Caracas – A City Unravels

The cultural spaces and infrastructure of Venezuela’s capital were once the envy of Latin America. Decades of decline have taken their toll

- By Fabiola Zerpa

Caracas once looked like a glimpse of Latin America’s future.

When petrodollars flowed into Venezuela in the 1960s and ’70s, the nation’s capital experienced a building boom. Highways ringed the growing metropolis, which boasted a university suffused with public art and the region’s tallest skyscrapers. Big American cars prowled the streets, thanks to generous fuel subsidies, while world-class museums and theaters and state-managed housing complexes were built.

But when Caracas turned 454 years old on July 25, it was less a cause for celebration and more of a reminder of the city’s reversal of fortune. A spate of economic crises ensued in the ’80s after oil prices crashed and the government accrued massive foreign debts, setting the stage for the election of President Hugo Chávez in 1998 and the socialist project known as Chavismo. After Chávez’s death in 2013, Venezuela endured political turmoil, and economic sanctions imposed by foreign governments on his successor, authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro, have hastened the capital’s decline. Today, many of Caracas’s most beloved urban spaces and architectural treasures have been pummeled by years of crisis, mismanagement, and bitter political battles.