Caracas

So C. works in public health but obv. could have a future in journalism … she’s a much better writer than me! She got back from her first trip to Venezuela last week; I’m planning to go with her on her second visit late next month. Here is a note she sent me about the trip.

My impressions, jotted down last week…

I’ve been leaving my little hotel in the morning to at least catch a few glimpses of Caracas in the surrounding streets. In the mornings, the mountains which separate sprawling Caracas from the sea are ringed with a dewy fog that dissipates as the day goes on. The modern, boxy buildings that seem typical of the area do not reveal any kind of character, such that you’d be hard pressed to know you were in a crowded latinamerican metropolis. The shiny Hondas and Toyotas that lurch through the traffic-filled streets are equally nondescript. It is only when the occasional public bus rumbles by that the underbelly of poverty and infrastructural chaos is revealed: brightly painted, with a placard of destinations in the window, they lumber down the streets belching diesel fumes that are slow to dissipate. They falter into another pothole, more infrastructural neglect. It appears, this is a place of contrasts with KingOil filling the pockets of the lucky while the rest scrape together their Boliviares for busfare.

On our ride to the public maternity hospital, which is in a poor district of the city, I got a better sense of Caracas culture: sidewalks filled with vendors hawking blackmarket items, toppling pyramids of shiny orange tangerines, freshly cut pineapples piled in pickups ready to be eaten; food carts with steam rising from hot stuffed arepas – thick corn pancakes filled with meat, cheese. Locals crowd the corner juice stands to sample a thirst-quenching guava, berry, papaya, or mango special. Cement slab houses rise into the hills. The iron cords that stick out of the top, ready for the owner to add another story when economic opportunity arises, reveal a kind of hopefulness. A graffitied wall announces Chavez’s already-won bid for president. Meanwhile, traffic inches forward, cars jammed together for hours to arrive at their destinations. A motorcycle whirrs by, skirting through the rows of traffic, getting ahead the best way it knows how.

It always takes a while to understand a place and I think Caracas needs particular attention to crack its shiny commercial exterior and actually discover what, who, this city is. And this jam-packed week is certainly insufficient to understand. A few things are clear: there is a subtle bubbling of anxiety underlying a genuine spontaneity and levity, perhaps due to the uncertainty following the most recent elections. A sense of pride for how Venezuela is different from other Latin American countries – less indigenous, more European, less religious – reveals both a love of history and a rejection of certain racial and ethnic assumptions about Latinos. But what is really happening is well-hidden behind the malls lining Los Mercedes…

(Los Mercedes = her hotel)