"Say what they like, the new Sambil is not going ahead", Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on December 23.
He was responding to the reaction to his decision, announced on his weekly television program Alo Presidente on December 21, that the almost completed giant Sambil company shopping mall, in the inner-city suburb of La Candelaria, would be expropriated from its private owners.
"The Venezuelan leader said it would be out of line with his government's socialist vision to allow the new Sambil mall to take up precious urban real estate — and that unbridled commercialism isn't his idea of progress either", according to a December 21 Associated Press report.
"We're going to expropriate it and turn it into a hospital ... a school, a university", Chavez told the Alo Presidente audience, in the outer Caracas neighbourhood of El Valle, where he was opening a new "people's clinic". "How are we going to create socialism, turning over vital public spaces to Sambil?"
On December 23, at the doorways of the Sambil building in La Candelaria — which was scheduled to house 273 shops — two groups of residents gathered, one supporting the expropriation decision and the other opposing it.
Supporters of the move, dressed in red T-shirts, wrote graffiti explaining that, "This [building] should be a space for life, not for the construction of more commercial centres. Here there should be a university or a hospital", according to Ultimas Noticias.
Members of an ecological group demonstrated against the fact that the construction of the mall had destroyed a number of trees. They wanted a park established on the site instead.
Local resident Elizabeth Navarro commented: "The property ought not to be used against collective rights. An investment of this magnitude must be made to the benefit of the collective, and not just for a small group of capitalists."
Rafael Yepez, another resident, added: "If the Sambil goes ahead or not, it should be subjected to a popular consultation, which should decide ... if they want a university or a hospital, or simply that nothing is built there."
Jorge Rodriguez, newly elected mayor of the largest Caracas municipality of Libertador from the pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), said that during his period in office, no more commercial malls would be constructed in his municipality. Rodriguez promised to open up spaces for discussion with the community, the communal councils and small business operators on the future of the mall, Ultimas Noticias reported.
The mayor will also authorise an investigation into the conditions under which construction permits were given to Sambil in the first place.
In a pre-Christmas statement, Chavez argued: "The message of Christ, who said that the Kingdom of Heaven is that of the poor, has very often been manipulated. In this way they have manipulated the poor of the world for centuries, to make them quietly accept exploitation", according to Venezuelana de Television on December 21.
"Christ was born to call on us to create, here on earth, the Kingdom of Love", which has no other name but socialism, according to Chavez.
In a Christmas Day message, Chavez added: "Today is the appropriate moment to make the call to fight for peace and social justice. Remember that Jesus Christ fought for this 2000 years ago, in order to leave behind a light of peace in the world.
"The path of peace is justice. Only a just world will be a world in peace", Chavez added, according to the December 26 Ultimas Noticias.