I arrived in Venezuela late on Friday night, and joined up with the Global Exchange tour that began that morning.

On Saturday, in Caracas, we visited Plaza Simón Bolívar, and Frank, our Venezuelan guide, talked to us about the history of the Liberator. He was an member of the creole aristocracy in Venezuela, and a slaveholder. The revolution was about preserving the privileges of the aristocracy from Spanish encroachments (and about rejecting Napoleeon’s French king on the Spanish throne). He has been claimed by every political movement throughout Venezuelan history, and Chávez says he was a pre-socialist thinker. This is of course a fallacy.

We also visited Llaguno Bridge. In 2002, snipers, presumably from the Caracas Metropolitan Police loyal to the anti-Chavista opposition, fired on a large anti-Chavista demonstration that had come from the wealthy eastern neighborhoods of Caracas, as well as on the pro-Chávez counterdemonstrators on the bridge. The Chavistas returned fire, and the privately-owned media, which are virulently anti-Chávez, broadcast narrow shots of the shooters on the bridge, creating the false impression that it was they who were firing on the anti-Chávez demonstration. (Wide shots show that the street below them was empty, not filled with demonstrators.) This incident led directly to the kidnapping of Chávez, the suspension of the constitution, the shut-down of the government TV channel, and the installation of businessman Pedro Carmona as president. Millions of poor people poured in from the barrios demanding their president back, and he was returned, and elected constititional government restored, with the help of troops loyal not to their officers, who carried out the coup, but to their president. You can see an image of the LLaguno Bridge monument to the fallen heroes who defended the government against the coup at the upper right.

It occurs to me that the U.S. government and its allies learned their lesson from Chávez’s return…when President Aristide was kidnapped from Haiti not long afterward, he was taken far away, to the Central African Republic, out of reach of patriots who might rescue him.

The subway in Caracas is crowded, clean, and fast. Some of the trains have advertisements all over them for the socialist revolution, complete with images of Che. Government messages about its socialist programs co-exist with capitalist advertising on billboards and on the TV.

Everyone says that Caracas is really dangerous. We were careful with our bags and cameras, and didn’t go down certain streets, and everything was fine. Our American guides, both of whom live in Venezuela, say that the socialist government is not addressing the rampant crime and violence in Venezuela, and that this is a major campaign issue of the opposition. The revolution is attacking the root causes of crime—education, housing, healthcare, employment, poverty—but this long-term solution does not address the immediate issue that Venezuelans are not safe on the streets. Next door, the iron-fisted Colombian government has brought down that country’s street crime dramatically over the last several years, but only as part of a larger program of general repression, including the widespread murder of labor union activists.

We took an overnight bus to Mérida. The trip took more than fourteen hours, and the air conditioning on the bus was FREEZING. Everyone, gringo and Venezuelan alike, was wrapped up in scarves and sleeping bags and ski caps, shivering.

Mérida, on a meseta (alluvial terrace) in the tropical Andes, is beautiful. It looks a lot like Oaxaca (built by the same colonial power in the same 16th century), but is surrounded by lush towering mountains. We took a stroll around town, and I was especially pleased by the pedestal on which a bust of Columbus used to rest. The bust was smashed on Indigenous Resistance Day (a/k/a Columbus Day). See above for a photo of the Columbus pedestal sans bust.

I´m staying in a cooperative inn here. The socialist government has made it a priority to support cooperative (worker-owned and -operated ventures) throughout the country.

We began Spanish language classes in Mérida this morning, and will be speaking this afternoon with a reporter for venezuelanalysis.com, who will address some of the common misconceptions about revolutionary Venezuela. More later.