Venezuela's Capital Endures Tough Times

abcnews.go.com Venezuela's Capital of Caracas, Once Trendy and High-Flying, Faces Tough Times The Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela Jan. 29 — Every night at 8 p.m. the clang of banging pots and pans rattles across the Venezuelan capital. It's the cacerolazo, a traditional Latin American protest against unpopular governments and toughening times.

In recent months, the din has spread from middle class districts into less prosperous neighborhoods as residents protest President Hugo Chavez's rule and their rapidly declining standard of living.

Chavez's backers answer with fireworks.

Then Caracas goes quiet.

After dark, this once-trendy, high-flying capital, an expensive vacation destination that bubbled with nightlife, is an empty shell.

Dark streets. Dark shops. Dark buildings.

Crime is up, and visitors are urged to stay indoors come nightfall. If confronted, hand over your valuables, one hotel brochure advises: "They can be replaced. You can't."

Caracas is now listed as one of the more dangerous cities in the hemisphere but it offers constant reminders of better days.

It bristles with modern high-rises, condominiums and buildings designed by world-renowned architects.

The sprawling Central University of Venezuela is a United Nations World Heritage Site with cantilevered walkways, mosaics and a sculpture garden featuring works by American mobile artist Alexander Calder. The Country Club residential area was designed by Frederick Olmstead, creator of New York City's Central Park.

A spotless air-conditioned subway rushes passengers quickly and cheaply through the city. An urban highway system is a monument to better days, when the oil and money flowed.

In the heyday 1970s, many wealthier Caracenos, as capital residents are called, regularly jetted to Miami to shop. Caracas was bright lights and good times. Many of the world's most exclusive shops opened branches here.

That all dwindled when the oil boom ended in the 1980s. As it became clearer that Venezuela's oil riches weren't trickling down to the majority of the people, a rebellion against the system emerged, culminating in Chavez's presidential election in 1998.

His opponents say that since then, Chavez's leftist policies have damaged business and scared off badly needed foreign investment. They have launched a two-month-long general strike aimed at ousting him from office.

The strike has crippled the oil industry and led to growing shortages.

In a country awash with oil, residents wait in lines stretching a mile or more for gasoline. Some wait overnight. Others buy gas on the black market at 10 times the official price. Banks are open only three hours a day. Fully half of the city's downtown shops are shuttered in sympathy with the strike, or because no one is buying.

"No flour today," reads a sign on a supermarket window. Soft drinks, bottled water, beer, cigarettes and prescription medicines are mostly memories.

Even baseball, in a country where it is more popular than soccer, was hit. Venezuela won't be at the 2003 Caribbean Series in Puerto Rico because it canceled its winter league season out of security concerns.

A lot of the city's business these days is done with buhoneros, tabletop entrepreneurs who sell everything from garlic to pirated CDs.

Venezuela imports more than half of its food, and with the strike it is looking abroad for even more basics.

When 500 tons of flour arrived recently from neighboring Colombia, the Chavez government, ever mindful of its power base, limited its distribution to poorer neighborhoods.

And there are plenty of poorer neighborhoods. Shantytowns jam the hillsides and ravines around the capital. Some hovels are built atop others because there is no space. More than half of Venezuelans live in poverty. Many of these residents are Chavez's people, who say he is the only Venezuelan president who ever cared about them.

Nervous residents in more comfortable neighborhoods have been forming private militias against the hordes they fear may come if the crisis explodes.

There are rumors of a currency devaluation. Rumors that Chavez will pull the plug on the city's unfriendly television stations, which is most of them. Rumors of a government bank takeover. Rumors of more political violence, or a U.S.-backed coup.

In today's Caracas, nobody knows what tomorrow will be like.

The uncertainty and anger is spelled out in the city's graffiti, where Chavez supporters appear to own the walls.

Aside from a rare "Chavez: Criminal," today's fare tends toward "Out with the coup-mongering oligarchs," "Bankers are corrupt coup-mongers," and "No to fascist sabotage."

And, occasionally, "Yankee Go Home."