Felix said he already had a Caracas Leones baseball cap, but the salesman wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.
'Why not buy one for your wife?’ he smiled. Felix smiled back, explained that his wife also had a baseball cap, wound down the car window and waited for the traffic jam to clear.
It was a wet evening in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Felix was our guide and chauffeur, taking us to our hotel for our final night before returning home. The transfer from the airport was not proving to be straightforward. Felix’s car had started hiccupping on the outskirts of the city – ‘water in the engine’ was his worrying diagnosis. Outside the car, pedestrians flooded around the traffic in the wake of the final game of the baseball season, and the merchandising salesman moved on down the line of cars to his next prospect.
'I am so sorry,’ said Felix, as we approached our hotel and the car started to splutter again. ‘I want to ask a favour. My wife’s office is nearby, with a car park. We can park the car there. It is only a few hundred yards from your hotel.’
The car park was underground, with security officers – a useful combination in a part of the city which, we had been warned, was rife with crime. The car park officer helped us to steer our luggage from the car park to the hotel, through the crowds of people enjoying a Friday night out or, in some cases, selling their wares. The latter category included the man selling merchandise for the Caracas Leones baseball team, and a dark-haired woman in a bra, tights, knickers and very little else, who glared at us.
We had chosen the Gran Melia Hotel for our final night, as a touch of luxury after four nights in an eco-lodge cabin on the banks of the Orinoco. The Gran Melia claimed to be one of the Leading Hotels of the World. If they hadn’t been in my bag, my sunglasses might have been useful to shut out the bling-tastic glare of the lobby as we signed in. The reception staff paused from admiring themselves in their Nehru suits long enough to direct us to a room on the third floor.
The air-conditioning followed the standard rule of hotel air-conditioning: it’s either noisy or it doesn’t work. This one was noisy, but not as loud as Helen’s shrieks as she discovered that the shower only seemed to have two settings: ‘off’ or ‘scalding, at high pressure’.
As I looked through the room service menu, I noticed that the carpet was nailed to the floor. Now, guests do liberate items from hotel rooms, of course: but how many would covet the carpet?
When I rang for room service, a female voice explained: ‘I am sorry, sir. In order to have room service, you must deposit some money at the reception, then phone us again.’ Reception asked for a deposit which would have covered at least three meals. I negotiated this down and returned to the room to phone for the meal. In my absence, a furious row had broken out next door. Shrieking and shouting, in French, entertained us until room service arrived.
Breakfast the next morning was based on the principle that nothing succeeds like excess. The options included:
Assorted sliced cheese, sweet French pastries, pastry with ham and cheese inside, croissants, bread rolls with Kerrygold butter on the side, sauvignon blanc, yoghurts, chocolate marble cake, mini-profiteroles and mini-cakes, waffles, pancakes, chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, maple syrup, oat meal [sic], skimmed milk, whole milk, cornflakes, Special K, All Bran, muesli, chocolate muesli, diet jelly, turkey ham, crackers, fruit salad, chicken in Mediterranean sauce, sausages, fricadelly, fried cornbread, fried plantain, grilled ham, Brussels sprouts, black beans, shredded meat, scrambled eggs, tortillas, empanadas, ham and cheese slices, fried eggs (on request), misu soup, guavas, apples, melons, grapes, bananas, papaya, grapefruit, strawberries, pears, watermelon, pineapple, walnuts, dried apricots, raisins, dry figs, dry plums, dry fruits with cereals, guava with syrup, peach in syrup, figs in syrup, oatmeal and fruit muesli, condensed milk and assorted cold meats.
Businessmen sat at neighbouring tables, consuming their power breakfasts and sending important texts. Greed, it seemed, was good. But, if the Gran Melia was one of the Leading Hotels of the World, I hope never to stay in one of the Worst Hotels of the World.
Felix showed us round the city that morning. The former Hilton Hotel was now empty, he explained, because ‘[President] Chávez invited them to leave.’ We drove along Av. Mille or Boyaca, site of the Britannica Tower – a skyscraper in which many British companies have their offices, with the Embassy at the top. Britain is the second largest investor in Venezuela. The largest (surprise, surprise) is the United States, although some companies are now pulling out (or being ‘invited to leave’).
Felix made it clear that he was not a fan of Venezuela’s President, who is one of the most controversial figures in world politics. Hugo Chávez’s story is remarkable. After 17 years in military service, he went to jail in 1992 for leading an attempted coup. The next President pardoned him within two years and, within another four, Chávez had won a Presidential election, on the back of massive support from the poor and the working class.
Since then, Chávez has become one of the most recognisable heads of state in the world, pursuing economic and social transformation at home and aggressive anti-Americanism abroad.
Chávez’s early initiatives included programmes of road building, housing construction, and mass vaccination. He also oversaw the renaming of the nation, by constitutional amendment, to the Bolívarian Republic of Venezuela – after Simon Bolívar, the soldier who led the country and much of South America to independence from Spain in the early 19th century.
‘Now Chávez wants to change the name of our country again – to the Socialist Republic of Venezuela,’ said Felix, who did not approve. But it is plain that the President has many supporters. Inside and outside the Panteón Nacional, which contains the tombs of Bolívar and other famous generals and politicians, civilian and military orchestras were rehearsing. Felix told us that the musicians were probably practising for the 4 February anniversary of Chávez’s failed 1992 coup. This is a novel approach: in Britain we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, but Fawkes didn’t get to be Prime Minister.
As Felix drove us round Caracas, we saw demonstrators for and against a constitutional amendment Chávez had proposed, to allow the President to run for office more than twice – departing from the American model. Chávez had already proposed these changes in a referendum and had been defeated. But Chávez’s persistence – and possibly some clever proposals to allow local mayors to stay in office longer - won the vote, second time around.
For all Chávez’s domination of modern Venezuelan politics, it is impossible to understand the country without a little knowledge of its founder, Simon Bolívar. Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios y Blanco (to give him his full name) was born in Caracas in 1783. An orphan by the age of nine, he went to Spain – whence his ancestors had left for Venezuela 200 years before - for much of his childhood and education.
Bolívar returned to Venezuela and enjoyed a glorious miliary career leading armies which invaded Venezuela, New Granada - modern Colombia - and elsewhere. By 1821 Gran Colombia (a federation covering much of modern Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador) had been created, with Bolívar as president. He became dictator of a liberated Peru in 1824 and Bolivia was created in 1825. However, it all fell apart within a few years and Bolívar died of tuberculosis in 1830, while planning to leave for Europe. The Venezuelan government made him posthumously persona non grata until 1842, when it returned his remains to Caracas and erected a monument in his honour. He has been a national hero ever since.
180 years after his death, Bolívar is everywhere in Venezuela. The currency is named after him as well as the nation’s full, formal title. Chávez’s early road building programme was called Plan Bolívar, and his wider political manifesto became known as the Bolívarian Revolution. In Caracas, Plaza Bolívar is home to a cathedral in which we found the Bolívar family chapel, with a modern sculpture of Bolívar mourning his parents, and his wife who died of yellow fever at the age of 20. To add to the Bolívar theme park feel, we walked a block to Bolívar’s birthplace. This humble building is now a museum. Behind it is the massive glass skyscraper of the Bank of Venezuela.
In Caracas we saw the brash side of Venezuela, a desperation to show how rich and successful the city and its inhabitants were. It was also reminiscent of one of Salman Rushdie’s comments on 1980s Nicaragua and its relationship with the USA: ‘a tale of unrequited love…Nicaragua, which loved the music, poetry and baseball of the United States, was being crushed by its powerful, careless beloved’ (The Jaguar Smile, 1987).
To many Venezuelans, Chávez is a powerful symbol of one aspect of the American dream: the little man standing up to the Goliaths of the world. The soft drinks vendor we saw outside Bolívar’s birthplace, using a mobile freezer in the shape of a giant Coca Cola can, seemed to sum up a nation’s ambivalence: a love for the American way of life, but not necessarily the USA itself.
The irony is that Chávez’s socialist policies depend heavily on Venezuela’s supplies of oil. ‘Petrol in Venezuela is so cheap that more than 10 litres can be bought for 1 Bolívar,’ said Felix. ‘I can fill my 4WD for seven Bolívars.’ At the time of our visit in early 2009, this was equivalent to just over £2, or the price of a couple of soft drinks.
Before we left for the airport, Felix drove us round one of Caracas’ most exclusive areas, Alta Mira, where apartments often sell for the equivalent of $1 million. While wealthy locals passed us, walking their dogs or jogging along in their tracksuits and iPods, we looked down on the rest of the city. The backdrop is a mountain range which separates Caracas from the Caribbean Sea. Caracas itself has its share of quirky architecture, including a building topped with a giant mug with the Nescafe logo.
We found out that Felix was married to a woman from the Dominican Republic, a regional manager for Venezuela’s tourism offices in much of Latin America. In an attempt to open up new markets for his translation skills, Felix was learning other languages such as Japanese.
‘I think the best way I have ever spoken Japanese is when I was drunk,’ he said, laughing.
With his gas-guzzling car and his ambitions to better himself and his family, Felix was living a Venezuelan version of the American dream. I wish him and his fellow Venezuelans luck. As Chávez told his supporters after winning the referendum to change the constitution: ‘The doors to the future are wide open.’ Whether the people continue to follow Chávez through those doors may be another matter.
First published in VISA 86 (Aug 2009)
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