Is Returning to Caracas a Good Option?
HAVANA TIMES – Many years ago, I lived in a very hectic city in Venezuela: Caracas.
I was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood, going through all kinds of situations that shaped what I learned from everyday life: the commotion, crime, partying, police raids, and shootings over just about anything. Despite all that, I learned to share and to take part in sports and cultural activities, which gave me an escape and a path toward personal growth. They nurtured my way of multiplying hugs and friendships.
In this enormous city, full of contradictions, I also learned how close dreams can seem and how, in a single second, disappointment can brush up against them. But that is the way life works. It’s just that in a noisy, polluted city full of people in a hurry, it is easy to lose sight of the need to appreciate the simple things, which remain hidden in densely populated places.
In greater Caracas, there are green spaces, plazas, boulevards, and parks for weekend outings, but time itself seems to keep anyone from stopping. Even so, it has always been a friendly and beautiful city, the center of so much of the country’s social, political, and economic activity. A concrete paradise watched over by a great mountain, ElA, an escape for many city dwellers.
Then, at the age of 34, due to circumstances beyond my control, I moved to Lara state, in the central-western part of the country.
I have now lived for 24 years on the outskirts of the city of Barquisimeto. I was always an active woman, accustomed to working under pressure, and adapting to the new pace was very difficult for me because living outside the capital is very different from living in Caracas. There, distances seem shorter and everything is close at hand.
Here, on the other hand, everything moves slower. The dynamics of daily life are more complicated, places are farther apart, and public transportation is less efficient. There are constant problems with water because there has never been a reliable drinking-water system. Seventy percent of the streets in the parish are unpaved, with no sidewalks or drainage channels for rainwater, which is why we experience flooding most of the time when it rains. Only about 50% of these communities are connected to sewage systems, and those farthest from the center receive even fewer services.
Because this is an outlying area where most residents are poor, government services are quite deficient. Today, the problem of power outages, which have been getting worse since 2020, is dimming hopes of being able to live better.
Many people I know ask why I don’t move back to Caracas, given all the limitations I live with. I have thought about it, but I weigh many things in making that decision, especially because I live in a community that 20 years ago received even less attention than it does today, and I know it inside and out. I own my home, which, although it still doesn’t have every comfort, has a large yard full of shrubs and trees that attract many different species of birds.
Here we wake up to the chirping of those birds and the crowing of the rooster, which happily roams my yard with his hens, alongside the slow-moving tortoises and the rest of our pets, dogs and cats. We say goodbye to the day accompanied by the raucous calls of macaws, and then the fireflies arrive, lighting up the dark night and blending in with an endless display of shooting stars.
These are very difficult times in my country, especially because of the political and economic situation. Although the electricity is rarely cut off in Caracas, purchasing power there is just as precarious. Renting or buying a home would be very expensive. I would have to face the crowded public transportation system again, the traffic, the exhaust fumes, walking fast again, constantly being on alert, the commotion, the never-ending noise…
It would not be easy to go back to all that, especially because what matters most—and what has no price—is the peace and tranquility that nature gives us. That is something very difficult to find today in a city as congested and noisy as my beautiful native Caracas.
I think that, although I sometimes miss it, those are reasons enough for me not to consider returning to Venezuela’s capital.