What it was like to grow up in Caracas, Venezuela

College, just as they promised from abroad, is a meeting place for a myriad of cultures that expand our worldview and leaves us wanting to explore the the world to meet them all. I remember the day of International Student Orientation and National Student Orientation. Yes, we, international students, had to go through basically the same process twice. Yet, I do not regret it, even in the slightest, since I got to meet people from almost every part of the US, and the world.

Now, two years into this journey of meeting people from all different places with completely different backgrounds, I want to share my experience at home before coming to Georgetown to spark a conversation about all the different traditions that are forging Georgetown’s diversity. Nowadays, mentioning that I come from Venezuela arouses a series of questions, which answers leave people more confused than before. Trying to explain why a country with one of the largest oil reserves in the world has the world’s highest inflation rates is almost a Herculean task. Yet, being born and raised in Venezuela gave me a lot of good memories to look back at.

Although I consider Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to be my home, I was born and partly raised in a small city called Barinas. Located in the plains, it gave me and my two brothers the perfect childhood experience: being able to mount bicycles outside the house around the block for hours, and countless nights at the only for kid-friendly place called Miami Pizza, a Chuck-E-Cheese’s-like local –expect without the creepy animatronics. When I was almost nine years old, we moved to Caracas, a city just as complex as any other metropolis. In a city with almost the same population as Paris (two million people) living in a valley the size of Augusta, GA (300 square miles), you can expect the traffic being just as bad as in DC. A six-mile journey from home to school would take about 45 minutes. So, that meant countless drives to school with me finish homework or having a solid study session for a test on the back of the car.

Although heavy traffic is a clear con, it had a bright side: it was the perfect excuse to why you were late to anything. Not that we needed one, since we Latinos are know for having a whole different time zone. We start to get dressed and prepare for an event almost an hour since it started. That is kind of our thing.

My daily commute to school was characterized by this view: the contrast between two different societies in the same city. As my preferred seat in the car was on the right side, I would always gaze into the growing organized chaos that is now know as the biggest, and most dangerous, slum in South America. Rising population density and poverty rates caused by urbanization brought many things, I would like to focus on some of the rather positive interesting ones.

What started as a simple solution to heavy traffic transformed into a whole industry. Motorcycles became the preferred method of transportation in Caracas because Venezuela lacks penalties for people driving in between lanes – therefore, what for most meant being stuck in traffic for almost an hour, bikes would do the same trip in a fraction of the time. And so, mototaxis were born. From kids to businessmen, everyone in a rush would hop on the back of a motorcycle to get anywhere in a matter of seconds. So you can guess that by the dynamic of Caracas’s traffic, changing lines was almost just as difficult as explaining the causes for Venezuela’s sky-high inflation rate.

Of course, there is an aspect of Venezuelan life that is extremely hard to ignore, and that is politics. Caracas, a already fast-paced and moving city, became more interesting thanks to daily political debate and discourse as I grew up. Everyday, one could hear banal conversations about weather and traffic religiously turn into a fierce political debate, just like in Georgetown. It wasn’t so hard to grew up in such an environment and foster a population of young men and women so actively involved in national politics as I feel that our generation is. We would grow up to become advocates of our own opinions in the bravest of ways, and I can certainly say that it was this kind of environment that drove my passion towards politics.

And last, but not least, it’s the greatest thing about living in Venezuela: arepas! Almost anyone who has met me knows about about my romance with them. Arepas are the tastiest and most versatile food there is, and that’s a fact –don’t try to fight me on this one. From breakfast to late-night munchies, you could never go wrong with a good arepa. Over everything else, it’s pretty much the bedrock of Venezuelan society.