ISSUES....
Inside,
confidential, off the record
Serious
business
The
New York Times, Venezuela's correspondent Simon Romero writes
about Venezuela's number one serious
business....
Venezuela’s
Cup Runs Over, and the Scotch Whiskey Flows
GOOD TIMES Oil revenues are allowing more Venezuelans to indulge
a taste for imported whiskey, much to the disapproval of President
Hugo Chávez.
By
SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela
NEW Porsches and Range Rovers crowd the streets here. Rents for
a three-bedroom apartment in leafy districts like Altamira and
Los Palos Grandes have doubled since January to $6,000 a month.
But what most vividly illustrates Venezuela’s latest oil
boom may be its Scotch whiskey sales, which are soaring.
Diageo, the
British company that markets Johnnie Walker and Old Parr, said
the volume of its Scotch sold in Venezuela climbed 60 percent
in 2005. Distillers can expect robust sales again this year as
high oil prices lift Venezuela’s fortunes. The economy expanded
9.6 percent in the first half of the year, enhancing access to
many imports.
Scotch whiskey
holds a rarefied place in the collective psyche of this status-obsessed
country of 26 million. Per capita consumption outstrips that in
relatively prosperous neighbors like Brazil and Argentina. Venezuelans,
both young and old, often drink Scotch over a leisurely lunch,
at family gatherings, at nightclubs, or as an aperitif, their
ice-clinking glasses filled to the rim.
“Scotch
whiskey has a mystique for Venezuelans that is unmatched by any
other drink,” said Rafael Pedraza, a spokesman here for
Diageo.
At first glance,
Venezuela’s appetite for Scotch might seem odd in a country
that produces excellent rum, much of it exported to Europe. Then
there is President Hugo Chávez’s growing effort to
create a socialist economy, which seemingly would frown on imported
opulence. Whiskey is popular throughout the country, from cheap
blends to the most prized imported single malts.
But Venezuela’s
leaders have tried to politicize Scotch, as they have with much
else in this polarized country. Benjamín Rausseo, a comedian
running for president against Mr. Chávez, has jabbed the
government by promising to build a “whiskyducto,”
a pipeline to transport the whiskey directly from Scotland. For
Mr. Chávez, however, imported whiskey is no joke. He has
made it clear that there is little space for Scotch in his “Bolivarian
revolution,” once describing oil executives as “living
in chalets performing orgies, drinking whiskey.”
“We
cannot keep providing the dollars, which belong to the nation,
for an importing oligarchy that brings in the best of everything,
the best whiskey,” Mr. Chávez said in June while
threatening to tighten currency controls to limit imports of luxury
items.
Yet the Scotch
continues to flow, as the oil-fueled economic growth supports
Venezuela’s spending binge.
Venezuela
has been down this road before, though an eternity ago for a country
that frequently experiences political amnesia. Rusting, gas-guzzling
Cadillacs and Buicks, the relics of that era, still roam the streets
alongside imported, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Public
spending, which is climbing about 70 percent this year, is at
its highest levels in relation to gross domestic product since
1974, around the time when high oil prices briefly made Caracas
one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Back in those
days when the country was described as “Venezuela Saudita,”
or Saudi Venezuela, during the administration of the populist
Carlos Andrés Pérez, a taste for fancy whiskey also
emerged in a big way, as David Atlee Phillips, a former C.I.A.
station chief in Caracas, noted in his 1977 memoir of Latin American
cocktail-party intrigue and cold war miscalculations, “The
Night Watch.”
Mr. Pérez
nationalized the oil industry, challenging American and European
petroleum companies. Rich Venezuelans splurged on trips abroad,
with that generation known in Miami by the shopping moniker “dame
dos” (“give me two!”). They could afford the
best, until faced with crisis in the 1980’s when oil prices
plunged.
Do resurgent
Scotch sales signal a return to the past in Venezuela? Yes and
no, historians say.
Like Mr. Pérez,
Mr. Chávez is spending generously after starting to radicalize
energy policies, risking ruin if oil prices sharply decline. But
even critics of Mr. Chávez, democratically elected president,
acknowledge that some oil wealth is efficiently reaching the poor
through social welfare programs, in contrast to the past.
And while
the well-heeled may be alarmed by his rhetoric, Mr. Chávez
has largely allowed these Venezuelans to profit in this latest
boom as long as they do not become his saboteurs. Witness the
Caracas stock exchange, up 70 percent this year. A newly rich
class has even emerged, called “boliburguesía,”
a riff on the words Bolivarian and bourgeoisie.
In contrast
to Mr. Pérez, Mr. Chávez has shown himself to be
more methodical in thwarting challenges to his rule. His supporters
control the National Assembly and the highest courts, giving little
hindrance to Mr. Chávez’s various antipoverty efforts,
which bypass traditional channels to provide services like health
care, literacy training and access to discounted food.
“He
wants power that depends not on institutions, but on a caudillo,”
said Roberto Briceño-León, director of the Social
Sciences Laboratory, a research group based here. He used the
Spanish word for a strongman with a military bent, which has been
applied to leaders as disparate as Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner,
the Paraguayan dictator who died in exile in Brasília last
week.
Often underestimated
by his opponents, Mr. Chávez has been consistently pragmatic
and patient, as his presidency settles into its eighth year.
How the whiskey
flows after elections in December may reflect whether his rule
hardens further into the revolution it claims to be.
NYT
Published: August 20, 2006
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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