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Caracas (AFP) – “Whistle, referee, whistle!” Yorsibeth Terán carries the whistle at a basketball game in a Caracas neighborhood, until recently the scene of extreme violence. An NGO trained in this trade as well as twenty young people in these impoverished areas.
The court is freshly painted in El Cementerio, which owes its name to a gigantic cemetery famous for the desecration of tombs and that was controlled by criminals with weapons of war.
“Let’s play for a world with more love and less violence,” reads a poster at the entrance to this sports facility. “Let your faith be greater than your fear.”
Neighbors watch practices from their homes, some drink coffee.
Yorsibeth, 18, is studying arbitration with the NGO Caracas Mi Convive, which offers other courses such as baking, pastry, barbering and graphic arts to children who grew up surrounded by violence and death.
A little over a year ago, in July 2021, they were left in the middle of the shootings that lasted for two days during a police operation by 2,500 security agents to occupy El Cementerio and other neighboring neighborhoods.
“The experience with the confrontation between gangs and police officers was very bad,” recalls Yorsibeth about these operations that left 22 criminals killed and four uniformed men dead.
Yorsibeth has already trained as a pastry chef, a job in which she works and generates income to help at home. And now she hangs her whistle, she enters the court and quickly moves to one side refereeing basketball.
“I want to make my parents proud and that the children in my neighborhood see me as an example to follow, that not only can they be thieves, but they can also be referees or players,” he says.
“Death Hall”
Venezuela registers one of the highest rates of violence in the world, with some 11,000 violent deaths in 2021, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, at a rate of 40.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, about seven times the world average.
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The practices are offered in Santa Eduvigis, a neighborhood that adjoins El Cementerio, once used as a passageway by gang members from the neighborhoods that border it.
To get to the court you have to go through a corridor that was considered “the corridor of death”.
“Many people were afraid to walk around here because they didn’t know when a confrontation might break out,” recalls Saray Figueredo, who became a social activist after living the bitter experience of seeing her older brother die, who was gangster.
“You could lose your life due to a stray bullet,” remarks Saray, determined to change the image of these sectors marked by crime and extreme poverty, which in Venezuela reaches more than 76% of the population, of 30 million inhabitants, according to the 2021 National Survey of Living Conditions, coordinated by the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB).
“We want people to see the other side of the coin, that side where young people are productive,” reflects Saray.
new bands
It’s Saturday and Miguel Ruiz, a 44-year-old basketball instructor, shoots the ball from maximum distance during a game where the 26 students, including Yorsibeth, are working as referees and table officials.
They learn the rules of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), signals, playing time and how to lead a game.
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Some students have had problems with drugs or weapons possession. “We try to get them away from that situation and enter the world of basketball,” adds smiling Miguel, from the Circle of Referees and Table Officials of the Capital District.
However, the desire to leave violence behind is threatened by the rise of new criminal groups that have taken the place of those that were “neutralized” in 2021.
“Insecurity has increased, we live in fear, now they steal and many things happen, before they didn’t steal because it wasn’t allowed (because of the thugs), it wasn’t a better life, but we did live more peacefully,” said one of the boys.
© 2022 AFP
