Caracas, Venezuela: 'The New Leftist Mecca'

There are reasons to claim that Caracas is a "ghost town." It is a thriving city but most of the energy and effort that otherwise would be spent in investing, building and developing is spent in nonsense quarrels started and fired by a populist government which has proved negligent in solving Venezuela's problems. The comment was not geared towards solutions but towards a deeper understanding of the situation in Caracas and Venezuela, regardless of how happy Harry Belafonte looks in pictures with Cavez.
Although it is a political appreciation, it is a fact that has a deep impact in the analysis of urban issues involving Caracas or any venezuelan city, for that matter.
Caracas is divided in five municipalities, 3 of which are "chavista"-controlled and two which are "escualido"-controlled. The images referred to by 'pvcolin' come from Baruta and Chacao, the two municipalities which have market-orientated mayors.
As a dramatic example of negligence and poor planning, the main expressway that links Caracas with the port/airport city of La Guaira's destruction is very graphic case. Warnings were abundant, but government did not take timely measures. The sunken concrete structures of one of the mountain passes deteriorated due to poor drainage, government-allowed, non-technical settlements with defficient sewage at the top of the hills, heavy underground flooding and the consequential shifting of the infrastructures. The total shift at parkway level was 16 cm, which rendered it completely unsafe for further circulation.
As measures to cope with the sudden blocking of the major artery that communicates Caracas with the world, old roads were open, with the expected contingency problems such as 4 hour commutes for an otherwise 40-minute-long trip and enormous financial losses. This is not a political appreciation but a reported fact.
The immediate measures taken by the government were an embargo on US airlines (using some inexplicable excuse but adding to the problem) and a hike on the price of airport taxes. Normal traffic has not been restored and airlines arriving into Maiquetia are evaluating their losses and starting a stand-by period in which they will evaluate the feasibility of cancelling their Caracas operations due to heavy losses.
This is not reported in official websites, press agencies or statistics bureaus, however I have personally experienced it, interviewed several businesspeople, members of the chambers of commerce and bankers, as well as taxi-drivers and workers, for a paper thas is in development phase and which abstract can be fount at http://arxlink.com/neapolis/#113812784127586269, unfortunately only in Spanish.
Moreover, all of Venezuela's information bureaus are government-sanctioned or government-controlled. Thus, it is unlikely that any of the examples and numbers that are provided by those agencies is accurate with the real Venezuelan situation. Again a fact. A crass example of this is the arbitrary manipulation of inflation numbers, which did not suit the Chavez administration and were allegedly made up to suit the projections and official propaganda.
Information is provided by the Centre for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge http://www.cedice.org.ve/ingles.asp unfortunately most of the information here is in Spanish, but it is an example of a non-governmental organisation which collects impartial information and publishes it. Further readings can be found on the Cato Institute and Independent Institute websites.
As in all centrally planned economies, there are successes and showcase projects geared towards foreigners in the form of offical propaganda. There are projects that are being drawn, some others that have been implemented. However, for the most part, the political circumstances are blocking private iniciative, making it really hard for the country to develop, stalling its economy and skyrocketing its negative numbers, as the UN, World Bank and other multilateral agencies have repeatedly reported. These are facts and not politically orientated comments, regardless of how happy Harry Belafonte looks in pictures with Chavez.

Having worked in international development as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador for several years before returning to the United States (CA) to work as a planner for Monterey County, then the City of Monterey, and now, as a Planning Commissioner for the City of Marina, I have learned time and time again that (especially in countries where the concept of planning itself in practice is near to nonexistent) that you can complain about conditions all you want and it will get you nowhere. One must be prepared (and dedicated enough) to act (as opposed to react) to make positive changes where you can on a project-by-project level or alternatively on a programmatic level, based on observations you make in the field (El Salvador, Venezuela). And you can't rest on the assumption that better zoning programs, land use plans, or even implementation of better national policies are going to correct the problems you identify. It takes dedicated people looking at circumstances in their community and organizing to make a difference before anything can change.

If the Potemkin village or the freeway collapse issues, as examples of the problem areas described for Venezuela, have any hope of being corrected, then they will be corrected not when Mr. Chavez decides they will be but rather when community organization efforts reach a level where the extent of concern regarding community problems is sufficient to energize the implementation of a solution. I saw this happen in El Salvador when some character came into town claiming to have great connections with the government and all kinds of funds for a water project. He had various meetings with hundreds of community members who came to large meetings at an open field, many of them campesinos who barely had time outside of work to sleep and eat. When it became apparent to the interested communities that he was a fake who really was just interested in wasting the communities' time and absconding with local monies (a problem that I identified early on by investigating the guy's record), he was chased out of town, and eventually the authorities caught up to him after he suffered a mild heart attack (brought on no doubt by the stress of having the people discover who he really was). And yes, I have observed this kind of thing here in California, too. Corruption is everywhere.

My point here is not that people should be organizing against Chavez although they are certainly free to do so in the context of Venezuela's election system. My suggestion is that if you are really interested in seeing change occur in Venezuela, that you explore options for finding a way to make it happen in the local level, perhaps by working in planning and community organization in Caracas yourself. You can look at some of the organizations that you could work or volunteer with in Caracas simply by looking at this link.
http://www.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/SiteIndex/Search/search?assetType...

-enjoy,

cg