In the “bubble” of Caracas, Ferraris, casinos and the boliburguese ostentation

“Venezuela it was fixed”. Although it sounds like a mockery, it is the antifashion phrase in Caracas. And not only around the Bolivarian power: collaborators of the false opposition and remote-controlled influencers also made it their own, in addition to some hypnotized by the socioeconomic phenomenon baptized as “bodegónica pax” by the thinker Guillermo Tell Aveledo.

The Caracas bubble rises in the east of the capital to enjoy and enjoy chavista hierarchs, Boliburgueseshigh-ranking military, related businessmen and beneficiaries of dollarization. They are the “plugged in” of Nicholas Maduroprotagonists of the revolutionary Disneyland, which has Ferraris, high-end cars, socialist casinos, luxury restaurants and the famous still lifes. They even have their favorite clothing brands and their almost exclusive paradise just over 100 kilometers away by plane: The Roques.

Anonymous is the fashionable restaurant at prohibitive prices where the hierarchs of the government enjoy invisible reserved. MoDo is the great novelty of the moment, colors and environments to choose from. The Versailles ice cream parlor dazzles the powerful people of Caracas, as well as the still lifes of the Hotel EurobuildingWhat Current, more protected from the glances. another still life, the 212impresses with its size. The Barriotwhich welcomed the nouveau riche and girls who look like models, lived through better times, but it doesn’t fall off the agenda of Maduro’s plugged-ins.

The last great novelty, of national impact, are the casinos, such as the one in Las Mercedes or the one in the Tamanaco Shopping Centerwith hundreds of slot machines delighting those who do have good wads of dollars, the vast minority in the country.

And above all, high above the heights, remains the imposing Humboldt hotel and the first socialist casino in Latin America, as it was baptized by the Mature. Watch from the sky, on top of the majestic Ávila, the peak of the mountain range that separates the capital from the coast of La Guaira. The hotel is today the favorite place of the wealthiest of the revolution to celebrate their parties and to spend their money. So extravagant that in the midst of a pandemic they served cocktails as if it were a saline drip from a hospital.

Psycho Bunnythe brand of the skull with pink rabbit ears, is all the rage. “How beautiful, it fascinates me!”, comments a young woman after buying a t-shirt for her boyfriend, which will take her to the exclusive paradise of The Roques. The boyfriend, top secret, is an assistant to a powerful minister. Exaggerated prices no longer allow mortals to travel to the Caribbean atoll, the favorite of the sons of the powerful and the escort models of contractors, at $500 an hour.

The bubble of Caracas It is the closest thing to a huge movie set, in which a Corvettes roars by your side a few meters from a spill of dirty water and where a ferrari The latest model presides over a dealership at prices that would mean 15,000 years of minimum wage for a Venezuelan. mustang, high end Audi Y Lamborghinis –yes, by the dropper, because the Caracas asphalt is not for big parties either–. That is why giant “vans” that look like the latest generation tractors prevail over sports cars, from Toyota Land Cruisers, Fortuners and Hiluxes to North American Hummers.

Socialist casinos, once banned for being “places of perdition”, illuminate one of the darkest nights in the region while the bodegones multiply to sell thousands and thousands of imported products thanks to the removal of tariffs from the United States, Spain or Turkey. Oddly enough, the same country that five years ago suffered from such acute shortages that it forced the flight of almost seven million people, the largest diaspora on the planet.

Mirage

“It’s a fiction, what the system does is relate the boom in still lifes with a certain improvement in economic terms. What we see is that such improvement is a lie, it does not exist. The economic impact of still lifes on the real economy is minimal, that is why it is a mirage, a screen to show a reality that has nothing to do with the economy of the people”, unravels Mirla Pérez, coordinator of the Popular Research Center.

“The average income in the neighborhoods of Caracas is more or less 50 dollars, at most. The bulk of the population lives on bonuses (the last one is close to four dollars), on the pension and minimum wage (two dollars) and on the CLAP box (subsidized food)”Perez concludes.

What is the economic architecture that sustains the Venezuela of still lifes? “There are people who accumulated a lot of money until 2017, when the external debt was paid. Millionaires in dollars thanks to exchange controls, overcharging imports, which now cannot invest abroad and do so in Venezuela. There are other people who are exporting and receiving dollars, who invest them in the country. Third is the military class linked to the regime, benefiting from contracts. And the fourth thing is money laundering,” answers the economist José Guerra.

The people of Caracas look at their bubble as if it were a gigantic washing machine, stocked by those sanctioned abroad and by those who fear persecution from the United States and Europe. “We know there is money from drug trafficking, from the sale of foreign currency, from gold smuggling, from white slavery. That money circulates and is cleaned through the purchase of real estate, cars, goods and set up businesses that are a facade “confirm economic sources under anonymity.

A neo-reality imposed by force. And whoever is not convinced by the mirage, get ready: “I am not going to allow anyone to speak ill of Venezuela, we must speak well of our country,” Maduro threatened in one of his last television homilies.

By Daniel Lozano

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