Word: bolivar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wide spectrum of salesmen, admen and promoters to some all-purpose operators that the others call "export bums." U.S. and other foreign companies have contributed heavily to Caracas' great private building boom, but the government splurge of public works is more than twice as big. The Centre Simon Bolivar, a complex of twin 30-story office buildings, underground parking areas, landscaping and traffic routes, is nearing completion on a site where 400 buildings once stood in the heart of old Caracas. It was inspired by Rockefeller Center-but so far has cost at least three times as much...
...Andean Custom. Venezuelan independence dates back to 1821, when one of hemisphere history's towering figures, Simón Bolivar, finally drove the Spanish rulers out of his homeland and went on to free the neighboring nations. Bolivar had no illusions that he had brought U.S.-style democracy to the liberated lands; he died predicting that in the Americas, "Ecuador will be the convent, Colombia the university, Venezuela the barracks." He knew his countrymen well; soldiers have ruled Venezuela through most of its history. Many of them were from the high western Andes, where to celebrate their own character...
...Financial mismanagement in the government. Semi-independent government corporations, e.g., the Centro Bolivar, the Workers' Bank, are paying many debts in short-term government notes. The contractors and sellers who get the notes must give discounts up to 18% to convert them into cash, so they naturally fatten their prices to cover the expected sacrifice. The absurdity of such costly short-term debt financing (total: some $127 million) in rich, credit-worthy Venezuela seems explainable only in terms of the carefree feeling that "it's only money." Pérez Jiménez, not at all amused...
...with "'I wish you all much happiness,' 'Gentlemen, I heartily wish you success in life,' and so on, constantly varying the phrase, which was always full of feeling." Visitors from abroad were entertained there as well: Francisco de Miranda from South America, "martyr to the cause of which Bolivar was the hero," finished his tour of Harvard in the Wadsworth dining room, the guest of President Willard whom he found "lean, austere, and of an insufferable circumspection...
Most Good on a Shoestring. Since its founding in 1895 by the late Obstetrician Joseph Bolivar De Lee, the center has always operated on a shoestring (1954 budget: $225,000, from the Community Fund and individual contributions), nevertheless has delivered some 104,000 babies, trained 1,154 doctors and 12,000 medical students. The men and women on its staff (two residents, six assistant residents, 15 medical students) go about their jobs in ordinary street clothes, travel by bus or in their own cars to deliver babies, as one nurse put it, "just about everywhere except in the maternity shop...