YAR Travelogue from Venezuela No. 1

Yesterday my wife (!) Charletta arrived in Venezuela for our honeymoon. We decided its the first time for both of us that we´ve been in a Latin American country as purely a tourist (previously it was studying, volunteering or CPTing). Venezuela seemed like a great place to go to see beautiful countryside and do some political sight seeing as well. We´ve been reading about Chavez for the past 8 years so it was about time we saw what it was all about first hand.

First impressions so far have been mixed. Our first political opinions on Chavez were from Emilio and Samuel on the bus ride from the airport into Caracas (tell you something about their economic status). Emilio is a student from the Southeast of Venezuela studying optometry. He used to go to St. George´s on Grenada but transferred to the Caracas campas after the Reggae culture of too much Ganja and Cocaine got to him. He was travelling with his cousin Samuel who is a professor teaching physical therapy. Neither of them had a particularly good view of Chavez. They said that he has been a polarizing force in the country, turning families against one another (sound familiar). They described his ideology as a mix of socialism, communism and anti-capitalism. These accusations weren´t new to me. However, they also said that in order to get a job with government or even to get a government contract “you have to have the right opinions.”

So that´s the first portrait. Over the next 2 weeks I´ll occasionally post other perspectives and reflections on the the politics and culture here in Venezuela. Hasta Luego!

Sphere: Related Content

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 1:45 pm by TimN and is filed under Politics, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “YAR Travelogue from Venezuela No. 1”

Lora Says:

September 16th, 2006 at 8:33 am

Tim, posting on your honeymoon!?! Yeah, I’ve pretty much heard the same thing about Chavez–just as polarizing as Bush, although at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Colombian refugees love him, though, since they get a lot of the services there (no questions asked) that the Colombian government has steadly been cutting, even as Colombia is asking for more funding from the U.S. for the war on terror/war on drugs. Most of the analysis I read in U.S. news dismisses Chavez and most Latin American leaders as leftists, but it seems like they’re more populists than anything. Keep us posted.
Young Anabaptist Radicals » YAR Travelogue from Venezuela No 4: A Chávez Supporter Says:

September 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 pm

[…] Andrés told us that despite the good salaries offered, many Venezuelan doctors refused to work at the clinics because they didn’t want to support Chávez. Which brings us back to the criticism of Chavez from my first Venezuela post. Emilio said that you had to have the right political opinions to get a government job or contract. To some extent, this appears to be a two way street as many of the Venezuelan elite don’t want to work for a Chávez government. […]
Colombia, Ecuador and Chavez » Young Anabaptist Radicals Says:

March 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

[…] The team’s statement also mentions the “saber-rattling by neighbors in the region”. I’d like to look at that saber rattling a little more closely. Specifically, the war-mongering coming from the party that was not directly involved in the incident, Chavez. In the fall of 2006 I went to Venezuela on my honeymoon and wrote four posts here (1, 2, 3, 4) documenting some of the reactions we heard to Chavez from people we met along the way. At the time we saw that there were a lot of good things going on in Venezuela, but it was also clear that Chavez’s leadership was problematic. While we were there he made his famous Bush-is-the-devil speech that boosted Chomsky to #1 on Amazon. It was a stunt that brought up conflicted response for me. While it was great to have Chomsky get some exposure, Chavez was clearly setting a polarizing and divisive course for himself and his country. […]