Violence? Civil War? Military Coup?

The second day now of clanging pots and pans all over the country. I am away from my home trying to flee the horrible mood at the compound. The vice-president of the compound resigned this morning after having received verbal insults and threats from some of my neighbors with Madurist sympathies. I am so angry at the violence, the fascist attitude of this regime, that I cannot believe that some of the European left are still supporting Maduro and his thugs (who seriously wounded an opposition MP in a parliament session today). I really cannot believe that the democratic countries are still waiting - for what? The votes won't be recounted. Capriles is unable to speak to the nation. His protest march due for tomorrow had to be cancelled because Maduro forbade it. The ones who call Capriles and his followers fascists, are a textbook example of what crude fascism really is.

From Venezuela I call upon the world, as long as I am still able to access Blogger, to start moving against this regime. We have no proof yet that Maduro's powerful state apparatus left behind by Chavez, has cheated in the election. But the smoking guns are everywhere, and the regime's reaction to insistent calls to come clear and out into the open, are repression, threats and insults, all encased by a approaching economic catastrophe.

This could mean to a certain extent widespread civil unrest, although I don't see any real civil war erupt in Venezuela. But the military have been strangely silent these days. Many sense something is cooking over there. It won't be the first time in Venezuelan history the army steps in with an own agenda.

My First Cacerolazo

Yesterday evening, just after having published my last blog entry, we had a major blackout which lasted for almost 2 hours. In all the years I have lived at my place here, it was the first time it lasted that long.

About ten minutes later, in pitch-black darkness outside with only two candles to show us where we were, a second thing happened which I had never experienced before at our compound. It started with two or three rattling pots and kettles, and soon after most of our neighbors were rattling away, in protest and frustration over what is happening in this country. As most of my neighbors are Chavists, many of them holding a government job, it struck us.

In the pandemonium, my wife grabbed a pan as well - something which I never have seen in the seven years we are together - and started making noise too. The pandemonium of pots, pans, kettles, vuvuzelas and jeering was eerie. It lasted about two hours and stopped well after power supply was reestablished.

I grabbed a pot too, and for the first time, I was actually taking part in what was probably one of the biggest civic actions till now against the Maduro regime. I managed to unload some of the frustration and the anger by beating on the pot. It felt good. Although at the same time I felt like a little ant making a point against an enormous monster, it was a statement, for me and for my many neighbors who felt the same.

Unrests in Caracas, Barquisimeto, Merida and many other cities all over the country. Clashes in Valencia between protesters and the Guardia Nacional, wounded and burning cars on the highway. People are so tired of what is happening here. We all know - even the Chavists - that Venezuela needs a government of comprehensive action, of national unity to avert the economic catastrophe coming towards us, caused by the same irresponsible Chavist government thinking only of staying in power by giving away money to half the world, leaving almost nothing to the country itself. But Maduro, who proclaimed himself president yesterday with his back turned to half the nation, wants confrontation. I think this idiot wants blood on the streets so that it can give this wannabe ruler the excuse to start acting like a dictator. Capriles has called to the cacerolazo at 8 pm - the one we all participated in, and which was an enormous succes nation-wide - and for avoiding any confrontation with the powers of the state.

While we were walking outside, in the dark we suddenly saw a group of motorized thugs wearing Maduro shirts, looking mean and observing what was happening. In the middle of our compound. Such motorized gangs are terrorizing protesting communities at the moment, even attacking them, as it happened in many places yesterday night. We walked on, not too happy.

What happened to the vote recount? All international organizations, the EU, the US and the OAS have called for a recount of votes. As I am writing these words, the Venezuelan government is busy burning the votes. Forget the recount, forget Maduro's promises. The CNE cynically has referred the opposition to make a claim at the tribunals, of which we all know are under control of the Chavist government. We know that Capriles under these circumstances, has very little chances to achieve anything.

And so, this "government of the people" has staged a slow-time coup d'etat, stealed the elections, broken every law concerned, every article in the constitution, beat up peaceful protesters through its paid street gangs, and is quickly becoming more and more a carbon copy of the regimes of Syria, Byelorussia and Cuba. And keeping the world's conscience quiet with enormous amounts of petrodollars, while Venezuela itself is falling to pieces.

Some world we live in. I feel alone, abandoned and laughed at. While my only goal is to build up a peaceful, productive life in this country. Under Marxist parameters however, it will become impossible in the long run. And as the world looks the other way, Venezuela is applying for membership of the club of authoritarian, totalitarian governments.

Cuba, the broke island filled with jobless people with no future at all - Socialist Sea of Happiness - can sleep quietly again. Venezuelan oil will keep feeding that starved country while the Castrist elite can count on more millions of dollars coming their way, while the rest of the population rots away either in their crumbling houses or in a stinking prison cell. And we are going the same way, in Venezuela.

I am living in a Cold War nightmare.

One Big Freaking Mess

At this moment, Venezuela is burning. There are many unrests in the major cities. According to the official CNE election results, Capriles lost by almost a point to Maduro. Capriles maintains that he is the real winner, with the acts in his hands and at least 3000 denouncements of serious electoral incidents, all without any exception perpetrated by Chavist gangs - and all ignored without exception by the CNE that claimed there were "no incidents". Many of these incidents are recorded on video, one specially remarkable one was that of a presumed Cuban that was grabbed by a furious crowd in flagranti with over 40 different ID cards in his possession, trying to vote again and again. Guess for whom. Right.

I was planning to go to Caracas today but couldn't, because with the street unrests, who could give me the guarantee that before we all know it, the authorities might impose a curfew and condemn me to stay an involuntary night in Gotham City.

Meanwhile, both candidates yesterday evening agreed that with the completely polarized election results, and Capriles' claim that the election results are falsified by almost a million votes, there would be a 100% recount of all votes. That didn't stop the highly controversial CNE to proclaim Maduro winner of the presidential election.

Maduro, which has totally ruled out to dialogue with the other 50% of the country that voted against him, is set on a confrontation. Capriles seems to have accepted the challenge, and so, with one half of the country not recognizing Maduro as president, and with the world waiting to wish him the best - meaning they haven't recognized the Maduro government till it becomes clear what the real results are - Venezuela is bound to become a disorderly mess the coming weeks. Add to that the disastrous economic situation, confirmed rumors of a third devaluation coming our way, and an increasing shortage of basic goods maybe going up to 50%, and you wouldn't want to be in Maduro's nor Capriles' shoes.

To make things even more sparking, the first signs of dissent within the Chavist ranks have popped up.

I am glad the internet is up after the authorities shut it down yesterday evening citing "hackers" as the cause. I will keep you posted, but if you don't read anything tomorrow, blame the connection. Or serious shit coming our way.

One Day Left

Venezuela is one day away from the presidential elections. I am sitting on my bed, typing away and watching national TV at the same time.

Since yesterday national networks are not allowed to make publicity for any candidate. Venevision, Televen, Globovision and Vale TV adhere 100% to that ruling. The ones who do not, are the state networks VTV, TeleSur, VIVE, Avila TV and ANTV. They keep on broadcasting political ads cunningly using the figure of Hugo Chavez in clear reference to its avatar Nicolas Maduro.

The opposition party alliance MUD has already denounced this. But it is expected the electoral committee CNE won't do anything about this, as they haven't done anything about the more than 100 denunciations against the government abuses of the campaign.

Colombian ex-president Pastrana has made clear what other foreign politicians have not: the Venezuelan elections are rifed with government abuse, using state recourses and the help of strawmen on key juridical posts to force their way, bent their own laws and rules and at the same time enforcing them on their opponents. Capriles has fought an uphill battle right from the start, and in view of this, his progress has been admirable and hope-giving.

Witout becoming stereotypical, let me draw a picture for you what Venezuela would look like if Maduro wins these elections without fraud. It will beome a new, updated version of the Castrist dictatorship on Cuba. Already Maduro's henchmen in judge robes are moving to prepare criminal prosecutions against all head figures of the opposition. It is to be expected that if Maduro wins, most if not all of the opposition leaders will end up in jail on bogus and trumped-up charges of whatever the law gives as options. Venezuela will slither down more and more in squalid poverty reminiscent of that in communist-rules countries like the former East Block, Byelorussia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and as an extreme example, North Korea. Repression will become stronger and even brutal, its enforcement in the hands of red-shirted gangs with the police looking the other way - something that is already happening for years. Dissent is already punished for years by not being hired in any state job, and if the Chavist government keep on following its master plan laid down in 2004, no private employment will be possible in the future. The message in a Socialist Venezuela will then be: adapt or die.

It has angered me that journalists that I have spoken with in Venezuela, even one reporting to one of the biggest global networks, haven't paid any heed to my words, that sadly have become truth over the years. The picture of Cuba as a benevolent Marxist state pushed to extremes by US imperialism is fabricated by the Castrist regime to hide its true monstrosity from the world. I have tasted this system here, designed to castrate whole populations as they have done it on Cuba, and it is my sincere hope that the world will wake up and realize that no appeasement, no compromise will do to effect any change to those countries. This system, expert in mind manipulation, must be exposed, denounced like nazism in its day, and barred for ever from taking part in political life. The case of the FARC in Colombia is exemplary. Disguising as sheep, the wolves try to make their way into Colombian politics only to take them over eventually and install their own brand of Marxist despotic rule.

Do I sound like Margaret Thatcher? To those people, the Cold War isn't over yet. You are warned.

Latest News On The Elections

Yesterday night was the closure of the very unique and controversial presidential election campaign in Venezuela. Maduro made the "best" of it claiming he is the president of what can be translated as the "scum of the earth", and that he would build schools for "mongoloid" children - verbatim. His folksy and crude way of expressing himself, a trademark of these elections (Capriles, an upper-class technocrat with a socialdemocrat streak, also adopted this), have struck raw nerves even among moderate Chavists who still support him.

Foreign publications maintain, till now, that Capriles is lagging in the latest polls and that Maduro will become the sure winner of these elections. In view of the bleak economic outlook, it strikes me why so few foreign journalists bother to ask the "why" question. The 100 days of the Maduro regime - following the suspicious death of Hugo Chavez at the hands of Cuban doctors - have been disastrous, and I can tell you this first-hand. The violence, connected or not to the election, has been unusually high. But not a word of this is found in foreign reports on the Venezuelan elections.

From what I know, I can state that Capriles has outrun Maduro in the latest tracking polls. The publication of the latest numbers is not allowed by Venezuelan electoral law, but the genuine enthusiasm found among the hundreds of thousands of Capriles followers who braved blistering sun and heat to listen to his speeches, has contrasted more and more with the forced jeering of obligated attendees to Maduro´s rallies, clad all in red and driven from all over the country in state-owned busses, of whom many yesterday took the chance of being in the capital to do some strolling-around in the busy shopping malls.

I personally believe the elections wil be a very close call. The Election Commitee CNE, although supposed to be impartial, has shown the opposite, drawing some heavy fire from the opposition. The regime will do everything to win these crucial elections, so cheating won´t be excluded. Opposition sympathizers, who number at least 6,5 million (the number who voted for Capriles last fall) smell victory for their candidate.

I will keep you posted.

The Plot Thickens

I haven't written my blog for some time because first of all, internet connection in Venezuela is not good at the moment. Partly to blame are the forest and bush fires sprouting all over the country. Most of them are the result of arson. Yesterday the Canaima National Park caught fire, and at some point of the day it was reported that the Auyantepuy, one of the most characteristic natural landmarks on this planet, was shrouded in smoke and flames. Every day as I drive over the main highway ARC, I see with pain in my heart how whole sections of natural landscape are being devoured by enormous fires, all of them close to human settlements and all of them lit by human hand. Needless to say, nature suffers a great deal, and many sloths, iguanas and other inhabitants of virgin forest zones are dying or forced to flee, only to be run over by drivers without any conscience.

The destruction of Venezuelan nature is only symptomatic of what is happening in the country in the days prior to the second presidential election in 6 months. Following the enigmatic death of Hugo Chavez - of which the truth will emerge sooner or later - his successor, the Cuban-backed Nicolas Maduro, has enjoyed a month-long advantage over Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate, who only half a year ago lost to Hugo Chavez and has since then struggled to regain his popularity. Maduro has been able to exploit public grief over Chavez' death to push himself in the limelight as the new leader.

The disastrous economic decisions taken by the Maduro regime in the last 100 days have, however, started to tilt popular preference towards Capriles. Maduro's fetishism with the dead Chavez, stating aloud that he is the real son of the dead Comandante, has alienated more and more chavists who see the playing-around with Chavez' body, name and legacy as plain disrespect towards their dead leader. He is constantly seen as hiding behind Chavez, which is raising more and more questions among the Chavist population about who the real presidential candidate really is. It all sounds and looks like a necromantic spectacle from a very cheap vampire movie.

And there is more. Maduro's stupid homophobic remarks, trying to show Capriles as gay in a macho society, are working against him now. His total ignorance of even the country's geography, triggering a whole wave of ridicule and bitter jokes about his supposed lack of intelligence, are steadily eroding popular support for the Chavist side. The regime's attempts to link Capriles to a supposed plan to murder Maduro, assisted by a complacent leftist Salvadorian government on the payroll of Caracas, are drawing few believers even among Chavist supporters.

All in all, Maduro's initial advantage has been eroding thanks to his unwise decision, words and actions. Even in spite of his resources, buying and bribing consciences, he gets fewer and fewer persons on his side.

Meanwhile, the initially insecure Capriles has been skyrocketing to new heights. As a public orator, he is drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters nation-wide, daily. His proposals are clear: end the corruption, end the giving away of billions in exchange for political backing elsewhere, restructure the economy, fight crime (which is now whopping at unknown heights), and restore parliamentary democracy and the balance of powers. It will mean probably the end of Castrist rule on Cuba, and problems in cashflow with leftist-populist governments such as Nicaragua and Bolivia. And herald a new era in Venezuela, after more than 20 years of political and social unrest.

Analysts predict a close draw in the elections next Sunday with both candidates having equal chances. Judging by what I hear and see on the streets, I think Capriles has a very big chance of winning. His charisma has been compared to that of Chavez in 1998. He is moving humble hearts as well as minds, offering them hope. His task is being helped by the abysmal performance of the Maduro regime.

I hope that my next entry can start with the sentence "Capriles won". I will tell you all about it after this Sunday. Have a great weekend.

Long, Hot Summer

Damn it´s hot. Excuse my French but I can´t think of any other way of expressing my disgust at the endless row of hot, steamy days accompanied by the acrid smell of bush and forest fires all around you. True, it´s a special sight to drive along the Autopista Regional del Centro at night and see the pitch black dark lightened up by roaring fires all around you. But it´s sad. Most of the fires are man-made, senseless people lightening up candles at some shrine and leaving the lit candles all in the middle of scorched grass. It makes you wonder whether people here are pyromans or just plain senseless.

Anyhow, this is the background to a country in escalating frenzy after the death of Hugo Chavez. Some people are walking around like out-of-season Santa´s in red chavista uniform, struttin´ their stuff as they say. Others are just getting on the street for the necessary shopping. The streets in the old western part of Caracas - Quinta Crespo, Santa Teresa, San Juan and El Paraiso - are not that full, but you clearly sense that some people are out looking for trouble. So people like me avoid the streets, buy enough for at least a week (this also to avoid looking at empty shelves when you need something and there isn´t any), just try to stay at home. The mood in Venezuela is maddening, to say the least. Even when you don´t watch any news, don´t follow any political events, the moment you walk on the streets you bump into crowds of frenzied red-shirted bikeriders and look at the electoral propaganda of Nicolas Maduro hanging by magic from every lamppost in the city. The word "Maduro" is there alright on the posters, but I see the face of Hugo Chavez and Chavez´signature beneath it. As if from the underworld Chavez is still running for president. Sometimes I feel Venezuela won´t ever get rid of this phantom. I am not exaggerating, really. I wish I were somewhere else, now more than ever. It all seems a very bad Stephen King novel interlaced with a lousily written local telenovela.

The electoral campaign has begun, inofficially, with Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate, calling Nicolas Maduro a plain liar and explaining why, and Maduro replying with the word faggot. Yes, you´ve read it correctly. For the umpteenth time the chavist side has called Capriles a faggot, a "maricon". Embellishing this insult are califications like rich-born kid, rotten aristocrat and so on. It´s clear that Maduro, who walks around puffed-up in his presidential mode, has no real arguments to throw at Capriles´ face. So he hides behind Chavez´ hallowed image, hoping that Venezuelan voters will vote for him in the assumption that they vote for Chavez, as they have done so for years. In this country, marked by a belief in the supernatural, an army of Virgins all competing with each others, and even more saints and pseudovirgins of the Catholic stables posing as African deities, selling the idea of voting for a dead candidate who is not dead really, is not as hare-brained as you might think.

Accompanying this folkloristic performance is a grimmer factor. Capriles seems to have avoided an attempt on his life day before yesterday, when he was expected to inscribe his candidature at the National Electoral Council (CNE). He didn´t show up, letting the inscription be done by one of the heads of his campaign. This was greeted by a jeering cannonade of insults by the chavist side, of course. But investigations are underway, and the proofs shown are serious enough to conclude that the fear for Henrique Capriles´ life is justified. Maduro´s call that everyone should get a gun to "defend the Revolution" could be taken too literally by the army of hotheads that made Chavez´s presidency possible.

The King Is Dead - Long Live The King????

I have waited on purpose for a week before writing here. So many things have been happening here in Venezuela, as you might know, that I decided to wait these days to let the dust settle down and then see what is really happening here.

The death of Hugo Chavez - an event that has announced itself for more than a month before it came out on March 5 - has eclipsed all news events, even that of the papal reelection. I have been an eye witness to the mass grieving, mass hysteria grabbing hold of a great portion of the Venezuelan people. The grieving is genuine, I can assure you. The void left by Hugo Chavez is so enormous - he has willy-nilly changed the country since 1999 - that virtually no one has the foot size to fill his enormous boots. Not even Nicolas Maduro, dubbed Mr. Potato Head, whose appearances have been till now nothing more than a bleak carbon copy of those of El Comandante, and nothing more than that. His fanaticism is borderless however, as well as his friendship with the Castro-communist gerontocracy on the island of Cuba. That will give him at least a period of strength, given to him by a desperate Raul Castro who knows perfectly well that Venezuela's free oil accounts for 60% of the yearly revenues of the broke island's state.

Still, Mr. Maduro, as the anointed successor to Hugo Chavez, appears like a boy putting on his dad's shoes. His desperate attempts at emulating Hugo Chavez have till now harvested some success as well as ridicule, even from chavists. Venezuelan chavism - its hardcore is at least 40% of the population - is in genuine grief, looking up to Hugo Chavez as a divinity and finding some comfort in having Maduro as a stand-in for him. But the country's economy is running steerless. The shortages of even basic goods, car spare parts etc. are caused by a chronic cash shortage of the Venezuelan government. The attempts at introducing a Marxist economic structure in Venezuela since 2007 have caused havoc and virtually destroyed the national production. In 2012, 97% of the country's yearly revenue was based on oil, while at the time of Chavez' rise in 1999 it hovered around 60%. The country, which produced its own dairy products till 2007, now is totally dependent on milk and cheese importations from Argentina, Uruguay and other countries. Marxist-inspired expropiations and nationalisations have done nothing but destroy Venezuela's non-oil production. The national currency, the bolivar, is worth nothing outside of the country, and quickly losing its value in Venezuela. The day Venezuela isn't able to import anymore with its petrodollars in order to finance its misiones and fill up empty shelves, is the day everything here will experience a melt-down. That day won't come soon, but it depicts in a clear way how deteriorated this country has become under chavist rule, and how we all live and bounce on an oil bubble which, theoretically, could one day burst and throw the whole nation into an abyss.

Despite Hugo Chavez's undoubted achievements on the social and macropolitical fields - he has redefined Latin America's position against the rest of the world, for instance, and introduced social policies in a region oblivious to its army of poors - his ultimate legacy for Venezuela has been a total failure. The country is split in two almost equal parts. The economy is a shambles, the criminality has never been that higher ever in its history, society is merged in a deep crisis. And he has been too late in building up a good continuity of his regime. Nicolas Maduro, or whoever will be put in his place by a restless military (who clearly is controlling the country's course now), will be able to stir up chavist sentiments for a time. But when the people realize that the man / woman in the red shirt imitating El Comandante is NOT Chavez, and has only hollow recycled phrases to sell to them amidst chaos and a mounting anarchy, what will happen then?

As things go, and historical events flow, the chavist movement without its charismatic founder and leader, will soon split up like peronism in Argentinia, into radical and less radical factions. It's too early yet to tell what will happen in Venezuela in the coming months. One thing is sure however. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has a very slim chance of winning the April 14 presidential elections against Nicolas Maduro. Maduro has made a very clever use of Hugo Chavez' death, the country's grieving and the ironclad control of the regime on all national institutes, including the Supreme Court. Thanks to that, Maduro has achieved to push through his grab for power in a pseudo-legal way. His investiture as "interim president" and his simultaneous candidature for president have broken constitutional and electoral law, but protests were in vain. The Supreme Court, a true kangaroo court, approved all of this.

So, it is expected Maduro will win the presidency on April 14. But as I pointed out before, what will happen when the country will start looking past the Chavez mask and see who Maduro really is? I personally don't think Maduro is able to master the power machinery left behind by Chavez. He has no economic background, no original ideas other than that of a syndicalist leader he once was. Will he be able to survive the transitional period? One never knows how the cookie crumbles. But if Nicolas Maduro wants to survive as president and new leader of the chavist movement, he will have to change, and quickly.

While Chavez, despite his bully acting, really knew when to play soft tunes to his adversaries and when not, Maduro has no clue what that means. His attitude towards the opposition has been sheer agressive and abusive. Other than looking for reconciliation and national peace, his boorish behaviour has only deepened the gap between chavists and opposition, and maybe even between chavists themselves. Although they know Maduro is Chavez' appointed successor, he lacks the charisma and the popularity among that group. He will have to change his acting and his image quickly. Otherwise, I see a new period of chaos for Venezuela after April 14. As if Venezuela isn't living in enough chaos already.

Waiting for Hugo Godot

Another weekend came and went, and still there is no real news about Hugo Chavez. Nothing. The only information the world gets, is through VP Nicolas Maduro and his team, who in a series of contradictory messages paint an image of Hugo Chavez as the president who is both present and absent. Jokes are going around about the enigmatic president - one that he is the true Santa: no one sees him but everyone has to believe in him. Needless to say at this point, the government hasn't done anything to dispel rumors about the true condition of Hugo Chavez. If anything, the contradictory reports from within the government itself have only fanned them to new heights. But attention of the Venezuelans is gradually turning to their everyday problems such as the devaluation, the scarcity of products, and above all the rampant criminality. Even the opposition media are paying less and less attention to what is happening politically. Everybody is getting tired of this hide-and-seek game, even the chavists.

But the social networks, specially Twitter, are fuming with wildest rumors, truths, half-truths and downright lies. There was one rumor, last Friday just after I closed my blog, that there was a quarrel between VP Maduro and the defense minister admiral Molero, in which Maduro supposedly wanted to sack Molero for insubordination and Molero replied that the only one to sack him is Chavez personally, and no one else. Nobody has confirmed this news / rumor, but I personally don't discard it. The army have been very silent these last days, their political conman Diosdado Cabello has kept his mouth shut as well while Maduro and his civil neocommunist club have been endlessly blabbing and contradicting each other. It is advisable to watch how the armed forces, this dark horse, the source of power and coup d'etats, will behave the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, on the economic front things are going from bad to worse. Something is not going right with the importations. There are signs that the chavist government is strapped of cash with the barrel of oil at around 100 bucks (???). That could explain in great part the puzzling shortage of even sugar! This country exported sugar! Now it seems most of the white sweet stuff is coming from capitalist Brazil. The government is doing everything to contradict this even with the use of plain lies. According to this socialist government, there is no shortage. "Hamstering agents" of the "ultraright fascist groups" under orders of the "foreign imperialists" are supposedly sabotaging the blooming socialist economy, planted by the "endless wisdom of Chairman Mao, sorry Comandante Chavez" blablabla. The same endless communist blabber which I heard in the seventies and eighties. Anyone suffering of so-called "Ostalgia", or nostalgia for Soviet times, should come here. For me, it's like riding a time machine over and over again. With of course knowing that this movie, called Socialist Venezuela, will end in total and utter failure.

But back to the news. The expected devaluation is now 3 weeks old, but independent economic analysts are already stating that Venezuela will suffer a second devaluation. If that is true, and I think it is, the devaluation will take place after the July elections, putting the country under a very tough situation till that month, when it probably will get worse. To erase all doubts: the economic decline in Venezuela started right after Chavez started the conversion to a marxist economic structure in January 2007, after his second reelection. It has virtually devastated the country's non-oil production, making the country even more dependent (over 90%) on its oil revenues. Despite heavy warnings from all side, the Chavez team is bent on keeping and even radicalizing its marxist course, thinking maybe that the oil revenues will wash away all mistakes. But to me and countless others living this downward hill ride with horror and amazement, things in Venezuela will get worse, much worse. This neocommunist Jurassic Park will throw Venezuela to the level of Castrist Cuba.

Unless people open their eyes. This however is a wish, not a statement built on facts. Venezuelans are still much too cozy in their semi fantasy world, fueled by the world's cheapest gasoline, to really understand what is coming to them. And the poor? Always been poor and ignorant, always will be. To them, Hugo Chavez will remain a redeemer for the time to come, even as this regime is starting to crumble away under the crushing weight of its own ineptitude.

Back again! Reloaded!!!!

Well, it's been a very long time. Living in this godforsaken city - it will be 7 years coming July - has impeded me in keeping true to this blog. But I have made a solemn promise to myself to be a Good And Faithful Blogger.
At this very moment, I am sitting in the middle of the Venezuelan post-Chavez vortex, about 20 minutes driving from the military hospital where he is SUPPOSED to be convalescing after having SUPPOSEDLY been flown back from Havanna, Cuba last Monday.
It's now Friday on the calendar and we have seen "dick" of Chavez, nothing, not even a blurry picture. The smiling and happy-happy pictures of Chavez and his daughters, SUPPOSEDLY taken last February 14, are most probably Photoshop fakes, as countless Venezuelan Twittees have posted their own version of the picture with Chavez reading Playboy, an opposition newspaper, you name it. I have downloaded some very funny ones, one very crafty one of Hitler reading a Venezuelan newspaper of that very day. Photoshop is Magic. That was for sure. But what is happening with Chavez? Where is he? Is he still alive?
Despite Peace Noble prize winner Rigoberta Menchu and hordes of red-clad wellwishers screaming and assuring each and everyone that Chavez will be on his feet in no time, helped by astral forces and whatever, the rational look at Chavez' chances of ever reappearing, is bleak, to say the least. I personally sense that the regime of Vicepresident Maduro, which is doing everything to crush and intimidate dissenters and the opposition, is desperate to hold power no matter what the cost. A NO to Venezuela's plea for more credits from Big Buddy China has made things worse, leading the straggling economy to a dark abyss with a devaluation of almost 50% - the third in three years in a row - , rising prices, food shortages, rampant criminality and whatever else it takes to ruin my days in this country.
If Chavez is dead, or not fit anymore to hold the presidency he was reelected to last fall, then reelections are mandatory according to the country's constitution. The mentioning of this by MP's of the opposition have resulted in enormous regime yelling and screaming, threats and some of those opposition politicians being accused of corruption and persecuted juridically by the government-controlled justice apparatus. Forget any impartiality from the government's side. It's a Cuban-styled Soviet era totalitarian regime with trotskyist mannerisms. And the Chavez-wannabe VP Nicolas Maduro has made this clear to everyone caring to listen and understand. Under Chavez, this regime made its utmost efforts to show a democratic face to the world. Maduro and the cronies of his regime have no problems in tearing that mask from their totalitarian faces. Efforts are made to exclude the only independent TV channel Globovision from the new digital TV system, shutting the last critical mediatic voice down and submitting the rest to follow the regime's ideological line.
The last deed of the Maduro regime has now been to deny a former police inspector, accused of killing scores of demonstrators in 2002 in a kangaroo court with forged evidence, a more humane treatment, while medical reports clearly state that the prisoner's health is failing. The denial by a government-controlled judge will probably seal this man's fate.
Venezuela is a broke country, with all its oil richness. The country is rife with anarchy at the moment. The regime does everything now to prepare the credulous part of the Venezuelan population for what the rest already knows. But God only knows what the effect will be on a country that is feeling more like a shaken champagne bottle ready to burst.
Keep in touch, also via Twitter: @avginkel.

Obama!

Dear nightly dwellers, Caracas is saying hello to you again. I´m sure you agree with me that we are living through special times. Specially in the USA, where a special man whom I won´t need to describe became president. I had my doubts about Obama, I must admit. During the presidential campaign, he sounded too Carterish, too Clintonesque. I am a witness of the disasters resulting from Jimmy Carter´s good-willed human rights politics, and what can I say about Bill, besides Monica, blue dresses and cigars? That he was a president of smooth and nice words... but bombs kept raining on Afghanistan and Iraq during his 8 years in office, so there is something to be said in favor of George Dubya Bush - he was not the first one to be mean to Saddam Hussein, just the one who gave him the final kick.

But on January 20th, I saw a serious, calm-looking man with a noble attitude, holding one of the best political speeches I´ve heard in years. So, Mr. President, forgive my doubts. I´m sure you will be the best Democratic president since Harry S. Truman. In any case, should you ever read these lines from Venezuela, here comes some advice. Be true to yourself. And tell Chavez to get stuffed.

Hugo Chávez doesn´t like you. In fact, he is so mad at you (being that fading artist of former glory who suddenly sees his audience shifting towards that new, younger performer) that instead of using the N word and getting rid of his bad vibes, he unleashes a savage ire and fury towards demonstrating students. Ordering his police and military forces to use "gas of the best" on them, beating the hell out of them... and it was all screamed on live TV. So said, so done. Students had a bad day yesterday. But Venezuela had an even worse day. And all because Hugo is angry at you, Mr. President. Because he knows that he is no more the big star of the Third World. He could make Africans cheer at him with some free petrol tankers - but now Africans are cheering at you for free - because of you.

Congratulations, Mr. President. I foresee a future for our world, and really - you are more inspiring already than JFK has ever been. Keep it up. I have heard enough recycled hate slogans here in this country that remind me of a drab and grey 70´s day in the Soviet Union. Enough of Che, enough of old senile men trying to play young revolutionaries. Who needs a half-dead Fidel and a worn-out Hugo when the leader of the most potent country on this planet is fulfilling a dream of millions? Without executions, without hatred, without exiles.

Long live democracy. And good luck to you, Mr. President.

Malcolm X

Good evening once again. It has been some time since I wrote my last entry, but what can you do - living in Caracas is a busy and hectic affair. That´s why I enjoy even the smallest moment of relaxation.

By the way, I love movies. Whether in the cinema or on TV or on DVD, it doesn´t matter - I´m in for most of them. I can watch some movies repeatedly, enjoying the "aha" moment, certain scenes, certain memorized quotes etc.. For me, watching a good movie is pure relaxation, whether on my own or in company.

If you are a TV addict, living in Venezuela means you´ve got to have cable. Otherwise, receiving the local TV station like Televen, Venevisión and the notorious fighting duo VTV and Globovisión will bring you the sudden cadenas or "chained" broadcasts, in which the President will take hours of your idle time to open a dairy factory somewhere on the plains, or preside over the graduation of hundreds of eager beaver students, and take his time to sing, dance, recite poems, be applauded over and over again in the best Kim Il-Yong fashion by red-shirted people, and explain to you and me, in hours-long, almost endless rhethoric repetitions why He is good and the "others" are bad. Apart from the fact that his speeches are more and more like faded carbon copies of each other, his stentorian ranting gives me a headache after approx. 10 minutes. Chávez is like certain strong drinks: don´t drink it all down in a gulp, but sip it, and sigh now and then.

Last week all records of his 10-year regime were broken when he gave a seven-and-a-half-hour non-stop monologue during the New Year parliamentary session. All ministers, red-shirted parliamentaries and invited members of the corps diplomatique were, so I suppose, sitting with crossed legs and with anguished faces, not having anything to drink, to eat or even being able to go to the toilet. Even more: this marathonic session was put on all public TV and radio stations, depriving very annoyed housemothers of their eveningly soaps or telenovelas. In fact, many cacerolazos or beating of pots and pans as a sign of protest were heard in various areas of Caracas. I tuned in on three separate occasions to check whether El Presidente was finished, and during those three times - to my big surprise - he talked about the miracles of the Barrio Adentro mission. Rather monothematic, I thought by myself. Hardly a word about the economic hurricane approaching the country with mathematical certainty, not a single word about the Real Problems harrassing the country - like the horrific insecurity, the galloping corruption and the growing unemployment. To El Presidente, these things do not exist and are mere inventions of the CIA-operated media wanting to put his Revolution into discredit. Chávez dixit.

So, in order to avoid those political things at a time you want to relax, you get cable TV. One channel which I like is the History one, and this afternoon I enjoyed once more the movie Malcolm X with Denzel Washington. Great movie, a cinematographic monument to a man who like Nelson Mandela, began as a person believing in violence to save people, and ended as a apostle of peace, understanding and a strong sense of the brotherhood of man that binds us all on this planet.

I thought, maybe if Ché Guevara, the Prophet of Leftist Hatred, had lived long enough, he would have given his ill-fated revolt a better, cleaner turn. As we know, even Fidel Castro grew more cautious, more balanced over the years. Maybe if Venezuela lets Hugo Chávez rule as Beloved President and Commander till his 75th birthday, as he so much wants it..... maybe we would meet a different, more cautious, less foul-mouthed ruler who is more concerned about social matters and less about the Everduring Battle against the US Empire. Age makes wiser, who knows.

But that, my friends, is an entirely different story. Sleep well, and till soon!

Don´t Worry, Be Happy

Venezuelan coasts give you a direct access to lovely beaches and that blue Caribbean Sea with stunning spots - for a fantastic Tropical Holiday, take a plane to Los Roques. So Venezuela should, according to Logic, have a Caribbean spirit hovering over there.

In great part this is true. Of course, there is that conquistador thing rushing through minds and hearts..... Venezuelans on the whole are, like their other Latin brethren, easily offended. Like a coin that has two sides, so do Venezuelans, in a way very appropiate for a country at cultural crossroads. You have the Spanish influence with easily flared-up tempers (watch it at times!), but flipping the coin, you´ll find that enormous, warm smile of the Venezuelans, their happy spirits, their boisterous partying and their joking about all things in life.

In that way, they are very similiar to Cubans. Cuba has just celebrated its 50th birthday under a repressive, post-sovietic regime under the Castro brothers, who in their drive to create homo socialisticus have dipped the island into an everlasting poverty. Still, Cubans drive out the bad vibes with their fantastic music and their happy spirits. There is a Cuban song whose refrain goes like: How I´m doing? I´m older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow. For Cubans in general, today is what counts. Today is the real reality.

That pragmatic way of looking at life is found among most Venezuelans. OK, so Caracas is quickly becoming the most violent capital on the planet. And yes, Venezuela has, between military dictatorships, known few good or even decent governments. To many, the only real difference between Chavez and his bourgeois predecessors is that the latter stole and then stepped down, while the former steals and stays on.

But still, Venezuela is a happy country. Problems at home or at work? Venezuelans retreat to the beach, the countryside or that parking lot I spoke about earlier, they set up their BBQ´s, put the domino game on the table, take out that cooler box full of beer out of the 4x4 and enjoy life, guys and gals alike. No serious talk please! Joking around, fooling around, enjoy salsa tunes and find any possibilty to just have a party, or an after-party party. The more grimly reality stares at the Venezuelan, the more happily he will grin back.

How many ordinary Venezuelans are shot to death on Saturday or Sunday night coming home from parties? You read about them every week in the newspapers. It sometimes baffles me how strong the good spirits of these people can be. It must be the true strength of the Venezuelan, his hard core which no corrupt politician nor power-hungry military can ever squash to death. And as I wrote earlier, that Red Grinch has tried it so hard, fearing his Revolution may go off the boil..... still he didn´t succeed. Venezuela kept on partying as well as possible.

If you ever want to experience a country with so much poverty and violence, and yet such high spirits, come to Venezuela. If you can make it in Venezuela, you can make it anywhere. And with a Don´t Worry Be Happy smile, I wish you a pleasant evening from Caracas, the ugliest and yet most wonderful city I know.

¡Uh Ah! ....Feliz Año Nuevo!

Dear nightly dwellers, after a Christmas full of presents and too much goodies (the pannettone was too good, simply), here I am again. We are leaving an interesting year (for me it was), 2009 will be a year full of suspense and hickups, as a good friend of mine put it. Well, besides a world financial crisis, to which I may add yet another conflagration in the scorched Middle East (will they never learn???), we are facing an exciting year.

Chavez has changed from being a local revolutionary leader to Grinch, the guy who stole Christmas. He has managed to violate an unwritten law in Venezuela, and that is to let its people, rich or poor, celebrate their Christmas IN PEACE with hallacas, pan de jamón, dulce de lechosa, pannettone and of course many more goodies full of carbs and lethal to that figure you worked on all of 2008. He doesn´t want to be president for ever, he keeps on repeating with an oh so slight irony - only till 2021 and maybe 2030, by which, if the Lord may be so gracious as to keep this president in good health, he might be over 75 years old by then. So he needs the applauding from "the people",and he will do so by pushing through a constitutional amendment which will make it possible to rerun a president - who else but Chavez, read the small print - as many times as you like. Good stuff of course, provided the candidate in question is an able, well-spoken ruler.

The only thing that has made many many Venezuelans weary and even angry, is that he kept on droning about this heart wish of his every day through the December month, disturbing the pre-Christmas celebrations with revolutionary verbal violence, and apparently had to be convinced at the last moment not to intrude into the Christmas celebrations with his long monologues about his unimitable revolution and his Humble Self on national TV and radio. But still, after the customary Christmas messages from the presidential palace, together with the all-too-accustomed anti-Western haranguing and even some free additional insults directed at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Chavez restarted his campaign, and for the first time Christmas songs or gaitas are being sung in his honor on state TV and radio. Now, where have we seen this before? Communist China, North Korea, fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany..... no wonder there wasn´t any real Christmas spirit on the Caracas streets, as the Red Grinch again had stolen Christmas from the people.

2009 will be an exciting year indeed. To you all.... a happy new year, and hope to see you all next week.

Revolutionary Times

Dear nightly visitors, at the beginning of this blog I have sort of promised not to comment on politics here. I have to break that promise, as Caracas and the whole of Venezuela are at the threshold of a new era. A revolutionary era?

We first have to define "revolution". In the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, you will find the definition "open fight against authority". To that, as a historian, I might add the following: a revolution in the social sense means a change, an overturn of its structure and resulting in new social structures. I guess that Marx, Lenin, Mao, and even Mussolini and Hitler might agree with me posthumously. Because all these leaders wanted their societies to change irreversebily, and true fascism kept talking not about that marxist word "revolution", but about a new country, a new society. Which sums up to the same. All these leaders had one thing in common as well, and that was their wish to smash parliamentarian democracy to pieces. I myself think, for that reason, that fascism/nazism and communism are two sides of the same coin. Despite their ideological differences and hate for each other, their means will always be justified by their ends. Whether you have Hitler who killed millions of human beings to save the purity of his own people, or Che Guevara who, in order to save humanity, saw it necessary to kill scores of human beings with his own hands - please show me the real, essential difference between these two extremes. I never have seen it, and I still don´t. To say that Hitler killed more people than Che.... Stalin killed more than Hitler. So where is the difference between these strains of "socialism"?

After a promising start, the regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is bogged down by incompetence, corruption and the plain refusal of even his anarchic "socialist battalions" of redshirts to adopt a true rigourous socialist discipline. Because despite its anti-American and anti-Western ranting which sounds like a carbon copy of the Soviet era rhetoric, America is still big here. Chavists, as all other Venezuelans, love to go to Miami, shop for US goods and goodies online, drive around in the newest Chevies and Fords and keep up a US capitalist living style, with lots of beer, BBQ and parties on the beach. As a resident here, the best example I have seen of this moral duplicity of the chavist revolution was a Chevy Tahoe truck with new number plates and three stickers on its trunk: one of Chavez, one of Christ, and one of Che Guevara. If someone can explain to me the combination of a symbol of US imperialist capitalism adorned this way, in a rational way, I´ll award a prize!

Or if someone who likes Chavez can explain to me why this president called himself a Trotskyist, liking the thought of an "eternal" non-stop revolution. Anyone who can read, should know that Leon Trotsky died defending an idea contrary in all its essence to what Hugo Chavez is doing. And that idea was, that the collectivity of a party should be more powerful than the thought of its leader.

We are living in revolutionary times, so they say. But as Chairman Mao, a professional revolutionary of his time, said: a revolution is not a tea party. And to weave on this thought, there is no such thing as a "nice revolution", as Chavez has labelled his plans. He seems to have grown aware of that, judging by the way his regime has grown in a more and more authoritarian way. Anyone living in Venezuela and not closing his or her eyes to daily life, will know about the enormous damage done to the venerable structure of the Caracas Town Hall on Bolivar Square by redshirted hoodlums after their party recently lost almost the whole capital to an opposition they declared dead and buried. Or about the sacking of other townhalls by departing regime officials who before ceding their posts to the new opposition officials, left them without even PC´s to work on. They will know about the still-present bands of redshirts at strategic corners in downtown Caracas who have already shown their eagerness to attack opposition members and journalists on the streets.

But the same "socialists" won´t talk about accusing their own officials of proven massive corruption and theft of public property. Which leads me to the conclusion that Orwell was a true revolutionary. In his Animal Farm, he stated the following, attacking totalitarian regimes: at Animal Farm, everybody is equal. But some are more equal than others. Which to me, seeing a fatbellied "revolutionary" elite in this country beating with a stick in one hand on capitalism and with the other hand accepting tons of money from it, is more than true. While on the other side, a population poor in their pockets and even poorer in their minds, is still trying to grasp certain obvious facts and pull itself out of the mud of the 19th century. Venezuela and other Latin American countries have yet a long, hard way to go.

A good night to you all.

How To Avoid Loose Cars

It´s been 30 years, almost to the day, since I left a city with the most chaotic and anarchic traffic I had ever seen - Tehran. It was in the middle of the Islamic Revolution, when the Shah of Iran, after letting the national economy slip in a mire of corruption and inefficiency while the imperial elite lived in scandalous wealth, committed the fatal mistake of underestimating a old bearded fellow with an evil glare, turban and dress. This fellow, ayatollah Khomeini, drove out the Shah and almost a million of Iranians from the country, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was thus born. Tehran now looks a lot cleaner than in my time, but Iran keeps being stuck in the mire of corruption and inefficiency, the new elite without doubt is better off than the common Iranian, and as then, the common people suffer from shortages of all kinds of goods. So, what has changed? As my dad, a retired diplomat and a fan of Sir Rudyard Kipling, keeps on saying: different rulers, same crap. And I don´t doubt a second that the chaotic and anarchic way of driving cars in Tehran hasn´t changed either. Some traditions never die out.

Now, for a new traffic adventure, here comes Caracas. Imagine a 2-million city, which in fact houses 6 million people, squeezed into a valley with hills on the southern side and an impressive mountain range in the north. Imagine that city with an infrastructure, 2008 AD, dating from the seventies, and lovingly kept unchanged, safe for missing traffic lights and road signs at vital spots. There has never been any real urban planning, just roads and streets organically growing along the winding valley and houses standing randomly, as nature and irrational man intended. There has been a military dictator in the fifties, a small man with glasses and a too big military cap, who seemed to have had a vision of colonial Caracas been turned into a new tropical Manhattan, but his vision was cut short and he was kicked out by a civil uprising. So Caracas looks till now like an unfinished painting. Like you wanted to refurbish a house from Louis Seize style to Le Corbusier, money ran out, and you are sitting in a living room on a black and white designer couch, looking at a gilded Versailles-style crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and wondering at the horror of it all. Mozart played by a reggeaton band. Mind you, there are people who like this eclectic style. Like there are people who love living in the cacophony of contradictions in Caracas. A crumbling apartment building standing next to a colonial house in ruins, the potholed street looking like Grozny after a Red Army bombardment - it´s a fairly normal sight in the downtown area. And I know plenty of people who love it.

But now comes the best part. Under the old regime prior to 1998, it was hard for the common man to buy a car. To many it still is. Like in Fidelist Havanna, you will still see scores of old Chevy´s, Buicks and Fords rolling around on a prayer and steel wire. The socialist government of Mr. Chávez thought that this was an injustice done to poor people, and made it possible, through an easy credit plan, for them to buy new wheels. Coincidentally set up in an election year, the number of cars in Caracas grew, and grew and grew. New and newest 4x4´s of the BIG kind, like metal dinosaurs looming over my little Ford Ka...... family cars straight from the assembly line, new buses, lorries - it all came down like an avalanche and flooded the streets and avenues of Caracas within one year. An infrastructure, designed for no more than half a million cars, is regurgitating two million cars on a daily basis, seven days a week.

Now sum up: too much cars, too big cars, a deficient and ageing infrastructure, gasoline which is ten times cheaper than mineral water, and an anarchic spirit found behind two million steering wheels with no regard whatsoever for the fellow driver, nor any respect for traffic rules - and you have a rather interesting traffic experience. A friend of mine commented: put a monkey in a car (not my words!) and within a week he will drive like the average Caracas commuter - keep on stepping on the gas pedal, try not to bump into other loose cars and try to keep a general direction.

A bit exaggerated, but it could nicely sum up a general impression of Caracas during rush hour. Let me however say something in defense of those tortured caraqueños: generally drivers try to avoid bumping into each other - spare parts are a rarity nowadays and you have to wait months for a garage to fix the damage. Other thing: if you do something unheard of in Caracas, like stopping for 5 seconds and giving a fellow driver the priority he actually deserves, you will always receive an incredulous smile from the person in front of you and then a wave from his hand - gracias, pana!

It pays off being nice in Caracas. Just try to avoid those loose cars flying around you. Have a nice evening.

JALABOLAS

Newsflash: Franz Kafka wasn´t born in Prague - he came straight from Venezuela. I know of few other countries like Venezuela where even a simple purchase in a store can turn out to become a bureaucratic nightmare. For paying with plastic money, I guess one day you will even have to have your DNA code ready to show - because everything else, from your ID or passport number, to your place of residence and your phone number will be asked everytime you dare to buy a loaf of bread with a bank card. Advice: take along enough cash and risk the chance of getting mugged. But if you prefer THAT to tell the nice cashier your private phone number, be my guest.

Latin American countries are known for their love for ID cards which show that, besides being alive, you hold some status which may become quite handy for anyone knowing you. The more status you have, the more "friends" will swamp your life, asking you favors to help them through the dense jungle of bureaucracy with contradicting laws and rules, and hostile civil servants. You will turn out to be a great "pana" or friend if you use your clout to help friend A to get his passport more quickly, or neighbor B to finally get those new licence plates after two years of fruitless waiting, or relative C to get that particular permit he isn´t really entitled to - but who cares.

Others may call it corruption, and Venezuela is known, by the way, to be one of the most corrupt countries on this planet. As a resident, I try to stick to the rules, accept no offers for bribery and live life the rough way (anyone interested in a diamond studded piece of land, by the way? It was offered to me a year ago in the Mayor´s Office, for hard cash of course, in exchange for a nice letter to some high-placed bozo in the Immigration Service. I declined of course).

Sticking to noble rules in a country like Venezuela means sticking your head in trouble, believe it or not. Whether it´s being run into by a taxi driver who broke all the rules, and still getting the fine because you happen to be a foreigner and the taxi driver was so shrewd to do something I declined to do on the spot - pay the police officer BsF. 300,- on the spot and leave it like that. Or waiting for two years for your ID number to be entered into the database system, only to find out that the immigration service never bothered to do that, and each time making extra turns and paying extra money to get your resident visa prolonged - all these things, including standing for days on end in the queue patiently waiting for your day of luck to be helped - belong to the daily routine of a person who will play it cleanly without payoffs and kickbacks to fatbellied bozo´s, and won´t join the jalabolas culture of just taking it easy and abuse the system to your own ends. I will explain.

A jalabolas is a person who knows "the system" inside out, like his own bathroom. He will also use it like that. He is a person who has mastered the art of looking busy, of flashing around with activity and trample on others who fall into his magic. He or she will promise you the moon, the stars, your residence permit, a really clean contract, anything your ears want to hear. And not do it. But carry out his or her lie to just a masterly level that you probably will never ever grasp the fact that you have been conned. He won´t steal your money, he will get paid by you for no work whatsoever but still convince you that the work will be done, eventually, in due time, when he comes to it, when hell freezes over twice, etc. etc..

Corruption is found with people who haven´t mastered the jalabolas tactic well enough. Those are the dunces who get caught red-handed. But not our jalabolas. His slick tongue, his quick words and his everlasting smile are his trademark and will lead him through a life of apparent importance, quick money and best of all, a total freedom in spending his time. In other words, a good-for-nothing that will part you with your money for being such a gullible fool. Don´t tell me I didn´t warn you!

Needless to say, Latin America is studded with jalabolas. After having bumped my nose into countless walls, I finally know how to distinguish a jalabolas from the common man. However, one thing is to distinguish him, another thing is to avoid him. In this country with a crazy runaway bureaucracy, in which you spend an entire day just to get a stamp, only to discover that you got the wrong form and have to start all over again.... sooner or later you will need that guy with the slick smile and easy talk who could free you from that kafkaesque headache. Or give you one, that of the jalabolas. I just take my chance and tapdance off into the setting sun, whistling.

Out And About In The City

Good evening once again. After a rainy weekend with intermittent sunshine, I´m almost ashamed to admit that I stayed in my apartment all these days. Thanks to a good ally called cable TV, I watched one movie after another and enjoyed some lazy days.

Caracas, despite its metropolitan character, has clearly seen better times in its nightlife. Some years ago, there were a number of heavily-frequented disco´s in the Paraíso and Las Mercedes area, but all of them went bust after the Oil Strike of 2002-2003, when some politicians who weren´t happy with president Chávez engineered a strike of the oil industry which paralyzed the whole country, to drive him out. They in turn were driven out of their jobs and the public anger caused by the strike strengthened the president´s position. Not only was it a foolishly and badly set-up action by the opposition, it also made many companies go bankrupt, and since there was no money and beer to go around, disco´s and nightclubs went down like flies. Driving around the main avenue in Las Mercedes or through El Paraíso you see some vestiges of what were once busily-visited nightclubs. Sad sight.

Now, where do the caraqueños find their entertainment? There is beer enough to go around nowadays, and these last few years a lot of money found its way to many pockets and accounts. You will find a number of very good Italian, Spanish and Portuguese restaurants and tasca´s in La Candelaria, Sábana Grande and Las Mercedes, where you can find a good meal for a reasonable price - when you have a dollar or euro account. For the common Venezuelan, a cozy dinner for two costing BsF. 200,- (200.000,- old bolívares) would mean a big sacrifice. However, restaurants are full every night, because one of the Venezuelan´s characteristics is his love for food. Love for a good beer or stiff drink comes right in second, with an ample offer of locally brewed beers and the much-loved Chivas or Buchanan 12-year olds to make thirsty throats happy.

Beers come in different tones and tastes. My fav one is the Regional Light from Maracaibo, and on second place, if Numero Uno is not available, Solera Green. These two are OK for the European taste, and I recommend them personally. Now, for the Budweiser or Heineken beer lovers Venezuela has an interesting selection to offer. Polar beer is the most-drunk brew, with a variety of tastes. Very popular are the light varieties and those called "ice", revealing the need to drink them ice- and icecold to kill an absent taste. Personally I steer clear of them because despite their "light" denotation, they can easily bomb you out of your skulls, as the many drunks on the Caracas streets will no doubt certify.

Drinking and driving are bad companions, but you´ll find enough Venezuelans on the road swagging a telltale blue or green bottle and doing their best to drive over your car if they could. Friday nights are beer nights, so watch out when you´re driving.

When you want to know where common Venezuelans spend their Friday and Saturday nights, follow the trail of empty blue and green beer bottles. Lack of disco´s and payable nightclubs has driven the common people to spend their social activities outdoors, standing around a car with its speakers belting out salsa, Colombian vallenato or reggeaton, and organize a party there and then. Parking lots are favorite among the revellers, so if you are so lucky as me to live in a residential compound with ample parking space, stuff your ears with cotton if you want to have a good night´s sleep. Sadly, residents who dare to tell the night revellers to set the music volume from 84 back to 6 have often enough been met with threats and even a drawn weapon. So party poopers like me try to sleep through the throbbing reggaeton, or plan to move to quieter places.

Then we have the posh and fancy people who go out to real places to see and be seen. There are expensive nightclubs in Las Mercedes, Los Palos Grandes or the dancings in the San Ignacio commercial centre, for example. You will find the rich and famous there, and single gentlemen among you readers will encounter a dazzling amount of Miss Venezuela´s. Watch out for unhappy married women however. The Venezuelan male is fierily jealous and won´t be nice to you as you would be to his wife.

And then we have the big shopping malls or centros comerciales. At the commercial centres like Sambil, El Tolón, San Ignacio or El Recreo, besides dancing you can go to the cinema or shopping, two other favorite pastimes. For the quick meals there is a big quantity of the well-known fast food establishments as well as sushi, chinese, Italian, Lebanese, Spanish and Venezuelan quick meal restaurants.

As a resident I strongly recommend NOT to frequent the bars with "hípico" found downtown. Don´t get fooled by the sign "ambiente familiar", because that´s not where you´d like to see your family - that is, if you love them. For those with adventurous spirits, try them, but try to go home not after 10 PM. It´s not the bars that are the trouble - it´s what might happen outside them.

Getting a taxi at night - first try to find own transportation, that is safer. If not, then take a cab outside one of the shopping centers with the center´s logo put clearly on the car. True taxis have yellow numberplates while the moonshining ones are plain cars with a TAXI sign on them. Those are not necessarily risky, but just try to stay on the safe side.

Buenas noches, and have fun!

A City That Never Sleeps

Welcome to Caracas. A city that never sleeps. A poor city, a slum city, a Hummer city, a country club city - choose, name whatever you like.

I for myself am not the country club type. Although I could be. After all, I spent part of my youth diving in those pools. Let me tell you - as a diplomat son, I find the country club life boring. Dull. So here I am, living in a mixed neighborhood, in a compound with an interesting vista of slum cities and the Caracas Twin Towers - the Parque Central - familiar to everybody who has stayed here more than 24 hours.

I will tell you some stories about how to live and survive in Caracas, declared the Crime Capital of Latin America and, according to unkind but true statistics, one of the most unsafe places on the globe to live in. Well, you know how statistics can be. Leon Trotsky, one of the idols of president Chávez, has once tried to slap a German delegation with a mountain of statistics. To which a German delegate, General Hoffmann, responded: "You can prove anything you like with statistics". There you go, Leon.

As I am sitting here, enjoying writing to you, I am listening to a salsa party outside my apartment. It´s Saturday Night, yesterday was payday, and many Venezuelans sure got a big pack of money, the "utilidades", or a sum equivalent to 30% of your wage multiplied by the months you worked in this year. Ain´t that generous. So, many caraqueños are partying this night, despite the rainy season. Two hopes I do have: 1) that people won´t be killing each other that much this weekend, and 2) they´ll let me have a good sleep.

Politics and regional elections? Chavez won, the opposition won, and for the first time in all those years I live here, I really don´t know whom to believe anymore. The world press is keeping mum about it, and so will I, for now. It´s not wise to comment on the Big Socialist Process of Mr. Chávez. So.... good night for now from Caracas!