ABSTRACT
Even before the first worldwide increase in oil prices as a result of the Middle Eastern oil embargo, economic life in Caracas circa 1971 was dominated by the petroleum industry, which had made Venezuela’s the least poor economy in Latin America. Production was, however, dominated by trans-national corporations like Exxon, Gulf Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, and what wealth remained in the country was highly concentrated. The remarkable Uruguayan-born essayist Eduardo Galeano wrote that: ‘[T]he city is ruled by Mercedes-Benzes and Mustangs’, but ‘[w]hile the latest models flash like lightning down Caracas’s golden avenues, more than half a million people contemplate the wasteful extravagance of others from huts made of garbage’, some of which were slated for bulldozing so they would not be visible from the windows of the Caracas Hilton (Galeano 1992, 111–17).
