Caracas is Collapsing!

The night we had planned to leave Caracas for Mérida turned out to be the same day Venezuela experienced the largest power outage in it’s history. Forty percent of the country was without power for about two hours. In Caracas, the entire metro system went down, stop lights stopped lighting, buildings lost power; all just before rush hour(s) was set to begin. What happens to a city like Caracas when chaos meets crisis? Collapse apparently, if we were to listen to any of the numerous people that night who told us, “The city is collapsing!”

We were packing our bags at the time of the power outage, naively thinking we would catch our bus that night. Really it was an afterthought for us that the power was out. Two hours passed, the power came back on, and when our friend Enrique came home we assumed he could still give us a ride to the bus station. After the soon-to-be standard gretting that night of “The city is collapsing!”, he matter of factly said that the blackout was sabotage. Huh? I wasn’t quite sure that I had heard him right but before I could ask for a little clarification he told us that there was no chance to make it to the bus station on time (we still had three hours before the last bus left at 9) because of the traffic. He had spoken with his wife and it had taken her an hour to drive four blocks. Great. Luckily (it appeared) we hadn’t bought our tickets because we had been assured three different times that there would be plenty of tickets available.

“And you actually believed them?”, Enrique asked us later that night after we miraculously made it to the bus station but later returned to his house, unable to catch a bus out of the collapsed city. He laughed at us the way an older brother does when revealing the truth to a younger sibling about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. That made me indignant. “We had no reason not to believe them. That’s their job to sell bus tickets!” I thought back on earlier that night at the bus station. It may be their job to sell tickets but they sure aren’t getting paid on commision. Enrique explained that he was trying to teach us an important lesson to never believe anything anyone says here. At the time I resented his “lesson”. How could I not believe anything anyone says? But eventually I would come to see the wisdom in his words.

When we first realized we weren’t going to get to the bus station, we decided we might as well go for a walk and see first hand the madness on the streets. Sure enough, it was a bumper car derby in the roads, with some folks getting so fed up they jumped out of their cars and started directing traffic themselves. Using water bottles as traffic directors, these brave/crazy men and women attempted to bring some sense of order to the chaos directing the streets. Comically, just when traffic would start flowing and the directors would run back to their cars, some impatient car would pull into the intersection and the whole process would start over. At this point we began to wonder whether this traffic jam would ever end and headed home. As soon as we stepped in the door Enrique jumped up and told us he had heard on the radio that there was a break in one part of the traffic and he thought we could make it after all. We grabbed our bags and, practically running, jumped in the car. As we sped out of the garage I decided that now might be a good time to get some clarification on the sabotage. “So who would be sabotaging the power?”, I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. “American imperialism, the opposition. Who else?”, he replied. At the time this seemed like a stretch in my mind. But as I would come to learn and despite my skepticism, in this case something was definitely afoul.

A friend told us later that Chavez had met with representatives from a private electricity company the day before the blackout, in hopes of nationalizing the power company. I never found articles corroborating this and we never heard it from anyone else, so its impossible to know if its true or not. But in any case, it is not just possible but likely that the opposition organized the power outage. It certainly wouldn’t be without precedent. All the food shortages in Venezuela earlier this year were actually caused by the opposition getting farmers to hoard goods on the border with Colombia. Literally tons of food were withheld from supermarkets to create an appearance of food shortages. Even right now in Caracas, I haven’t been able to find rice and have been told that its because elections are coming up. Once the elections are through, the opposition will flood the super markets with rice. But for now they want to maintain the appearance that these “food shortages” are the government’s fault. The blackout seemed to have been planned in advance as well.

Earlier in the day, maybe two hours before the power outage we stopped by the office of a man we knew was an anti-chavista and a member of the opposition. We were exchanging dollars for bolivars** with him and hoped to be in and out.

**The money situation in Venezuela, like most things, is complicated. For various reasons (insane inflation, Chavez flooding the market with dollars, a limit on dollars individuals can spend annually, etc.) the official exchange rate is a little more than half the exchange rate on the black market. So we’ve constantly had to change the dollars we brought with us for bolivars on the black market, constantly trying to find the best rate. The rate has only gotten worse since we’ve been here, the dollar losing about a quarter of its value in three months.

We made a little idle chit chat with this guy and out of nowhere he brings up the fact that there are always massive blackouts throughout Venezuela and Caracas. He implied that this was the fault of the government. It seemed weird to us at the time that he brought this up and was so upset about it (I remember thinking, “Wow this guy is passionate about power outages!”), but when Venezuela was hit two hours later with a massive black out, it made perfect sense. Who knows if there really was a connection or if it was just a bizarre coincidence, but one thing is undeniable: the paranoia in this country is easy to be infected with. The opposition is paranoid that the government is keeping tabs on them and that the country is on the verge of a socialist dictatorship. Chavistas are paranoid that the opposition is purposely sabotaging the country in order to overthrow the government in collusion with U.S. imperialism. Everyone in between thinks that both sides are up to something (true), and it is impossible not to get wrapped up in the paranoia. The news media (almost entirely in opposition of Chavez) only makes matters worse. Both sides have valid reasons to be paranoid, but ultimately the opposition scares me a lot more at what it is capable of doing if it comes into power. Hmmm… A government with close ties to big business and the media. Sound familiar? I think the opposition and moderates (few and far between) need to think long and hard about what the country will look like with the opposition in power because that is the only viable alternative to Chavez right now.

With politics so polarized here, and everyone so convinced of their views, it is sometimes difficult to press deeper on issues. To me, opposing Chavez and supporting the opposition should be two very separate things. Often we hear from anti-chavistas that they support many of Chavez’s ideas but passionately hate the man and the government. I appreciate critiques but I almost always leave these discussions feeling like something deeper is at stake. These people (almost always middle or upper class) feel threatened. Their wealth, lifestyle, privilege is under attack by Chavez and his government. And when beams of light start to shine through the cracks of their arguments, the opposition begins to lose their leverage, at least in my mind. On more than one occasion middle-class anti-chavistas have told us that the lives of poor folks in this country are not improving. On the other hand, people from barrios and working class neighborhoods have told us that their lives really are improving (albeit a long and often slow process). I´m sorry but I think I gotta side with the people living this reality.

The more we talk to people and hear more and more opinions, the more Enrique’s “lesson” has become relevant and I’ve realized that people don’t always know what they’re talking about. I think it may be cultural in part. Let me explain. People feel its polite to offer their opinion (though often unsolicited) rather than turn down a discussion. Just as if you ask someone in the street for directions, you will always get a detailed response because its polite, even if the person has no idea what or where you’re talking about. Our Spanish teacher recently told us about a TV program that played pranks on normal Venezuelans in the streets. An undercover reporter went around asking for directions to a city in Australia and, without fail, most people offered up directions. “Oh yeah, I think its just over there.” “Take this bus.” “It’s the next town over.” Political discussions may be very similar. My benefit of the doubt period is slowly being replaced with skepticism.

Geography plays a part as well. Having spent the most time in Mérida, almost entirely in opposition of the government, and Caracas, mostly supportive of the government (depending on the social class of the neighborhood), we’ve seen the belly of both beasts. The simplest explanation is that support for the government is divided by class. The working class and poor make up the overwhelming majority of the population in Venezuela and the majority supports Chavez. The middle class is minuscule, especially compared to that of the U.S., and together with the upper class, the majority of the higher classes oppose the government. In any case the conclusion I’ve reached is that regardless of how one feels about Chavez or the current government, something bigger than failed policy or personality defects is at stake when anti-chavistas rebuke completely the movement going on in Venezuela, knowing full well everything the opposition represents. It is a refusal to engage in discussions about a different structure for society, not questioning whether anything can really change within our current framework. That said, imagining what a successful 21st century socialism will look like in a consumer, materialist country like Venezuela is difficult at best. Stop by a mall here and tell me if you think Venezuela is on the brink of becoming another Cuba. And a top down revolution with such a charismatic leader ultimately depends too much on Chavez, diverting attention and power from the real leaders of any revolution, the people. However, generalizations don’t hold much weight in this country. There is only speculation.

But I digress. Back in the car with Enrique, racing to the bus station. As we zipped down side streets, sat on the horn, and drove up on sidewalks, trying to maneuver our way onto the freeway, it occured to me that this was really the only thing predictable about this city: chaos. And that could be comforting for some. This is what modern, overly urbanized cities provide, and there are people (like Enrique) that thrive in this environment. I certainly don’t but I can appreciate those that do. I never really thought about there existing varying levels of city slickers, but my twenty years in San Francisco ultimately meant squat when confronted with Caracas. We should have realized that escaping would not be easy.

When we finally made it onto the freeway on-ramp, the traffic in the city seemed worse. I closed my eyes and envisioned bumper to bumper gridlock. Before I opened my eyes I realized we were still accelerating and when I finally peeked I was greeted to four beautiful empty freeway lanes. Enrique read my mind and cackled, “Don’t ask why!”. As he sped along the tune of the evil witch riding her bicycle in the wizard of Oz played in my head. Duh duh duh da duh da… We made it to the bus station with plenty of time but barely said goodbye to Enrique as we rushed in. My first reaction inside the station was, “Man, a lot of people are traveling for a Tuesday night.” The waiting area was packed. We jumped in line and asked the woman in front of us what was going on. “The computer system is down.” Suddenly everyone around us looked a little more frustrated, a little more tired, and a little less happy to be there. We spent the next two hours shuffling between lines, being told completely opposite stories by different cashiers, explained that we should wait, that there was nothing they could do, and ultimately, that the next available bus left in two days. We left the station defeated, wondering if Caracas was in fact some sort of purgatory, and if so, would we head up or down when we finally made it out. Or more pressing at the moment, would we even make it out? We caught a cab back to Enrique´s apartment, trying to make a little small talk with the cabbie. “Crazy night, huh?” “Tell me about it,” he said. “The city is collapsing!”

You don’t say.

-Jake