El Nacional’s president and owner became part of the news cycle. The movement took its name from the opposition’s first electoral victory. In December of 2007 voters rejected a constitutional referendum that would have made it possible for the president of Venezuela to run for multiple terms in office. Chávez famously derided the opposition victory as “the victory of shit” and encouraged his supporters to launch the referendum a second time with the same intention—doing away with presidential term limits. In January 2008 Otero formed a political action group along with a number of prominent intellectuals. Since then they issued almost 200 proclamations, all of which appeared in El Nacional as full-page advertisements. The recurring theme was opposition to the Chávez administration as an undemocratic and unlawful regime. The group campaigned across the country and El Nacional frequently covered its forums. Consequently, their activities entered into the paper in two ways: as opinion pieces and as news stories.

Despite his strong political leanings, Otero repeatedly emphasized that the editorial line was not imposed upon journalists or upon their work. Reporters were given the freedom to go about their business without trying fit the facts to the newspaper’s worldview. This point was echoed by Cenovia Casas, the managing editor of El Nacional. Casas was the person most responsible for interpreting the position of the newspaper on a day-to-day basis. Her specialty was international politics, which she studied as an undergraduate at Georgetown University. Before coming to El Nacional in 1990, she worked two stints at the influential but now defunct newspaper Diario de Caracas, the first time as a reporter and the second time as editor of graphic information

16 Author’s interview, June 22, 2009

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covering the Gulf War. Between these two posts, she served as the press secretary for the United States Embassy in Caracas under Ambassador Otto Reich.17 When Casas was considering the move to El Nacional, she was concerned about the newspaper’s Marxist legacy. “They were very close to Cuba and Nicaragua, Castro and Noriega,” she recalled. “I wanted to know if I would have to report on them favorably.” Otero’s reply was that she had complete freedom on these matters. “He said to me, ‘Your job is to publish the news. Period.’”18

Of course, these protestations of freedom elide how the editorial line works in the first place. Owners do not hire editors whose judgment is likely to clash with their own political priorities. It is unlikely that Miguel Henrique Otero’s father would have handed the editorial reigns to a former press secretary of Otto Reich, just as it is doubtful that Casas would have felt comfortable at a newspaper that was in any way supportive of the Cuban government.

The Crime Desk

Ronna Rísquez, the crime section editor for El Nacional, was eating lunch with a group of journalists in the cafeteria. Just across from her sat two women from the international news beat and a rookie reporter who had been working the crime desk for just a few months. When I arrived with another reporter, the four of them were in the midst of an animated discussion about President Chávez’s CNN interview with Patricia Janiot the night before.19 The theme of the interview was the president’s first ten years in office. Near the end of the half-hour interview, Janiot confronted Chávez with accusations about the rising tide of violence under his administration. Around the table, the reporters expressed admiration for the way that Janiot wove together the themes of crime and political violence in Caracas. There was also a sense of outrage at the president’s rebuttal. Mimicking him, Ronna exclaimed, “‘I don’t know what you’re

17 The Cuban-American Otto Reich was deeply unpopular with the Latin American left. An outspoken critic of the Chávez government, Reich backed the failed 2002 coup (Vulliamy 2002). There is some evidence to suggest that that Reich actively participated in the plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government (Golinger 2006, pgs. 58-59). 18 Author’s interview, May 14, 2009 19 February 2, 2009. “Chávez 10 años en el poder.” CNN Español.

210 Chapter 6 talking about, Patricia.’” The youngest journalist rolled her eyes and huffed in agreement. “Such a liar!”

I met Ronna on several of my visits to El Nacional and, eventually, she agreed to let me shadow her for an afternoon on Tuesday, February 3, 2009. Although a veteran of seventeen years, Ronna always struck me as youthful. She usually wore her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, accentuating high, lightly freckled cheeks. That afternoon she was dressed in a floral blouse with matching turquoise necklace and earrings. At the time, Ronna had been a section editor at El Nacional for a little over a year. Her career trajectory included experience in marketing, radio, sports journalism, and teaching in the school of communication at the University of Santa Maria (Caracas). She was hired for this job based, largely, on five years of experience as the section editor for crime news at the newspaper El Mundo. At El Nacional, she was in charge of one of the largest crime desks in Caracas, one that had its own internal feuds and factions. To make matters worse, there was growing tension between reporters and the senior leadership of the newspaper. A few months after our afternoon together, there was a major union slowdown over stalled contract negotiations. Ronna was in a difficult position, made all the more difficult because she was a newcomer.

After lunch, Ronna disappeared for about an hour to what I presumed was a meeting with the brass. I headed upstairs to the newsroom to wait for her. Of all the Caracas newspapers, the offices of El Nacional were the newest and the most contemporary. From the outside, the complex was white walls, sculpted steel, and mirrored glass. The interior of the newsroom was bright and spacious. Floor to ceiling windows let in plenty of natural light. Three long rows of modular workstations complete with black mesh Herman Miller chairs gave the place a dot.com feel. My friend, Manuel, a reporter from the international desk, gave me a tour of the floor, explaining the arrangement. The workstations nearest the entrance housed the politics section, the weekend section, and most of the senior editorial staff. Layout and design were in the middle of the room. Crime was located all the way in the southwest corner, just beside the fire escape that doubled as the “smoker’s lounge.” There were by my count at least six desks dedicated to the crime section of El Nacional, occupied by four full-time

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reporters, a coordinator, and the editor. Although the desks were separated by high dividers, Ronna was just an arm’s length away from every member of the team. I commented that it seemed like a great work environment. Manuel shrugged and grinned. “Yeah, but it’s hard to hide from your editor.”

Around 3:30 Ronna was back at her workstation, reviewing articles, fielding phone calls, fixing the section layout, and running back-and-forth to the printer. Most of the articles that came across her desk merited two readings and I watched her change various details for purposes of clarity and space. These changes were made without consulting the reporters, although I suspected that there was a mutual understanding on this. After all, she had extensive contact with each of them. With Sandra Guerrero, the most senior reporter, Ronna was content to ask for small alterations and an additional quote or two. With the two youngest member of the team she was more hands-on. This was not simply a matter of seniority, although it played a part. It also had to do with the different kinds of assignments that they were covering that afternoon. Whereas Sandra focused on breaking news, the other two journalists were working on feature-length articles.

According to Ronna, she devoted the bulk of her editorial energies to overseeing feature articles rather than the shorter daily pieces. Reporters usually had two days to produce feature articles, which ran from 800 to 1500 words in length. Such rapid turnaround meant that there was minimal time for research and due diligence. That put additional pressure on editors like Ronna. On Tuesday, there were two features in the works. One was a rebuttal to Chávez’s CNN interview being handled by the politics desk. Ronna was not supervising this piece, but she had been asked to provide supplementary information. At her behest, one of the crime reporters spent the better part of the afternoon searching for quotes to round out the article. The second journalist was putting together a full-page feature on the ransacking and desecration of Tiféret Israel, Caracas’s largest Sephardic synagogue. The incident was reported three days earlier on Saturday, January 31, 2009, and it quickly made international headlines. What made the story particularly sensitive was the link between the Chávez government’s stance on Israel and concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Venezuela. Rumors, later dispelled, suggested that

212 Chapter 6 a splinter group of government supporters could have been behind the attack.20 The story made front-page news in El Nacional for nearly a week, yet the feature article was running behind schedule. Before the journalist left for the day, Ronna had stern words about quality standards and deadlines. After all, this was a major story and one that fit perfectly with the newspaper’s editorial line.

***

Coverage of crime at El Nacional prioritized two themes: victimhood and public protests against insecurity. During a previous interview, Ronna explained that, in this regard, her instructions were explicit and they came from above.21 First, victims and victimhood were supposed to take precedence over criminality. “We always try to focus on the victims, not the perpetrators. The pieces in which we focus on delinquents or criminal groups are exceptional.” Whenever possible, the newspaper followed the story of particularly sympathetic victims: children, students, workers, and upstanding community members. This focus oriented both feature stories, like Tábata Molina’s ongoing series “faces of violence,” as well as day-to-day coverage from the morgue. As such, readers of El Nacional encountered a steady stream of stories that relived the trauma of the parents, spouses, children, and friends of victims. Likewise, interviews with experts, opinion articles, and the weekend death toll (published every Tuesday) also revolved around the suffering of innocent victims. When I asked Ronna why the editors had decided to concentrate on victims, she took me through a quick thought exercise: “Suppose that in Venezuela there are approximately 50,000 delinquents. That’s a lot, but in a country of 28,000,000 that’s an infinitesimal number. In other words, the majority of us are victims. There are 50,000 people out there who are affecting more than 27,000,000. What I am saying is that we are all victims.” For Ronna and the directors of

20 The international debates on these events are well documented in a series of articles and responses in the Boston Review. Lomnitz, Claudio and Raphael Sánchez. 2009a. “United By Hate: The uses of anti- Semitism in Chávez’s Venezuela.” Boston Review, July/August 2009; Lomnitz, Claudio and Raphael Sánchez. 2009b. “A Necessary Critique.” Boston Review, July 16, 2009 (online version accessed on 4/1/2012), http://bostonreview.net/BR34.4/lomnitz_sanchez2.php; Ajl, Max. 2010. “A Response to Lomnitz and Sánchez.” Boston Review, January/February 2010. 21 Author’s interview, August 28, 2008

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El Nacional, victimhood was a potent theme because they imagined it as a common denominator, a unifying experience that connected the vast majority of Venezuelans.

Second, El Nacional was intent on highlighting social responses to violence, especially protests and demonstrations. “We try to underline the spontaneous actions of the communities and of civil society that are demanding security and appealing for their right to life.” The point of covering protests was to “awaken public consciousness” so that people could feel empowered to demand an effective response from the government. This was something that I had plainly observed while working with the crime reporters. Two or three times a week, the team from El Nacional would drive halfway across the city to cover all manner of demonstrations. During my eighteen months on the beat, we observed dozens of thoroughfares closed down by bus drivers and motorcycle-taxis collectives demanding better security measures. We witnessed “die-ins,” “human chains for peace,” student rallies, and political demonstrations. Some of these protests were genuinely spontaneous. Some were clearly staged. Almost all of them received attention from El Nacional.

This emphasis on victims and protests by El Nacional exemplified the populist style of denunciation. The explicit purpose was to demonstrate that popular unrest was growing out of unfulfilled demands for security. Just as corruption was the unifying theme that crystallized popular outrage against the government during the 1980s and 1990s (Chapter 2), insecurity was the great failing of the Chávez administration taken up by the private press. Like most of their colleagues, beat reporters and photographers from El Nacional agreed that violence was out of control and that they had a responsibility to address it. However, reporters and photographers were not setting the newspaper’s agenda. The thematic focus on victims and protests allowed the journalists their professional autonomy within certain limits. In turn it provided the newspaper with a steady stream of material for populist denunciations.

The Morgue Photograph

Nowhere was El Nacional’s use of crime news to stir populist fervor more evident than in the controversy that I observed during the summer of 2010, scant weeks before

214

Chapter 6 parliamentary elections. Once again, the editors of El Nacional were inspired to action by a CNN interview. On August 11, 2010, CNN Español aired a one-hour special on crime in Venezuela. It featured a live debate between the ex-Minister of Communication, Andrés Izarra, who served as a spokesman for the government, and the prominent criminologist Roberto Briceño-Leon, who had strong ties to the opposition and El Nacional. The major point of contention surfaced about half-an-hour into the program, when the anchor asked Briceño-Leon to comment on a recent editorial in which he wrote “There is no doubt that Caracas is the most violent city in the world.” To back up his claim, the criminologist referred to an official homicide rate that was more than seven times the average of Bogotá and an unofficial homicide rate of nearly 200 per 100,000. Although the camera was focused on Briceño-Leon, Izarra could be heard laughing incredulously. He accused both CNN and Briceño-Leon of “journalistic pornography,” questioned the authenticity of their sources, and then denied the comparison with Colombia and Mexico. Izarra’s response was that change came slowly and that the problem was induced by the culture of capitalism, not the government

The editors of El Nacional rushed to the rescue. On Friday, August 13, 2010, the newspaper published Alex Delgado’s photo of eleven naked, blood-spattered corpses piled on metal gurneys and haphazardly strewn about the floor of the Caracas city morgue. It was front page, in full color, and gruesomely detailed—the kind of image that appears on the forensic crime shows so popular in the United States and that air on the cable channels here in Venezuela. Rarely does anything so graphic appear in the news. The Caracas press-corps turned away from such sensationalism long ago. This is not to

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say that photographers stopped taking photos of dead bodies—simply that editors and producers stopped running them. What was so exceptional about Alex Delgado’s photo was that El Nacional had the audacity to publish it just a few weeks before a national election. The ensuing firestorm exemplified how crime news was mobilized in the pages of El Nacional in line with a populist style of denunciation.

The moment that I saw the cover, I knew that there was going to be a backlash. There was no public access inside the Caracas morgue and cameras were strictly prohibited.22 A few years earlier, El Universal did an exposé accompanied by similar photos revealing the atrocious treatment of the bodies of the deceased. The day before the piece came out a friend warned me, “Shit is about to hit the fan.” The reporter and the photographers anticipated that the pictures would cause a firestorm among both the journalists and government officials. As it turned out, the episode passed without much incident. However, it underscored the fact that publishing such photos was potentially inflammatory for a number of reasons. The authorities in charge of the morgue were under constant pressure about poor conditions of the facilities. Along with traffic, trash, and power outages, the morgue was a metonym for everything that was wrong with Caracas and, by extension, the Chávez government. Nonetheless, crime journalists and the people who worked inside the morgue co-existed and, from time to time, even cooperated. The explicit albeit unspoken agreement was that the crime journalists were not supposed to drag the people who worked at the morgue into a political battle. To do so would be to burn their sources and potentially jeopardize their ability to continue interviewing victims outside the morgue.

Less than 24-hours after El Nacional published “the photo” the environment around the morgue turned toxic. Wilmer Flores Trosel, the national director of the investigative police (CICPC), which had jurisdiction over the morgue, announced that he was pressing charges against El Nacional for violating Venezuela’s child protection law.23 He appeared on state television contradicting the photograph as false, politically motivated, and socially irresponsible. According to Flores Trosel, El Nacional’s

22 This is common security protocol in most morgues. 23 Ley Orgánica para la Protección del Niño y Adolescente.(LOPNA)

216 Chapter 6 depiction of the morgue was part of an orchestrated plot by the opposition to use insecurity to discredit the government, when in actuality crime was decreasing. It was under the same child protection laws that the national ombudswoman, Gabriela Ramírez, filed a complaint. Less than twenty-four hours later, the public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation. It took only three days before the 12th Tribunal for the Protection of Children and Adolescents passed a general restraining order prohibiting all media outlets from publishing “violent, bloody, or grotesque images …that in one form or another violate the psychic and moral condition of children and adolescents.”24 El Nacional and another newspaper that reproduced that photograph, Tal Cual, were hit with heavy sanctions. They were ordered to refrain from publishing “images, information, and publicity of any kind” that could be broadly construed as violent, provocative, or that otherwise dealt with death and dying. The wording seemed to suggest that even the most quotidian form of crime news was prohibited.

The publication of the photo and the government’s response caused a stir among the Caracas press corps, especially the reporters and photographers who covered the crime beat. Suddenly, they found themselves at the center of a national controversy. An extra security detail was stationed outside the morgue. The president was denouncing their work as “journalistic pornography.” The investigative police, who had once been their most important source of information, were now hostile adversaries. The situation was so intense that Alex Delgado, a thirty-year veteran, decided to take a leave of absence. The rest of the Caracas crime beat, nearly one hundred journalists in total, oscillated between outraged indignation and nervous apprehension.

On Wednesday, August 18, I was sitting with about a dozen reporters from various media outlets at the usual café in downtown Caracas. The day’s big news was El Nacional’s defiant response to the restraining order. The title page read: “Publication of images and news about violence prohibited,” and just below it, in bold red type, the word “censored” was written across a pair of empty image boxes. The captions read: “If there had been a photo here, you would see a father crying for a son he no longer has,” and “If there was another photo here, you would see politicians demanding the figures that the

24 August, 18, 2010. “La sentencia.” Últimas Noticias.

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police cannot publish.” One of the reporters took the paper, thumbed to the editorial page, and began reading aloud, approvingly. The editorial denounced everything from government lies, the violation of press freedom, the enrichment of a corrupt class of bureaucrats, the cynicism of state officials, and the rise of leftist extremism that was transforming Venezuela into a new version of Cuba, South Korea, or Iran. When the reporter finished reading, he looked up and clapped his hands. “Beautiful, beautiful. That is exactly what we needed to do. Good for El Nacional!” Turning serious, he looked at the reporter beside him and tapped emphatically on the table. “They need to keep this up. They cannot let this one go.” The other reporter nodded in agreement. “One of the editors was saying that they are thinking about running headlines about insecurity every day until the election.” For the next month, El Nacional did exactly this; it ran story after story about crime under a banner decorated with a censorship sign.

Almost overnight, the morgue photo morphed into a whole series of political demands that far exceeded the problem of crime in Caracas. More than simply a denunciation of urban violence, news coverage of crime symbolized opposition to the Chávez government broadly construed. The point is not simply that the morgue photograph was pointedly political or that it caused a commotion. Rather, it laid the groundwork for a particular kind of political community around the shared experience of victimhood, be it at the hands of violent offenders or government censors.

What Goes Without Saying

For weeks, the morgue controversy made national and international headlines. Every major news outlet in Venezuela covered the story. Opposition outlets like Globovision, RCTV, El Universal, and Tal Cual devoted major blocks of time and space to the scandal, using it as a platform for denouncing crime, censorship, corruption, and incompetence. The government’s draconian response to the photograph also led moderate outlets like Venevision and Últimas Noticias to pay considerable attention to the controversy. Even state-sponsored channels were forced to address the issue, albeit obliquely (see below). Outside of Venezuela, the story received significant attention. It

218 Chapter 6 was even the cover story for the August 23, 2010 edition of The New York Times.25 Of course, no outlet covered the controversy more extensively than El Nacional.

The publication of the morgue photo was a clear example of a populist denuncia and it consciously provoked a reaction. Miguel Henrique Otero said as much in an interview with CNN Español. “The editorial reasoning behind the photo was to create a shock so that people could in some way react to a situation that the government has done absolutely nothing about.”26 Reflecting back on that editorial decision, Ronna Rísquez commented:

The motivation for publishing the photo was to call the attention of the country, of its citizens, of the police to what is happening in Venezuela—the problem of the violence and the homicides. The publication of this photo created a wave, a boom of coverage about the importance of the theme of insecurity and violence. And from this moment, I think that its importance has been maintained in the media, from this point the importance of insecurity has not fallen in the media and this was key, this was one of the motives for the publication of this photo.27 It was the editors and owner of El Nacional who decided to stage the campaign of denuncias just weeks before national elections.28 I expected that some of the crime journalists from El Nacional would disapprove. After all, this threatened to upset their daily routines and it clearly violated the unspoken rules of the crime beat. To my surprise, every beat reporter and photographer that I encountered approved the move, including the team from El Nacional. They were proud to have provided the materials that sparked the controversy and thrilled to see their work take on international significance.

***

25 August, 23, 2010. Simon Romero and María Eugenia Díaz. “Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why,” The New York Times. 26 August 18, 2010. CNN. “Venezuelan newspaper owner defends photograph that spurred investigation.” http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-17/world/venezuela.media.probe_1_photo-venezuela- morgue?_s=PM:WORLD 27 January 21, 2012. Erica Najibo. “Entrevista Periodista Ronna Rísqeuz.” http://www.ivoox.com/entrevista-periodista-ronna-risquez-audios-mp3_rf_1003815_1.html 28 Victor Hugo Febres Jaramillo describes a similar editorial strategy at work inside news channel Globovision (Febres J. 2011).

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The Official Story: Inside Diario Vea

Diario Vea reported crime news with an official slant. For years, it was the only mass circulation newspaper that supported and was supported by the Chávez government. Even after the proliferation of state funded Founded: 2003 Weekday Circulation: 85,000 newspapers, it remained the only pro- Sunday Circulation: NA Founder/Director: Guillermo García Ponce government newspaper with an identifiable Current Director: Servando García Ponce crime page. Instead of publishing victim stories, Diario Vea covered crime exclusively from the point of view of the police and state security forces (e.g. the National Guard, the military, and the Ministry of Interior and Justice). A few times each week the newspaper’s lone crime reporter penned short articles about successful arrests, drug busts, rescues, and security initiatives. There was no mention of the morgue, nor were there testimonies from aggrieved families or outraged experts. Although Diario Vea tacitly acknowledged the problem of urban violence, denuncias never appeared in the crime pages.

Diario Vea consciously adopted a propagandistic model of journalism that supported chavismo. It had all the characteristics of a party newspaper, although it was not an official vehicle of President Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The two principle owners and founders—brothers Guillermo and Servando García Ponce—were ex-guerrillas who had helped overthrow Venezuela’s military dictatorship in 1958. Both were prominent members of the communist party and they had a lifetime’s experience in journalism.29 When the García Ponce brothers started the

29 In Venezuela, the communist party (PCV) was instrumental to the establishment of democracy in 1958. Betrayed by their allies and excluded from the power-sharing “Pact of Punto Fijo,” the PCV and other leftist groups like MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) adopted an increasingly radical stance toward the government. Armed struggle in Venezuela was, in large part, a response to government persecution. Although they received extensive attention from scholars, the guerrilla movements were relatively short-lived. On the guerrilla in Venezuela see (Petras 1967; Ellner 1988; Gott 2008 [1971]).

220 Chapter 6 newspaper in 2003, there were very few outlets sympathetic to Chávez or the ideals of his Bolivarian Revolution. They set out to change this. In a very short time, the newspaper managed to attain a national following, no doubt with help from the government. At the time of my fieldwork, Diario Vea was privately owned and operated by the García Ponce family.30 However, the vast majority of the newspaper’s funding came via government advertising revenues.

Like the state press, Diario Vea adhered to a news agenda that was radically different from that of the private press. Rarely did the newspaper publish headlines or major news stories that coincided with those of Últimas Noticias or El Nacional. The same was true of crime, sports, and the international news sections. Unlike other private press outlets, the denuncias published by Diario Vea were directed primarily at the United States, Europe, and the opposition, particularly the opposition media. They were constantly fending off the falsehoods of the opposition or revealing injustices perpetrated against the countries of the global South. Along with these denuncias, Diario Vea had an explicitly pedagogical purpose. It was an instrument through which the common people could learn the conditions of their oppression. As such, it functioned as an important arm of what its director Guillermo García Ponce called “the battle of ideas” (García Ponce 2007).

The Editor’s Line

My first and only meeting with Guillermo García Ponce took place in a spacious, spartanly furnished office inside of Diario Vea.31 Eighty-two years old at the time of our conversation, he was all cranium except for two tufts of grey hair. This was one of the most renowned leftists of his generation and a lifelong revolutionary. He founded the Communist Youth of Venezuela and was one of the few surviving members of the Patriotic Junta that fought against General Marco Pérez Jiménez during the 1950s. Locked up in San Carlos prison for revolutionary activities, he famously escaped in 1967

30 Guillermo García Ponce told me that more than twenty members of the family were employed in different aspects of the newspaper’s production and that they formed the nucleus of the paper. Author’s interview, December 21, 2007 31 Except where otherwise noted, all quotes and information from this section comes from the author’s interview, December 21, 2007

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along with two other guerrilla leaders, Pompeyo Márquez and Teodoro Petkoff. Although both Márquez and Petkoff eventually chose a more moderate political route, a handful of the guerrillas—among them the García Ponce brothers and Douglas Bravo—remained committed to armed struggle. The young Hugo Chávez drew inspiration from these figures, and when he was elected to office in 1998, García Ponce became one of the president’s main advisors (Nelson 2011). During the failed 2002 coup d’état (Chapter 3), García Ponce played a pivotal role defending the president. Diario Vea would be his final project; its mission was to promote and defend a revolution that was finally coming to fruition.

There was no mistaking the source of the newspaper’s editorial line, which was far more explicit than any other newspaper that I encountered. It came directly from García Ponce himself. “Every day we have a meeting very early in the morning. I preside over this meeting. I comment on the news of the day and I provide what is, in my judgment, the correct interpretation.” García Ponce then took me through his interpretation of the global food crisis, which was the day’s cover story. The headline read, “Risk of global starvation; another phase of the crisis of capitalism; through massive monopolies, richest nations use the conjuncture as a neocolonial weapon.” Next, he showed me the international news section, which contained a prescient analysis of the mortgage crisis in the United States. The author was predicting an imminent collapse. Finally, García Ponce turned to the opinion section and explained his column about chavismo first’s electoral defeat just a few weeks earlier. In his estimation, the constitutional referendum failed because the opposition successfully smeared it as an attack on private property.32

“How is your method of running Diario Vea different from other newspapers?” I wondered aloud. After all, every newspaper had an editorial meeting in the morning, so what set Diario Vea apart? García Ponce replied that he had to do more ideological work than his colleagues:

32 Two days after the failed referendum, I interviewed his brother Servando García Ponce, who believed that crime had been the most important cause of the government’s defeat. Author’s interview, December 4, 2007

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“In the big newspapers they don’t need much conversation. Because the journalist already knows, he understands what he should write. If not, they throw him out. A journalist who enters El Nacional already knows what interests El Nacional is defending. It is not necessary for the director of El Nacional to explain very much. Me, I have to explain it. Why? Because my young journalists are surrounded by an atmosphere, an environment that comes from the old traditions, the old customs, the old culture, soaked in the church, in the preaching of the church and the family. Every day I have to combat this so that they are not poisoned. Because they go out into the street and they encounter the culture of the enemy through all their pores and every day I need to strengthen them.”33 Diario Vea served as a pedagogical instrument for both its readers and its journalists. For García Ponce, the newspaper’s main purpose was strengthening the revolution and supporting the Chávez government. Anything that might run contrary to this goal was vigorously rejected. Take his relationship with the leftist intellectual Heinz Dieterich, who once lionized Venezuela as the model for his vision of “21st Century Socialism” (Dieterich 2005; Dieterich and Franco. 2012). For years, Diario Vea proudly published Dieterich’s writings. At the time of our interview, however, he had publicly questioned the direction that Chávez was taking. García Ponce was still on friendly terms with Dieterich, but he refused to publish these new critiques. “I talked to him over the telephone and I told him, ‘I don’t agree with you and I am not going to publish this because I cannot allow the newspaper to disorient people.’”

The Crime Desk

William Characo was waiting for us with pen, notebook, digital recorder, and staff photographer at the ready. My research assistant and I had worked for several weeks trying to arrange this interview with the sole crime reporter from Diario Vea. We finally worked out a time and place, but it was a surprise to find that we were the ones being scrutinized. The three of us sat down at one end of a large conference table and the photographer began snapping shots of us. William assumed the role of the interviewer, raising his pen and asking us for our names and our occupations. Suppressing a moment’s panic at the thought of becoming the subject of an article in Diario Vea, I explained the purposes of our interview and, per Human Subjects requirements, the rights of the

33 Author’s interview, December 21, 2007

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interviewee. William agreed to let us tape-record the conversation, but he eyed the written consent form warily. I started my digital recorder; he started his.

On the subject of crime, my conversation with William was very similar to interviews with officials from the Chávez government. Like every government official that I interviewed, William was under no illusions about the seriousness of violence in Venezuela. “Insecurity is not a phantasm; it is a reality. Insecurity in Venezuela is a scourge that is killing the community.” Whereas most crime journalists emphasized the failure of the police, the courts, the prisons, and ultimately the government, William saw things in a different light. High rates of violent crime were not unique to Caracas. Rather this was a global problem that affected cities in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. The violence afflicting Venezuela was a problem that the Chávez government had inherited from previous administrations. It dated back more than a decade and it manifested itself in struggles over territory. These struggles were exacerbated by the sale and consumption of drugs. At its roots, shootouts between youth gangs were the result of a violent attitude, which was spurred “by a lack of consciousness, by private businesses, and by the mass media.” As a journalist, his job was to educate people. This was the foremost responsibility of the press, yet the private media continued to broadcast violent material with little or no regard for its effects. In place of “cadavers,” the media and the press should focus more on culture if there was to be any hope of reversing the current trend in Venezuela.

Over the course of my fieldwork with the crime reporters, I never once saw William at the morgue or a crime scene. He was, however, a regular figure at press conferences given by the Ministry of Interior and Justice. Without fail, I knew that he would be there with reporter’s badge and camera slung around his neck. Thanks to his experience at Últimas Noticias years before, he knew a few of the other crime journalists, particularly the photographers. Some of them he greeted quietly, but he was not much for mixing. This was partly due to a reserved character and partly due to an abiding mistrust of the private press. He was convinced—and not without reason—that most of the private news outlets were in the business of manipulating information towards political ends. During our conversation he stressed this point repeatedly. William provided example

224 Chapter 6 upon example about the importance of faithful reporting and the ways that the facts were manipulated by journalists and editors.

Against Necrophilia

Diario Vea never mounted a campaign against urban violence. Compared to other news outlets, its crime page was sterile, the stories drawn from official police sources without any other frame of reference. If García Ponce and his journalists tacitly recognized the problem of urban violence, they covered the subject from a strictly administrative perspective. The zeal that characterized news coverage of crime in outlets like Últimas Noticias or El Nacional was entirely absent.

Instead of sensationalizing urban violence, Diario Vea dramatized its coverage of national and international politics. Here were the morality tales replete with victims and criminals, heroes and villains. Crime was depicted as the exploitation of the weak by the powerful: it was neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and neofascism; it was George W. Bush and Alvaro Uribe, the CIA and the IMF, the Venezuelan opposition and the mainstream press. Any hostile politician or organization was likely to be depicted by Diario Vea as a thief, a delinquent, a thug, or a terrorist. These figures were guilty of subverting the will of the Venezuelan people and acting against the national interest. Their victims were the popular classes, the president, and his allies.

Diario Vea’s response to the morgue photo (previous section) exemplified how the newspaper portrayed crime and victimhood. First, the newspaper ignored the controversy. For almost one week, there was scant news of the incident. With the exception of a brief notice that the District Attorney filed charges against El Nacional, a reader whose only source of news was Diario Vea would have had no knowledge of the photograph or the ensuing firestorm. Then the story became front-page news. Diario Vea used the morgue photo to illustrate the perverse attitude promoted by the private press. Rather than responsible journalism, it showed that opposition newspapers were guilty of necrophilia. Diario Vea published two front-page stories to this effect. The first centered on a children’s protest staged before one of the public ministries in Caracas. “Children protest the necrophilia of El Nacional” (August 18, 2010). The second featured the

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denuncias aired by a group of journalists sympathetic to the Chávez government. “Directors of the National College of Journalists accused of complicity with necrophilia” (August 19, 2010). Both of these pieces were written from the perspective of the alleged victims (children and journalists).

Finally, Diario Vea mounted its own campaign of denuncias that placed the morgue photo in its political context. In two separate headlines, the newspaper denounced the photo as part of a political strategy for congressional elections that were just weeks away. Diario Vea dismissed the morgue photo as a “politicized and illegitimate use of crime” (August 25, 2010), the product of a “directionless opposition [that] can only emphasize delinquency and crime” (August 26, 2010). These headlines dovetailed nicely with the larger theme of the press as the instrument of diabolical conspiracy. In contrast to the machinations of the opposition, the mobilization of chavismo for the coming elections was painted in a heroic light. “Red machine into the streets” (August 23, 2010), the newspaper crowed. “With a great popular mobilization the PSUV begins its electoral campaign” (August 26, 2010).

This style of denunciation was essentially conservative. By conservative, I simply mean that on the subject of violent crime Diario Vea was intent on protecting the status quo. Although the editors were well aware of the problem, they were equally aware of the threat that it posed for the Chávez administration. By denouncing the denouncers, they were defending the government. As in a courtroom, discrediting the reputation of an accuser was an effective means of dismissing their accusations.34 I am not suggesting that the newspaper itself was conservative or that was the only way that it used denuncias. To the contrary, in its coverage of international politics, Diario Vea was as radical in its use of denuncias as El Nacional was conservative. Whereas the former regularly denounced the status quo, the latter routinely defended it.

34 A similar pattern was evident during the crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Nearly every person accused of corruption fought back with a wave of denunciations against their accusers. In their introduction to the third volume of the Diccionario de la Corrupción en Venezuela, the editors remark: “Every denouncer will be denounced and all involved will become the most vengeful defenders of the people” (1992:9).

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Conclusion

These three portraits present three distinct ways of managing denunciations of crime and victimhood. In its treatment of crime news, Últimas Noticias took up a reformist position. It used denuncias with the hopes of influencing the government and improving the way that it functioned. Coverage of crime by El Nacional demonstrated the populist/radical use of denuncias. Their express goal was to make popular discontent against the government visible in the hopes of forcing Chávez out of power. Finally, Diario Vea adopted a fundamentally conservative posture towards denuncias of violent crime. It explicitly attempted to defuse, deflect, or delegitimize accusations of government negligence. Each strategy of denunciation—reformist, populist/radical, and conservative—was the outgrowth of a different editorial line, the reflection of a different politics of security. With the possible exception of Diario Vea, these positions were not imposed on journalists. Rather, their consent was carefully cultivated.

The intricacies of crime journalism, editorial lines, and the journalistic field in Caracas should not distract us from the revolutionary potential of denuncias. Under the right circumstances, denuncias serve as building blocks for popular movements. Even the reformist strategy of denunciation is based on the implicit threat that the people can force an unresponsive government out of power. During my fieldwork, both the government and the opposition recognized that denuncias of crime had revolutionary potential. Of course, it is only in times of severe crisis political or economic that broad-based populist movements are likely to form. The Chávez government did everything it its power to prevent such a crisis; the radical opposition worked to provoke one. In my concluding chapter, I turn to a moment when news coverage of crime created a wave of popular protests. The case of the Faddoul brothers sparked outrage over urban violence in Caracas and made visible widespread discontent with the police, the prisons, the courts, and the Chávez government.

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228 Epilogue

EPILOGUE

On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was elected to a fourth term in office. Although there was speculation that fading health and a rising tide of domestic problems could bring about his political demise, Chávez comfortably defeated the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles with just over 54% of the vote.

Despite this victory, there were signs that the Chávez era was drawing to a close. Among his supporters, the president’s battle with cancer raised real concerns about the future of the Bolivarian revolution. At the same time, the opposition began to modify its political tactics. Instead of confronting the president, the Capriles campaign struck a conciliatory tone. Capriles promised to continue the popular programs established by the Chávez government, while doing away with corruption, inefficiency, and excess spending. Uncertain about the future and weary of the past, a fragile and probably fleeting truce emerged.

What remained unchanged was the problem of urban violence in Caracas. Neither crime nor the popular protests against it showed any signs of abating. If anything, evidence suggested that in 2012 the situation continued to worsen despite concerted efforts on the part of the national government. During my last round of fieldwork, there were a number of major disturbances in the prisons, which drew attention to the horrific conditions of the country’s carceral system. There were also growing concerns about Venezuela’s role in international drug trafficking. New reports surfaced suggesting that the western half of the country had become the main stopover for narcotics traveling to Europe and the United States. On top of these emerging challenges, street crime continued to claim lives at an alarming rate. Short of a dramatic turn of events on a global scale, this crisis seemed likely to continue.

In this dissertation, I examined the response to urban violence from the vantage point of the private press. I argued that journalists, editors, and owners sought to shape the response to crime through representations of victimhood. Through portraits of suffering they helped link individual tragedies to a series of larger failings by the government, the state, and Venezuelan society. My ethnographic account of the Caracas

229 Epilogue

crime beat has described the processes and practices through which these linkages were formed. In particular I focused on how the journalistic practice of denunciation situated victims in relation to “the people.” By addressing themselves to the people, mass mediated denuncias helped transform isolated accounts of suffering into full-blown national tragedies.

Too often, the importance of such practices has been overlooked. If scholars have recognized the shifting significance of democracy, there has been a strange failure to examine how it has been mediated by different representational traditions. As I have argued in this dissertation, the dominant tradition in Venezuela privileged the people over the public. In order to situate the power of the press in contemporary Caracas, the first section of this dissertation dealt extensively with representational practices of the Venezuelan press since the 1980s. The rise of media power during this period prefigured the political standoff between the press and the president. Specifically, I showed how mass mediated denunciations created the conditions of possibility for the movement that coalesced around Hugo Chávez. This same practice of denunciation would later be mobilized against him. Rather than sidelining this practice or dismissing it as a political aberration, I have situated denunciation within a popular democratic tradition that has deep roots in the Americas.

Populism as conceived in this dissertation is not a departure from democracy, but rather one of its manifestations. Admittedly, populism is a slippery concept and one that threatens to conceal as much as it reveals. By focusing on populism, my aim was to demonstrate the workings of press freedom in a non-liberal setting. Pointing out the close correlation between press freedom and mass mobilization is uncomfortable to say the least. However, as the liberal consensus of the twentieth century continues to unravel, it has become all the more difficult to sweep this observation under the carpet. Owen Fiss wrote that the irony of free speech was that it undermined democracy by allowing powerful individuals and corporations to control the means of representation (Fiss 1996). I would add that there is a second, more unsettling irony. If freedom of expression can serve as an engine of social justice, tolerance, and democratic values, it can also do the opposite. The journalistic denunciations of crime that I observed were a case in point.

230 Epilogue

They had the potential to provoke far-reaching and much needed reforms. They also had the potential to incite a witch-hunt or worse.

My purpose in this dissertation was not to add to the chorus of critics who condemn sensational depictions of crime and violence in the press. Universal denunciations of “the media” paint all journalists with the same brush. Rather than confronting the problem of urban violence, they replace one scapegoat (the urban poor) with another (the press). The vast majority of journalists with whom I worked were professionals in the best sense of the word. They were people that I came to respect for their integrity, resilience, and abiding concern for their fellow human beings. If the practice of denunciation presented an ethical challenge, so do other models of journalism such as objectivity.

Seen from a global perspective, Caracas provides a window onto both the conditions of urban violence and emerging reactions to it. Cities across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are struggling with similar problems: high rates of homicide; low rates of employment; easy access to guns and narcotics; failing prisons and courts; the brutal policing of the poor; and generations of youth who grow up surrounded by violence. If it is imperative to search out solutions, we must also be vigilant of the ways that “law,” “order,” and “security” are mobilized. Outrage over crime is understandable. That does not mean it is either desirable or effective in curbing cycles of violence that afflict cities like Caracas.

231 Epilogue

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