Image credit: Iwan Baan
The hills surrounding the city center of Caracas have long been the sites of barrios, informal settlements populated by a steady influx of poor, rural migrants. It is estimated that about sixty percent of the city’s five million inhabitants live in such communities, but due to their illegal status these areas have never been formally connected with public transit or other civic services. The result has been a seemingly inexorable social divide between the two parts of the city.