418 percent, with most of the victims being young males (San Juan, 1997: 232–233). Countless streets in the middle- and upper-class neighborhoods were closed and privatized; increasingly, bars and electric fences surrounded houses and buildings in these areas. The threat represented by the "dangerous class" came to occupy a central place in the media – along with demands that drastic measures be taken, including the death penalty or direct execution by the police. During this period, the prospect of a reasonably comfortable life for most Venezuelans, which had appeared attainable in the 1970s, became increasingly remote; poverty and exclusion appeared inescapable for many. According to Lander: These crises-like conditions increasingly became permanent features of society. We are dealing here not with the exclusion of a minority categorized as "marginal" in relation to society as a whole but with the living conditions and cultural reproduction of the great majority of the population. The result was the development of what Ivez Pedrazzini and Magalay Sánchez (1992) have called the "culture of urgency." They describe a practical culture of action in which the informal economy, illegality, illegitimacy, violence and mistrust of official society are common. Alejandro Moreno (1995) characterizes this other cultural universe as the popular-life world that is other, different from Western modernity – organized in terms of a matriarchal family structure, with different conceptions of time, work, and community, and a relational (community-oriented) rationality distinct from the abstract rationality of the dominant society. This cultural context is scarcely compatible with the model of citizenship associated with liberal democracies of the West. Shortly after attaining office, Pérez, faced with a severe crisis of international reserves, fiscal as well as trade and balance-of-payment deficits, and an external debt ($34 billion) that under these conditions could not be paid," signed a letter of intent with the International Monetary Fund stipulating that he carry out a liberalization adjustment program. The agreement was not submitted to parliamentary consultation and was made public only after having been signed. On 25 February 1989, the government announced an increase in gasoline prices, and two days later a public transit price rise precipitated the Caracazo, a series of mass demonstrations and riots in Caracas and Venezuela's other principal cities. Pérez suspended civil rights and imposed martial law. The military's suppression of the rebellion resulted in, by the government's own admission, 300 deaths; and others estimate the toll at more than