VENEZUELA:Venezuelans publicly opposed their teetotal president's introduction of a 'dry law' curtailing the sale of alcohol during the Easter holiday, writes Benedict Mander
"Dry law: sale of alcohol suspended" reads a makeshift notice outside a bar in gritty city centre Caracas. Step inside, however, and you may be pleasantly surprised.
A lively, visibly alcohol-fuelled scene quickly gives the lie to the sign, with customers jostling for space along the counter, clusters of empty beer bottles mounting up and waiters struggling to keep pace with demand.
"A toast to the dry law!" proposes one cheery customer, raising a glass of beer, evidently not his first. "Long live the Bolivarian revolution," he adds, with a touch of irony, referring to president Hugo Chávez's idiosyncratic socialist project under way in Venezuela.
Almost two weeks ago, many Venezuelans were unpleasantly surprised when the teetotal Chávez abruptly decreed that alcohol sales would be banned after 5pm for 10 days during Easter, and all day on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The idea was to control drink-driving, which is believed to raise above 100 the number of deaths as a result of road accidents during Easter, when Venezuelans flock to the beach to party.
The decree met with strong disapproval among many Venezuelans, who have the highest per capita consumption of beer in Latin America and are the seventh largest importers of Scotch whisky in the world. While they may be growing accustomed to the increasingly radical policy announcements of Hugo Chávez's "21st-century socialism", this was too close to the bone. People on Margarita Island in the Caribbean, which relies heavily on tourism, protested by painting "No to the dry law" on the rear windscreens of their cars.
"It's like the Prohibition in the US - no wonder people call Chávez a dictator," said one indignant drinker, Reinaldo Ramos, as he knocked back a whisky in the city centre bar in Caracas. Ramos, who voted for Chávez in presidential elections last December and remains loyal, conceded that alcohol bans are the norm in Venezuela, and elsewhere in the region, during elections.
"But this is a holiday and holidays are for having fun. It's absurd to try to stop that - and, quite frankly, impossible. Venezuelans like drinking too much." The bar continued serving alcohol, despite the fact that another one just two blocks away had been given a hefty fine the night before for doing the same. In the hillside slums of Caracas, no attention whatsoever is paid to the dry law, according to another clandestine boozer, Ignacio Suárez. "The police wouldn't dare to stop them selling alcohol there and even if they tried, they wouldn't get very far. They have no control there," he said.
While most bars and restaurants in the more affluent parts of town respected the law - resulting in some being either empty or closed altogether - some discreetly flouted the law by serving alcohol in coffee cups and ensuring no bottles were left on tables.
Complete enforcement of the "dry law" may be too much to hope for in a country in which it is normal to see people drinking before midday, or street vendors picking their way through traffic jams peddling cold beer to frustrated drivers.
But officials say the ban was a success: deaths have fallen this Easter.
Opposition factions produced contradictory evidence showing that accident levels had barely changed, despite the law. - (Financial Times service)