Segregation and conflict in post-modernist Caracas: from Pérez’s Gran Venezuela to Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution

Reviewing political and economic changes underwent since the so-called Gran Venezuela, characterized by the nationalization of oil and mammoth projects during the first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP, 1974–1979), the article focuses on the socio-spatial segregation and urban conflict staged in Caracas until Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution (1999–2013). It is a timespan when, at an urban scale, the oil-booming and modernist capital of the 1950s – initial episode of the article’s review – gave way to a less progressive and more deteriorated metropolis, which has become one of Latin America’s most polarized and conflictive arenas. Drawn from a research project about ‘The City in the Thought of Urban Venezuela’, the article outlines, from a methodological standpoint, an urban overview throughout some images, which intertwines the political and intellectual discourse about the city with its changing structure and perception. In this respect, the article’s approach is arguably inscribed within the urban cultural history in Latin America. For decades after CAP’s second government (1989–1993), the article intends as well a closer examination of segregation in the public space, considering that Caracas has become Latin America’s testbed of political and spatial polarization, fuelled by the unrest characteristic of Chávez’s neo-populist revolution.