Caracas to Calcutta

To go from Caracas to Calcutta it takes you only a few minutes: reach Avenida Universidad and drive it along sometime after 9 PM. It is a vision worthy of one of Dante's infernos.

I have one friend who lives downtown Caracas, and thus does not bother owning a car. One of the few brave souls who dare to live in a place they could have escaped long ago. But he was born close to Quinta Crespo and it took him until this year to finally decide to move out, in a few months from now. Thus when we get together for dinner I am kind enough to give him a ride home, making sure that I am out of the area by 10 PM.

Tonight was the first major rain storm of the season. Rainy season starts any time between mid April to late May, but no matter when it starts, Caracas town hall is always caught without having cleaned up the drains, inspected the sewers. Tonight traffic was pandemonium. After dinner at La Castellana we could not get into the highway and we had to resort to the Libertador avenue. We discovered soon enough that it was also blocked and we decided to border it from above. We saw the huge pond that formed in the middle, that was crossed slowly one car by one.

Neither could we get back on the highway Plaza Venezuela and thus for the first time in years I took the Avenida Universidad from Bellas Artes to Capitolio AT NIGHT. I mean, I do go through it on occasion in day time, sorting all the informal street vendors, and garbage, and collapsing traffic to go on some official business downtown but it has been decades that no one in his right mind goes out at night on Avenida Universidad.

It is not such a bad avenue: after all that is where the infamous General Prosecutor Isaias has his offices in front of Parque Carabobo, a place where many an opposition march went to boo him. It ends at the historical Capitol building, which recently has been spruced up, now that chavismo controls it 100% of its seats. They do like their comfort and nice working places, you know...

But Avenida Universidad at night is something else. When the informal vendors leave around 6-7 PM, they leave, along the public buildings and numerous lunch places and small stores, dozens of piles of full trash bags. Some easily as high as 5-6 feet. By 9 PM most of the piles of garbage have been broken into and spread over the side walks by the army of indigent people that comes out from nowhere it seems (the pictures of the under-bridges that I have shown recently are not enough to account for the numbers that I saw tonight).

It was truly horrible. One scene summarizes all: at one corner, waiting for the light I could even see an African American man, perhaps in his early 40ies, without shoes, without a shirt, eating something he picked up from the floor, 200 yards from the Nation's Capitol, at 9:30 PM. But my friend told me that there were not that many already has most of the trash had been "inspected". Still, they were by the dozen.

This is worse than ever, and after 7 years of glorious bolivarian revolution which is now ready to battle the US instead of misery at home. Why don't TV crews come and film such a scene?

After I dropped my friend I was able to take the highway to come back home, on my usual way. The road was clear but at 10 PM the line on the blocked side still went from La Araña until Altamira, that is, it crossed 2/3 of Caracas. At 10 PM.

At least from the trans Caracas highway chavistas and opposition are spared observation of the worst failure of the regime: indigent and street kids scavenging for food.

And no, my disgestion is doing fine. After 7 years there is no reason for me to feel responsible for such misery. Chavismo is starting to have a lot to answer for. It is Chavez who proclaimed that street kids would be off the streets soon, or his name would have to change. It was in 1999. Chavez name has still to changed and the street kids of 1999 are now the adults of Avenida Universidad nightly raids. I pay more taxes than ever and I have never felt so insecure and saw so much misery. Where is my tax money going? Where are the shelters for these poor unfortunate souls? Are they built instead in Uruguay? Boston? F*** this!