Venezuela’s high-life elite hope hard-hit poor will abandon Chávez’s legacy

The Observer

Venezuela’s high-life elite hope hard-hit poor will abandon Chávez’s legacy

Food shortages and high prices have raised conservative chances of victory in this week’s election – and buoyed the mood in Caracas’s country club

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Caracas
Saturday 5 December 2015 20.22 EST

From the vantage point of the well-kept lawns and overstuffed antique chairs of the exclusive Caracas Country Club, Venezuela doesn’t look so bad.

Much of the oil-rich country is crippled by rising inflation, a lack of basic goods and rampant violence that could lead to the ruling United Socialist party losing control of the legislature for the first time in 17 years in Sunday’s elections. But at this exclusive club, set on the leafy slopes of the El Avila mountain, those troubles seem a world away.

Elegantly bowtied waiters offer club members and their guests an extensive menu, including lobster bisque, lobster ceviche, lobster salad and grilled lobster. Outside the grand mansion clubhouse, a sparkling swimming pool gives way to an 18-hole golf course.

Since it was founded in 1917, the club has been a second home for the privileged Caracas elite. But since the late Hugo Chávez began what he called his “Bolivarian revolution” in 1998, that elite has been derisively termed los escualidos, the squalid ones, and they have been the object of government scorn.

Fed up with corrupt politics and neoliberal economic policies that the poor felt left them unprotected, Venezuelans swept Chávez into power hoping for change. With an economy buoyed by sky-high oil prices, Chávez set up social welfare programmes to benefit the poor in education, health and housing, winning him the gratitude and loyalty of millions.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/06/venezuela-elite-hope-poor-abandon-chavez-legacy-election