Caracas Trollparty 2006: Part 1

Day 2 – Saturday 21st Janauary 2006
My first mission was to top-up the Venezuelan SIM card Teresa had given me before I left London. Teresa hadn’t mentioned it when she gave it to me, but as well as saving me time and money, this also avoided me having to give my fingerprint to get a SIM, as is usual here.

After a quick bite to eat and a delicious cocktail of fresh fruit juice, I called Pablo, arranging to meet him at Chacaito station at 11.20am. This gave me an hour or so to spare, so I got myself a metro travelcard and headed to Plaza Venezuela to have a look around, see if I could work out where La Oficina was, and find an internet cafe.

I got to Chacaito early. Outside the station I was approached by a random friendly local called Jairo Loaiza, who had been attracted by my Peace Not War t-shirt. We discussed economic and policital systems, how governments have to borrow money at interest from banks, and the worrying dependency of our industrial food system on cheap plentiful oil.

He thanked me for my time, showed me a relevant passage in the bible (about the inability of financial riches to offer salvation) and gave me his card for Trasnporte Turistico Terrestre.

Once Pablo arrived we went for a quick drink and chat in a local cafe. I had missed a big party at La Oficina the night before. I gave him the belt and memory card he’d asked me to bring from London (techology is very expensive here, and apparently a good value quality belt is hard to find too) and in exchange Pablo lent me the essential Engligh-plug-adapter.

I showed him a bit of the footage I’d taken on my camcorder. “You don’t want to take that out (of its bag) too often”, he said. “You don’t have to worry about me”, I told him…

Just as we left the cafe (Pablo had to go and do a Bush voice over for TeleSur), Charley called. Charley, a good friend who lives in London with his Venezuelan wife, has been involved in the Hands Off Venezuela campaign for some time and knows Caracas well. He wasn’t far from Chacaito so I waited for him to join me and we decided to walk through the centre of caracas back to my hotel.

I filmed as we walked from Chacaito through the markets towards Plaza Venezuela, hoping to soak up some of the electric atmosphere. We were discussing the contrast between authoritarian and libertarian socialism. I was beginning to tell Charley about a comment made on Pablo’s Redpepper Venezuela blog about the “ominous signs of authoritarianism” of Chavez’s government. Just as I said the word “authoritarianism” someone tried to snatch my camera out of my hand…

Instinctively, I held on tight to my camera, which was strapped to my hand anyway. Time seemed to pass in slow motion as I struggled with the two men trying to rob me. Then I saw the gun. My first thought was a sensible one: let go. But the gun didn’t look real, and the gunman’s eye told me he wasn’t going to shot. My desire to be able to document my travels, and not to loose an expensive camera on day one, told me to hold on…

I continuted to struggle, trying to keep the man holding my camera between me and the man with the gun. Thankfully, suddenly, it was all over. The men gave up and disappeared into the crowd. The gun (real, or otherwise) was purely an instrument of intimidation. For reasons I don’t fully understand myself, I had not been intimidated.

Charley seemed far more shaken by the incident than myself; perhaps because he actually saw it happening. For me, as soon as it was over, it was almost like it had never happened. My heart didn’t start to race until I showed the footage to the Trolls later in the day. Still, I put my camera away before Charley and I continued our walk back to my hotel…

We walked through the market to Plaza Venezuela, got some smoking papers from El Gran Cafe, discoverd a nice vegetarian restaurant, and passed the pedestal where there once stood a statue of Christopher Colombus (some of Charley’s friends from media co-op “Calle y Media” pulled it down a while back).

After cutting through Parque Los Caobos we were back at the hotel, where went up to my room for a smoke…

Later that evening Charley popped over with and Johan from Access All Areas, Yasmin from the Justice for Jean Campaign (Jean Charles de Menezes, the guy mistakenly shot dead by plain clothed officials after the 7/7 tube bombs in London), and Anne.

Yasmin and Anne had arrived in Caracas from Cuba about a week ago, and are off to Brazil next. Interestingly, they both said that Cuba had felt like the safest place on Earth (though they did get constantly chatted up in the street, unlike here where, due to the contrast with Cuba, it felt like they suddently weren’t pretty any more!).

Fellow Troll Jason Diceman (of Co-op Tools and Dotmocracy) joined us before we all went to eat some Arepas (a typical “Venezuelan hamburger” type dish made with corn flour and stuffed with all sorts of yuminess). A few beers later we decided to track down “La Oficina”…

Pablo had told me that from about 9pm onwards we wouldn’t be able to miss the place (we’d been unable to find it before). Still, there was nowhere that stood out. Luckily a friendly local could tell we were looking for somewhere and asked “La Oficina?”. “Si” we all said, as he pointed to the (unsigned) bar on the corner that was empty and looked closed. It was closed, but since a couple of locals were already hanging out in there and the owner let us in, explaining that last night was a big party and apologising for the mess.

We had a good chat with Edgar, the owner of the bar. He is a Cuban who came to Venzuela when he was 15 and so has seen the country go through lots of changes. He said that Venezuala today is full of opportunities. He put some nice Cuban music on and showed us the pictures of famous Cuban musicians by the bar.

Later, Ernesto from political salsa/hip-hop band “Son Tizon” came in, and informed us about all the parties happening in the coming week, before he and his brother gave us a lift in their cars to “El Mani”, a salsa club not far away, from where they said it would be better to get a cab home.

We had a smoke with them then went our seperate ways…