Entombed In the Mud

The

floods and mud slides that have devastated Venezuela--and that may have killed as many as 30,000 people--were an all too foreseeable tragedy. Millions of people inhabit Caracas' ranchos, the squalid shantytowns that cling to both sides of the 6,000-ft. mountains ringing the capital. And for decades those people have fought a Sisyphean battle to keep their rickety tin, cardboard and clay-block houses from tumbling down the washed-out slopes during heavy rains. Hundreds have died in past downpours, but as los ranchos kept swelling in size and population, it was only a matter of time before a deluge claimed thousands of lives.

Last week that deluge came--and it wrought what may have been Latin America's deadliest natural disaster of the 1900s, a grim closing note to the continent's century. Fewer than 2,000 bodies had been recovered as of late last week, and a reliable death toll was impossible to calculate as soldiers and rescue workers continued digging near the northern coastal town of La Guaira, just across Mount Avila from Caracas. Still, officials said the toll would certainly surpass 5,000 and could even reach 30,000. "There are bodies in the sea, under mud, everywhere," said President Hugo Chavez, as corpses filled the tarmac at nearby Simon Bolivar Airport. "It's horrible." How horrible was evident in the spectral gaze of Alegra Rangel, who had seen her four small children buried alive, inside the family's car, by a roaring mud slide. "I got out for a moment to see what the noise was," she said, still in shock, "and when I looked back they were gone."

The five days of relentless Caribbean storms left more than 150,000 people homeless amid billions of dollars in damage. Huge swaths of the northern coast, where Venezuela's chief ports and tourist resorts lie, are now uninhabitable. The devastation was doubly crushing because Venezuela is suffering one of its worst recessions ever. Decades of foul politics played just as large a role in this catastrophe as the week of foul weather. Venezuela has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves and is America's No. 1 foreign source of crude. But because a corrupt elite, los cogollos (slang for big shots), has pillaged the country's oil wealth for generations, 80% of Venezuela's people live in poverty--and each year, searching for jobs, they scratch their way onto Caracas' perilous mountainside real estate. In those vertical, collapsible slums, potable water is a luxury, and violent crime is among the worst in South America. "We live in a constant state of emergency," said one rancho community leader.

That is largely why Venezuelans last year elected the populist, corruption-busting Chavez. A former army paratrooper colonel, he led a bloody but failed coup attempt in 1992 that was widely applauded by citizens fed up with cogollo rule. Many citizens complained that Chavez's government was initially slow to respond to the disaster. They conceded, however, that he was doing more than his effete predecessors would probably have done--dispatching troops to set up relocation camps and touring the devastated areas in his trademark red beret. On Dec. 15, the day the flooding began, voters approved his new federal constitution, which is intended to make Venezuela a more equitable democracy.

But the charter also gives the fiery and authoritarian Chavez sweeping new executive powers. That is a concern for U.S. officials, who are worried about his leftist and often anti-Yankee bent (as well as his warm relations with dictators like Cuba's Fidel Castro). And it's a big reason why oil-conscious Washington was quick to send millions in rescue and relief aid to Venezuela last week--hoping to help shore up the country's fragile democracy as well as its collapsing mountainsides.