Fallen Oligarchs - a vigniette

Upon arriving in Caracas I have found myself encountering many Venezuelan bourgeois who have come across hard times since the rise of the new order.

The younger of these people have been educated to expect a lot from life. The older have been used to getting more. One man I have come to know was working a $60,000 a year job with a nice apartment five years ago. Now he makes $2 an hour and sleeps on his friend's couch. The other bourgeois I have met are in a similar position to him. There are many with MBAs and MAs who work in dirty, poorly equipped offices in squalid conditions. Bitterness emanates from their polite faces as they know there is nothing better for them. Most survive by living with their parents. Others have rent to pay and struggle to eat 4 decent meals a week.

They blame their President entirely for their situation. Their hatred for him is fierce and consuming. According to them everything that is wrong in the country and their lives is because of him. Even though most of them lost their former jobs in the strike, which was instigated by the opposition and the oligarchs, they do not blame them at all. It is all the President's fault. If they could leave the country they would, though extremely tight currency controls exist to deter such a course of action. Besides this many now the lack the financial means they might previously have possessed to be able to afford to travel abroad anyway.

Though their material circumstances have changed one thing hasn't and that is their attitude to the 80% of the population who are poorer than them. They regard them as universally stupid, lazy, scum. Some refer to them as little better than animals. It is an almost certainty that if the previous political and economic order had been preserved they would shed no tears for the plight of others. As far as they are concerned the only people entitled to security of employment, good pay and working conditions are them and their type. In their eyes the poor deserve nothing but contempt. In these circumstances the pity one feels for them is tempered by their attitude to others.

Above all this the real oligarchs appear to live unmolested. As for the poor, I haven't properly encountered them yet…..