I've been in Venezuela for nearly two years and I only have two and a half more months. I'll try to address conditions here in my next few posts for the benefit of friends or strangers who might consider coming here. This one is about the people. They're not so bad.
Venezuelans are stratified, perhaps polarized by economic class. There are what people call the rich, which includes the middle class, usually with higher education degrees and the truly rich (I don't know how they get that way; they don't talk to me about it.) Then there are the poor; some say two thirds of the population. They usually have enough to eat but not much more. They typically live in humble little clay tile houses with poor (or no) plumbing and often no glass in the windows. These habitations usually have a to-die-for (sometimes literally) view because they are often built as squatter houses on treacherously steep terrain. Unless I say otherwise, my comments pertain to rich and poor alike.
Venezuelans are patient, sweet, sociable, uninhibited, and they seem impervious to noise. They place a high value on family. (There are some exceptions to these virtues of course, which I will get to in a moment.) You will often even see adolescents being affectionate with their parents, e.g. walking arm in arm with their mother or grandmother. People of all ages congregate at dance venues and other popular hangouts. People greet each other warmly even in casual situations. Women greet everyone with a little kiss on the cheek. Men usually greet other men with warm handshakes and sometimes a jolly pat on the shoulder. They are, after all, men and appropriately homophobic.
Even the gentlest Venezuelans find their dark side when they get behind the wheel. They honk incessantly even at policemen who are directing traffic, jostle for position in intersections, drive all over the sidewalk and aggressively crowd into fully occupied lanes. Any pedestrian is fair game, even the elderly crossing on a walk light, burdened with 40 pounds of groceries. I experience this first hand! However, if you can make eye contact with the driver and hold up your hand as if pleading for your life, they will often spare your life without even honking. They try to keep you from making eye contact though by having heavily tinted windows. The strangest thing is pedestrians of all classes show total deference to motorists and never lift a middle finger salute or shout an expletive. Also motorist to motorist road rage is rare and hardly ever comes to more than fist shaking as these two women below my office window are doing.
Venezuelans proudly tell you they are not a racist society. True; there is no racial labeling here. Nearly everyone other than recent immigrants have at least a few snippets of African and/or indigenous DNA in their genome, which would make them a certifiable minority in the USA. The closest thing to racial classification is that people might use the term "indigenous" for people who have been very geographically and genetically isolated most of the last five centuries and very thoroughly retain their pre-Columbian culture and appearance. Though there is no racial labeling, the poor tend to have a higher proportion of darker people than the wealthy, but wealth trumps color. The concept of "politically correct" has not made big inroads here. I have heard stories of snooty nightclubs turning women away, bluntly telling them they are too dark or too fat.
The one homo-sapiens sub-species that seems to be totally missing here is the "redneck". You North Americans know the type I mean. For my Venezuelan friends I shall describe this sub-species. Long ago redneck was a derogatory term for farmer but now it is applied more often to unpleasant blue collar workers. Rednecks are brash, aggressive, undereducated, and financially over-extended on pickup trucks, motor-sports toys, and firearms. They have a good time when they're drinking (same as Venezuelans) but they often become belligerent or destructive when they've had too much. They tend to be patriotic to a ridiculous extreme and very politically and religiously conservative. They think they're funny and they like to show off. They are fond of aggressive bumper stickers that say things like, "This truck protected by Smith and Wesson" or depicting an impish little boy urinating on just about anything that intimidates them, which is just about everything but their own brand of pickup truck. They yell at their kids and whack them a lot. They take great pride in being stupider than average and their choicest bumper stickers say things like, "My kid just beat up your honor student." Their favorite icon is the Confederate flag (because they see themselves as rebels) even if they’ve never traveled southeast of Spokane, Washington and couldn't tell you in which century the United States civil war was fought. Consistent with their contrary nature, they study science in church and pray in school. Uh oh! I'm on a sidebar rant. Let me wrap up and say the good news for visitors to Venezuela is THEY DON'T HAVE ANY STINKIN' REDNECKS HERE!
Pickpockets and panhandlers are also rare. Criminals exist in sufficient quantities to require lots of walls, bars, razor wire, and electric fencing. However, they are mature and professional. It's a tribute to the Venezuelan character that there aren't more criminals because the police and judicial system are quite ineffective at capturing them and prosecuting them. If you cooperate, they usually don't shoot you or beat you up. They just point a gun at you, demand your money or, better yet, break into your house and take what they want without vandalizing the place.
Oh, I almost forgot. Outside of the President's railing tirades, they seem to really be OK with American's from the USA. Most of the movies in the theaters are Hollywood fare. People buy T-shirts made for the USA market with stupid slogans in English. In our international Las Mercedes neighborhood with the Finish, Bulgarian, and Russian embassies only blocks away and plenty of Venezuelans with German and Italian ancestry, we feel quite camouflaged. When we've been out in the country side, about the only evidence that we've been detected as Americans have been a few heavily accented English greetings like, "Hello Yankees" or "Hello Beautiful" (to my spouse and her Canadian amiga).
Now, let me tell you about the politics. No wait. That's too big and complicated. I'll save that for a later post if I have the energy. So that's it for now. I don't think I've offended any of my Venezuelan friends with this but I'll be extra especially careful in the future when I step out into the crosswalk with armloads of groceries.
