AT the 360 rooftop bar in the heart of Caracas, every table is taken – even though a round of drinks can cost more than several months of base wages for many Venezuelans.
On a recent evening, 19-year-old Veronica Sanguino, who works at a fish market, says she saved for weeks to afford a night out at the open-air lounge.
She and her friends clink wine glasses and share ceviche, gazing over a city that was bombed in January during the US operation that led to the capture of Venezuela’s long-time leader, Nicolas Maduro.
“We go out just to slip away for a moment from this country’s reality,” Sanguino says.
In a capital battered by economic collapse, authoritarian rule and a vast exodus of its people, scenes like this are spreading.
Returning after years away, I find a city diminished yet stirring – proud, bruised and tentatively alive again.
New restaurants are multiplying. Nightclubs are full. Start-ups are appearing in polished co-working spaces. Some even whisper about an economic revival.
Much of that optimism rests on hopes that Venezuela’s moribund oil industry could rebound.
Political restrictions, too, are shifting. Prisoners have been released. Venezuelans are pushing against censorship and holding small protests.
The atmosphere feels looser – though only just.
Caracas remains a bubble where wealth pools around a small elite. Only a fraction of Caraquenos can afford its glossy nightspots.
And the tentative warming of ties with Washington is still fragile.
The United States is pressing hard for reforms, a sensitive proposition in a country where the ruling Socialist Party has long cast US involvement as hostile meddling.
The crash of the past decade drove millions to emigrate. Once-notorious traffic jams have thinned, leaving breezier commutes on the highways.
The city is also markedly safer. Homicides and kidnappings once invited comparisons to Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War.
Crime specialists say violence has fallen partly because members of gangs such as Tren de Aragua have migrated abroad, and partly because of a brutal campaign of extrajudicial killings by elite police units.
Yet fear has not vanished; it has simply shifted. Analysts point to the Bolivarian National Police as a growing threat, citing widespread allegations of extortion and bribery.
Other changes are subtler. Portraits of Hugo Chavez once dominated public spaces, emblematic of the personality cult that defined the socialist revolution he launched.
Today, images of “El Comandante” are largely confined to the old city centre and loyalist strongholds.
Some see that as a reflection of market-oriented policies introduced by Delcy Rodriguez before she became interim president in January, aimed at stabilising a free-falling economy.
“The colour red has been gradually disappearing from the cityscape,” says economist Asdrubal Oliveros, referring to the hue synonymous with Chavismo’s revolutionary identity.
Still, he cautions that growth remains volatile. Many investments now reshaping Caracas were launched before Maduro’s capture, as Rodriguez began exposing the economy to market forces.
To restore Venezuela to its pre-collapse size, Oliveros estimates, it would need annual growth of about 10% for a decade.
Inflation, he adds, is running at roughly 560% on an annualised basis, shrinking public-sector base salaries to the equivalent of about US$2 a month.
Meanwhile, widespread use of dollars and heavy reliance on imports have produced eye-watering prices. Deodorant can cost more than it does in Miami. Cocktails at some bars fetch US$17 or more.
“This city has the wages of Zimbabwe, the public services of Bangladesh and the prices of New York,” says Phil Gunson, a British political analyst who has lived here for decades, over lunch at La Estancia steakhouse, where a Porterhouse costs US$160. The restaurant is nearly full.
The appetite for high living – something Venezuela’s socialist experiment never erased – is unmistakable.
Filomena, an Italian seafood restaurant in the leafy hillside district of San Roman, opened less than four months ago. Diners can easily spend US$200 each on imported lobster, grouper in truffle foam and caviar.
“The country is turning a corner,” says Andres Elizalde, its general manager.
Yet most Caraquenos will never set foot there. The majority rely heavily on state subsidies to get by.
In Parroquia San Pedro, a poorer neighbourhood of fading art deco blocks, a street fair offers a glimpse of the old model still at work.
Under white tents, public employees provide free blood pressure checks, eye exams, medicines, haircuts and even therapeutic massages. Dogs and cats receive vaccinations and nail trims. Nearly 200 people queue patiently.
“Things like this make life here bearable, even pleasant,” says Katy Valderrama, 53, a secondary school teacher waiting to have her blood pressure taken, her dog Duque at her side.
With such stark contrasts on display, the city feels disorientating.
On my final day, I hike up El Avila, the mountain range rising above Caracas and separating its sprawl from the Caribbean Sea. The view is majestic; the air, briefly, is lighter.
Descending near my hotel, the mood shifts. Half a dozen officers on motorcycles from the Bolivarian National Police surround me.
Rifles in hand, they demand identification, pat me down, empty my pockets and threaten detention. They seem sceptical when I explain I am in the country on a journalist visa.
In recent years, the Maduro government has arrested foreign visitors on opaque charges of destabilisation before releasing them in prisoner exchanges. I steady my voice and show an electronic copy of my visa. I suggest they contact the Ministry of Communication and Information, whose officials authorised my visit.
With a predatory grin, the officer in charge hands back my passport card and tells me to move along.
I walk briskly away. The encounter is a bracing reminder that Caracas’s revival is incomplete – that its glitter is fragile, and its menace close at hand.
The city is stirring, yes. But for now, celebration here still comes edged with caution. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
