Building the City Twice: An Introduction to Venezuela’s Barrios.

View to Barrio San Agustín from Parque Central  in the centre of Caracas.

In Venezuela more than 50% of the population lives in the barrios, those sectors of the city built by residents themselves without official rights or provision of services, on unstable land, under constant threat of eviction and with no legal rights to the homes which they have, in many cases, occupied for generations.*

Barrio Mamera as seen from the Metro station.

The barrios are the spatial expression of a deep segregation within Venezuelan society. They contain within them many other types of exclusion; unemployment, lack of access to medical services and education, exposure to crime and violence.

The official city has always had an ambiguous relationship with the barrios. The barrios are home to the builders, drivers, nurses, teachers, cooks and cleaners on which the official city depends. It is a vast pool of cheap labour. Yet the official city refuses to recognise the crucial function of the barrio, referring to it only as a problem, a source of crime, an eyesore, and an urban blight. On most official maps the barrios do not exist at all, they are depicted as blank ‘green zones’.

A view from central Caracas towards the surrounding barrio

In Caracas they say the residents of the barrios had to build the city two times. First, brought into the city as cheap labour, they came as the construction workers who built the highways, stadiums and apartment buildings of the official city. Secondly, on finding no place for themselves in that city, they also worked by night, in solidarity, with rough materials and much imagination, to make their own city - the barrios.

In such a way the barrios are on one hand the expression of segregation and on the other the expression of the fight against that segregation. The residents of the barrios have had to fight over many generations to claim their right to occupy land, their rights to clean water, sewerage and electricity, their rights to medical care, to affordable, good quality food, to education and employment. This struggle continues in Venezuela today with growing support from the government as well as many urban professionals, including architects.