Caracas is a vivid, noisy city. People speak loudly and gesture lavishly. Music blasts. Drivers blow their horns as they dodge around the motorbikes and the colorfully decorated buses, navigating through the unending bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The sun is hot, the breeze is cool. The sacred mountain, the Avila, rises above the red tile roofs. The goddess María Lionza, pumped and gorgeous, raises her pelvic bone from the middle of the highway. At sunset, the parrots fly home with a wild chatter over the line of cars. The main highway leaves the city and takes a thirty-kilometer downhill slide until it reaches the smooth waters of the Caribbean.

The mangos are so ripe that I just peel off the skin, no need for a knife. But when I open the tap, no water comes out. I flop down on the bed, bare feet sticking over the edge. From the open window, I hear an enthusiastic and off-key rendition of “Mi Alma Llanera”. Beyond that is a shrilling car alarm. I am definitely in Caracas.

As soon as we entered the city, a wall-size photo of President Hugo Chávez greeted us, telling us that Venezuela is free and will stay free. As soon as we got into a cab, the driver started talking about the inflation, the shortages, the crime, and the almost-daily demonstrations. We heard this litany from every taxi driver, sometimes with passion, sometimes with resignation.

As we drove through the city, on every side we saw the enormous billboards that said “SI”, or sometimes “VOTE SI”. This refers to the referendum in February which gave Chávez the right to be president for life. The other side is mostly represented in graffiti. “No es no - y no!” says one, referring to the fact that two years ago Chávez lost a referendum on the same question.

What he learned from this loss, apparently, was that he hadn’t campaigned enough. This time, the publicity campaign was relentless. My brother-in-law tells me that he saw government workers filing out of their offices during the day, carrying their “SI” signs, standing at intersections. The tax payers paid to convince themselves.

Yesterday my spouse and I were at the local panadería with a bunch of her old high school buddies. Ada, Lucy, Walter, María, Rosa, Rubén, friends for thirty years. Over cachitos de jamón and golfeados, they laughed over who stole their parents’ cars and who was the best person to sit next to during tests. They also talked about how their lives have changed in recent years.

María works in a government tax office, but feels isolated since she is the only one who is not a Chávez supporter. She needs the job, so she pretends she just doesn’t care about politics. But she’s also looked at with suspicion because she won’t take bribes.

Lucy and her husband have an import/export business, but they are mostly living off their savings. With the strict currency controls, they can’t get enough dollars together to import anything.

Walter and his wife are both electrical engineers. They have a business designing precision machinery, but they are ready to close it down. They can no longer get the parts they need.

Rubén was considered the most idealistic in this group of childhood friends. In November, he ran for election as an opposition candidate to Chávez, and won the post of procurer of the municipality of Baruta. But six months after he won, the government abolished the position.

This has been a favorite strategy of the Chávez government, in response to the opposition gains in November. The most famous case is that of Antonio Ledezma, the opposition candidate elected as mayor of Caracas. At first, Ledezma’s worst problem was the groups of pro-Chávez militants occupying and vandalizing city hall. But then Chávez managed to reorganize the government in a way that removes the mayor’s power, and now a political appointee, Jacqueline Faría, does everything that the mayor was supposed to do. The elected mayor of Caracas no longer has any funds or personnel. Recently he and his supporters were tear-gassed as they tried to lead a march to the National Assembly.

I love Caracas. It’s the city where my spouse was raised, and I see it reflected in her confidence, her energy, her smile. It’s a city of flamboyant, dramatic, sociable people. But Caracas now seems different from the city where my partner and I lived, eleven years ago. The people are tenser, more wary. And there’s way more garbage in the streets.

I want to be fair, so I affirm that Chávez has done some good things. There are still slums all around the city, but now some of them have nearby clinics and community centers. Literacy has also improved, and I saw trucks delivering copies of “Les Miserables” to school kids in Plaza Bolívar. But most dictators begin as liberators. And it looks to me like democracy is crumbling in Venezuela.

My astrological prediction for Hugo Chávez? I think he may become more and more paranoid over the years, since this is what generally happens to those who hoard power. But I don’t think this will happen until 2015, when Pluto opposes his stellium in Cancer.

This is an idealistic moment in history, but it’s also a moment when illusions loom larger than usual. With the conjunction between Jupiter and Neptune, lovely ideals come to the forefront, but they keep growing, and sometimes end up taking off into the stratosphere like helium balloons. In the new moon chart at the end of May, Mercury squared the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction, and provided a certain amount of practical ballast. Mercury was also retrograde through almost all of May, slowing everything down.

Now Mercury is direct, so new directions are possible. But as June begins, Mercury is still squaring the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction, so there continues to be some dissonance between ideals and applications. People can believe all kinds of beautiful things, but what is really possible? Chávez is noted for the incredible stamina with which he gives speeches. He keeps on talking for hours and hours in his weekly TV show. A deluge of words is hypnotic, even in this noisy city; it’s a way to forget life’s daily problems.

June is a wordy month, not a particularly focused time, with its Gemini/Cancer emphasis. It’s all about talking to people, gathering information, and enjoying friends and family. New networks can be formed and new connections made, while old attachments remain strong.

However, all that diffuse energy coalesces at the new moon of June 22, just after the summer solstice. The sun and moon oppose Pluto, signaling a new lunar cycle which digs deep into root causes, and makes lasting changes. The idealism and illusions of the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction are still there, but the focus is elsewhere. It’s a grittier, more intense time.

June is a month of chatter, a month when ideas bounce around on shifting wind currents. But at the end of June, all these voices could come together. A single voice, the voice of truth, may be heard above the din.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com