Sunday, February 16, 2003

Religious concentration calling for peace and praying for Chavez to leave Today rather than a march it was a concentration with a mass. As usual it was huge, I guess size is no longer relevant. People were asked to bring their icons of virgins to the concentration. Parishes brough their statues from the churches nearby and even the Virgen of Coromoto, patron saint of Venezuela was brought from Guanare where the church in her honor was built. Guanare is a few hundred kilomteres from Caracas. It was definitely very emotional, clearly there is a lot of religious fervor in this country where 90% of the people are Catholic. It was very emotional, I saw people with tears in their eyes during the whole mass and it was indeed moving when the priest asked everyone to hug all the people surrounding them as if they were family. I was definitely moved... Below left, the altar built in the middle of the highway, right the Virgin of Coromoto brought all the way from Guanare. Inside in the Pictures section lots of photographs from the march, the icons, the people and the sights. 10:58:53 PM    comment []

Old pictures of Caracas Ernesto Leon, whom I don't know, but apparently lives in Houston, sent my a note about his site with a collection of old pictures of Venezuela, which is very interesting, at least for us Venezuelans. The filthy, polluted Guaire river that two men dared canoe last Saturday, is seeing above on the left in a 1918 postcard that says on the upper right corner in English: "Greetings from Caracas". The one on the right is the Catia lagoon in 1924. Catia is today the "West" of Caracas and I think it would be hard to find where the lagoon used to be. There are other pictures of the Presidential palace, the Legislative palace, the Guaire River, Country Club and many others. Very nice and very interesting. Thanks to Mr. Leon both for sending it and for doing it! 2:37:30 PM    comment []