(Former CC intern Rachelle Krygier is back, and is reporting from Caracas.) Venezuelans go to bed not knowing if in the morning they will be able to find, let alone afford, basic staples. Providing for leisure activities for themselves or their families is so far beyond the pale, many have stopped thinking about it. And what…
Ruben opened the buttons of his shirt to show me the tattoo on his chest. It was a large image of a 2-year-old’s face, with big sad eyes and thick lips. “That’s my son. I wasn’t able to have kids because I had a health problem but fíjate, after I was made a saint, I was able…
Five years had passed since the first time ¨El Chivo¨ drew something on a wall and discovered how the adrenaline “rushes through your body when you alter public property,” and how “you feel you own part of the street when you leave your art hanging there, freely expressing how you feel.” “I started drawing sketches on…
People go in and out of the nearby Altamira subway station, and they walk in different directions with a purpose. Mornings and afternoons are beset by traffic, the minutes drowned by the sound of horns and angry shouts from drivers and motorizados. This is the southeast corner of the emblematic Plaza Atlamira, the home of Lugar Común, a little bookstore founded…
Tents, bare mats, improvised shelters, tattered refrigerators, and used-up kitchen utensils cover the sidewalk of this stretch of Avenida Lecuna, in downtown Caracas. Several government-subsidized buildings on both sides of the street are adorned with propaganda. Women, men, and kids stand by, looking at each other and at the cars driving on this busy street. They sit on…
Dr. Martín Carvallo, who heads the Hospital Universitario’s HIV department, doesn’t know what to tell his patients when they ask what they can do when they can’t get the anti-retrovirals they need. “What can I say? There’s nothing I can do, and there’s nothing they can do,” he says. Paint is peeling off the blue walls of the Infectious Diseases Unit in what…
In February 1939, two ships approached the shores of Venezuela after a long, desperate voyage. The Konisgtein and the Caribia’s captains had already asked for asylum in many other ports, now they pleaded with the authorities to allow the entry of its 251 passengers. But it was 1939, and the ship’s human cargo was considered radioactive. Why? Because most of the passengers were…
(A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a Venezuelan currently studying journalism in New York City, and yadda-yadda-yadda, Caracas Chronicles has a summer intern! Meet Rachelle Krygier. I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. She’ll be blogging from Caracas for the next few months.) A man brings up his curtain…
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