Abstract
Chapter 3 analyzed social network density in three barrios of Caracas: Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia) , Petare , and Santa Cruz del Este /Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). It found that social network density was high in all three studied barrios. Such findings point toward some structural composition of social capital present in all the studied barrios . This factor of social capital is necessary for social capital to exist, as it lowers transaction costs of organization-building toward goals like imparting informal social control . The present chapter contributes to the discussion on social capital’s structural composition, and its moderating role of urban violence, by analyzing its second structural factor, collective efficacy , in these three studied barrios. However, two sub-factors compose collective efficacy: Social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. This chapter shows that high social disorganization does not correspond with high violence rates. Hence, it is an irrelevant sub-factor of social capital. Regarding collective action within the institutional context, the chapter shows that in all the barrios attempts at collective action were not sustainable, likely because of rent-seeking organizations’ presence. This chapter found that only in the barrio of Baruta was there evidence of sustainable collective action. However, the evidence presented has some limitations.
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- 1.
CDIs are somewhat controversial. They provide only basic healthcare services and are usually staffed by undertrained physicians, many of them from Cuba. However, they provide healthcare services near within barrios , which increases the reach of this service at no costs. The data collected for this book shows that in many cases they are the only available source of medical services, even if their medical services were of limited quality.
- 2.
In English: “Here [in Caracas] you get to see [to earn] more money”.
- 3.
In English: “the street of the gochos”. Gocho is a Venezuelan term—sometimes used pejoratively—used to describe people from the Venezuelan Andes. This term, and its pejorative use, was originally a label for supporters and henchmen of Venezuela’s longtime caudillo, General Juan Vicente Gomez , who came from Tachira state in the Venezuelan Andes. It gains a pejorative normative charge because Gomez only appointed people from his native state to positions of power. In fact, the process of democratization after 1958 was a process of getting rid of Andeans from power networks since Venezuela’s caudillos for more than half a century were all from the Venezuelan Andes (Bruni-Celli, 19 May 2016) .
- 4.
The use of the verb “squat” has a rather strong negative normative charge. However, it is the appropriate translation for the verb used by the interviewed subject, “invadir.” The referred squatters, due to the time frame of the events, are likely barrio-dwellers from coastal towns not too far away from Caracas displaced by the torrential rains of late 2010. This interview partner elaborated that, “aquí se organizan…entre ellos mismos se organizaron, ellos no son nada, ellos no son ONG, y se organizaron, y por eso la policía está aquí [de nuevo]” (1.01, 16 April 2016). In English: Here they organize…between them they organize themselves, they are not NGOs or anything similar, but they organized and because of that the police is here [once again]”.
- 5.
In English: “The sparkplug of the community.”
- 6.
In English: “Only the members [of community councils] reap any benefits.”
- 7.
In English: “What there is are community councils and you that they don’t work, it works for a tiny group and he majority of people living in the barrio don’t get any benefits from community councils. They distribute [resources] between five and seven families and the rest remain helpless…that same thing happens with the light bulbs, and the same goes for everything distributed by the government, same with Mercales [government-owned grocery stores], they get to buy first, and the rest get fried [or left out] if you are not their friend”.
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Leon, D.S. (2020). Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings on Collective Efficacy. In: Violence in the Barrios of Caracas. The Latin American Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5_4
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