Venezuela of Yesteryear

On Friday August 22, my last day in Mérida, my friend and I went to Venezuela de Antier, one of three theme parks outside of the city. Rain or no rain, it’s high season due to school holidays, and the place was packed. As far as I can tell, we were the only non-Venezuelans there.

There are no rides at Venezuela de Antier. It’s all edutainment, as one passes from pavilion to pavilion, each representing a different Venezuelan state. We took the trolley-bus into the park, which is far away from the parking lot, and upon arrival were ordered off by machete-wielding “policemen” (the park is set in the 1920s, time of Venezuelan dictator Vicente Gómez).

There were demonstrations, performances, audience-participation shtick, a bullring (no bulls, though, just some guy who plays a mean trumpet), and a giant replica of a dancing devil, from the Corpus Christi festival in the town of San Antonio de Yare. You can see the bullring and the devil in the photograph. Just like at any theme park, there were many many opportunities to spend money on food, T-shirts, and knick-knacks (not to mention the steep entrance fee).

We enjoyed a good meal at one of the restaurants, had fun watching Venezuelans dress up at the olde tyme photo portrait studio, and had a blast at the cabaret. The bar was really well stocked (I had a Cynar), and the bands were fantastic. One was a Cuban-style Latin jazz combo, and the other played Mexican music with great big sombreros and whole get-up. The audience was super-enthusiastic, with people whooping it up, and getting up to dance. People were there with their kids—no taboo against kids in bars here, so long as they’re drinking soft drinks. I reflected on the many opportunities for working musicians in the various pavilions of the park.

Back in the city, we watched President Chávez speaking at length on TV. He does that regularly, extemporaneously or in response to questions. He is always lucid, persuasive, and coherent, although perhaps a bit repetitive. (Can you imagine Bush speaking at length without notes? It would be incomprehensible, and he’d probably say something that would cause an international crisis.) At one point, Chávez was talking about the Chief of the Venezuelan Opposition attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics. He was referring to Bush, of course.

On Saturday August 23 we said goodbye to Mérida with a prop-plane flight of about an hour and a quarter to Caracas. Here’s a photo of a valley to the east of the city, seen the base of Mérida’s (no longer operational) cable car. I also said goodbye to the lovely people at the inn I had lived at for three weeks--it's a cooperative enterprise, something the Chávez government encourages and provides technical assistance for.





Back in Caracas

On Saturday and Sunday August 23rd and 24th, and my friend and I had some time to explore Caracas. We stayed at in a fancy hotel suite in a fancy (and safe) neighborhood. Here’s the view from our room—Dorothy, I don’t think we’re in Mucuchíes anymore. And here’s a photo of part of one of Caracas’s extensive slums, this one right next one to a major downtown area. Caracas, like Rio de Janeiro, Quito, Lima, Lagos, Karachi, and any number of other cities around the globe, has huge populations of penniless people flocking to the urban centers, with the crime attendant with large wealth discrepancies. The poor, of course, are the first victims of the crime rate, since they cannot afford the private security that the middle class and rich resort to. See "The Free World of Slums by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/1090/ .

In our meanderings around town, and in and out of some of Caracas’s art museums, we enjoyed the architecture of the city, some from the early days of independence in the beginning of the 19th century, a lot of it poured concrete stuff from the late 20th and early 21st century. One the way out of town, we passed some of the houses that the Chávez government is building in slums—sturdy little boxy things built right on the site where a ramshackle hovel had stood.

I’m back home in New York now, eager to maintain and improve my strengthened Spanish skills, to teach a little Spanish to my first-grade students, and to share my observations about revolutionary Venezuela with people in the United States. To keep up with the situation in the Bolivarian Republic, check out venezuelanalysis.com . And please be prepared to stand up against the U.S. government if it decides to invade Venezuela, as some ominous signs point to. Thanks for reading. Peace.