Infrastructure and Insurrection The Caracas Metro and the Right to the City in Venezuela

• Published in: Latin American research review Vol. 52; no. 5; pp. 775 - 791
• Main Author: Kingsbury, Donald V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburgh Latin American Studies Association 01.01.2017; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: 20th century; 21st century; Cities; Citizenship; Democracy; Demonstrations & protests; Elites; Historical text analysis; Infrastructure; Local politics; Modernization; Neoliberalism; OTHER SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES; Pedagogy; Planning; Political movements; Politicians; Politics; Positivism; Public works; Social activism; Social change; Social movements; Social response; Subjectivity; Tactics; Urban areas; Urban environments; Violence; Writing instruction; Venezuela; Caracas Venezuela
• ISSN: 0023-8791; 1542-4278
• DOI: 10.25222/larr.244

This article envisions the Caracas Metro as infrastructure that forms and is formed by political subjectivity and urban space. The first section provides a brief history of the metro as conceived by modernization-minded politicians in the twentieth century. Here the Metro is seen as playing a pedagogical function in accordance with a larger tradition of Venezuelan positivism. The second section examines a shift in the social and political composition of Caracas after El Caracazo of 1989. In response to neoliberalization, social movements reshaped the terrain of politics and the city in a way that can be usefully conceptualized as demands for the right to the city—that subjects have the right to access, shape, and themselves be shaped by the urban environment. I conclude with an analysis of 2014’s violent antigovernment protests. The tactics and targets of these protests—barricades and direct attacks on public infrastructure such as the Metro—illustrate the perceived threat democratized urban space poses to traditional elites in the context of social change.