Barrio La Lima de Los Maitines

Justin and I met Chris, a youngish guy from Colorado who is a teacher at my language school, at ¨seven thirty this morning in Plaza Bolivar. Chris came to Merida two years ago to get his masters in Latin American Studies at the University here in Merida. He found that the program he wanted to take was dysfunctional because non career oriented departments, purely academic, are not very popular here, and therefore the departments hardly function. Chris took us on the bus, to Barrio La Lima de los Maitines, where he has been working for at least a year now. At one point he was helping to organize community meetings as part of one of the Missions, which are the social programs initiated and funded by the government since Chavez. However, the funding for that mission disappeared, nobody knows why. Lately, Chris has been teaching a computer class to middle school aged kids in a school funded by a Catholic organization.
When we arrived at the foot of the hill, where this barrio begins, there was a crowd of school kids waiting for a jeep to take them up the hill, where the schools are. We took the stairs instead of the jeep, and it was a steep climb. The steps zigzagged up the very steep hill, and around the houses made of red clay cinder blocks and concrete, and tin. Most of the houses in this barrio are only accessible and divided by these steps and concrete walkways as wide as sidewalks. Some of these walkways are partly crumbled away, because the clay beneath them washed away. The instability of the soil beneath these houses is one of the main challenges for many Venezuelan barrios, because they are commonly created on very steep hills on the outskirts of cities, where no one else wants to build.
Although the mission Chris worked with disappeared, this barrio has a few other government missions. The first is the Barrio Adentro, a basic care health clinic with one Cuban doctor who lives and works in a building in the Barrio. The Bario Adentro health program is a copy of part of the Cuban health program. In the beginning the program did not come with its own building provided by the government. Instead the doctor lived in one of the houses with a family in the community, and worked out of the house as well. It appears that this program is working very well now for the community. Becasue most barrios have their own clinic now, the one public hospital in Meridais not the only place where everyone goes for every type of health problem.
We also stoped in to visit the Bolivarian School, which is a public school for grades 1 through 6. The gov. education system also includes other levels, including adult literacy programs and Universities, but I am not sure on the details yet.
Another popular and successful program are the Marcals, which are grocery stores that are independently run, and provide gov. subsidized food within the poor communities. An extra positive to the inexpensive food is that the food is supposed to be grown and produced as much as possible within the country.
The missions are working well for the people. Accessible health care, inexpensive food, and education opportunities have improved people´s lives. There are more problems that need to be addressed, and it will take time. Chris explained that the community has been organized by outsiders, and organized itself many times, and many times the gov. has not come through with with the funding. Recently the gov. has been encouraging the barrio communities to organize themselves and present the gov. with requests for funding. The idea seems to be that the people living in each barrio know what their most important problems and needs are, so encouraging inter community organizing could be effective. Chris explained that an interesting issue in this barrio is that so far, the requests of the community have been very small. So far they have asked for trash receptacles with roves where trash can be picked up, and their other request was for a bridge across the large stream that separates a far edge of their barrio with a main road. The trash receptacles look very good, and the bridge is not quite finished. I need to find out if the gov. pays for the labor of making these things, or just the supplies.
More on this subject later.