Venezuela: Hugo's tombs

www.americanthinker.com

In 2011, Hugo Chavez launched and sang the praises of his low-income public housing projects, dubbed La Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, splashing out a $2.3 billion initial outlay, which, in subsequent developments, reportedly ballooned to $76 billion.

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Free housing! Or, well, as was claimed, low-income housing -- a big problem was that those who wanted to pay for their units couldn't find anywhere to pay for them even as they wanted to, so -- free housing!

Chavez's propagandists literally sang Hugo's praises, which were then echoed in the U.S. media and among DSA types everywhere:

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More free stuff!  It was hailed as the triumph of socialism and big public spending. Hugo bellowed that it was 'beachfront property not just for the rich.'

In La Guaira state, (formerly Vargas state), on the coast where the big airport is, public housing, which went up about 15 years ago, began with expropriated private properties in many cases, and was financed with oil earnings, spent there instead of invested in the state oil company or on infrastructure and maintenance. Human needs, you see. And votes.

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Today, they look like this:

Venezuela 🇻🇪: several housing projects in La Guaira collapsed at the foundation due to the earthquake.

The Chavista government had been warned for years that the cheap flats it was building were not safe in case of an earthquake. pic.twitter.com/JlYCdraWxa

— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) June 25, 2026

🚨🆘‼️La impresionante imagen de la torre OP de la Misión Vivienda en Caraballeda, La Guaira, luego del terremoto del 24 de junio. Las personas han apilado los cadáveres en las aceras pero otros cuerpos siguen a viéndose allí atrapados sin que puedan ser extraídos.#Venezuela… pic.twitter.com/QXvkiDkVr3

— Cristian Crespo F. 🇨🇺 (@cristiancrespoj) June 26, 2026

🚨🆘‼️Acá está tu “Misión Vivienda”… Definitivamente, el chavismo tiene que morir. #Venezuela ¿Ahora ven lo caro que sale que te den vivienda gratis? pic.twitter.com/UBaB3Qs4qS

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— Cristian Crespo F. 🇨🇺 (@cristiancrespoj) June 26, 2026

Acá está tu “Misión Vivienda” del Chavismo. La Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela (GMVV), construcción hecha para caerse.

Con Nicolás Maduro el programa superó de los 5.5 millones de hogares adjudicados, y buscaba 8 millones de soluciones habitacionales para el año 2031. pic.twitter.com/dhT6a4ox90

— Line (@LineLoza) June 26, 2026

Note that the third featured image below appears to be Chavista public housing in Catia La Mar in La Guaira:

🚨🇺🇸🇻🇪 The before-and-after footage out of Venezuela is staggering: entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble in seconds.

The images lay bare the scale of a catastrophe that has now killed more than 920 people and injured 3,300, with at least 250 buildings toppled and 1,400… https://t.co/Q56CFn9BOA pic.twitter.com/csTeyNMiQ2

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 27, 2026

A very good photo essay by Estimulo, an online dissident publication, can be viewed here.

Somehow, after all the hoopla and billions spent, these new houses had no earthquake protection in their construction, which was very bizarre in a region that had experienced a major landslide in 1999. Many said that the Chavistas had been warned.

Not only that, engineers who complained about the danger were arrested:

To był jeden ze sztandarowych budynków Mision Vivienda, inaugurowanego w 2011 roku przez Hugo Chaveza, programu budowy mieszkań socjalnych.
Ten właśnie w Caraballeda wybudowano tuż nas samym morzem - reżim zachwalał, że w dzięki Boliwariańskiej Rewolucji mieszkania z widokiem na… pic.twitter.com/4CUuyXTgIM

— Tomasz Surdel (@TomekSurdel) June 25, 2026

VIA IG: reina_pepiada_queen .

Todos los edificios de misión vivienda colapsaron estrepitosamente de maneras que causan a simple vista una terrible intuición los hicieron con los peores materiales sin ver las consecuencias de fabricar sobre un desclave donde la tierra era barro… pic.twitter.com/d3fObDLTj0

— DODI 👽 (@DODI_VZLA) June 27, 2026

For some reason Chavez didn't trust local construction businesses very much and turned instead to companies headquartered in the countries of Chavez's allies -- places like Turkey, Iran, Spain, China, and Belarus.

According to a 2015 piece published by Contrapunto:

Little is known about the Venezuelan companies building for the GMVV (Great Housing Mission Venezuela). Last year, Molina stated that 251 Venezuelan companies, from both the public and private sectors, would be working on this program. However, their names and the bidding processes for these contracts remain unknown. In 2013, Transparency Venezuela published a list of 42 Venezuelan companies contracted by the Housing Mission. Contrapunto reviewed the status of these companies in the National Registry of Contractors and found that only 21 are authorized to contract with the State, 12 are ineligible, and 9 do not appear in the registry.

Among the internationals, a large Turkish company which had been chosen, SUMMA, built a large section of them in Catia La Mar, where the boxy blue houses, all built alike, all seemed to tip over like children's blocks.

Thinking of the Turkish and Syrian earthquake of 2023, which left huge losses owing to shoddy construction practices, and resulted in many arrests, I wondered if this company was one of the culpable companies in that disaster, but actually, they weren't. They actually had specialty knowledge about retrofitting older buildings for earthquake-worthiness, and a good reputation. At a minimum, they might have been better employed retrofitting the older buildings in Venezuela, which had no earthquake standards before 1984. 

But that wasn't what this Chavista project was interested in. They wanted to build millions of housing units easily controlled in exchange for votes.

And parsing the SUMMA website, I found the three projects they did here, here, and here. I was looking for clues as to what happened, why did the seemingly reputable company construct such shoddy housing? SUMMA constructed the U.S. embassy in Turkmenistan, which would normally be built to withstand bombs, so it's reasonable to think they would know how to make buildings strong.

For comparison's sake, buildings in Caracas that had been built to interntional earthquake standards did hold up very well in the quakes and remain standing with no damage, as did old colonial buildings at the epicenter of the quake, in Yumare, which were built on bedrock.

But not these.

 On SUMMA's projects page, the company described how the project came about:

 The days in Caracas were passing quite strange since no one was able to tell us what to expect the next day. Everything seemed to happen in a coincidental way or it seemed to me like that. It took really some time to adapt ourselves to Latin American way of living.

After meeting Minister of Housing and Minister of Infrastructure I really felt like this was going a little slow and believe me, waiting at the lobby of Gran Meliá Hotel in Caracas, from 9 o’clock in the morning till 9 o’clock in the evening expecting a call or some sort of a program was really frustrating since there were days we did not hear anything at all. But few days later around 12th of December we were told that Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Nicolás Maduro wanted to meet us and the meeting really took place at his office in the wonderful historic building so called "Casa Amarilla” with the presence of Defense Minister Mr. Carlos José Mata Figueroa.
 

The meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs was excellent. He knew Turkey very well, he was impressed with what he saw in Turkey during his official visit in November. Especially, he was aware of the worldwide fame of Turkish construction sector. After half an hour of meeting with Minister Maduro, I felt like we passed the interview successfully.
 

Few hours after leaving the office of Minister Maduro, Mr. Bracho told us to change our plane tickets to open status for a possible meeting withPresident Chavez.
 

Few days later on 16th of December Mr. Bracho came to Gran Meliá Hotel and made us run to Miraflores Presidential Palace where President Chavez wanted to meet us. Our meeting took place at 2 o’clock in the afternoon for about an hour, (unexpectedly long but very very sincere) he was accompanied by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Oil, Minister of Infrastructure and Minister of Defence, where he took a decision to work with Summa. But of course he knew about our company from Russia and from Libya, he has really checked on us from his information channels of these countries of reference prior to our meeting.
 

After the meeting was over President Chavez took our delegation to Vargas, a neighbourhood near the Caracas International Airport where he wanted us to build social housing.
 

Today is almost 2nd anniversary of our meeting with President Chavez. And guess what! We managed to design and build 1488 units housing project within almost less than a year time after getting mobilised to a country of which we never had any experience before. 

The motto of this project is: If you know a person long enough to trust, never underestimate his recommendations about a third party of reference.

Reading between the lines, the obvious seat-of-the-pants chaos of the Chavistas, and their rudeness and time-wasting of their guests' valuable time, made the company officials blanch.

Here also was this note from the project's architect on the SUMMA website:

SUMMA contacted us, the architects, and we began working on the project in January 2011 in Venezuela. 

Despite the great and urgent need for housing in the Bolivar Republic of Venezuela, the "Mission Vivienda” does not compromise on its Bolivarian socialist principles and adopts an analytical approach to new settlements and social housing projects. The actors involved in developing the projects are not limited to architects, engineers, clients and investors, but also include the well-commuted neighbourhoods of the Bolivarian socialist regime. Our initial contacts for the project were the Ministry of Housing and the Municipality of Vargas, who brought us together with a neighbourhood council following our first site visits. This was an exceptionally interesting encounter for us as designers. While the client for a social housing project is usually the state itself, in this case, the Bolivarian Republic shared this role with the future inhabitants of the project, and consulted their aspirations regarding the sort of settlement and environment they would prefer.
 

Our meeting with the neighborhood council, and their presentation of a model they had prepared together provided us designers a significant chance in understanding the user profile of the project. Both the neighborhood representatives and the government officials expressed that the project’s social facilities were as important for them as the housing units themselves, and informed us on how they desired the schools, nurseries and hospitals to be designed.
 

Following the meeting, during our continuous contact with the architects from the ministry of housing, we were advised to develop three different housing types of 1+1, 2+1 and 3+1 rooms. Discussions on building techniques led us to decide on low-rise blocks (ground floor + three storeys). Resting on collected data, three different housing types were developed in the form of four storey blocks withan outdoor central stairway leading to four units on every floor. The housing demand for the site called for an inevitably dense use of land, however this was natural for the people living in a climate that enjoys summer all year round. Social gathering in narrow and shaded outdoor spaces is a very important part of community culture in Vargas.
 

Design Criteria was based on:

- Creating an ecological and sustainable environment
- Creating sufficient social facilities and social areas by consulting the inhabitants, in accord with the social understanding.
- Keeping schools and kindergartens within walking distance, especially for little children.
- Providing sufficient sports grounds.
- Creating pedestrian areas free from vehicular traffic.

Earthquake standards, which had been on the books in Venezuela since 1984, were not mentioned. But it looks like the Bolivarian Circles and other Chavista organs of shantytown control did have the final word about what the design would be. And obviously, nobody cared about structural soundness. It would be interesting to know what the money picture was.

For the survivors, their homes now look like this:

🇻🇪 This is what the road to Catia La Mar, Vargas in Venezuela looks like right now

At least 920 dead, 50k missing, and this is the human reality behind those numbers.

Families on a roadside with what they could carry.

Writer: Oliverpic.twitter.com/OELs8pHdAa https://t.co/s8QD0kZAdy

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 26, 2026

If they're lucky enough to see them.

Which raises questions as to what the company was thinking when it threw up those houses. A candid statement from them, clarifying what kind of Chavista government interference in the project management they had to deal with, which led to zero earthquake standards in the construction, (which is what I suspect happened), would be useful for them to do. Other countries' construction companies that have internatioal reputations to uphold, from China and Spain, ought to say something, too. 

The Chavistas, on the other hand, seem entirely blameworthy, with expropriated land, zero consideration of earthquake-proofing in a landslide and mud zone, irregular local contractors, and clearly a propagandistic purpose -- votes for Hugo -- the premise behind what became a catastrophe. 

What it tells us is that nothing is so expensive as free stuff, given the terrible toll from the earthquake. They will get away with this, with no accountability, so long as they retain power. But it must be pretty clear to the locals that all the shiny new housing handed out to them for free was their tombs, not their homes. That somehow serves as the perfect metaphor for socialism.

Image: Screenshot from X video