The Story of Venezuela

It’s time to take a break from my search for the meaning of the nation and turn my focus to specific countries. I will start with Venezuela, which has been experiencing a political and economic crisis for several years. I spent a good deal of time in Venezuela in the 1990s. The reason for my being there was not clear, then or now, but it gave me some perspective on what’s happening in the country today. My first flight into Maiquetia airport was at night. On the approach, I could see a mountain, all lit up with what appeared to be lights lining the streets of the capital, Caracas. As we landed and deplaned, I realized that it was not Caracas at all that I was looking at. It turned out that I was quite a distance from the capital, and the marvelous city I thought I had been watching was actually a shantytown, or a barrio. The mountain was actually a hill and the lights were lining the jagged paths between the settlements. They were powered by stolen electricity, as hundreds of illegally attached cables hung from electrical wires, running into the barrio randomly scattered. The possibility of catastrophic […]