A once-proud industrial city, now a monument to Venezuela’s economic woes

Long before Hugo Chávez launched his socialist revolution, government planners came here to Venezuela’s eastern frontier, where the mighty Orinoco and Caroni rivers converge, and envisioned an industrial workers’ paradise.

President Rómulo Betancourt, a key partner in John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress,” founded the city in 1961, inviting his countrymen to turn Ciudad Guayana into a tropical Pittsburgh.

More than a city, “it felt like you were building a country,” said Alfredo Rivas, who arrived as a young engineer and went on to become president of the huge steelworks here.

A half-century later and 15 years after Chávez came to power, Ciudad Guayana’s factories are crippled, starved for investment and roiled by labor disputes.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/a-once-proud-industrial-city-now-a-monument-to-venezuelas-economic-woes/2014/09/03/4b577663-8f18-4841-b958-eee3b8830ad9_story.html