This book has something important to say, not only to students of Venezuela but to anyone interested in how urban politics and policy work, and with what consequences, anywhere in the world. The author rests his general analysis on a deep and rich social history of one particular neighborhood and housing project in the center of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. The project was built by the country’s last military dictator as a showcase for urban renewal. After his overthrow on January 23, 1958, the still-empty buildings were invaded by local families looking for decent housing. Since that time, the barrio (also named 23 January), often seen as a bastion of support for the Left (and most recently for Hugo Chávez), has played an outsized role in local and national politics.

Barrio Rising is the first serious study of urban life in Venezuela in quite a while. It stands alongside such works as Talton F. Ray’s Politics of the Barrios of Venezuela, Lisa Peattie’s classic A View from the Barrio, and the Harvard/MIT Joint Center series centered on the development of Ciudad Guayana. But Velasco’s book has a different and enlightening perspective. What makes it different is the author’s decision to look up and out from one important urban neighborhood, to center attention on violence and self-generated political activism, and to set these in a well-developed context of institutional and political decay.

The works by Ray and Peattie were conceived and carried out during a period of growth and optimism about the future. Despite the enthusiasm many of his subjects display for Chavismo, Velasco’s study vividly shows the long-term effects of economic and political decay, along with cultural fragmentation, all of which contribute to violence of many kinds: political violence, ordinary crime, rampant domestic abuse, drug-related violence, kidnapping for ransom, and gang wars. In this, Venezuela’s cities have a lot in common with others in the region. Where the country differs is in the particulars of its political decay, the resurgent role of the military (a contrast to what we see in the rest of the region), the powerful impact of Chávez in changing the rules of the political game, and the prominent role played by neighborhoods like 23 January.

Velasco’s social history of 23 January is simply terrific. I have never read anything quite like it. He combines formal urban history (origins of the projects, political planning, the whole idea of urban renewal with its notorious downsides) with a rich social history of the site as it evolved within a rapidly changing city and country. This social history is uniquely matched with political history, which on the national level ran in very different directions from trends within the barrio and the capital city itself. The conflict between the liberal democratic governments of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and the urban barrios is not a new finding, but Velasco gives it considerable depth and meaning. He goes much more deeply than anyone I know (except for a few memoirs) into the history of urban violence in Venezuela, what that has meant in the lives of real people, and its close connections with the failed guerrilla movement of the 1960s. Although in a sense this is “history from below,” the author avoids the clichés of that perspective and is always careful to tie what is going on in the barrio into larger social and political scenes.

The decay visible in the social history that Velasco provides has accelerated and become more polarized and violent since the book was written and published. This makes some of the author’s arguments more questionable, particularly in the last few chapters and in the conclusion. For one, the scale and persistence of violence coming from within the barrio is underplayed here. What one sees in 23 January is not just violence coming from the outside meeting a beleaguered resistance from within. This has long been an armed, aggressive barrio with strong and enduring links to a Left that, until Chávez, had little popular pull in the nation. The roles played by ordinary criminality, gangs and drugs, and domestic abuse as elements of that violence are also underplayed. Finally, the broader political analysis is not as convincing as the urban history. Velasco advances two points. First, he argues that the political situation for the barrio and its residents is best captured by “indeterminacy” or uncertainty. But the brute fact is that throughout its history, the barrio and its residents have faced overwhelming state power, with few compunctions on the parts of elites (of any kind of government, Chavista included) about inflicting massive force on its opponents. For residents, the goal has been to extract resources from the state, to coexist if possible, and to resist when necessary. The reality may feel indeterminate to ordinary people at any given moment, but the process is pretty clear. The rules of this game are rigged against barrio residents, and this remains the case now despite what Chavista ideologues would suggest.

Second, Velasco further suggests that the political situation may be understood as a potential seedbed for a social and political transformation, more or less on Trotskyist lines of permanent revolution from below. This is less than compelling, especially given the desperate struggle of the current state machine, relying above all on force, to survive in the face of massive popular discontent. The last chapter relies on a limited range of authors and concepts for its political analysis and suggests that conventional political analysis is of little use, because Venezuelan politics in the Chavez era do not fit neatly in a liberal democratic frame. But of course they do not, or, rather, this is part of the continuing struggle in the country. Straightforward political analysis, centered on core issues of power, conflict, and institutions, would help a lot.

The preceding concerns do not take away from the overall excellence of the work. Barrio Rising is a major achievement. Velasco opens up new perspectives and brings an entire area of urban social history to light and to life with vivid description and analysis. The net result will not be uncontroversial, but it does significantly advance knowledge and at the same time advances and repositions the debates about urban social and political conflict, and about the origins of social movements, especially (but not only) in contemporary Venezuela. Anyone wanting rich and detailed insight into what city life is like in much of the Third World (and also in the housing projects of big cities just about anywhere) will profit from reading this work. The author has a sharp eye for real life and he understands how policies are made, and how they can and do produce unanticipated and sometimes poisonous consequences.