Downtown Caracas

I’d like to remind you that you can click on any picture to enlarge it!

Last Monday my mother took me downtown to run some errands. I firmly believe she was intentionally trying to deceive me! She said she had to go run one errand, and it turned into a BILLION of them! We got home close to 3pm. My poor husband was at home starving to death wondering where the heck we were!

The first problem was that I was in PAIN. The night before I had hit my foot against the love seat SO hard I ended up limping. Sorry for the lack of pedicure, but I don’t think you’d understand the pain I was in until you see this in a more graphic way:

So, as you can see, a billion errands was not in my plans!

Anyways, we drove out to Altamira, where my mother used to work, and parked in her usual parking garage. She gave up her keys, and admitted being unsure about parking there at first. The main reason was that it’s not really a full valet service: the customers pick out their keys from the keys box on their own, and go searching for their car when they are ready to leave. She asked her then-boss whether it was safe (anybody could come in and pick out any keys and drive off). Her boss responded “yes, that could happen… but mostly people just take their own cars.” Oh well, I guess it’s all a game of convenience versus security trade-offs.

From Altamira we took the subway to Bellas Artes.

Our first stop was Parque Central (translation: “Central Park”). It’s not really a park, it’s just what we call Caracas’s version of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. They stand tall in the center of Caracas, and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of it (only video — which will come later), so I took this picture off the internet:

On our way into the building, my mother pointed out an organic garden that President Chávez had had put in so that foreigners staying in nearby hotels would think that we plant vegetables everywhere in the city, regardless of urbanism in the area. Pff. It thought it was funny, and took a picture of it:

We went to the office on the first floor where my mother was to run her errand. The little office had quite the line. It seems like you can’t get anything done online, or over the phone, or even in advance. Public services are the most annoying thing about living here. My mother, who now lives in the US, has been here for almost 3 weeks, and every day she has had to stand in line to get something done. This is what it looked like:

Oh, and yes, you are looking at it right: this is not the inside of an office, this is the hallway in the building.

While I waited around (yes, like those people on the left) for my mother to go through the requirement checking, waiting, entering and exiting the mysterious door, I took a couple of pictures of my surroundings. I thought you would appreciate a look for what it looked like outside the building from the inside.

Let me know if that gif animation is too fast for you. I could post the pictures separately.

Anyways, afterwards we took the subway to the Teatros station for yet another government paperwork errand.

I do have to say that the subway was not bad. My mother says that when she was here in October, the subway had no air conditioning, and it took 15 min to depart each station. It was not worth it to hop on it. It seems to be functioning fine now.

My mother had to go check if a letter was ready for her to pick up. We got there at 11:03am. They said they were not servicing that type of requests for the day (as of 11am), and we should come back tomorrow at 8:30am. My mother really tried to get them to make an exception (it was 11:03am!!!) but they wouldn’t budge. She’d have to come back.

This is where my mother had to go pick up her papers. As you can see for the line forming outside, Venezuelan agencies do not seem to be big fans of indoor offices…

We did get some good shots of Plaza Caracas. The bust you see is Simon Bolívar, liberator of 5 Latin American countries from the control of Spain (Venezuela, Bolivia, Equator, Panama and Colombia), and the country’s pride and joy. Our currency is even named after him (The Bolívar, code VEB).

Right there, just beyond the bust, you can see the headquarters of the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE – National Electoral Council). That’s the institution that organizes elections, counts and verifies all votes.

We went back on the subway, this time headed for Parque Carabobo station.

As soon as we got out of the station, we passed something like 5 people who were saying “selling/buying gold, dollars, euros” repeatedly.

After running my mother’s errand, she asked me if I wanted to see Plaza Bolívar and Congress. I said sure — would be nice to get some pix to bring to my loyal readers 😉 (see? I’m thinking of YOU ;)). So we went.

I tried my hardest to be as inconspicuous as possible. I didn’t want to draw much attention to myself, so I kept my videos and picture-taking to the minimum. I thought you would appreciate this one, though. It’s a Wendy’s that was put into a colonial-style building. I thought it was a funny mix of styles:

Here are some shots we took of the area. I did take a 360-degree video of Plaza Bolívar. Stay tuned for that. Sorry I can’t name all the buildings below. My mother probably could.

Now, here’s the interesting bit about this trip to Plaza Bolívar: the day before, President Chávez had expropriated all the buildings surrounding the plaza. He did it in the most unbelievable way: he stood outside during his radio/TV address and started pointing at buildings asking “what’s in that building?” and someone would answer “that’s some businesses,” and the President would say “Expropriate that. What is in that other building?” “it’s a jewelry store” “Expropriate that one too. What’s over there?” and so on. You can read the full story here, and see the video of this here. The order was made effective immediately, and the documents were drafted 2 hours later.

Two things are of note. Number one, there is a constitutional process through which the government could expropriate private property. The conditions are very explicit: there must be a trial where the government must demonstrate the need for the land for public service, and they must reach a settlement agreement with the owner. Once the owner has been paid, the government may take over the property. President Chávez has completely ignored the law and simply decided to take possession of property that does not belong to him without due process.

Number two, as it turns out, some of those buildings are currently owned by state universities. This means that the buildings are ALREADY owned by the State, and it is legally and technically impossible for the government to try to expropriate itself. However, it appears as though Chávez is more interested in evicting businesses off the premises than he is in any kind of premeditated research and analysis of his actions, let alone measurement of consequences.

My mother and I had totally forgotten that this had happened just the day before, and we found ourselves in the most undesirable part of town on a very important day. People had started to gather around Building La Francia, one of the expropriated buildings, out of curiosity, out of support or out of protest. La Francia is a LANDMARK of Caracas. It holds the best jewelry stores all in one building. My parents always go us our milestone items from there (baby bracelet, baptism chain and cross, and our sweet fifteen ring). It really hurts to see the President leave a trail of devastation of our democracy in his path.

There was a government-supported post right outside the building, where there seemed to be a heated argument going on. My mother, who loves to hear what people on the street are saying, walked TOWARDS the noise to eavesdrop. This is what we heard someone telling other people (who appeared to be tourists): “You see, this building used to be owned by the State, then the rich people came and took it over!” We took our pictures and video and got the hell out of there!

We made it home and lived to tell that we were there the day after the historic and nonsensical expropriations happened. Just don’t tell my father… he’d kill us both! 🙂

Again, stay tuned for videos. I’ll be posting them after I have a chance to work on them next week when I get back home. Have a good weekend everyone!

ina

PS: Oh, and my little toe held up just fine even after all that walking. I ended up limping at the end of the day, but it’s feeling much better today 🙂 Thanks for your concern 🙂