From Collective Tragedy to Individual Misfortune
An accidental fire in a room in one of the victims’ shelters in Caracas forms the starting point for this analysis of the process of social relegation and moral questioning of the families affected by the disaster which hit Venezuela in December 1999 (known locally as La Tragedia). This article grows out of a reflection on the articulation of social and institutional violence with the lives and institutional trajectories of the victims, and is based on ethnographic research carried out in the shelters between 2000 and 2004. The experience of the female victims interviewed shows how factors such as localisation, infrastructure and socio-political organisation combine to produce highly unstable living conditions. Moreover, as the status of disaster victim loses its legitimacy, the experience can be one of violence set within everyday life. The article offers a contribution to an anthropology of disaster, showing that the subjection of victims in these shelters is marked by a temporality different from that of the emergency, and by the ending of the political and social legitimacy of the status of victim.