In an article entitled "Prison orchestra offers hope in Venezuela", in today's New York Times, journalist Simon Romero, for once, has something positive to say about the Venezuela's Chavez government:
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela: When Nurul Asyiqin Ahmad was delivered seven months ago to her cell at the National Institute for Feminine Orientation, a prison perched on a hill in this city of slums on the outskirts of Caracas, learning how to play Beethoven was one of the last things on her mind.
"The despair gripped me, like a nightmare had become my life," said Ahmad, 26, a shy law student from Malaysia who claims she is innocent of charges of trying to smuggle cocaine on a flight from Caracas to Paris. "But when the music begins, I am lifted away from this place." Ahmad plays violin and sings in the prison's orchestra.
In a project extending Venezuela's renowned system of youth orchestras to some of the most hardened prisons in the country, Ahmad and hundreds of other prisoners are learning a repertoire that includes Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, folk songs from the Venezuelan plains and Mercedes Sosa's classic lullaby "Duerme Negrito."
The budding musicians include murderers, kidnappers, thieves and, here at the women's prison, dozens of "narcomulas," or drug mules, as small-scale drug smugglers are called. The project, which began a year ago, is expanding this year to five prisons in Venezuela from three...
"This is our attempt to achieve the humanization of prison life," said Kleiberth Lenin Mora, 32, a lawyer who helped create the prison orchestras, modeling them on the system that teaches tens of thousands of poor children in Venezuela classical music. "We start with the simple idea that performing music lifts the human being to another level..."
Officials say it is too early to tell whether the project will improve overall conditions here and at the two male prisons where it started, in the Andean states of Mérida and Táchira. No stars have emerged like Gustavo Dudamel, the 27-year-old phenom from the youth orchestra system named as the next music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic...
For now, the project, which receives $3 million from President Hugo Chávez's government and the Inter-American Development Bank, takes baby steps. It staged its first public performance last month in Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas.
As a public defender in juvenile court, I represented many angry young kids who repeatedly offended and re-appeared in court. But there were some repeaters who mysteriously disappeared from the system. Many of the "disappeared" were kids who had miraculously found a passion which did not involve breaking the law. For some it was music, for others it was falling in love with a sport. I used to wonder why the Judge didn't sentence kids to take guitar or tennis lessons to help them divert their creativity into constructive directions.
I'm delighted to hear that such programs are being implemented here in Merida,Venezuela, though I hope I won't be joining a prison orchestra anytime soon, it's a wonderful way to humanize the prisons.
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