Iran in Doug's imagination must be like Soviet Russia in the old anticommunist imagination. :->
If I were a trust-fund radical, though, I would love to have pieds-à-terre in Tehran*, Caracas,** and Paris.
* Tehran is modern, though Isfahan, where my Persian teacher comes from, is much lovelier than it.
Tehran: <http://www.worldisround.com/articles/98910/index.html> Isfahan: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/isfahan/clusters/>
** Caracas has to be politically exciting, but it is also a very tough city. Here's an honest report from a friend of Venezuela.
<http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff12272006.html> December 27, 2006 Hugo Chavez's Political Imperative Saving Caracas By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF
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Smog, Buoneros, and Disorder
In 2000-2001, while pursuing research for my dissertation, I spent many months living in San Bernardino, a neighborhood located not too far from downtown Caracas. Next to my landlord's condominium building stood an informal barrio. The housing there was improvised and was built up on the side of a steep hill.
Though San Bernardino was considered unsafe at night and the streets became deserted after 7 PM, one could at least breathe the air. The same could not be said of downtown, where my eyes and throat frequently felt sore from the smog. There, I could not walk down the street as it was clogged with so-called buoneros or informal street vendors.
After carrying out my research in downtown, I would take the subway to the Bellas Artes stop, located beneath San Bernardino. The subway came as a welcome respite to me after the relentless and daily assault on my senses. One of the few bright spots in the city, the subway system was clean and efficient.
Unfortunately, one had to get out of the subway at Bellas Artes and transfer to a bus to reach San Bernardino. Very early during my stay in Caracas, I was pick-pocketed by a gang of thieves as I was riding up the escalator in Bellas Artes. They had distracted me with a ruse on the escalator and I had little chance to see their faces.
Distressed by my experience, I found a cop and told him what had happened. We went back to the subway station, where the policeman pointed at a middle-aged man.
"That was the person who robbed you?" the cop asked.
I scrutinized the man's face.
"I'm sorry officer," I replied after a moment. "I was robbed so fast that I couldn't identify the thieves."
The cop was unconcerned by what I had said and took the man down to the station for questioning. As the two marched off down the platform I grew a little concerned and wondered what kind of treatment the man would receive.
For the rest of my stay in Caracas I had no more run-ins with the police. In fact, the cops seemed largely absent from the city's streets (except for Altamira, an upper class district where they wore nifty outfits and rode bicycles). With a little effort, the police might have brought some security and order to Caracas. In San Bernardino, bunkered down in my room, I would hear the sound of distant gunshots. But, I never saw the police patrolling the neighborhood.
After my unfortunate encounter in Bellas Artes I exercised caution and did not run into more thieves.
Despite this, I had other problems. My daily bus ride to San Bernardino, for example, always proved to be a free for all. There had seemingly been little effort invested in urban planning in and around Bellas Artes, and chronic traffic would delay my trip home by up to an hour.
For relief from the smog and traffic, I would frequently go to Altamira or to Centro Comercial Sambil, a shopping mall.
2006: Return to Caracas
I left Caracas in 2001 and didn't concern myself much more with the city's affairs. Years later, now back in New York, I saw a harrowing film entitled Secuestro Express about kidnapping and police corruption in Caracas. The film was directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, who himself had been kidnapped. He and his friends had been grabbed, robbed of their money, ATM cards, and clothes.
The film fell under withering criticism from the government, which blasted it as an attack on life under the Chavez regime. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel denounced Secuestro Express as a "miserable film, a falsification of the truth with no artistic value."
Officials even threatened Jackubowicz with imprisonment, while the government's film commission declined to submit the movie for Academy Award consideration. Despite this, Secuestro Express became the most popular movie in Venezuelan history.
This past summer, I received an invitation to speak in Caracas. Perhaps, I reasoned, the capital city had improved since 2001. The vision presented in Secuestro Express, I thought, must surely have been sensationalized in line with government claims. Maybe, more politically and socially conscious officials had addressed chronic problems and made Caracas a more habitable city for all. I headed back to the capital city with high hopes.
I was sorely disappointed.
To me, the city seemed more polluted, congested and unsafe than ever. Even more glaring, I saw more people than I remembered in 2001 sleeping in the street around Bellas Artes. At one point, exiting a restaurant near my hotel, a security guard warned me to exercise caution. It was about 9 PM and I felt like taking an evening walk. I didn't see any cops anywhere in the vicinity and decided to beat a hasty retreat to the hotel.
Indeed, during my entire stay in Caracas I rarely saw policemen patrolling the streets. I quickly reverted to my usual pattern of heading to Altamira and the shopping mall in an effort to escape.
In the run up to the recent presidential election, the opposition media on TV was screaming about the lack of security under the Chavez government and urban crime.
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Gimnasios Verticales: An Innovative Strategy
In an effort to curb violence in Caracas, local authorities have pushed an innovative strategy: construction of new gyms. Informal settlements in the city have historically lacked access to sports facilities. One pioneering project, "Bello Campo," transformed a pre-existing soccer field in the municipality of Chacao into a multi-level sports complex or gimnasio vertical.
The complex, which accommodated up to 200 people, was located in between formal and informal neighborhoods. Free to all residents, Bello Campo has succeeded in bringing together a wide range of local residents. Every year, according to the exhibit, Bello Campo receives 180,000 visitors. Most importantly, since the inception of the gym crime has decreased by 45% in the neighborhood, which has become one of the safest in Chacao municipality. According to the exhibit, Bello Campo is not unique: a video display screen showed additional city locations for other gimnasios verticales.
Solving Caracas's social problems will surely prove to be one of the most vexing and daunting challenges for President Chavez in his second term. Gimnasios verticales and urban redesign at San Rafael are promising developments. The government will have to do its utmost to integrate other barrios into the urban fabric. Failure to do so will provide further ammunition to the opposition, which will charge that the Chavez government has failed to rein in crime and insecurity. -- Yoshie