Holy Week in Caracas

As I said in my last post, this has been Holy Week. Since most everything - well, schools and the archives at least - were closed for the week, a friend and I took the opportunity to check out some of the sights around the city. A week ago Saturday we took the bus to El Hatillo, a little tourist town outside of Caracas. I had been there before (there are some pictures from there in a previous post), but it's a charming place and I was happy to go again. Then on Monday we took the teleferico (cable car) to the top of Avila and then took a Jeep ride partially down the other side of the mountain to a little town called Galipan. There wasn't much there except some vendors selling jams and flowers and a couple of restaurants. The things to eat there are pernil and fresas con crema (pork and strawberries with cream). Yum! There is also not much at the top of Avila. There are a couple of restaurants and a few food booths and a couple of stores. There is also an ice skating rink called Avila Magica. And there is an old hotel called Humboldt Hotel, named after Alexander von Humboldt, a German baron/scientist/geographer who traveled around Venezuela and other places in Central and South America between 1799 and 1804. The hotel is not in use; however, for 5.000Bs ($2.33) you can tour part of it. We did not do that. Instead we went back down the mountain and visited Quinta de Anauco or the Caracas Museum of Colonial Art. But here's what the hotel - which can be seen from anywhere in the city - looks like. We also got lucky and the clouds drifted away enough so that we could see a little bit of the Caribbean from the top of Avila. If you look closely in the picture you can see a little bit of blue ocean through the clouds.

Quinta de Anauco is a house that was built in 1797 and donated to Venezuela in 1958 with the proviso that it would forever serve as the headquarters of the Museum of Colonial Art of Caracas. The house was restored and furnished with 18th century art and furniture. As you can imagine - I thought this was a wonderful place. It is the best museum I've seen in Caracas and is way better than the casa natal or birthplace of Simon Bolivar. Here's a couple of pictures just to give you a feel for the place. One of the interesting things about the house is that it is representative of the period that I am studying - late colonial and early independence. For example, in the dining room were cups from the hacienda where coffee was served for the first time in the valley of Caracas. Following the wars of independence the economy of Caracas shifted from a reliance on cacao to one where coffee played a much more important role because during the wars the cacao fields had been nearly destroyed and coffee trees produce fruit much faster after planting than do cacao trees. There was also a mural rom with frescoes from 1828 with scenes from the new republic.

Well, I'll fill in the rest of the week tomorrow. It's getting late and I need to be up and on the metro early tomorrow morning. I found out this afternoon that Wednesday is another holiday - I'll have to find out more about that.

saludos de Caracas.

I'm Back! or What's been going on?

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, but I don't have any good excuses for not posting anything sooner. I guess I've just been caught up in the minutia of my mundane day-to-day existence. You know, things like the stupid refrigerator (I've had technicos to my apartment at least 7 times now and have spent over $100 on this old fridge and have finally developed a method of dealing with it, even though it is not working properly), figuring out what to do about taxes, playing Sudoku, and reading lots of other people's blogs, especially about Venezuela. Except for this week, which is holy week, I've been working as long hours as possible in the archives. I have two and a half months left in Venezuela, which is just amazing to me. So I'm starting to panic a little that I won't get everything done. But I'm focused and I'm sure I'll get enough information to put together a decent dissertation. The truth is I could be working in the archives here for a couple of years. The end result would certainly be different, but not necessarily better - or so I tell myself. Like I said above, a lot of the time in front of my computer seems to be taken up with either playing Sudoku (I've become addicted) or reading either newspapers or blogs on or about Venezuela. Although this week has been pretty quiet - I guess because it's holy week - there was in the previous weeks lots of stuff going on. So, for all of you who don't keep up with Venezuela - I can't imagine why - here's the highlights.

The viaduct on the way to the airport from Caracas finally fell completely. Here's what it looks like now.

The really sad thing that happened a couple of weeks ago was the discovery of the bodies of three brothers (ages 17, 13, and 12) and their driver. They were kidnapped and had been missing for more than a month. It is really sad to think about what their family has had to go through for the past couple of months. The announcement of this discovery along with the death of an businessman the prior week launched a couple days of demonstrations about security and at one of these demonstrations a journalist was killed. These deaths were covered in various Venezuelan and foreign press articles. El Universal (English), Reuters, and Miami Herald are some of them and they provide at least an understandable picture of what went on.

April 11 was the anniversary of the 2004 overthrow - or coup - which removed Chavez from power for about 2 days. Although he claims that this was a CIA sponsored coup, I'm not aware of any proof to that claim. On the other hand, the US was quick to recognized the new president - who was in power for less than 48 hours. You can read about it in BBC online.

Relations between the US and Venezuela seem to be continuing on their consistently deteriorating course. Last week Ambassador Brownfield was in a poor neighborhood of Caracas distributing baseball equipment for the kids there when his car was attacked by people throwing food and stuff at it. The US, of course, issued a statement that this was unacceptable. Chavez replied that Brownfield had not informed them he was going there, that possibly he had been spying, and that maybe he would just kick Brownfield out of the country. US and British press covered it as well as the Venezuelan press.

Well, I guess that's enough of a news update for now. In case you can't tell, I'm really glad to have learned how to do those links rather than just pasting in the URL. I probably got a little carried away.

One more thing before I close for now, though I'm planning another post this evening with pictures since I've been playing tourist this week. Some of my friends ask me my thoughts about Chavez and the situation in Venezuela. I am trying to learn more so that I can have an intelligent opinion. As I said, I've been reading blogs about Venezuela, and there are quite a few in English. One of the best is Caracas Chronicles. One of the links on the site is titled Hugo Chavez FAQ and I think it's worth looking at if you are at all interested in learning more about him. The Wikipedia entry for Hugo Chavez is also pretty interesting.

OK, well I'm off to visit a friend for a bit and then I promise a post that's more about what I've been doing and less a press coverage report.

Saludos from Caracas.