Page 15 - Preliminary Report on the Venezuelan Migrant and Refugee Crisis in the Region

control is to ensure that the basic needs of individuals depend exclusively on the will of the

authorities, not on their own endeavors. Depending on completely opaque authorities for

access to basic services—and in the case of the most vulnerable populations, to social programs

that supply basic needs, such as housing, health care, and food—generates a perverse system
of incentives whereby the beneficiaries have to show their support for the ruling party at the

ballot box or in other ways in order to secure their livelihoods.

In Venezuela, perhaps the most visible example of the existence of social control mechanisms,

and even of the perception thereof, is the “homeland card” (carnet de la patria). The homeland

card is an identity document linked to an automated payment system necessary to access social

programs, such as food, medicine, and fuel subsidies, housing, special bonuses, university

placements, jobs, and even the pensions of beneficiaries of the Venezuelan Social Security
29
Institute, among other things. The imposition of this new added requirement in order to
receive benefits to which Venezuelans are entitled by the mere fact of being citizens, as well as

being required to carry an identity card, have been viewed from the outset as tools of social
control for several reasons.

To begin with, because of the strong party-political rhetoric—favorable to the United Socialist

Party of Venezuela (PSUV)—in all pronouncements by the authorities and official documents in

relation to the homeland card. Official websites of the Venezuelan regime describe the
homeland card in partisan and ideological language as “a new instrument of the revolution that

has advanced protection, social equality, solidarity, socialism, happiness, and peace for the
30
whole population.” Furthermore, the design of the homeland card features the silhouetted
profile of former president Hugo Chavez, the founder and ideological leader of the PSUV.

29 Díaz, Daniela Rojas. “La Venezuela del carné de la patria,” El Espectador, August 19, 2018,
https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/la-venezuela-del-carne-de-la-patria-articulo-807115.
30 Vicepresidencia. “Carnet de la Patria, instrumento de protección nacido en Revolución, Gobierno
Bolivariano de Venezuela, December 31, 2018,
http://www.vicepresidencia.gob.ve/index.php/2018/12/31/carnet-de-la-patria-instrumento-de-proteccion-
nacido-en-revolucion/.

15