There is a world beyond Disneyland that I intend to visit when I return from Barinas. On Saturday night, or rather the early hours of Sunday morning, my female friend drove out to a Salsa dance hall in a Caracas satellite town. Working and lower middle class clientele. Some of the best known Salsa musicians in the country. Sounded like it was humming! She wasn't looking to pick up men, just to Salsa. She sat at the bar drinking a beer, was approached courteously by men asking her to dance and then graciously returned to her chair as said men asked others to dance. She says she wouldn't be able to do this and feel comfortable with it in upmarket Los Palos Grandes. I'm not sure where in the world a woman would be able to do this comfortably.
She observed that most of the Salsa musicians and singers sported a hand gun down the back of their trousers! One of her dance partners, a man who had lived in Chile for more than 10 years, observed that prior to his departure from Venezuela he was a regular at the dance hall and that at least one person was shot dead every night. "Now they only hurt you" he said. "Oh" she replied, "what do they do, like beat you up?". "No, they break your heart". Now that could mean lots of things and doesn't negate the fact it was well known you didn't go there without your gun back in the '70s and '80s, pre Chavez. The 'great times' as the anti-Chavistas often refer to them. It sounded like a chat up line to me. Needless to say, my friend, a happily married woman, didn't fall for it. The 8 National Guards on duty were her back up if anyone got too heavy. They are a Chavista era presence.
Caracas 2 October 2011
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