Venezuela through Fresh Eyes
If you read Spanish and have an hour or so to spare, you really should check out this rivetting first-person account of life as a dignitary invited to a chavista Judicial Conference. Dr. Pedro Salazar Ugarte, the Mexican legal scholar who penned it, is an extravagantly gifted writer - though one in need of an equally gifted editor! A puzzled Juan Cristobal thought him an odd duck, a kind of "PSF-in-reverse", in that he comes across as a naïvely idealistic liberal dazzled (and horrified) by the otherness of Venezuelan political culture. I mean, hell, the guy insisted on buying bolivars with his Mexican bank card...at 2.15!
His write-up comes closer than anything I've read in ages to showing what it actually feels like to come face-to-face with chavista autocracy for the very first time eleven-years into this movie's runtime.
The thing is far too long to translate, but this tidbit towards the end was too telling not to relate. After the conference had ended, the Supreme Tribunal organized for a little excursion on the Teleférico - the cable car that takes you to the top of Avila Mountain, where Supreme Tribunal head Luisa Estela Morales would host a farewell dinner for the assembled jurists. Salazar Ugarte takes up the the tale:
Though the old Hotel isn't particularly interesting to a tourist, it was announced to us that given its past as a luxurious spot for the elite, it had great symbolic value. Convincing us of that much was the task entrusted to one of its young workers. Her mission seemed straightforward: letting us know where the dance floor used to be, what the bar was like in the 1970s, etc.
But the chief magistrate of the Supreme Tribunal was expecting something different. And so, when the girl was getting ready to finish, Dr. Morales asked her point blank: "tell us, please, who is restoring and remodelling this place?"
To which the girl, who gave no hint of having any aptitude for verbal sparring, answered: "um…some workers". You could feel the tension right away, and the chief magistrate did nothing to attenuate it: "yes, of course, but which authority decided to restore it?"
To which the girl responded, mumbling, "the ministry of people's power for tourism".
The answer, obviously, was not satisfactory.
"And…who stands above that ministry," demanded our host, unembarrassed.
"Ah!" managed to reply the girl, "president Hugo Chávez Frías". Silence ruled the room; a scene full of pathos.
Even more pathetic was the worried interjection of the Supreme Tribunal's head of protocol, who hurried to confirm that, in fact, the president had ordered the hotel's restoration, and had also decreed that it should henceforth be known by the indigenous name of the park where it stands: Waraira Repano.
Do read it all.
Kepler
Francisco Toro
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Correct the link...
...because it's linked to a photo of the hotel
We have a new writer on the
We have a new writer on the blog, meet admin.
admin = Quico
This is a lingering bug from the software redesign - I need to login with an administrator account to do site maintenance now and then, and always forget to log back out and then in again as Quico.
Link fixed...
Sorry about that.
Great article by Salazar Ugarte
Quico, a million thanks for your post and link. It was truly an excellent piece. I hope it will get a wide, very wide, readership. It deserves to be translated. I was captivated by the writing and didn't find that the article was too long.
quote
"Una cosa es aceptar la realidad y sentirse parte de ella y otra, muy distinta, conformarse con un estado de cosas en el que la marginalidad es destino."
That sentence summarizes it all
Absent...
... because I've been busy, but I came here to post the link to this article, only to find that you guys had already blogged about it. Although terribly long, it's a great piece. As you know, I found a similar dismaying picture in Venezuela during my trip in June and July, and it's spiraling down further as we speak. In the mean time, the judiciary is more than ever used as a plundering machine, crunching people's pockets here and there so "Bolivarian justice can be served."
gobernado(...) por una elite clasista y explotadora
Was the puntofijismo an exploitative and classist elite? I may agree with the classism, I actually think that the whole Venezuela is a classist society (who else uses "marginal" as an insult?).
But I find a harder time accepting the "exploitative" part, unless the author was using the term rather loosely.
I expect a exploitative elite to do this: "you the many work, we the elite keep the money".
While the puntofijismo (an the inter-galactic leader) do: "you the many take this piece of the oilcake for your vote and keep quiet, we keep the other piece and rule".
What do you think? I think that the chavista discourse actually got him.
I thought the same thing...
A partial casualty of Chavez's propaganda, based on the assumption that his is a "revolution of the poor against the wealthy." Other lies that fly high, for example, are that the Venezuelan government repressed the left throughout 40 years, killing 'countless' leaders and pretty much carrying out an "Operacion Condor" in our lands; that Chavez nationalized the oil industry for the first time (forget about CAP, etc.); or that with Chavismo it is the first time the country has free education and health care for all. I am sure some people believe the Caracas Metro was built by Chavismo and destroyed by the oligarchy.
That's an impossible nit to pick, Estocolmiano...
...I mean, think about it. The premise of the entire piece is "here are the impressions of somebody with basically zero background knowledge about Venezuela looking at the beast from the inside for the first time."
Salazar Ugarte doesn't pretend to be an expert - just the opposite - and that's what makes his prose so refreshing.
For somebody coming into this "cold" and having to catch up in a mad hurry, I think he gets an astonishing amount right - all simply by using the evidence his eyes and ears supply.
That some of the details of his historical interpretation are naïve seems like a ridiculous nit to pick. Cuz sure, you COULD have gotten someone with long experience of Venezuela to write a long Chronicle of his stay as a guest of the TSJ - and probably such an observer would get every detail right - but that would defeat the whole purpose of the piece!
Yes,
I think you are right, Quico.
I guess it still surprises me how much has the current government been able to manipulate history...the extent and reach of it.
It's an important point
Salazar's observations about what he thinks must have preceded Chavez go to the core of his PSF-dom in reverse.
A lot of people come to Venezuela with little to no background knowledge. Some of the more sensible ones - liberal, independent humanists like Salazar - flee in horror. Others, like our PSF friends, think Venezuela is the second coming of the USSR and are enamored, the demons haunting them since 1989 completely exorcised.
But one thing they all have in common is: what must have preceded this man so that people would throw themselves in the arms of this bold experiment?
To most, the most obvious answer to that question is that what preceded Chavez was a bunch of horrible, horrible people. Little do they know that the price of oil had been on a free-fall for twenty years, and that Chavez has benefitted from a surge in oil prices unprecedented in our history.
I mean, what preceded Chavez was crap, no doubt about it, but to go and call them "classist" and "exploiters" and explaining away Chavez thanks to that is off target and an over-simplification.
OK. Here we go again...
... FT, cuando tu puedas escribir en castellano, la MITAD de lo bien que escribe este Sr., sólo entonces haz comentarios como aquel sobre la necesidad de un editor. Ubicate panita, it'll do you no harm.
As per the article, thanks very much for bringing it to our attention.
Nobody's questioning Salazar's amazing talent...
...but 9,600 words?
Chamo, se pasó!
Y por que habría de ser mas corto?
O es que todos los artículos sobre Venezuela deben ser de 700 palabras? El tipo narra lo que vivió durante su estadía, si le tomo 9.600 palabras, so what?
I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that those typical sentences of yours do not add anything of value to your otherwise interesting take on things. Mind you, you don't need to put down others to shine, you know?
Yo estoy con Quico
Las anecdotas del aeropuerto Benito Juarez estaban de mas. Lo de la piscina del Melia tambien. Podria haberlo hecho mas corto y hubiese quedado mucho mejor. Pero entre gustos y colores...
Pues yo no...
... estoy de acuerdo. Es una bitácora de viaje estimados, no un op-ed.
I agree with Alek
I agree with Alek. For me part of the charm of the article was his detailed descriptions of seemingly trivial things. Salazar Ugarte's piece should not be read as simply another blog post. It was the detailed chronicle of the experiences of a naive but honest observer. Despite being misinformed about pre-Chavez Venezuela, his sense of ethics and his intellectual honesty shielded him from being seduced by Chavez and Chavismo.
Hmmm..
Maybe Sean Penn should have come with the honorable Doctor: check out http://ow.ly/1g1mO
Thanks
for sharing with the link.
Even though I grew up in Venezuela (I was 3 years old when we arrived and 21 when we left), I felt the same feelings of otherness when I visited again in 2006 (granted, my last trip took place in 1997). I remember telling my husband, how beautiful and modern Caracas was. Well, for me, in comparison to 80's decade Santiago de Chile, Caracas seemed like a futuristic city, and when you leave there is a tendency to idealize things. So, yeah, I held on to my memories.
My husband was extremely curious about Chávez, his regime, etc, since in Argentina he's somewhat popular and the myth about Venezuela being Sierra Leona prior to Chávez arrival has sunk deep in the public debate; even among those who oppose the Revolución Bolivariana.
So, our first impression was the fallen bridge of La Guaira (hence, it took us 3 hours to get to Caracas), and then the mountains filled with ranchitos, which reminded of that familiar yet sad feeling I got every time I saw them. Long story short, we both had a blast. He met my friends from high-school, tennis training, the University, etc. and I got to see many of them for the first time in 9 years. It was a very emotional trip, and a very sad one. Caracas felt so abandoned, so old, like a city that was a metropolis, but in the 70's. I knew almost everything had become political; however, when a cab driver refused to take us to the Hotel Las Mercedes because he didn't go to oligarch areas, I couldn't believe it.
When we returned to BsAs, my husband told everyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not, that the Bolivarian Revolution was a complete fraud. I already knew it, what was more shocking to me is that I felt like a stranger in a place where can I still say I've spent most part of my life. I was born in Chile, but, whenever people asked my where I was from, it was automatic, my answer was: I am Venezuelan. After that trip I always give it a thought. Venezuelans remain among the most kind people I've met, but there was a bitterness in the air that really left a bad taste in my mouth for quite sime time
But the point ...
It s not that it is a long article - or that he misconstrued the 4th -
Is that he revealed what we so much fear - the cult of the personality, the inability to accept criticism (constructive or not) and the total believe that this is the only future.
It amazes me that (money or not) there is obviously a large group in government (in all the powers) that will follow the rules and ensure that it is understood that only Chavez orders - that there is only one way forward (whichiver Chavez chooses) and that no criticism can be attached to Chavez -
Furthermore it is the re-writing of history - and repeat it ad-nauseum, that is key. To the point that the writer fell into portions of it -
What struck me the most, what I think Venezuelans fail to see, was their comment at the airport - We are free - It is incredible to understand that key guests of the government, with a full suite of benefits, top hotels, drivers, etc, felt that they were free once they departed - They felt the oppression and the lack of ability to voice their opinions - the promotion of hatred - all in a 5 day trip -
And for 11 years we have not been able to do anything about it
So so
I found some parts of the article to be a fascinating insight on the Chavez machinery circa 2009...but I also found the writer to be a bit naive. First of all, expecting a grand colonial center in Caracas and then comparing it to Cuernavaca...when Cuernavaca was at the center of the Spanish American Empire and Caracas was not. And overall, expecting a normal modern country... Hasn't this guy been reading the news these past 11 years?
Yes, Venezuela right now is not a normal country, and visitors should expect to have a weird, bitter experience when visiting Venezuela.
Successful endeavors depend on clarity of goals.
Successful endeavors depend on clarity of goals.
However in my subjective world,too many words to say so little, distracts from the clarity of the images making them more convoluted as well as causing the reading of it to be under a greater burden to do in one comfortable sitting. However this is a common occurrence in Spanish writing. Spanish writers typically use more flowery words to make a piece more exciting and detailed so that more words are used to appeal to the feeling of the reader.Also, more words are required to say the same thing one can say quite well in English with far less words.
But in the end it's just a matter of taste.
Firepigette
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