A Visit to the Colonel
January 16, 2005
By Boris Kagarlitsky
It is less than a month since Colonel Hugo Chavez, the radical and charismatic president of Venezuela, spoke in Moscow to an enraptured crowd of left-wing youth and intelligentsia. Now I am in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, at a big conference organised by the president. It is, so to speak, a return visit.
Hell in Paradise
The first thing that strikes a northerner who comes to a tropical country is the landscape. This is not the first time I've been in Latin America, but its always the same. Before your eyes is a completely unaccustomed vista too huge and rich to fit at first into your consciousness. Of course, the vistas in Russia are much larger we know this from our geography lessons. But the Russian expanse opens up only gradually; you don?t perceive it at a glance.
Our landscape is modest; with its rivers, hills and coppices, it is more like chamber music than a symphony. You gain a sense of spaciousness only when you start to move, and this is why Russians love fast travel. In Latin America its different; here everything opens up at once. On one side is the sea, and on the other an endless chain of mountains, overgrown with lush greenery. There's a great deal of everything, all of it on a huge scale.
You don't need to move; you can simply stand still. Or better still, you can lie down and absorb the new sensations. The world outside doesn't urge you to go anywhere; it doesn?t impel you into motion. From the point of view of nature this is clearly paradise, a garden of Eden spreading out for thousands of kilometers. The first signs of civilisation, however, break the harmony. Between the lush mountains stand huge, ugly, dilapidated buildings.
The city of Caracas presents an irrational (to foreign eyes) jumble of shabby skyscrapers and undisguised hovels. Threading between them are hordes of battered old cars and crowds of poorly dressed people. From time to time well-dressed people and expensive cars appear too, but they exist in a sort of parallel world which, to tell the truth, I do not find very interesting. Exactly the same parallel world can be found in Moscow.
At one time Caracas, like many urban centers in Latin America, was a small, comfortable provincial city. But the Yankees found oil here, and then an economic boom began. Historic quarters were levelled to the ground (only the house where Simon Bolivar was born miraculously remained intact). In place of the old buildings, concrete skyscrapers were built, and freeways for the cars. Unfortunately, the prosperity did not last; oil prices started falling, the export revenues were plundered, and the standard of living declined sharply.
The skyscrapers have a depressing air. We were put in the Hilton, in the very center of town. The hotel consists of two massive concrete towers, one of them embellished with the words Caracas Hilton in huge letters completely rusted through. Next to the hotel are two more skyscrapers, even more massive, one of them half burnt-out and abandoned. Some ministry once occupied the middle floors. There was a short circuit, the ministry went up in flames, and along with it all the higher floors. No-one was hurt. Nor is there any sign of renovations.
The most picturesque areas of Caracas are the shantytowns on the mountain slopes. A good half of the population lives there. In elections, these people vote almost unanimously for Chavez. Foreign tourists, however, are not encouraged to visit the shanty-towns; you could get your throat cut. The level of crime in Caracas is so high that local residents, I have the impression, almost take pride in it. They advise us insistently not to go out on the streets after dark, explaining in detail and with relish how to avoid unwelcome encounters. Nature created a paradise, but in this paradise, people have contrived to build their own hell.